Who Are You?
I am FJ van Wingerde, currently in Berlin, and I have been working on user interface problems since 1992 or so when I was studying for my degree in Computer Science at the Vrije University in Amsterdam.
I started professionally 1995 in Harvard Medical School figuring out if putting medical records on this new thing called the World Wide Web was a good idea. Turns out it was. Since then I’ve done this user experience thing for apps and websites, on desktop and mobile, across healthcare, e-commerce, finance, scientific publishing, and energy; places where you can’t just “move fast and break things” because mistakes get people sued or hurt.
The titles keep changing (Software Engineer, Information Architect, UX Lead, Principal Product Designer, and much more) but the work is always the same shape: leveraging human empathy and user insights to bridge business strategy with user needs.Sometimes fractionally for startups to coach founding designers to their best work, sometimes for billion-dollar platforms that are out of control.
I run Design Studios, Design Sprints, and other workshops that create actionable results. I build visions that get the C-suite, engineers, and product people aligned around user needs. I coach designers to do good work. I design and ship things that get used for years.
I understand technical constraints because I was a software engineer first. I understand stakeholder politics because I’ve navigated them so many of times. And I understand what actually works because I’ve been doing this for thirty years across enough industries to see the patterns.
So What Is This About?
15 years ago this blog started as a place where I discussed how I donated time to small startups to help them get their first UX work started for their ideas, something that was incredible fun to do, and still happily do.
Now it is just my space to talk about UX issues. It’s very low volume because I am usually strapped under NDAs.
And what else do you doo?
You can see more about me at fjvwing on Linkedin.
