Your team has three members now with the recent addition of Catarina. What’s the role of each one in the project?

Oliver: I’m the Project Manager, while Ivo and Catarina are responsible for UI/UX design.

Last week you all traveled to Germany to work directly with the client. How is your work routine when you’re there?

Ivo: This week we have been working on the mobile app wireframes. So, we arrive at the office around 9:00 and we have several meetings with the team during the day to understand their requirements and create the wireframes for the mobile app.

Can you tell us the main benefits of visiting the client regularly?

Oliver: In terms of UI/UX design, the main benefit is being able to review the wireframes directly with the client onsite and therefore fasten the process significantly. Whenever we have a question we can meet with them and resolve the issue almost immediately.

In terms of Project Management, the main benefit is to have a better overview of what is happening with each team locally here in Germany. It also gives me the opportunity to review the current work process with them and adapt accordingly. For example, if we have a process that lacks communication we can setup weekly conference calls and improve the communication process to work more closely with the customer.

Ivo: It’s a good way to get clear some questions and some misunderstandings that sometimes can appear. Being here, in person, we can educate the client in some UI/UX processes for example, and in the other way around, we can understand better some processes from the client side. Things are way faster to decide and allow us to explain some details to the client directly. I also think they can give more importance to our role in the whole process and see that we can actually bring a lot of value to the project.

Finally, can you share with us your experience visiting Hannover? What has attracted you the most?

Oliver: I love Germany because it is a very “green country”.  In terms of infrastructure for bicycles, the whole city has bicycle roads, so I can use my longboard throughout the whole city. Hannover has a forest within the city that covers 6.4 km2. The food is also very attractive to me because you have a lot of Turkish and Greek restaurants.

Catarina: Hannover is a cool city with a lot of gardens and beautiful sightseeing. The food was ok, it’s a lot different than the Mediterranean food, but we could manage great meals and good experiences.

Ivo: It’s not a touristic city so it’s very calm and nice to walk around. It has some beautiful monuments like churches nearby. Hannover also has a lot of “green” and big lakes.