About Namahn
Namahn was founded in 1987 with a view to delivering more user-oriented media, products and tools. The company remains independently owned. One of its great strengths lies in its pragmatic approach to tools and techniques, grown out of experience with hundreds of projects.
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 clients' expectations.
Choosing a supplier is never easy, particularly in a specialised field such as user-centered design. We believe that three criteria are important:
Expertise: does the firm have demonstrated expertise in user-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.
For more details, see our Disciplines section.
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 nearly 20 years, and has completed literally hundreds of projects, applying our methodology across multiple domains for a large variety of organisations.
See our Clients section for a comprehensive list.
Approach: as craftsmen, rather than artists, we at Namahn follow a rigorous process. The ethos and strategy of a potential partner are also important. Is the firm a specialist in the field or is usability design just one of several activities? Namahn's 15 design consultants focus exclusively on designing user experiences. Perhaps this explains why many of our clients have been with us for more than 10 years.
To read more on our approach, see our Solutions section.
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 business contacts, 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 user-centered design.
Namahn is a member of:
- Agoria, the Belgian federation for the technology industry (www.agoria.be)
- Leuven.inc, the Leuven innovation networking circle (www.leuveninc.com)
Namahn design consultants are frequent guest lecturers at academic institutions:
- Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany): "Produktgestaltung" (master's degree)
- Hogeschool Sint-Lukas (Brussels): "Graphic design" (bachelor's degree)
- K.U.Leuven: "Applied Informatics" (master's degree)
- K.U.Leuven Kortrijk: "Integral Product Development" (postgraduate degree)
- Mediacentrum K.U.Leuven: "Usability Design" (postacademic program)
- University of Antwerp Management School (UAMS): "Product Innovation & Entrepreneurship" (postgraduate degree)
- University of Hasselt: "Human-Computer Interaction" (master's degree)
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel: "Communication Science" (master's degree)