About me
I’m Nicole Neuberger, a multilingual Human-Centered Design Consultant, Service & UX Designer, and Art Therapist based in Bogotá – available for remote work worldwide. With over 20 years of experience in creative work and a background in psychology, I support change processes at all levels and help develop people-and life-centered solutions for complex challenges.
Design and Creativity
What is Design? Design is creative problem-solving. It’s about identifying challenges, turning them into opportunities, and creating effective solutions.
Creativity is innate in every human being. Unfortunately, our school and corporate system often make us believe that we are not creative. However, working with art therapy and product/service innovation has taught me that everyone can reconnect with their creativity and inner child.
Design implies change, and change is not easy for us humans. It can be challenging or even scary. That’s why it’s so important to keep human psychology in mind when designing for change.
Design, Art Therapy and Innovation
Art therapy helps us to understand and transform our inner world. It can give us access to hidden desires, dreams and needs, activate resources and inspire new ideas. It can strengthen the courage and ability to change the outer world through design.
I see enormous potential in combining art therapy, generative and art-based research, participatory design, and life-centered design to promote sustainable social innovations and work together to create a better world. Read more
My Story
After discovering my passion for design during my first internship, I wrote my final thesis in Psychology at IBM on User-Centered Design. After graduating, I was fortunate to get involved as a user researcher in the human-centered design of an online knowledge base for the World Food Programme in Rome. In the years thereafter, I helped companies create people-oriented, easy-to-use products and services in different UX/CX-related roles.
In 2008 my cousin fell into a coma. During my hospital visits, I realized that human-centered design could contribute much more than creating easy-to-use websites. After moving to Vienna, I secured funding for a pilot project to demonstrate how Human-Centered Service Design could improve migrant health and healthcare access while reducing system costs. The funding enabled me to put together a small but highly diverse team and collaborate closely with both migrant communities and healthcare staff. Despite the enormous potential of human-centered design in healthcare and social innovation, obtaining the necessary financial support and institutional collaboration to implement such initiatives proved to be very difficult.
I then concentrated on assisting people and organizations in successfully integrating and applying Human-Centered Design and Service Design Thinking through consulting and training. During the pandemic, I studied art therapy with the vision of combining art therapy and participatory design to help communities and interdisciplinary teams develop innovative solutions to social and environmental challenges. Since 2021, I have also been working as an online UX mentor.
Education
M.Sc. Psychology (Humboldt University Berlin and Philipps University Marburg)
M.A. Interaction Design (Domus Academy Milan)
Certified Art Therapist (Colombian Art Therapy Association)
Skills
Human-Centered Design
Service Design
UX Design
Design Thinking
Creativity
Training
Design/UX Research
Innovation
Mentorship
Psychology
Art Therapy
Participatory Design
Interests
Planet-Centered Design
Life-Centered Design
Humanity-Centered Design
Social Impact
Design for Health
Circular Design
Co-Creation
Arts-based Research
Participatory Research
Tools
Over the course of my career, I have used a variety of tools. In my opinion, tools are really secondary. Nowadays, it has become very easy to learn any tool thanks to established design patterns, Google, YouTube, and ChatGPT. A grain of problem-solving obsession is always useful, too…
I do strongly believe in the wisdom of the hands, though, and love working with pen and paper, especially in the early stages of the design process.
Languages
Spanish, English, German, Italian
Something Personal
