Damascus, Cairo, Bucharest, Borneo, and eventually the Netherlands

Growing up in that many places teaches you one thing properly, which is that the same situation looks different depending on who is standing in it. I still start from the assumption that the person in front of me can see something I cannot, and that is most of why I ask before I propose anything. Eindhoven has been home since 2008.

Miri, Sarawak · One of the places that raised me

Trying aerospace first is how I found industrial design

Delft came first, two years of aerospace engineering, and leaving it is how I found industrial design in Eindhoven. Aerospace is one discipline, and I wanted the rest of it as well: the object itself, the person picking it up, how it gets made and how it gets sold.

Everyone was assuming somebody else would pick up the flag

Halfway through the master's I interned in Barcelona, where the walk to work went past people sleeping in the plant pots, some of them in suits, next to people who had been on the street for years. It changed what I wanted design to be for, and the vision I wrote at graduation came out of it.

Design should improve self-esteem through fun activity. Someone who takes action and changes the world does so because they know why they matter. My goal is to help people see themselves in the right light.

The best way to learn is to try new things in a safe environment. That is play.

They offered me the teaching post before they told me I had passed

At my graduation assessment I said I wanted to start a company and to teach, and they offered me the post before they got round to telling me I had passed, cum laude. For several years I taught bachelor's and master's students, and the useful part was getting each of them to the designer they could become instead of a copy of me. Alongside the design I taught what decides whether a product ever exists: business strategy and business goals, how it gets sold, support, logistics, manufacturing, and how long certification takes.

TU Eindhoven · My masters graduation project

A startup, a marketing studio, and the studio it became

Tingle was the technical startup, a patented instrument that put physical feel back into digital music making, and it got into HighTechXL. I closed it before the investment landed, because what was in front of me was running a company on a lot of debt, and I know myself well enough to know I carry that badly. De Jongens van de TU came next with a co-founder, marketing for local companies, grown to ten people and doing Prodrive's marketing and product design. Then OOOH Studio, which is what it became, adding interactive installations at festivals. All three taught me the same thing, which is that I am happiest doing the building and the deciding, so that is the work I do inside a company now.

My design team featured at Dutch Design Week

We learn through our mistakes, which is what a prototype is for

Putting an object on the table while we are still talking can look like I have decided something, and it is the opposite of that. When somebody tells me a thing cannot be done, I can usually put a prototype in front of them the same day that shows it can, and then we are talking about the prototype instead of the objection. An innovation manager takes an undefined problem through to a working product, which mostly means breaking a routine the company has stopped questioning. I would rather get the first eighty per cent right across a whole product than polish the last twenty, and if somebody will pay before it is finished, that tells me more than research would.

You learn when you try things, and that is why prototypes are important

AI costs energy, so design with intention

I use it more than most of the people around me and I am still learning to use it well. It earns a place where it clears work nobody wanted to do, or gets a first version in front of people sooner so they can tell me what is wrong with it. What I care about most is that it supports people talking to each other, so a long machine-written message misses the point, because the reader can tell you did not spend the time.

AI is a medium, what was the question?

Hardware, software and the business, designed together

The products that work are the ones where the hardware, the software and the business around them were designed as one thing. What I want next is to coach a team that owns all of it, in a company where both sides already matter. Coaching is the part I am best at and the part I enjoy most, which is what the teaching years were and what I have kept doing since.

Miniatures, tabletop games and a Polaroid camera

I run tabletop roleplaying games for friends, paint the miniatures for them, and I am designing a game system of my own. At festivals I carry a Polaroid camera and hand the prints to the strangers in them. In the evenings I still ship my own products, because The Looting Llama keeps the whole loop in one pair of hands, from the design through the marketing to the support.

Painting Miniatures and war gaming for fun

Recognition