All you want to know about me 

During my time in the military I learned to follow as well as to lead. Contrary to popular believe in the military you are trained to take responsibility and lead from the lowest levels on. This stems from the "Auftragstaktik" or mission command philosophy that let’s individual soldiers and NCO’s decide on how to complete an objective where senior command mostly decides what these objectives should be. The “boots on the ground” know the situation and circumstances best and should be capable to deal with most obstacles themselves. I still live by this philosophy and it is also how I lead my teams. I was never a drill sergeant but I did experience being drilled which has it’s merits in a military environment, but has no place in design environment.

In my view design has the purpose of creating value for users through intended outcomes. In the end our customers are the users of our platforms and the ones that are paying our salaries. For me designing is mostly doing, sure communication is important, but in many ways design helps to clarify that communication. We can talk all day, in the end something needs to happen and designers play a pivotal role in that process. There are 2 sayings I borrowed from football, that apply to design as well. It was Ernst Happel who said: Kein geloel, Fußball spielen. (No B.S., just play football, or Football and talking football is not the same thing). The same goes for design; No B.S. just design, run the process. The second is: designing is simple, but the hardest thing to do is designing simply. A saying by Johan Cruijff that I freely transformed to the design context 😉.  To summarize, for me in design it is reality over theory, function over form.  

I’m not a developer by any means, but I do have a basic understanding of HTML & CSS and a bit of Javascript. I also have a basic understanding of IT architecture and the workings of API’s for example. A portfolio like this, I designed and build in a week.  In addition I understand very well that anything we as designers come up with must come under scrutiny of the developers first before it can come live and be of value for our users. So good collaboration and understanding of the development standards are essential to make sure that this happens. Because only when things are live will the value be present for our users.

As said I believe the main goal of design is to bring value to our users. But I also understand that companies need to remain financially healthy. In my view it is a win / win situation if we create experiences our users love, create value for them, any  company should be able to make a profit as well. Most customers do not expect free services, but they do expect value for their money. A big part in that value is an, easy, efficient and understandable digital process. In addition designing for internal employees plays a big part in business value, if employees can do their work in fast and effective way they are better able to help our customers. So both internal and external users should be taken into account when creating business value through good user experience.

Like most designers I began my design career as a T-shaped designer. Meaning that I had one expertise and a good amount of knowledge on other parts of the field. Over time, there has been a lot of inflation in the design field, with different roles and expertise added. Currently I would say I more of an H-shaped designer. Having 2 main expertise areas and broad knowledge on the rest. These two areas are design leadership, how to manage a team of designers and collaborate within the rest of the organisation and the other expertise is interaction design specifically in the B2B segment.

I do have a good understanding of research, visual design, service design and UX copy and content and fulfilled parts of these roles on different occasions during my career. But as said my main expertise is in leadership and interaction design.

Any serious designer knows that getting input and feedback by the user is the most important part of the design process. So any feedback and insights should be gathered where possible. However, a designer should also know not to blindly follow everything a users or data tells us. Input is to bring understanding, to reveal the blindspots, to get a better grasp of the way of thinking of our users and the painpoints they experience. And our solutions should reflect and address that. So doing research and gathering feedback and data is a must, but the designer should control the solution. So, the input should guide us, but we should also guide our users.  

For me design and creating value for users is leading, irrespective of what line of business you're in. Banks and insurance companies rely heavily on their digital products and channels. Having worked on the B2B side of the bank, functionality is much more important than aesthetics, but it cannot hurt to take it into account as well. Also a designer should understand that things do not end with a user on a screen , it is all the things the company does that matter. I believe this basic understanding is more important than branch knowledge. But of course having the knowledge on the inner workings of a product is beneficial when creating optimal experiences. But the understanding of those specifics could surely be learned over time and gathered by listening to specialist and colleagues.

As lead I do not design a lot myself currently, but when I did my design process was pretty straight forward. Overall I tend to listen a lot and gather as much input as I can. Mostly I will align with the researchers, subject matter experts and data analyst to provide me with the insights I need to start. After this phase I will quickly make a lot of experimental draft designs to talk about the different options and possibilities. These drafts are meant to fail and learn from. After another round of input on these drafts I would make a more definitive design / prototype so that we could test it once more with users. During this process I would also align again and again with both business and IT to check all their requirements are also met, so business value was created and tech feasibility was taken into account.

