About Me · Henning Witzel

About Me

I'm a 32 year old Product Designer based in Berlin.

My name is Henning, I'm a Product Designer with a background in engineering. For the past nine years, I've been designing & developing software products to provide meaningful and relevant user experiences.

In 2011 I founded Zebresel, a small agency in Erfurt (Germany), where I planned, designed, and implemented websites & web applications for our clients. After two years, we started developing our own products to solve problems in the event business.

In 2015 I changed my life and went down a new path to experience other parts of the world. I joined NewStore, an international company that wants to bring the joy back to retail, and moved to Berlin. Since then, I'm part of the product team and transform the vision into a real product. Almost three years ago, I got the opportunity to build up a new design team and learn how to become a leader and manager. My team and I drive the UX strategy, scale the design process, and help others grow in design to deliver products people love.



Working experience

I'm in the business of building products that solve real problems.


NewStore

2015 – Now · 5 years 8 months · Berlin

My journey at NewStore starts in 2015, right at the beginning when the company was founded and is still going on.

NewStore operates a platform for retailers to run their stores on iPhones. We deliver Omnichannel-as-a-Service by providing a single global solution that combines order management, mobile POS, and inventory management in the cloud.

If you ever shopped at Decathlon, Burton, UNTUCKit, or Outdoor Voices, then tell me about your experience – happy to hear about it!

Product Desginer

March 2015 – May 2017 · 2 years 3 months

This was my first job doing design without any coding. During that time, I researched & designed two products by working together with many teams across the company.

🖥 Omnichannel Manager

A back-office tool that allows the support and operations team of a retailer to manage their day-to-day business and set up our platform.

Check out www.newstore.com/omnichannel.

Learn more in my portfolio.

📱Consumer App

A white-label shopping app for loyal customers that our retailers can customize to their needs. By using React Native the goal was to have one codebase and experience that can be published to iOS and Android.

The product was discontinued.

I was part of different development teams that worked in an agile manner, using either Scrum or Kanban. On top of that, I was a member of the design team. Being together with other designers and researchers helped me shift my focus from design aesthetics to problem-centered design. We were always in close collaboration, and each one of us had the design ownership of a specific product. Doing User Research, Story Mapping, Design Reviews, Usability Tests, Design Sprints, and working with Product Teams became my daily business.

Product Manager

Mai 2017 – April 2018 · 1 year

To expand my knowledge and see the other side, I wanted to experience how it is to be a Product Owner coming in with engineering and design experience. I partnered up with another PO and led the design and development of our new mobile POS app.

📱Associate App

The app addresses the needs of today’s associates and shoppers. It streamlines the checkout, gives store associates access to inventory & customer data, and allows them to engage with the customer even outside the store.

Check out www.newstore.com/mobile-pos.

Learn more in my portfolio.

With a large team of front-end developers and multiple back-end teams, we launched the first version at the beginning of 2018 with functionality that fulfilled the basic needs to operate a store and get the job done.

Head of Product Design

April 2018 – Now · 2 years 7 months

While being a Product Owner was a good learning experience for me, but I missed doing design and keeping our focus on the user experience and solving real problems. I’ve got the opportunity to switch from being an individual contributor to becoming a leader and build up a new design team. Our focus is to drive the UX strategy, scale the design process, and help others grow in delivering products people love. We are working hands-on doing design jobs, user research, and prototyping efforts together with different engineering teams daily.

I still design parts of our product (mainly the Associate App) and continuously improve the user experience. I’m doing regular research to understand specific feature requests, analyze user flows, design interfaces, and work together with various product teams that want to add more functionality.


Zebresel

2011 - 2015 · 4 years · Erfurt

My journey here starts in 2011 while I was finishing up my bachelor's degree and ended 2015.

Zebresel is a media agency focusing on website- and app development. I founded the company with a team of computer scientists while I was still studying. From 2011 until 2015, we planned, developed, and launched customer projects in Germany. Next to doing project management, I focused on the user experience and interface design. At the end of 2013, we started to develop our products to solve problems in the event business.

Web Design & Development

April 2011 – October 2013 · 2.5 years

With my freshly gained engineering developer knowledge we started to design and build websites and web apps for clients in our region. I focused on front-end design & development by using PHP, HTML, CSS, and JS. People liked what we did, and soon we did not just design websites but solved real problems for them by building web and mobile applications.

