Life in a nutshell

Name:
Alexander Karl Kruck-Kneip

Date & place of birth

I was born on February 23, 1977 in Gelsenkirchen-Buer in Germany.

Marital status

I have been married to my wonderful wife Daniella Kruck since August 31, 2001. Together we have four lovely children.

Countries lived & worked

Germany, 1977 - 2015

England, 2015 - 2019

Ireland, 2019 - 2020

Netherlands, 2020 - 2022

Ireland, 2022 till now

Hobbies

Hiking with the family and road cycling.

Education

1997
Abitur at the Max Planck Gymnasium in Gelsenkirchen Buer

In 1997 I graduated from the Max Planck Gymnasium in Gelsenkirchen-Buer. My advanced courses were physics and mathematics.

2003
Media designer for digital and print

Completion of the recognized training as a media designer for digital and print media at the Kartäserwall vocational college in Cologne in 2003.

The training lasted 2 1/2 years and was a combination of practical work in a company and learning at the vocational school.

2012
Certified Usability Engineer
Fraunhofer FIT

Issued Feb 2012
Credential ID UE-1111--04

“In our vocational training, we provide you with the essential tools for a profound consulting activity in usability engineering. You will learn the concepts, methods, and procedures of usability engineering in a practice-oriented manner.” [usability-ux.fit.fraunhofer.de in 2023]

After almost 2 years as the first product designer at Europe's largest freight exchange TimoCom, I wanted to bring our customers more into the center of my work.

At that time, the Fraunhofer Institute in Bonn offered further training to become a usability engineer specifically for professionals with experience in product development.

I was very fortunate that the TimoCom management supported me financially in this further development.

Next topic

• Career stages

Project descriptive name

Business & Design Strategy for several small projects and presales.

Tools and technologies

Figma, FigJam, Material Design, Confluence, JIRA.

Project description

I worked on three projects related to sustainability, hi-tech and HR.

• I supported specialised technology experts at ELEKS to start creating a product in the energy sector that helps companies in the dairy industry to be more sustainable.
• Supported ELEKS presales team in preparing a competitive proposal for a consulting software in the energy sector for Siemens.
• Improved the UX of the task overlay for the eCAP team.

Responsibilities

• Planned and executed internal team workshops in the areas of a business value proposition, proto personas, personas.
• Facilitated ideation workshops with potential external partners like the FIT and the University of Reutlingen.
• Set up a user research framework to give the team a better starting point for generating qualitative data.
• Collaboration with product management, senior stakeholders, external partners and business development.
• Created a first prototype of the sustainability energy management app and handed it over to development.
• Created multiple system and user journey maps to help the presale team understand the scope and the needs of the customer.
• Worked together with the eCAP team to optimise the UX on the task creation form.
• Created service blueprints and presentations for the topics UAT and Figma design processes.

Work samples

Jamboard workshop sustainability project

20240228-Hypothesis driven ideation validation process kick-off

Requested concept to improve UAT at ELEKS

UAT - Service blueprint

Project descriptive name

5 brands - White label mobile digital credit card.

Tools and technologies

Figma, FigJam, Google Analytics, Maze, Lottie, Adobe After Effects, ReactJS, Material Design, Confluence, JIRA.

Project description

I worked on two projects related to white label mobile digital credit cards. The projects were as follows:

• Digital credit card optimisation for a fintech company. The task was to quickly address problems indicated by newly collected Google Analytics data when a new digital credit card was launched on the market. The solution required cleaning up neglected and overcrowded Figma files and establishing new common processes across departments. The solution also included development of a user research framework to coach designers as researchers and improve market responsiveness.
• Design system optimisation of a digital credit card for a large hotel chain.

Responsibilities

• Led, coached, and trained the design team; hired and onboarded new team members.
• Optimised processes to deliver all design artefacts faster.
• Collaborated with the C-level management.
• Reported to the C-level management and the stakeholders.
• Developed and implemented the product design strategy and the design process.
• Conducted alignment, ideation, user journey mapping, and design-thinking workshops to quality assurance, product, commercial, marketing and product design departments to define and apply new processes.
• Set up and implemented the user research framework. As a result, the high drop-off rates decreased by 25%.
• Conducted unmoderated testing using Maze.
• Conducted low- and high-fidelity prototyping.
• Created and executed the UX copy framework.
• Conducted competitor analysis and conversion optimisation.
• Created, implemented, and maintained the design system.
• Created user journey maps.
• Conducted QA UAT support.
• Responsible for the successful implementation of Apple Pay and Google Pay for all credit cards.
• Responsible for increasing the overall rating in the Apple App Store from 1.9 to 4.6 stars.

Work samples

Example User Research Findings/Figma

Improvements ASDA Login Page

UX UI Brand Design Pitch Deck

IHG One Reward Digital Credit Card Brand Design

UX UI Brand Design Pitch Prototype

IHG One Reward Digital Credit Card Brand Design

Project descriptive name

Global user research to support scaling from a European to a global product.

Tools and technologies

Figma, Framer, Lottie, Adobe After Effects, FigJam, Miro, Google Analytics, Maze, SurveyMonkey, Lookback, MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android, ReactJS, Tailwind, Confluence, JIRA.

Project description

The project featured the development of numerous design frameworks and artefacts to quickly adapt the company's product to the market requirements. We developed a new design system and established a global user research lifecycle to support scaling from a European to a global product.

