Professional Identity and Vision

Professional Identity #

I’m a hybrid between a designer and software engineer, focused on improving complex software such as game engines, 3D CAD, BIM, and other design software.

Because I understand how this software works and gets built, I can create meaningful and feasible solutions to hard usability problems. In a field dominated by engineers that value complexity and feature-richness, having a designer that speaks the language of engineers enables design to have a larger seat at the table than just “We will make it look pretty”.

Design is a mindset. It’s the idea that anything in our world is malleable, and that every problem is solvable. But often, problems need to be solved outside the role of a traditional industrial designer. Therefore, I don’t shy away from things traditionally not considered design, such as “designing” an organisational structure, the business model of a company, or a technical system.

In my relatively short professional life, I have designed and built VR experiences for construction projects for the Ministry of Defence; worked at a game engine startup and built a new editor experience; set up my own software startup and launched a product; and am now working on an XR related project for the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Through these projects I have learned to value pragmatic problem solving, while still taking opportunities to gain a deeper understanding of a topic, such as graphics programming, or solving a specific problem well, such as solving precision issues of ray interactors for augmented reality.

My rebellious nature and intense sensitivity to bad design and bad software, will lead me far, far away from a simple corporate life: I want to build and explore what beautiful software could be made, not add some fixes to the new 2024 version of a 20 year old product long overtaken by middle management. Luckily, startups, open source projects and small software companies exist.

I want to work with a team of people who care as deeply about the thing they’re building as I do. While I am helplessly self-directed and can work deep into the night solving hard problems, the why is always the people around me. They help me get through the first 80% of the project, and the second 80% of the project.

In the long term, I still have the ambition to set up my own software company, but for now I want to get work experience and learn from as many talented and experienced people as I can.

Vision #

When I look at the world of today, I marvel at how much we have achieved as humanity, and I dream about how much more could be. I dream about how we could build and live in harmony with nature. How we could make our cities more social and inclusive. And how we could make our software and computers to be more expressive and intuitive.

There are opposing forces and incentives to these dreams, so we need to fight for them. We need to fight for open source, we need to fight for a car-free city and we need to fight for software that isn’t the tragic amalgamation of a thousand careless engineers.

In addition, there are opportunities that arise. Either from companies that leave some of their chess pieces hanging, or from new technological innovations:

Machine learning and XR (Extended Reality) are two examples of such technological innovations. These technologies, while not full replacements for existing software and computer interaction paradigms, can supplement existing workflows and enable more intuitive interaction with computers in the long term. I am critical of any hype surrounding these technologies, but do believe they mark the beginning of a new era beyond smartphones and laptops.

I want to investigate how we can improve and utilise these technologies in products that bring meaningful benefit to design professionals working in various industries, such as architects, urban planners and product designers.