The 2009/2010 Human Resources Report

Barbara Schulz and Alexander Schulze on their work creating “Made by Deutsche Telekom” product experiences.

“It all started with a shoe box full of materials,” Barbara Schulz recalls. Today, the qualified designer’s “Colors & Materials” team uses a library containing around 5,000 different materials to de- sign items such as cell phones for the near and more distant fu- ture: “We translate the value of a product, so to speak, into hands- on quality.” “And, of course, we have to keep everything as simple as possible,” her colleague, Alexander Schulze, adds. As an inter- action designer, his responsibilities include making sure that cus- tomers can navigate the user interface on their handset without any difficulty and, at the same time, enjoy the distinctive “Made by Deutsche Telekom” product experience: “This includes functions, operation, and finding familiar elements and icons when they change from one handset to another – or from a cell phone to a television set with Entertain, our TV service.” To achieve this, numerous creative professions – product managers and design- ers, technology and marketing experts – work hand in hand at Deutsche Telekom’s Products & Innovation unit, which includes T-Gallery as a “Forum for the Future.” They all have a common objective, namely to surprise customers time and time again with innovative in-house developments. This is a particularly exciting part of both designers’ work: “We work on products and services that customers could well be using every day in one or two years from now.” And we do this in flat-hierarchy working environments that allow room for independent thought and action on an equal footing.  Some 7,000 patents. A new patent filed every week.  Think tank: T-Gallery, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories and more. “Designing for tomorrow’s customers today.” 18 Technology