experience
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since JUN 2020
Product Design Lead
Meta Reality Labs
Burlingame, CA
--> Build concepts, prototypes and designs for Meta Portal's screen, voice, and physical interfaces in collaboration with cross-functional teams across Facebook's family of apps and present them to key stakeholders and teams in the organization.
--> Develop design strategies, information architecture, interaction patterns, prototypes and visual designs for existing and next generation Portal products.
--> Provide strategic design direction, thought leadership and mentorship on best practices in UX design and be an evangelist for design as a key discipline for product development and business impact within the organization.
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since NOV 2017 — MAR 2020
Principal UX Designer
Bowers & Wilkins
Menlo Park, CA
--> Build concepts, prototypes and designs for mobile, 10-ft, and
physical UI in collaboration with cross-functional teams and present them to key stakeholders and teams in the organization.
--> Develop information architecture, interaction patterns, prototypes and visual designs for existing and next generation products.
--> Research design, society and technology trends and explore new, state of the art luxury audio, video and home automation experiences with strategic impact for Bowers & Wilkins.
--> Provide strategic design direction, thought leadership and mentorship on best practices in UX design and be an evangelist for design as a key discipline for product development and business impact within the organization.
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NOV 2016 — SEP 2017
Senior Manager UX Design
APR 2016 — OCT 2016
Manager UX Design
Mercedes-Benz
R&D North America
Sunnyvale, CA
--> Lead a team of 15 very talented cross-disciplinary designers and
creative technologists from project ideation and conceptual development to project delivery.
--> Organized and facilitated cross-team collaboration between design, engineering, user research and business strategy as well as between the different design studios around the world.
--> Scaled various conceptual and visual design projects from vision to
production for next generation telematics system MBUX. Roll-out with 20+ car models, starting 2018.
--> Concept EQ – introduced the vision of an immersive digital space along with the vision of a map centric user interface to mitigate range anxiety and support electric mobility needs.
--> Provided thought leadership with a long term vision for designing a
holistic user experience across different platforms and touch points of the Mercedes-Benz brand.
--> Worked cross-functionally with other team managers and stakeholders to identify opportunities for impact and product enhancement as well as product and business requirements.
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AUG 2015 — MAR 2016
Principal UX Designer
Mercedes-Benz
R&D North America
Sunnyvale, CA
--> Guided and mentored a vision team of cross-disciplinary designers and creative technologists.
--> Explored new experiences for Mercedes-Benz with strategic impact for in-car displays, mobile devices, wearables, intelligent light, smart materials, interactive and transformable surfaces.
--> Spearheaded and established tangible digital interfaces as a new design discipline within Mercedes-Benz.
--> Collaborated with cross-functional teams on multi-modal interactions combining voice, gesture and gaze.
--> Built concepts, prototypes and designs which I presented to key stakeholder and teams in the organization.
--> Developed core information architecture, interaction patterns, prototypes and visual designs for the next generation telematics system MBUX and beyond.
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OCT 2014 — JUL 2015
Senior UX Designer
Mercedes-Benz
R&D North America
Sunnyvale, CA
--> Strong individual contributor as member of the F015 core project team. Developed concepts for autonomous mobility experiences, worked on interaction and visual design, developed prototypes for evaluation and effective communication of the design vision and ensured correct implementation into the final product.
——
Red Dot Design Award “Best of the Best” 2016 — Engadget “Best of CES 2015” — The Verge “Best Car of CES 2015”
--> Lead a small design team for demonstrating the Mercedes-Benz vision of a predictive user experience. IxDA Award 2015 shortlisted in category “Disruptive”.
--> Created concepts, designs and presentations to gain alignment and drive decisions across multidisciplinary teams.
--> Designed mockups and prototypes to effectively communicate intended interaction.
--> Collaborated with designers, researchers, engineering, and communications from idea conception through execution.
--> Synthesized user insights and business goals into personas, user journeys, concepts, wireframes, interaction flows and visual designs in an iterative development process.
--> Developed design tools that streamlined repetitive tasks and enabled rapid iterations for the design team.
--> Crafted compelling designs and experiences that met and redefined the digital brand language of Mercedes-Benz.
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OCT 2012 — SEP 2014
UX Designer
Mercedes-Benz
R&D North America
Sunnyvale, CA
--> As the lead designer for the digital user interfaces of the Concept S-Class Coupé I worked directly with software and embedded hardware engineers – from whiteboard concept stage over rapid prototyping to final polished visual design.
--> Spearheaded a new collaboration model and best practices of interdisciplinary co-creation and the strategy of using show cars as proof of concept – designing and developing for real life automotive hardware in order to accelerate the transition of innovation from vision into product.
--> Designed high fidelity wireframes, and clickable rapid prototypes for
Instrument Cluster, Head Unit, and climate touch bar.
--> Worked closely with product managers and engineers to design holistic user experiences.
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MAR 2012 — AUG 2012
UX Design Intern
Mercedes-Benz
R&D North America
Sunnyvale, CA
--> Pioneered creative coding as a new design tool and design discipline for rapid prototyping and concept evaluation within Mercedes-Benz.
