Thoughts on Digital Life

Last week I was invited to visit the Hieronymus Bosch show currently showing at the Noordbrabants Museum. I was involved with the concept and realisation of the campaign website for the exhibition so I was invited to visit this amazing exhibition. Hieronymus Bosch As I stood there, alone, in front of a masterpiece I had seen on my screen over a hundred times in a period of just a few weeks I was amazed how interesting it really is. Hieronymus Bosch died 500 years ago this year. He lived from around 1450 till 1516. The paint on those paintings, the concept, the realisation has been made over 500 years ago. Yet, if you look at the big success of the exhibition, people still find his work amazing and want to see it. After 500 years it still matters greatly. Webdesign It's a big contrast to my work. My work is always fast and temporary. A website, app or anything else I create is not timeless. The campaign website for Hieronymus for instance runs from Jan 1st until the end...

This blog post is about service and digital transformation. I want to take a real-life situation and relate it to what we call service these days and want to talk a little bit about digital transformation. First I need to explain the situation: High service, low pricing - the introduction During Christmas our washing machine broke. When I bought it, only 3 years ago, I also bought a service contract at the store. It was pretty pricey, so you'd expect service. Obviously I wasn't expecting anyone to work during Christmas, so on the first working day after Christmas I called the company. I would have used Whatsapp or Twitter - but the company isn't active on those media. I got a guy on the phone telling me they would come round after 4 days. On that day no-one showed up. Instead we got a card from a 3rd party that they wanted to set a date to take a look. Another 4 days passed. The 3rd party came and took a look. The mechanic noticed two modules that weren't working. He...

Just as we are all getting ready for the most festive time of the year - I'd like to look back at 2015 and look forward to 2016. I've done so every year on Facebook. But as Facebook is getting less personal and stuffed with promotional adverts I decided to use my blog. Lets start with the three themes of 2015. 2015 1. Living Video 2015 for me was all about background videos. AirBnB started a trend by using a video in the background of its header. Over the past year it has been described as 'living video', 'experience video', 'backdrop video' and more. 90% of clients have asked for it last year. So for me, this was the trend of 2015. I really wish people would look beyond the "living video" in 2016. 2. Social presence Another thing of the past year was social media. Where companies needed to get a website over the past years - because "the Yellow Pages just don't work anymore - you have to be online!" - they now seem to...

Last Friday I got to visit the 2nd edition of Dsgnday in Amsterdam - many thanks to my employer Insiders for allowing me and 2 colleagues to visit Dsgnday. In this blog-post I would like to recap what I have seen and how I have experienced the talks. Simon Collison - The Designer's Guide to Being Essential The first speaker of the day was Simon Collison. Simon was very smart in combining his life story with his message. Simon explained how his life was modular and how he forgot some modules of his past and refound them over the past years. He continued that robots know it all. All the modules in webdesign can be designed by robots. So what makes a human webdesigner better than the machines? The answer to the question would be empathy. Simon quoted from an article by Travis Gertz. I've read it and I think its a must read. The part about AirBnb is very sadly so true. Its the most asked question of 2015 for me: can we have something like AirBnb? Great article , be sure ...

First of all I'd like to apologize for the delay in posting. I've been pretty busy (freelance) and I was doubting this blog for a while. It played a part in me losing my job, so I was a bit reluctant to post again... So my apologies, excuse me and let's give it another go. TV shows for kids Something struck me over the past weeks, something I noticed in TV shows my kids were watching. When I grew up there was Teddy Ruxpin, Fraggle Rock, Gummi Bears, Mask, Dungeons & Dragons and He-Man. There were more, take a look at some of the intro's here . Quite nostalgic to me, pretty dated when my kids look at them. I've seen a lot of more recent shows together with my daughter and my son. They watch shows like Dora, Diego, Bubble Guppies, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Paw Patrol, Ni Hao Kai Lan. All of these more recent shows have something in common. Something the old shows I enjoyed didn't have. Character interaction Dora, Diego, Kai Lan and all...

Lately I've been reading more and more about H2H, Human 2 Human communication. And the more I read about it, the more I feel there's a simple truth in it. B2B, B2C, ... A lot of companies are promoting a proposition of a B2B, B2C or even C2C leader. They claim a position in one or both of these markets. Thats actually pretty smart. I believe that choices are a good thing. You need to make choices and follow through. This article isn't going to tell you any of these choices are a bad thing. This article is trying to tell you that I think the differences between B2B and B2C aren't that big as they are all floating towards H2H. User centered These days we're often working with persona's, user journeys and user testing. Everyone is shouting we need to include real users in our working ways. Good call. Ten years ago we imagined what people wanted to see or experience. These days we include users to understand what they need, want or expect. We have really e...

This article is again about webshops. Webshops need conversion. Webshops need to sell products. I decided to take a look at my user journey when looking for a new laptop, Adobe software and some shoes. Here's how Zalando, Dell and Adobe made me feel and what they could improve. Zalando First of all Zalando isn't responsive. Your mobile experience is different from your desktop experience. The mobile experience is better, because the flow of information is positioned better. When you view a product on desktop format, the conditions of Zalando (about shipping and payment) seem to be the most important - as they are presented first. On the mobile version these are presented last. It gets better though! You can view a product at a larger format, ideal when looking for new shoes. You can see this in the image shown above. The bigger image is shown over the price and order button! Thats a conversion killer right there. The image below shows the same page if I don't roll over...