World Usability Day 2023 at the THI.
The 19th World Usability Day took place on November 9, 2023. To mark the occasion, the Department of User Experience Design and the interdisciplinary research group Human-Computer Interaction Group (HCIG) at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, together with the Spiegel Institute, hosted an event at THI for the seventh time. Under this year’s motto “Collaboration and Cooperation”, Boris Schmelter and his students also contributed to the thematic exchange.
Branding meets Usability
In his keynote, Boris Schmelter highlighted the challenges that arise when the fields of branding and usability meet: Successful brands need to differentiate themselves from their competitors in order to leave a lasting impression. However, we almost only encounter brands digitally. Interactive touchpoints require a high level of usability and therefore a certain “normality”. How can these learned mechanisms be reconciled with a strong brand identity? This is an exciting field for brand designers. The THI course “Brand Design Development” led by Boris Schmelter in the User Experience Design degree program is dedicated to this interface and led to convincing results in the summer semester 2023.
Accompanying exhibition
The students of User Experience Design showed how theory can be put into practice in their own exhibition. The works that were created in the summer semester 2023 were on display. Of particular interest was the question of how brands can be innovative in order to create memorable user experiences with analog and digital elements. The assignment covered the entire process of brand development: from identity and concise brand elements to multimedia touchpoints and a click prototype that shows how the brand feels when used. This allowed the designers of tomorrow to show what they are made of today.
