Stay close to the problem.
Understand what people are actually trying to accomplish.
Service Designer
Currently at Neugelb Studios, Commerzbank’s digital design studio, working across digital banking, self-service, and AI-assisted services.
I connect customer problems, service capabilities, and product decisions.
In complex services, the visible issue is often only a symptom; understanding what people are trying to do, what the service can actually support, and where the constraints sit is essential to making good product decisions.
I use AI to work with that complexity—exploring, synthesizing and prototyping across disciplines—while keeping human judgment close to the problem and to the consequences of the decisions being made.
Selected work at digital banking
Connecting work across a distributed bank.
Customers experienced one bank across digital and human channels. Behind them, systems, processes, knowledge, and responsibility were distributed across Commerzbank.
My work focused on digital services that could not be improved in isolation. Across roles and projects, I connected customer understanding with the people and capabilities needed to improve the wider service.
01Initiative stewardService StellarCall reduction became a question of service resolution.As Service Designer, I developed the diagnostic approach, structured the intervention trade-offs and defined the contextual-search MVP. The team collectively prioritized that direction.Nearly 400 categorized interactions · MVP evaluated with ten customersRead the case 02Product contributorAvaA mobile assignment exposed a larger AI service question.As Mobile Experience Designer, I expanded an early banking-AI assignment into conversation quality, linking visible interaction to the knowledge, workflow, and service capability beneath it.Ava marks the beginning of the AI service-quality inquiryRead the case
Also shaped: frameworks and workshops
- Innovation WeekDesigning conditions for product designers to explore possible roles for the bank and collectively produce three Innovation Lanes.
- Navigation & IAMaking competing mental models visible so participants could collectively produce shared navigation and information-architecture principles.
Experience across industries
Different contexts change what good design requires.
Fifteen years across industries with distinct operating dynamics, constraints, and responsibilities—each entered through a different discipline. The context changes; the practice of making complexity workable carries across them.
Finance
Neugelb Studios · Commerzbank2023–present
Service design · Digital banking
Healthtech
Kaia Health2020–2022
Service design · Digital health
Logistics
Mercedes-Benz Fleetboard, at Idean2017–2020
Digital product design · Fleet operations
Automotive
AudiIcon Mobile (automotive & IoT)Mercedes and Toyota, at Renner Produktgestaltung · 2008–2017
Industrial & digital design · Automotive interior and User Interfaces
Airlines
Lufthansa, at Renner Produktgestaltung2009–2010
Industrial design · Inflight equipment design
Fifteen years in design practice—from industrial design, through digital product design, into service design. Each move widened the system in view rather than replacing the question.
Industrial design → Interaction → Services → Organizations → Human + AI
Design approach
Understand enough before intervening.
I see design as the cultivation of conditions from which meaningful solutions—and more fully human ways of working—can emerge.
Look beneath the interface.
Separate interaction problems from missing service capabilities.
Make problems discussable.
Create enough structure for different perspectives to lead to a decision.
Other practices
01
Tennis coaching
I coach through constraints, attention, and adaptation rather than prescribing one ideal technique. I’m interested in how people learn through experience, how small changes in environment alter behaviour, and how capability develops over time.
02
Sound
I play piano, work with modular synthesis, and build experimental digital instruments. Sound gives me a space to explore systems, feedback, timing, constraint, and expression through making.
03
Human–AI practice
AI is increasingly part of how I think, design, and build. I use it to explore ideas, connect knowledge, prototype across disciplines, and extend what I can do independently.
The more capable these tools become, the more important I find questions of judgment, authorship, responsibility, and where human attention should remain.
Continue the inquiry
Explore the portfolio through conversation.
The portfolio guide draws on the evidence and working principles behind this site. Use it to examine how I think, distinguish my contribution from team activity, or find the most relevant place to begin.
Questions to begin with
- What does the work suggest about Niko’s approach to organizational learning?
- Where is the evidence strongest, and what remains uncertain?
- How might this practice transfer to a different industry or organizational context?
- Which project best demonstrates strategic service design?
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