Design at Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom started doing design work before it actually had a Design Team.
As a matter of fact, in 2003, the German giant opened an “experience gallery” in its headquarters. Its purpose was to showcase the future of technology.
The spaces that used to be those of the corporate library – hence previously dedicated to history and the past – were there for turned into a live lab where to experience tomorrow, explaining to people what the advent of digital technologies meant for them.
The importance and the potential of such space was soon perceived as strategic and a team was created to continue building on the customer experience. Technology here is the driving force but user perspectives, especially those of their near 200 million global customer base, shape their innovation. Now, more than ever, digitalization is a basic need and Deutsche Telekom is showcasing how it can benefit 360º of our lives this is by integrating technology into interior design – our homes at large – and seamlessly merging the landscapes of digital and analogue.
The first Design Team in Deutsche Telekom was created to show customers what is possible but also to make it real. Throughout the years, its importance grew and it soon turned into a multi-disciplinary group of professionals working on product, experience and UI design, software, AI and VR development, engineering.
In corporate teams, this was a quantum leap for the design function. By putting Design and Customer Experience at the core of the company’s business creation process and at the heart of the R&D, Deutsche Telekom’s approach taps into the multiple opportunities that design has to offer to large technology companies; imagination, translation of the technological insights into people-focused scenarios, visualization and deployment of digital experiences.
There are over 350 creative personnel in the innovation hub, from designers to programmers and researchers, spread across their offices in Bonn, Frankfurt and Berlin in Germany. The Design Center is a visionary, circular gallery space that aims to inspire employees and visitors of their infinite ideas on the fully connected future. With recreated scenarios and real products, the gallery envisions an ecosystem of our daily lives, from our smart home to our city and even specific work and retail environments.
Throughout the years, the Design and Customer Experience Team has been working on two fronts: creating visions for the future – based on actual technology pipelines – and realizing actual consumer products to enhance the quality of life of consumers.
The team received throughout the years 237 design awards, the most recent being the Red Dot Product Design Award for the MagentaTV Box.
