4 Years of Goodpatch Europe — A Summary
In January 2015, our founder Naofumi Tsuchiya and managing director Boris Jitsukata decided to build a new Goodpatch Studio abroad and make the jump from Japan to Germany — more specifically — Berlin. The following May a team of three started an unexpected adventure together. Today, four years later, we look back with smiles on our faces and have some highlights to share with you…
Our very first year and humble beginnings are illustrated in this blog post by Boris. Little did we know at the time what changes were still to come. Only six months down the line we moved to Kreuzberg for a bigger office and opportunities with international corporates popping up left right and centre. We pushed ourselves daily and our mantra at the time was “output, input, output.” Check out the 12 things we designed in 2016.
Our red thread: Building Minimal Lovable Products
Many classic MVPs lack the special “wow factor” that makes users truly love a product. We make sure to prioritize for desirability, not just feasibility and viability. Over the past year, we have created our unique design process and apply it to each and every client for different types of projects as well as shorter and longer periods of time.
The “Goodpatch DNA” has become our shared understanding of a good design process. It consists of a design track and a feedback track making it possible to iterate continuously if needed. Both tracks go through divergent and convergent phases. The heart of the process is about allowing ourselves to go abroad and create opportunities and subsequently narrowing our ideas down by making informed decisions. We build Minimal Lovable Products and try to provide value to our users from as early as possible. We strive to get the first 1000 fans, not just the first 1000 users.
Servus München!
With the business and team size slowly, but surely growing in Munich we made the decision to go from a co-working space desk to our own office space in the heart of the city. Not far away from the Central Station, you can now find Khanh leading and building the next Goodpatch Studio with taking Berlin’s learnings as a blueprint. Combining Munich’s business power with Berlin’s creativity and our Japanese mindset we want to grow beyond our existing clients and attract new clients and talents.
Our team in Paris
With our long term client relationship, we established a team of four people in Paris. This partnership started at our headquarters in Tokyo during Summer 2016, when some members from our Berlin team started working with the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance. Soon after they moved to Paris to help build the Alliance design team there. Since then, the team has grown to four local members and we continue to expand our design offerings in the ever creative city, Paris. Earlier this year we also successfully launched our famous Product Crunch Meetup here.
Our Automotive Journey
Our personal and professional interest in mobility and automotive passion continue to blend and we have been lucky to work in such an interesting field. Since 2016 our design and development teams use empathy, research, validation, and testing methods to support OEMs, corporate companies and startups around the globe.
Our objective is to create product visions, white label, and branded products while working on different approaches for B2C and B2B customers. Here you can find more details about the current projects and our mission.
The in-house Product Athena
In 2017 we decided to start building an in-house product — next to our client consultancy. Our team in Tokyo has been building the in-house product Prott from the outset and now we seized the opportunity and combined our prototyping DNA with Automotive and Virtual Reality. We are extremely passionate about the future of mobility and use immersive technologies to make it reality today.
This unique product is called Athena and is a virtual reality tool for designing and testing experiences around the connected and autonomous car. You’re always welcome to come by the office and try it out.
Product Crunch — more than just a Meetup
Have you seen how massive our meetup has become?! What once started as a small group of designers sharing stories is now a monthly event with over 4.000 members in the meetup community. Product Crunch is a learning platform for all those interested in product design. Project managers, designers, engineers, founders and more are invited to inspiring talks by people building great products; in Berlin and all over the world.
Conferences around the Globe
Sometimes we try to escape the office and look for inspiring conferences. Our colleagues not only discover festivals in Germany and Europe, from time to time they even have the chance to visit places like WWDC or Google I/O in the U.S. Every now and then these stories are shared on the blog and you can read up on Janos’ experience at SLUSH, Diana’s journey through an interesting day and Alex’s TNW recap.
Goodpatch Family and Kids
Not only our company is growing, but Goodpatch families are sprouting. We have become mummies and daddies and some got married too. It's such an amazing time to see people grow, develop and make the next steps professionally and privately with and at Goodpatch. It's not always easy-going and fun, but we try to remember every day how valuable our time is and how privileged and lucky we are to do what we love.
💙 Big thanks to the whole Goodpatch Family and all of our dear clients! Your success is our success.
Follow our journey and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Regarding design & dev projects, we are always interested in meeting new exciting companies. We are also never stop hiring. Drop us a mail at berlin@goodpatch.com.
