About Namahn

Namahn was founded in 1987 with a view to helping organisations create products, services or tools that are designed from the user up. Namahn remains independently owned. One of its great strengths lies in its pragmatic methods and techniques, grown out of experience in hundreds of projects.

Namahn's clients are to be found in a wide variety of sectors and today include AstraZeneca Global, Atos Worldline, Belgacom, Boston Scientific, Brussel Deze Week, Certipost, De Post, Eurocontrol, Fluxys, Neopost, Siemens, Sony Europe and several Belgian federal or regional public authorities.

As a professional service firm, Namahn's relationship with its clients is one based on trust. We earn this trust through our unrelenting attention to our clients' satisfaction, combined with a continuous effort to clarify expectations.

Choosing a consultant is never easy, particularly in a specialised field such as human-centered design. We believe that three criteria are important:

Expertise: does the firm have demonstrated expertise in human-centered design? Our core expertise in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is augmented by expertise in engineering disciplines, cognitive ergonomics, visual design and the social sciences. This mix of skills helps us to understand a variety of complex user domains.

Experience: craftsmanship can only be acquired through practice. Much of the craft of designing digital products lays in the repertoire of the designer and in the process followed. Namahn has been designing digital products for consumer, business and technical markets for over 20 years, and has completed literally hundreds of projects, applying our methodology across multiple domains for a large variety of organisations.

Approach: as craftsmen, rather than artists, we at Namahn follow a rigorous process. Is the firm a specialist in the field or is usability design just one of several activities? Namahn's 16 design consultants focus exclusively on designing user experiences. Perhaps this explains why some of our clients have been with us for more than 10 years.

Namahn gets involved in projects ranging from small to very large. Our contribution to these projects can take a range of shapes and forms. We can come in as trainers, coaches, individual consultants, or as a complete project team.

Our clients highly value our network of professionals, particularly specialised suppliers of technical services (such as custom software builders) or design services (such as industrial design) that are outside of our scope. Being a fairly small contributor to sometimes very large projects, we understand the ins and outs of partnering.

Namahn is located in central Brussels in an elegantly refurbished 19th century print shop. Our offices house one of the largest specialist libraries on human-centered design.

Namahn is a member of:

• Agoria, the Belgian federation for the technology industry (www.agoria.be)
• ITS Belgium, an organisation stimulating innovation and collaboration in the sector of intelligent telematics solutions (www.itsbelgium.be)
• Leuven.inc, the Leuven innovation networking circle (www.leuveninc.com)
• vVio: vereniging van Vlaamse industriële ontwerpbureaus (Association of Flemish Design Agencies) (vvio.be)

Namahn design consultants are frequent guest lecturers at academic institutions:

• Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany): 'Produktgestaltung' (master's degree)
• Hogeschool Antwerpen: 'Product development - industrial design' (master's degree)
• Hogeschool Sint-Lukas (Brussels): 'Transmedia - Arts + Media + Design' (postgraduate degree)
• K.U.Leuven: 'Applied Informatics' (master's degree)
• K.U.Leuven Kortrijk: 'Integral Product Development' (postgraduate degree)
• Manchester Business School, University of Manchester (UK), 'Human-Computer Interaction' (undergraduate course)
• University of Ghent: 'MICT'
• University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS): 'Product Innovation & Entrepreneurship' (postgraduate degree)
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel: 'Communication Science' (master's degree)