Digital Media or Medieninformatik

I was awarded a degree in Digital Media, or Medieninformatik as it is in German, from FH-Furtwangen, Germany. This 4-year degree was the first one in Europe when it was established in 1990, being at the forefront of digital media. It provides its students with a perspective of new media from a technical, marketing, conceptual, social and artistic point of view.

My overall score in the Digital Media degree was 1.4 (1.0 best, 5.0 worst).

The degree enables me to work in the conceptualising, development and project management of multimedia applications or hard- and software tools for their development.

As part of the degree two internships are required, each 6 months long, to gain hands-on industry experience. To get an international point of view of Digital Media I decided to do my first industry placement at Virtual Artists, Adelaide, Australia. I was the first student who did the first internship in Australia.

After I got back, I did another two semesters which involved a major one-year project characteristic of my degree. I was the project manager of a group of 5 people who collaborated on "Conceptualising a 3-dimensional operating system". We also developed a prototype using Virtual Reality technology from various sponsors, where our business education proved to be very valuable. This was the first time a student proposed topic was accepted for this course, and we went on to achieve the highest score possible, 1.0 or 100%.

My second internship I did with Xerox PARC, a place where no other student from my program was ever accepted before. I assume I received the chance because by that time, I had finished my second degree, a Bachelor of Multimedia. As you can see, I did a lot of things in a very short time.

I wrote my thesis in cooperation with FX Palo Alto Laboratory in California, USA, the joined research lab between Fuji and Xerox, next door to Xerox PARC.

The title of my thesis is "Mediacaptain: User Interface Design for Video on the Web".

I chose this topic because my very special interest is in the field of interface design and human-computer interaction. I learned about video analysis, web services, streaming video and content delivery. I also gained a lot of experience in the streaming media field, and I believe this knowledge can improve the experience people have with media on the web.

The complete thesis is available and can be downloaded from

It received the perfect score of 1.0 (100%).