Responsibilities

• Started with a new design team from scratch and managed freelancer and agency designers.
• Reported to the CPO and collaborated with senior stakeholders.
• Conduct budget planning and execution for the UX and user research tools.
• Conducted feedback, ideation, design system, and design-thinking workshops.
• Developed and executed the first global user research framework.
• Conducted moderated testing using Lookback.
• Collaborated with the marketing and development team to create a design system for all departments.
• Developed together with the OPS Lead a more sufficient UAT process.

Project descriptive name

Design and build a complete bot authoring app within 9 months.

Tools and technologies

Adobe XD, Miro, Google Analytics, Confluence, JIRA, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AngularJS.

Project description

The project goal was to develop a bot authoring application within 9 months for a new less technically savvy target group. I initiated regular user journey mapping workshops with all stakeholders and Software Developers to provide a clear vision of the product's UI and UX direction and resolve disagreements between teams. With quick support from colleagues, I started regular iterations of high-fidelity prototypes. Initially, I tested the prototypes regularly internally, but I finally managed to involve real users from the potential customers for user testing. My design-driven approach was a key success factor to get a first multimillion dollar contract for our bot authoring software.

Responsibilities

• Coached, trained, and onboarded Junior Designers.
• Developed the process to deliver faster all design artefacts.
• Conducted senior and middle stakeholder management.
• Developed and implemented the product design strategy and the design process.
• Conducted alignment, ideation, user journey mapping, sketching, and design-thinking workshops.
• Set up and implemented the user research framework.
• Conducted moderated testing using Zoom and Confluence.
• Conducted competitor analysis.
• Conducted prototyping in the form of digital pen & paper on the conference screen and hi-fi using Adobe XD.
• Conducted with the QA team regular UAT sessions.

Work samples

Case study

Save the bot

XD prototype

Save, train and test

XD prototype

Introducing the Library

Project descriptive name

eCommerce shop creation and coding.

Tools and technologies

Sketch, Adobe XD, Zeplin, Google AnalyticsConfluence, JIRA, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SASS, jQuery, Node JS, CSS animation, Gulp, PHP, MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Bootstrap, EPI Server.

Project description

During this time, I designed UI and UX for different e-commerce platforms.

Responsibilities

• Learned to develop, sell and publish eCommerce store designs directly with PHP, responsive and adaptive for all mobile and desktop devices.
• Conducted multiple rebrands and replatformings for various e-commerce clients.
• Designed and developed the new company brand design, design system and presentation eCommerce platform.
• Conducting ideation, feedback and design thinking workshops to optimise the shop experience.

Work samples

Maginus new brand company website

Maginus.com

ERA Security Systems

erahomesecurity.com/

Project descriptive name

AB testing conversion optimisation.

Tools and technologies

Sketch, Adobe XD, Google Analytics, Hotjar, SurveyMonkey, Confluence, JIRA, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SASS, jQuery, CSS animation, Gulp, MacOS, Windows, iOS.

Project description

I worked as a single UX Designer in a cross-functional team on a car rental platform and established new UX processes that helped the software development team to increase the ratio of successful experiments.

Responsibilities

• Collaborated with members of QA, analysts, copy writers, product owners, members of marketing and developers to define and execute a better design thinking ideation process.
• Provided the Software Developers with closed code packages of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without dependencies to test a hypothesis on the car rental A/B testing platform.
• Increased the rate of successful A/B testing using a variety of methods, such as lightning talks, sketching workshops, user research, competitor analysis, cross-departmental ideation sessions, and more.

Work samples

Maginus new brand company website

inspire-for-more.com/ab-tests-at-rentalcars.html

Project descriptive name

Align existing product suites, launch new products and find solutions to conquer new markets in the innovation department.

Tools and technologies

Sketch, Balsamiq, Google Analytics, Google Forms, Confluence, JIRA, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe InDesign, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SASS, Query JS, Node JS, CSS animation, Gulp, AngularJS, Twitter Bootstrap.

Project description

2007-2010 - Working in the Marketing department in the role of a Graphic and Web Designer. Biggest task was to invent with the core team a complete new brand design for all media.

2010-2014 - Starting as first product designer in the development department. Created the first Design System for the company and aligned the two existing products with the brand design of the company which included icon- and component design. Hired, trained and led the first product design team and supported the development and launch of two additional successful products.

2014-2015 - Joined the innovation department to explore ways to conquer new markets with growth design. Using whiteboard user journey mapping and ideation workshops, I iterated on which solutions were possible in a design thinking process. What was extraordinary was that I was able to go straight from lo-fi hand-sketched prototypes to creating high-fidelity prototypes in code, AngularJS. This saved a lot of time and we were able to regularly test the current status of development with real users using real data.

Responsibilities

• Team lead, development, coaching, training, onboarding, hiring.
• Process optimisation to deliver faster all design artefacts.
• C-Level collaboration and reporting.
• Product Design Strategy.
• Alignment, ideation, user journey mapping and design thinking workshops.
• User research framework setup, training, implementation, execution and stakeholder reporting.
• Moderated testing.
• UX copy framework creation and execution.
• Competitor analysis.
• Design process development, training, implementation and execution.
• Creation of the design system, coordination with development, rollout, execution and maintenance.
• User journey mapping.
• Lo- and hi-fi prototyping.
• Brand Design.
• Icon design and library creation.
• Interactive banner design.
• Coding in HTML, CSS, SASS, NodeJS, Gulp, AngularJS, Twitter Bootstrap.
• QA UAT support.

Work samples

Uncover growth markets

inspire-for-more.com/uncover-growth-markets.html

Less food waste

inspire-for-more.com/less-food-waste.html