my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Paper

Recently, I registered for Flinkster - a car sharing service operated by Deutsche Bahn. At first, I was pleasantly surprised at their rather straightforward online registration process. Little did I know then that their registration process also involved handing in a printed and signed document for confirmation of identity. Turns out I was in for a Kafkaesque farce of a process. Not only was I required to also hand in my passport and driving licence for identity verification, which could easily have ...
Sunday February 16th, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship
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The Future of Coding: Simple, Responsive, Instant Feedback

Last year Daniel Siegel outlined what he thinks will be the future of computing: While trying to teach everyone to code certainly is well-intentioned and to some extent beneficial the idea falls short of what most people require of computing environments. Most people don't need comprehensive and complex development environments. They need to accomplish specific tasks that lend themselves to being solved by code yet most people don't need to develop enterprise-grade web applications or mobile apps. What's actually needed are simpler tools ...
Sunday January 5th, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Software
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Outside the box

"Thinking outside the box" "I'm an outside-the-box thinker" Most of us have heard those phrases or variations thereof. It's one of those empty clichés you see on CVs, alongside other meaningless bullshit like a 'well-rounded character' in 20-year-olds - whatever that's supposed to mean. Aside from being an empty buzzword, what does thinking outside the box actually mean? It basically means leaving well-trodden paths when approaching a problem. Most people like to see themselves as creative problem solvers, while - as a matter of ...
Sunday December 15th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design
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Natural Language User Interfaces And Internet Search

Recently, there was an article at Wired about IBM’s Watson and how IBM might be able to supersede Google as the dominant search engine by providing a question-answering kind of search engine. Every few years the idea of a natural language / semantic / question answering search engine crops up again. Indeed, natural language understanding is quite relevant for the crawling and indexing part of information retrieval systems and Google is very good at that. Just look at their quite formidable automatic translation ...
Sunday November 10th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Web Applications
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Designing For User Delight

Adam Berrey wrote a nice article about why a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) often falls short of meeting users' needs. He argues that by focussing on a product's gestalt (its core features and experience, i.e. its essential characteristics, such as Google's search bar or Facebook's friends feed), design and quality truly successful product designs delight the user to a degree he or she falls in love with the product.
Sunday October 6th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship
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Practical Typography

Under Butterick's Practical Typography you'll find a highly interesting, comprehensive online book by Matthew Butterick about typography and how to put it to use. The book can be read for free. However, the author suggests a variety of ways of paying him for his work. So, if you find this resource as useful as I do, please don't hesitate to compensate the author for his efforts so he'll be able to keep up his great work.
Sunday September 8th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design
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Less, but better

Great design is long-lasting. - taken from Dieter Rams' ten principles for good design. This particular principle is especially true for Rams' perhaps most seminal design, the record player Braun SK 4 that's commonly know as 'Schneewittchensarg' (Snow White's Coffin) in Germany: While the product itself is more than obsolete the ideas and concepts behind this design can still be seen in many modern day devices. This is especially true for most of Apple's designs, which draw heavily upon Rams' work.
Sunday August 25th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Software
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Eine sinnvolle Alternative zu QR Codes

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Vor kurzem habe ich über den Unsinn von QR Codes in der Werbung geschrieben. Neben Zustimmung gab es auch ein paar Kommentare, in denen darauf hingewiesen wurde, dass es eben doch sinnvolle Anwendungszwecke für QR Codes gibt. Der einzig wirklich interessante Anwendungszweck darunter war meiner Meinung nach für Anwendungen wie z.B. AirDroid. Dabei authentifiziert man sich ohne Passwort und Co., indem man einen auf einem Bildschirm angezeigten QR Code mit seinem Smartphone einscannt. Sehr clevere ...
Sunday June 2nd, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Mobile Applications
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Über den Unsinn von QR Codes in der Werbung

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Vom BMWi gibt's jetzt die Start-App mit Infos für Startup Gründer. An sich ja keine schlechte Idee. Was mich aber irritiert ist mal wieder der QR Code. 'Einfach über den QR Code downloaden'. Ja klar, Moment, ich suche und lade mir eben eine von Dutzenden von QR Code Apps runter, mach ein Foto, geh auf den Link, der mich dann über Umwege zum App Store weiterleitet, wo ich dann die Start-App runter laden kann?! Die ...
Tuesday May 7th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design
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