Being 22 years in the fields of HCI, Helmut Windl currently works for Panasonic Automotive Europe near Frankfurt where he manages the Advanced Product Planning Group. Before he headed the HMI Design group at Continental Automotive’s Infotainment & Connectivity division. He was responsible for the visual and interaction design of infotainment concepts and products and created user interfaces for multimedia systems of European and US American cars. At Siemens’ Automation & Drives Division he founded and headed the Usability Competence Center and designed award winning PLC programming Software for the industrial automation product family Simatic S7. Helmut Windl is a world-class interaction designer and experienced visual designer for large-scale software applications as well as embedded systems. He has a track record as inventor of more than 20 patents mainly in the field of human computer interaction. He is a practitioner of activity centered design and co-developed the abstract prototyping using canonical components and contributed additions to Usage-Centered Design like Usage-Centered Exploration. Helmut Windl graduated from the University of Applied Sciences Regensburg Germany with a diploma in electrical engineering.

Panasonic Automotive Systems Europe GmbH, is headquartered in Langen (Germany) and provides sales, marketing and engineering operations to the automotive industry. Panasonic offers systems and technology focused on making mobility more comfortable, safer and more eco-friendly. From entertainment systems to green energy solutions, Panasonic’s advanced technology and expertise expands the possibilities of future car development. The aim is to be an indispensable partner to European OEMs and key industrial branches for both systems and components. Therefore the company continues to provide significant value and growth potential for customers and drive innovation in the European automotive industry through the ongoing development of solutions for greater safety, energy efficiency and connectivity.