--> With a small team of designers, engineers and UX researchers we established a new collaboration model of interdisciplinary co-creation and a human-centered design process.
--> Contributed to the Mercedes-Benz digital user experience strategy and design language.
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OCT 2011 — APR 2012
Designer
Spontech Spine Intelligence AG
Stuttgart, Germany
--> Worked as the design lead together with marketing and engineering on concepts, wireframes and visual designs for the innovative implant software, company website, and marketing material for web and print.
--> Established a new brand and CI guidelines for this fast growing medical start-up.
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FEB 2011 — DEC 2011
Designer
Zum Kuckuck Digital Media
Würzburg, Germany
--> As a designer and creative technologist I worked directly with clients and developers and created concepts, designs and prototypes for innovative websites and digital experiences that pushed the envelope of established web standards.
--> In a cross-disciplinary team I developed digital experiences for highly
distinguished brands such as Mercedes-Benz AMG, Audi, Villeroy & Boch, Drykorn, to name a few.
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OCT 2011 — DEC 2011
OCT 2010 — DEC 2010
Design Tutor
University of Applied Sciences
Würzburg, Germany
--> Mentored and taught a group of 60+ undergraduate students in Adobe Illustrator. I guided the students through the software from basic to advanced features and demonstrated how the software facilitates procedural design.
--> The learnings were applied in weekly sessions in groups of 15 students using real life design problems which were accompanied by weekly design exercise assignments.
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OCT 2009 — SEP 2010
Designer
formfellows
Framkfurt am Main, Germany
--> Started as a graphic design intern and graduated into freelance
graphic designer.
--> As a designer I worked closely with clients to provide effective visual languages for their brand systems.
--> In an interdisciplinary environment I worked directly with fashion designers, architects and copywriters and developed concepts and designs for cross-platform campaigns, exhibitions, sports wear, and more for highly distinguished brands such as Continental, Red Bull, Jewish Museum Frankfurt, to name a few.
skills
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Design Thinking
Design Strategy, Card Sorting, Information Architecture, Mood Board, User Journey, Personas, Wireframing, Interaction Flows, Human-Centered-Design
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Design Doing
Adobe Creative Cloud, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Modo, Sketch, Paper & Pencil.
Confluence, Jira, Bitbucket, Slack, PNG Express, Zeplin, Design Style Guide
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Rapid Protoyping
Processing, Java, Arduino, JavaScript, Raspberry PI, Python, Qt/QML, Reactivision, Unity, Android, Keynote, Invision, Flinto, HTML, CSS, Actionscript, Flash, Paper & Cardboard, Physical Prototyping
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Leadership
Mentoring, Coaching, Facilitating Collaboration, Effective and Transparent Communication, Managing Stakeholder Expectations, Management of Scope, Milestones, Timelines and Resources for Projects
patents & awards
2012 — present
Inventor on several international patents
Mercedes-Benz
2017 — Red Dot Award “Best of the Best”
Mercedes-Benz Style | Artemide Ameluna
2016 — Red Dot Award “Best of the Best”
Mercedes-Benz | F015 Luxury in Motion
2015 — IxDA Interaction Award Shortlist "Disrupting"
Mercedes-Benz | Predictive User Experience
2015 — Engadget "Best of CES" & The Verge "Best Car of CES"
Mercedes-Benz | F015 Luxury in Motion
exhibitions & publications
2017 — Concours d’Elegance, Pebble Beach, CA
Mercedes-Benz | Maybach Vision 6
2017 — CES, Las Vegas, NV
Mercedes-Benz | Concept EQ – Intelligent Maps
2017 — Car Throttle | https://goo.gl/GQCgQq
Mercedes-Benz | Concept EQ
2017 — Engadget | https://goo.gl/3KPgcd
Mercedes-Benz | Concept EQ & AI Typewriter
2016 — Mondiale De l’Automobile, Paris
Mercedes-Benz | Concept EQ
2015 — International Tech Day, Sunnyvale, CA
Mercedes-Benz | F015 Luxury in Motion
2015 — CES Asia, Shanghai
Mercedes-Benz | F015 Luxury in Motion
2015 — CES, Las Vegas
Mercedes-Benz | F015 Luxury in Motion
2014 — CES, Las Vegas
Mercedes-Benz | Predictive User Experience
2013 — IAA, Frankfurt am Main
Mercedes-Benz | Concept S-Coupé
education
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SEP 2011 — JUL 2013
Master of Arts
Information Design
University of Applied Sciences
Würzburg, Germany
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SEP 2007 — AUG 2011
Bachelor of Arts
Communication Design
University of Applied Sciences
Würzburg, Germany
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SEP 2004 — MAR 2006
Business Information Systems
University of Applied Sciences
Würzburg, Germany
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SEP 2001 — AUG 2004
Economics
University of Applied Sciences
Würzburg, Germany
MARCO PLEWE
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