June 8, 2014Quite regularly I’m posting a picture of a big cup of coffee with a good book or my laptop. Sometimes people ask me “Do you work for Starbucks?”, on which I start to laugh, because I understand where that question comes from. The answer is no. I don’t work for Starbucks, but I do work at Starbucks. When I’m in a coffee place I work for myself and here is the reason why. People. I think the first answer is people. There are times when I work at my desk at home, but after a couple of hours I just... View Article
June 1, 2014I love to meet new people. It’s one of the reasons I like to travel so much. Everywhere you go there are different people with unique lives and backgrounds. And if you’re not a traveler, there is no problem since there are a lot of people in your town too that you have never met. It’s just sometimes easier to connect I think when you’re away from your own place. The other day I was sitting in a restaurant when an older man was walking in. I started a conversation with him and not much later he was sharing his... View Article
May 27, 2014Last week I wrote about why it’s important to ask yourself questions. I think it’s even more important to ask yourself why you do the things you do. There are times in business and life when things get a little less fun. I love having my own company and to work for many people. Though from time to time you get a client that is quite demanding without showing appreciation for the work you do. Those are the moments that can be challenging. Right then it’s important to know why you do what you do. The other day I had... View Article
May 18, 2014I try to be a regular blogger, but sometimes things come up in life and since it’s not top priority, it’s one of the first things I’ll drop. Anyway, here I am again writing down some thoughts. My first blogpost about two months ago was about doing what you love. Life is too short to do spend it mostly on things you don’t like. So it’s important to find out what you love. However, I think researching what you love is part of a bigger story. Recently I got myself a creative scratch book with many interesting questions about your... View Article
April 26, 2014How often are you sitting still, doing nothing? I don’t mean sitting and watching a movie or playing with your phone. Just sitting at a couch, maybe with a drink and doing nothing. This may sound simple or boring to you, but I found out that in my life those moments are pretty rare. I’m a driven person, always pushing myself and doing something. Even on a holiday I make plans to do things and see as much as possible. It’s only when my feet are really hurting that I start to take things a little slower. It’s at those... View Article
April 25, 2014After a long weekend of holiday I decided to continue the One Year of UI Design story today. Some time ago one of my clients told me it would be great to have a nice tool to publish one message to several places at the same time. At Media Injection our system has such a thing, but it’s part of a much bigger system. I thought it would be nice to create a new design for a multi destination composer. I made a sketch this morning and discussed it with a colleague. He liked it, though immediately came with feedback:... View Article
April 21, 2014Life goes really fast, especially in a country like the Netherlands. In my case, I work five days in the week and the other two are filled with resting from the workweek and social activities. I’ve stopped saying it too often, but time is moving fast. We’re now almost four months on the road of 2014. A quarter of the year has passed by. How has it been so far? Are you on schedule with your goals for this year? Since we have our lives so fully planned (I say we, because most people around me seem to be as... View Article
April 17, 2014Every designer needs inspiration and so I decided to use today to make a selection of the most beautiful interfaces I’ve found so far. I love to regularly spend some time at Dribbble and Pinterest to collect inspiring designs. Since today is day eleven, I thought it would be nice to make a selection of eleven designs: Windows 8 Day Mode Why I like it: It’s clean. It’s super clean. Only showing the things needed and nothing further. I’ve used this design a lot as inspiration for my work at Media Injection. Windows 8 Night Mode Why I like it:... View Article
April 16, 2014About one and half years ago, I started with daily exercises. Almost every workday right after I woke up, I started the day with pushups or sit-ups. It was good, but not great. It costed me a lot of discipline to keep on exercising, especially when I went to bed late the night before. Some days I kept to my good intentions, others I didn’t. In the summer I went on holiday and didn’t workout for a couple of weeks. When I came back home, it took quite some time to get back in the habit. I was thinking about... View Article
April 14, 2014I think Live Chat is one of the best features a website can have to offer support to their visitors. Happily I see chat boxes appear on more websites these days and I find it very helpful to be able to ask direct questions before I buy a product or sign up for a service. I was thinking how a chatbox like that could be improved and made a quick sketch. Often you see the live chat buttons at the right bottom or vertically at the left side of a website, presented as a tab. To let the chat button... View Article
