Volkswagen is developing more and more digital services, which are also available as apps on smart phones. At the Group IT Digital Lab, Melissa Zee is a member of a team which ensures that such apps not only function with- out any problems but are also easy to understand and operate.
Melissa Zee is a UX designer at the Volkswagen Group IT Digital Lab in Berlin. At the lab, an inter- national team is developing software for digital customer services and services related to connected vehicles. These also include the Volkswagen brand “We Deliver” mobility service (the vehicle’s boot is used as a delivery address for online orders) or the “Identity Kit” project, a central customer app which can be used in future for controlling all digital services related to a customer’s car. This is also one of the projects on which Zee is concentrating at the moment.
Zee’s specialist area is user experience (UX) – a field of project development concerned with the user’s experience as a result of interaction. Although UX can be applied to any conceivable physical product, the main focus is on software development – programs, websites, apps and other digital services.
“We are concerned with the art of clarity,” says Zee. Of course, apps intended for customers must look good and function without any problems but that alone is not sufficient. The services must be easy to follow for customers, easy to understand and easy to operate. “User guidance must be an intuitive process. Our customers must not need to think hard before using a service”, Zee says. ‘Usability’ is the key word. Zee also sees a change of perspective in this context. “Once, the main focus was on the product and the technical solution. Now we are mainly concerned with the question of what benefits our product brings to the user.”
Zee, who was born in Singapore, is part of an international team at the Digital Lab. Currently, some 70 IT specialists from 16 countries work there. In the future, the team is to be expanded to 120 people. For example, they come from India, Singapore, Ukraine, and the USA – as well as from Germany, of course. The team consists of programmers, UX designers, product managers and software developers. Almost a third of them are women and the language in the office is English. “The atmosphere is just great,” says Zee. “Of course we focus on the task in hand, but we also laugh a lot together.”
By the way, Zee reports that UX designers do not spend all their time in front of a computer screen. The teams from the Digital Lab regularly visit different locations where they try out the prototype apps together with test users. “Direct contact with test users is extremely valuable,” says Zee. “In our development work, the procedure is always the same: “build, measure, and learn”. This way, the solution developed is continually improved.
Zee says that this is a dream job and adds: “Berlin is one of the places where things are really happening.” And she definitely wants to be part of it.
Volkswagen at CEBIT 2018 (June 12-15)
In the Future Mobility Hall (Hall 25) at CEBIT, the Volkswagen Group will hold a forum for inter- ested members of the public and specialists with exciting presentations and first-class exhibits as well as interesting discussion rounds and talks. The forum will cover a wide range of topics from new types of digital automobile design, quantum computing and projects with blockchain tech- nology to applied artificial intelligence within the company and data-aided traffic optimization in major European cities. There will also be a world premiere at the show stand.
In Hall 27, HR marketing specialists from Volkswagen will discuss the wide variety of IT tasks within the Volkswagen Group and career entry possibilities with experts, recent graduates and students.
