About

From the Low Lands to Los Angeles.

I believe great design is all about perspective and context.

Growing up in the Netherlands, I have been enamored with technology from a very young age. One of my favorite pastimes was taking different building kits and come up with my own hybrid creations. This ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking has stuck with me ever since. Instead of focusing on the plain and obvious, I always find great value in taking a step back and considering the big picture.

While earning my Bachelors in Electrical Engineering I learned about a concept in engineering called the black box, which is a means to consider the inputs and outputs of a system before knowing the details of the inner workings. This, for me, is the essence of Human-Centered Design (HCD). It is paramount that you understand the user’s motivations, skills, and behaviors (input), as well as their desired outcomes (output), before you can successfully design a product or service (black box) to help bridge the gap.

HCD breaks any design exercise down into these bigger questions:

WHO are the prospective users? This leads to understanding the persona, their objectives and unique capabilities.

WHY are they seeking help in the first place? This leads to identifying the key obstacles to success.

HOW can the challenge be overcome? This step requires creative problem solving and design thinking.

WHAT are specific tools we can offer? Now we can start to develop products and services to help the user.

Once I identified my passion, I went on to pursue a Masters degree in Human-Technology Interaction, with a renewed focus on the human factor: perception, cognition, environmental and social psychology. One of my favorite research projects involved the Rubber Hand Illusion, exploring its effects on body ownership and demonstrating how flexible the brain is in helping us make sense of the world. My thesis was focused on the Antecedents of System Trust in recommender systems, finding that in a trade-off, people favor shared values over competence.

Studying Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University, my award-winning PhD dissertation combining research on biosensor technology in the form of eye tracking and a self-made data glove with a virtual environment to gamify rehabilitation practices. My passion for computer accessibility and (tele-)rehabilitation offers a prime example of my prowess to pinpoint pain points, develop targeted solutions, study their effects, and iterate in an agile manner. This was before HMDs were readily available, but I was already seeing the potential of virtual immersion to engage, enable, and empower users.

I continued my journey by joining Second Studio, a VR startup based out of an architecture firm in L.A. Using the brand new HTC Vive headsets at the time, our mission was to facilitate remote collaboration in VR. As VP of Product, my role was to research industry trends, gather user input, ideate new features, build the product road map, and manage our design and software engineering teams.

In my most recent endeavor as co-founder of AfterNow, I once again took on the Product Owner role. My overarching accomplishment was to lead the transformation of an internal tool we used to build AR experiences, into a multiuser, crossplatform, XR content creation platform. I spearheaded UI/UX design and built our product roadmap for new features and functions, and headed our international development team of 3D artists and software engineers. In a public facing capacity, I conducted workshops, webinars, and UX studies with early adopters. My pitch for AfterNow Prez earned me an entry in the Oculus 2020 Launch Pad program, and at the end of the program we published our app on Meta App Lab and won a $25k grant with ongoing support. During this time, I also served as a consultant for three XR projects at Microsoft Research.