MY STORY
I began my design career in this brand-new Web Designer job during the wild west of the early internet and the birth of the infamous browser wars (a period of intense competition between different web browsers in the late 90s). Every company wanted websites, and digital marketing became the holy grail. I quickly realized that problem-solving was a crucial skill for a Web Designer, and digital art direction was clearly something new that I took under my wing.
I look back on a highly nostalgic and dynamic time when my problem-solving mindset and love for this creative profession were born. After so many years, this experience has deeply rooted itself in me and shaped my problem-solving approach and creative thinking.
Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.
At the core lies an unconventional education at the art academy, focused on photography, where my training to solve problems started. For almost every photography assignment, you had multiple problems to solve both in preparation and in the moment. A model is not showing up, a makeup artist who doesn’t do the work properly, a famous actor who doesn’t feel like it, a shoot at Schiphol with a time frame of 5 minutes, a laboratory that develops your film roll incorrectly, and I could go on like this for a while. I think that this is where the foundation lies that my brain is so wired that I have developed a great problem-solving ability and have even come to love it.
My Drive
When I started as a web designer, you practically did everything to get a website online. After working on the technical side for a number of years, I decided to specialize in the design process because I had more talent and affinity for it. The design process continues to fascinate me, and what underlies this is that whatever people interact with is designed. What is fascinating is that the basic principles always remain the same, even as the landscape changes. Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology. Technology changes quickly, and people change very slowly. Jacob Nielsen (an authority in the field of usability) eloquently states:
“The human brain’s capacity doesn’t change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behavior have a very long shelf life. What was difficult for users twenty years ago continues to be difficult today.” This is the key drive for this love of design and is an important realization and basis of ultimately every creative process for any service or product.
What i can do for you
- User research
- Usability testing
- User Experience design
- User Interface design
- Prototyping & Wireframing
- User Journey mapping
- Design systems
- AI-enhanced UX
- Stakeholder management
- UX strategy
- A/B testing
- CRO
- Leading creative projects
- Design strategy
- Scrum & Agile
- Mentoring & coaching
- Conceptual & design thinking