About me
I love to build products that enable others to create, shape or become more effective. I’m currently doing exactly that at no-code design and development tool ConvertCalculator, and by building exciting features for my sideproject Shortcuts.design. When I’m offline, you’ll probably find me working out, reading, roasting green coffee beans, brewing craft beer, or road tripping with my best friends.
We can build anything, but what is the future we want to build together?
— Branden Kowitz, Design Disruptors
When I’m happy at work
Over the last few years working and learning as a designer, I discovered that I’m at my best and most satisfied when I’m working on tools for others to create something themselves, work effectively, or lead a fulfilled life. I find myself being motivated when I believe in a vision and have ownership of my process and the product I’m working on.
Currently I'm working at ConvertCalculator, a no-code design and development tool SMBs can use to create product configurators, calculators, forms, sales funnels and more. I just started here, but there are a lot of interesting challenges ahead in improving the visual and logic builder, lowering the barrier for non-designers and engineers to build great performing products, and telling our story to attract the right customers.
How I got here
Before all of this, I worked on native apps at YipYip where I also scaled up the design team from me-myself-and-I to a team of 4, built out a design system with our engineers to keep one of the products we were building maintainable, learned about accessibility for native and webapps, and balanced user focused, technical, and business-driven needs and constraints.
Earlier I designed mobile-first presentation software for Paste by WeTransfer, worked at Awkward on Coffee by Benjamin and learned a lot from being around the people building Sketch Cloud, taught courses to design students, and graduated cum-laude and with an 10/10 (A) at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Check out my resume
On the side: Traveling
Every year, I try to visit at least two different countries, whether it’s a city trip, wandering around in nature, or roadtripping with friends which we often do with an old red 1992 Mazda Miata.
Recently, my friends and I roadtripped through Sweden🇸🇪, Norway🇳🇴, and Scotland🏴, and we went to -25°C winter wonderland in Sweden🇸🇪. I just got back from working remotely for a while from The Canaries 🏝️🇪🇸 where I started enjoying the nomad working style while doing some scuba diving, paragliding and supping. Next up, I'm heading to Morocco🇲🇦.
Traveling is also where I enjoy photography — Currently not really sharing them online, but they make for some great wallpapers. I’ve got some great travel stories to share, so we should grab a coffee or beer sometime!
On the side: Fitness & road biking
Since COVID, I picked up road biking on nights and weekends. I love to road bike on the Dutch island of Flakkee, where I live.
Recently, I picked up going to the gym, and started liking it way more then I ever liked roadbiking. I'm starting almost all days of the week with an hour of weight training in the morning, which really helps me to feel great during the day, feel better mentally, sleep better, and build better things for Convert!
Check out some photos on Twitter of where I live and ride.
On the side: Discovering craft beer
I really enjoy discovering craft beers with friends (Shout-out to Frontaal in Breda) or messing around with homebrew beer kits 🍺. After some malt extract kits turning into not-so-tasty beers, I'm currently going down the rabbithole of all-malt brewing with my hobby brewery "Lost Brewing".
I’m learning a lot about recognizing flavors, what I like or dislike, and somehow it’s making me better at articulating my thoughts.
On the side: Roasting coffee beans
Besides brewing, I’m roasting my own green coffee beans in a little oven in my backyard. Maybe I'm gonna make a full-fledged brand for it someday, and call it Lost Roasting 😉.
I don’t know if it’s the IKEA-effect, or if I truly roast and brew the best coffee out there, but I believe it's the best.
Check out this Twitter thread if you want to learn more.
On the side: Learning & creating
I’m often reading books about design, productivity, and self-development, listening to podcasts, spending too much time on Twitter, and dabbling around with side projects.
I used to work on a beer tasting web app and a Figma MUI/Vuetify UI kit, but for now, those are on the back burner as designing for Convert gives me enough fulfillment at the moment. When I do work on my side projects, I'm mainly focusing on Shortcuts.design, my first side project that became Producthunt Product of the Day back in 2017.
One of my friends wanted to shoot a quick picture of me just after I launched, and as you can see, I awkwardly agreed — Years later, I'm more than happy that we captured the moment. 😉