I trust the expertise that is present in the team first of all. As a leader I believe my primary role is to facilitate. To make sure that the team has all the right circumstances to perform to the best of their abilities.  In addition I would like to bring in some structure in order to collaborate and learn from each other. Usually I would organise a bi-weekly “show and tell” so anyone could talk about their solutions and challenges in an accessible and none judging setting in order to help and learn from each other. And depending on the maturity of the team have several design stand ups each week, to get a feel for the support necessary for each project. Furthermore I believe a healthy work / life balance is important. I tell people, I’m still a father when I’m at work and I’m still an employee when I’m on holiday. That is how I approach it, but I will encourage anyone to find how they feel comfortable with it. Overall, I realize we spend a lot of our time at work, so I believe we should make an effort to make that time enjoyable, but also with clear purpose and goals.

Just like in military planning, UX has to be conducted on three levels; tactical, operational en strategic. The tactical part is your everyday process. These are the task that you do daily that help improve the experiences we create for our users. The operational part is making sure that all stakeholder are taken into account, that proposed solutions are technically feasible and all business requirements are met. It also has to do with allocating the right UX capacity to the right team depending on the phase they are in. The strategic level is what gets determined together with senior leadership,how do we want to position our brand, what are the USP’s of our company and how does that translate to the (digital) experience we create. In addition we need to look how we can increase the UX maturity of the company and how the company benefits from that. Understanding all these aspects and and optimising things on each of these levels is what counts most in my view. So for me strategy is understanding what plays out on all levels.

In have a very basic understanding of coding. enough to understand that others are way more proficient than I am, For me it is not about being an expert on all possible levels. It is about listing to experts and knowing when to consult their expertise. Same goes for business knowledge, or for example  knowledge on AI or data, I am not an expert on any of these things, but I know enough to have the right conversation with the experts to utilise their knowledge so it can benefit our users. The same goes for coding. Good knowledge is that designers should know some code, but it is wise to not let the designer code your applications 😉.

In 5 years time I’m still leading UX teams, maybe I will be the head of multiple teams that each have their own team leads. Furthermore I have started a growing podcast on parenting, something that I’m currently setting up, but is very much early days. I think that AI will be largely embedded in our design process by then, even now I am already using it, for example to help me write a lot of content for my portfolio. But is also helps me to structure my sometimes chaotic thoughts when I’m in full creative mode. That creativity is good, but at one point it needs to be brought back, AI helps me to structure and will help me and others as well in the future. Also designing beyond screens and different types of interaction will also be more common, so excited to see how the field will look in 5 years time.

There is only one real way to deal with resistance and that is to communicate, you have to tell the reasons, consider other opinions and try to find common ground in order to make the changes stick. Of course change is the only constant in this world. So we need to be prepared to adapt and adjust to a new reality. However it is not always easy for everyone to do so and as a leader one of our main tasks is to make sure no one is left behind. So we have to stay in dialogue with everyone, take into account their point of view and have clear arguments on why change is necessary.

When I start on something new, I tend to go into full "sponge mode", which means I ask a lot of questions and I try to listen as much as possible. So I really like to hop into a lot of meetings with most of my major stakeholders, of course to introduce myself but also to get familiar with the new setting and the language (jargon) I’m operating in. Naturally I would have some ideas before I start on a new challenge and that first period is also used to adjust and measure how these ideas hold up in reality. So soaking up knowledge and learning the new setting, while challenging my own prior ideas in order to move forward in a responsible way after that period.

There are a lot of reasons to have a solid UX maturity in a company. First of all, bad UX can cost serious amounts of money and can even cost lives. So testing and research and putting platforms and applications under scrutiny is very important. Further more companies that invest in UX perform way better than companies that don’t. It increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. It reduces development time and cost of change. It increases employee satisfaction, which results in lower turnover and reduced training time. There are fewer support calls and reduced spendings on customers support. So UX in the organisation costs money, but having no UX costs more.

My strongest asset by far is my collaborative nature. I’m all about doing things together, having an ambitious goal and working hard as a team to achieve it. I learned this as a marine in though circumstances and it is still the best asset I bring to the table in any organisation. Sure I have a very thorough understanding of UX, CX, banking products etc. But there are more people that have that as well and such knowledge is also temporary as these things change all the time. In the end it is your attitude that counts most, I know I don’t know everything. But I know that I’m a good connector and I have a disciplined but easy going nature to take actions to help teams succeed.