Product Design & Development

November 2013 – March 2015 · 1.5 years

I loved doing visual design and building stuff – it didn't matter if it was a website, flyer, or an app. But it's not about how it looks like; it's how it feels and the journey within. While still doing design & development for our customers, we also started building our products. I focused more on user experience design and marketing and less on coding. To my advantage, for both products, we were trying to scratch our own itch and solved problems that we had inside the event business.

📱Beamerlasershow

An app that allows anyone to create a light-show to fascinate people wherever you want without a special license. We combined a video projector, artificial fog, and 2D animations with an iOS device. With the app, you can create playlists with a broad set of predefined animations, and a live mix mode allows you to touch and draw animations on the screen to unfold your creativity.

Check out www.beamerlasershow.de.

Learn more in my portfolio.

🖥 Signum+

A digital signage solution that allows you to put social media content on display and engage with your audience. You can bring up anything you want during events – a GIF, Facebook post, Tweet, video, vote, or simple text.

We created a party service that people could book: SONEP – Social Network Party. It was 2013, and Facebook parties were booming. The system was running all night long in night clubs or event locations. People could post into a Facebook group and saw their posts on a big screen. With different modules, we allowed ourselves to guide the evening.

Check out www.sonep.de and www.signumplus.de.

Learn more in my portfolio.

JENDATA Computersysteme

2006 - 2007 · 1 year · Jena

My journey here starts in 2006 and ended 2007.

Working in a tech company was part of the deal getting my highschool degree. JENDATA Computersysteme GmbH is a computer system house based in Jena. They offer countrywide services around information technology and help companies setting up and maintaining network systems. Provide Internet services, business software development, hardware repair, and consulting.

IT Engineer

2006 - 2007 · 1 year

I worked as an IT engineer and was responsible for maintaining their customer's IT systems. In my day to day business, I was consulting customer and dealt with computer hardware, software, and networking tools. I learned how to test, install, and configure those to troubleshoot and solve issues.

On top of that, I programmed on my first PHP web-project allowing us engineers to submit our report after finishing up a customer visit online instead of filling out a piece of paper.



Education

I spent six years at the university.

University of Applied Science Erfurt

2008 - 2014 · 6 years · Erfurt

My journey here starts in 2008, where I decided to give it a shot at the university and ended 2014.

A study in Erfurt aims to teach practical oriented knowledge and skills in the main areas of computer science. I gained expertise in technologies, algorithms, and programming as well as methodical skills for analyzing, planning, and implementing solutions.

🎓 Bachelor of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Sience

2008 - 2011

During the first three years, I specialized on computer science in media. I learned a lot about procedures, methods, and technologies in media design, production, and engineering. My focus was on the evaluation, planning, and implementation of digital web-based products.

📄 Web-Framework by Martin Gessert & Henning Witzel

My bachelor thesis focused on the development of a PHP web-framework to build web applications. My thesis describes the conceptual design, implementation, and evaluation of it. We were one of the university's first ones that tested a development framework on usability with other software developers. In the end, we used the framework to build a real application for a construction company to allow its customers to upload and manage building-plans instead of sending them via email.

Check out my thesis here.

🎓 Master of Science (M.Sc.), Computer Science

2011 - 2014

I started to split my time between gaining working experience while still studying. I became better at analyzing complex requirements at the university, proposing appropriate solutions, planning, and coordinating implementations. I specialized in the development of complex interactive applications with a focus on user-centered design of interfaces.

📄 Interactive Display Systems by Martin Gessert & Henning Witzel

My master thesis addressed the UX design and further developed an interactive display system we developed for cross-media communication, emphasizing social media. See more about this in my working experience around 🖥 Signum+.

Check out my thesis here.

SBSZ Jena-Göschwitz

2004 - 2006 · 2 years · Jena

The SBSZ is a governmental career development center that got me into computer science. This education was a combination of school and work. After two years of studying, I had to work in a company to get my high school degree.

🎓 Technical Assistent for Computer Science

2004 - 2006

It was the first time I learned something about computer science – how to code, how computers work, or how to set up a proper network. This education allowed me to get my high school degree and specialize in what I enjoyed – computers.


Awards

I was told everyone has this nowadays.

🏅 Nominated for boyfriend of the year 2019


Contact me

The places where I'm actually active and you can talk to me.

@Twitter - twitter.com/henning_witzel

@LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/henning_witzel

@Mail – witzel@hey.com