About
I’m Joep, a 27 year old Rotterdam resident. I am a professional musician, sound designer and a cum laude MSc industrial design engineer. My main interests lie in sound design, interaction design, crafting pleasant objects, UX Design, graphic design and programming.
VISION
My vision as a designer is quite flexible. There is one strong core message I believe has always stuck with me and that is that I believe in quality over quantity when it comes to interaction design. A lot of the products we enjoy in our everyday lives are multifunctional, especially smartphones and other smart devices and while smart devices. These devices are very potent, yet because of their multi-functionality and touch screen based interaction they also lack a sense of clear interaction affordances. The increasingly firm grip that smart devices, apps and social media have on our daily lives is becoming more visible in industrial design as well. When was the last time you had a problem in your life that needed solving and there wasn’t an app for that? Smart devices are the technological chameleons of our generation. They present the designer with a blank canvas filled with sensors and possibilities and leave it up to them to create a meaningful application or product within that given canvas. Could you imagine a nutcracker that would also allow you to change a car tire and check the temperature? It might seem that I oppose recent technological advances although this is not the case. In my view, industrial design is at a point in time in which there is a lot of interest for multi-use devices and concepts with autonomous systems, smart watches and smart homes at the frontier, instead of the more specific, single purpose and single use designs. Personally I feel that designs become much more valuable if they focus on a single functionality and execute it in a way that is incredibly satisfactory instead of having ten times the functionalities, but each of them only creates satisfaction on a superficial level. Quality of interaction over quantity of interaction options.
IDENTITY
In the first steps of my design process I consider myself to be a dreamer. I usually come up with more playful and artistic concepts than very concrete and functional designs. In the stages of the actual crafting of the design I am quite fast at translating those dreamy concepts into concrete forms. I have a lot of experience with modern fabrication techniques and I can quickly create prototypes and technical explorations that lead to new ideas and concepts. I am convinced I have found a steady workflow for myself and that I am not afraid to make important design decisions and cary the responsibility that comes with that. Within everything I do I need a little time to acclimatize and make a subject matter my own before I am able to work on concepts. As a designer I work great when I use a trial and error conceptualization phases during which I try out shapes with different materials and build various hardware setups and programs to get inspired. I have proven to be as much of a team worker as an individual worker when it comes to design projects. During brainstorming and conceptualization phases of a project I like working with others more because I usually gain a lot out of external input. Within group projects I like the function of a team leader as I like keeping an overview and stimulating a group to work in different ways in design. People often find me very social and easy to talk to. As far as I can describe my ways of thinking I would have to say that I very rational in my decision making. I can dive into early concepts or thoughts very quickly even if it sometimes leads to a dead end because I know I will find out new things along the way. I like exploring the abstract and I am not afraid to go into vague territory before coming up with concrete ideas and concepts. My identity as a designer can on some levels be compared with my identity as a musician. I enjoy composing abstract and difficult polyrhythmic music that is enjoyable for musically schooled purists as well as regular listeners. As I find the aspect of quality of interaction so important, I tend to spend a lot of time on the aesthetics of a concept’s presentation, interaction and hardware.
Picture by Isolde Woudstra.
My vision as a designer is quite flexible. There is one strong core message I believe has always stuck with me and that is that I believe in quality over quantity when it comes to interaction design. A lot of the products we enjoy in our everyday lives are multifunctional, especially smartphones and other smart devices and while smart devices. These devices are very potent, yet because of their multi-functionality and touch screen based interaction they also lack a sense of clear interaction affordances. The increasingly firm grip that smart devices, apps and social media have on our daily lives is becoming more visible in industrial design as well. When was the last time you had a problem in your life that needed solving and there wasn’t an app for that? Smart devices are the technological chameleons of our generation. They present the designer with a blank canvas filled with sensors and possibilities and leave it up to them to create a meaningful application or product within that given canvas. Could you imagine a nutcracker that would also allow you to change a car tire and check the temperature? It might seem that I oppose recent technological advances although this is not the case. In my view, industrial design is at a point in time in which there is a lot of interest for multi-use devices and concepts with autonomous systems, smart watches and smart homes at the frontier, instead of the more specific, single purpose and single use designs. Personally I feel that designs become much more valuable if they focus on a single functionality and execute it in a way that is incredibly satisfactory instead of having ten times the functionalities, but each of them only creates satisfaction on a superficial level. Quality of interaction over quantity of interaction options.
IDENTITY
In the first steps of my design process I consider myself to be a dreamer. I usually come up with more playful and artistic concepts than very concrete and functional designs. In the stages of the actual crafting of the design I am quite fast at translating those dreamy concepts into concrete forms. I have a lot of experience with modern fabrication techniques and I can quickly create prototypes and technical explorations that lead to new ideas and concepts. I am convinced I have found a steady workflow for myself and that I am not afraid to make important design decisions and cary the responsibility that comes with that. Within everything I do I need a little time to acclimatize and make a subject matter my own before I am able to work on concepts. As a designer I work great when I use a trial and error conceptualization phases during which I try out shapes with different materials and build various hardware setups and programs to get inspired. I have proven to be as much of a team worker as an individual worker when it comes to design projects. During brainstorming and conceptualization phases of a project I like working with others more because I usually gain a lot out of external input. Within group projects I like the function of a team leader as I like keeping an overview and stimulating a group to work in different ways in design. People often find me very social and easy to talk to. As far as I can describe my ways of thinking I would have to say that I very rational in my decision making. I can dive into early concepts or thoughts very quickly even if it sometimes leads to a dead end because I know I will find out new things along the way. I like exploring the abstract and I am not afraid to go into vague territory before coming up with concrete ideas and concepts. My identity as a designer can on some levels be compared with my identity as a musician. I enjoy composing abstract and difficult polyrhythmic music that is enjoyable for musically schooled purists as well as regular listeners. As I find the aspect of quality of interaction so important, I tend to spend a lot of time on the aesthetics of a concept’s presentation, interaction and hardware.
Picture by Isolde Woudstra.