Starting Point
In early 2019, I realized that I kept on stumbling upon UX companies in Munich that I’d never heard of. Out of curiosity, I started a Google Doc with companies that are somehow part of the user experience design scene in the city.
Work
After having collected a few companies myself, I crowd-sourced the list and asked friends and followers on social media to help me collect all UX companies in Munich. However, the interest was rather low. I suspected that it was due to the fact that a simple spreadsheet hardly gets any designer excited – no matter how useful it is. So I decided to make the data more fun and engaging to explore.
Based on the crowd-sourced list, I created an interactive map that visualizes the data. Each UX company is displayed as a colored dot at the location of their office in Munich. The color depicts the category (agency, consultancy etc.) and the size of the “glow” around each dot represents the firms (global) size. This creates a colorful impression of the UX design landscape in Munich. In addition, the map also includes a table view of the data and features for searching and filtering.
In May 2020, I also published a blog post with insights and statistics on the local UX scene.
Result
The map struck a nerve with UX designers in all of Germany. It was widely shared on social media and got lots of positive feedback. In February 2020, I was invited to give a short talk at the #21 UX & Product Meetup.
In October 2022, I had the chance to exhibit the project on a large touch-screen display at the PUSH UX Conference in Munich.
Analytics also shows that the map is constantly being visited by new users every day. As with every good digital product, the Munich UX Map is not finished. I am actively working on improving it and adding new companies every few weeks.
Project Basics
- Type of WorkPersonal Side Project
- Year2019 (Ongoing)
- My ResponsibilitesData Sourcing · UX Concept · UI Design · Web Development
- TeamAlone
- ToolsGoogle Docs · Airtable · Mapbox · HTML · CSS · JavaScript · jQuery