Hi! I'm Zeno.(You probably figured that out already)
I make experiences that make me smile, and help people be their best selves.
- π¨πΌβπ»
Creativity and
code
My passion is organising information in a visually striking way, and bringing complex ideas to life with technology. I am naturally curious for the world, and love exploring big ideas while collaborating across disciplines.
- π
Invisible tools
I love the concept of digital tools: Interfaces that help you create, work, discover, and grow in any way you find important β without being in your way.
- β¨
Polish every pixel
Call me a devil, cause I'm up in those details. Interfaces are so much more than just static screens: they have loading states, page transitions, edge cases and more. My favourite thing is enriching interfaces with animations and interactivity.
(Micro) Blog
All posts ->Occasionally I write something about one of my side projects. For more regular nonsense you can check out my Mastodon.
The four phases of attending a hackathon
The rhythm of highs, lows, and everything in-between that I encountered at the 24-hour Young Creators hackathon β from idea to (winning) solution.
Playing catch-up with the Twitter app
A small design exploration of how Twitter could help users scroll back to where they were after scrolling to the top of their timeline
Shiplog has shipped βοΈπ’
IntroducingΒ Shiplog: a menu bar app to keep track of running deploys on Vercel and Netlify
1. Nice to see aria-labels even on stuff as extraneous as the store's hype queue.
2. Fascinating to see Apple do alt text in the same voice as its marketing.@LiftinApp Hey, my Ad-Hoc Routines carousel seems stuck, Iβve changed the routines inside that section but theyβre not changing, even after I delete all of them I see the old routines there. Anything I can do?
Liftin' version 36.5 (300)
Today marks the first day of my Β½-month sabbatical in-between jobs. Thereβs a new energy in the air β‘οΈ
Itching to make a website from scratch again
From a Google Ad Manager email:
"The advertising industry as a whole is taking into consideration evolving user expectations with regards to privacy across Europe.βNow there's a begrudging sentence if I've ever read one.
Currently: Springing forward π»
Ever since I started referring to using ChatGPT as βasking the lying robotβ, everyone (myself included) has been a lot more enthused about it
Fun Friday project: made a list of learning resources in our company Notion to help me become a better de(v)signer and hopefully spread some knowledge.
The βAdd to Reading List" button triggers a small Notion automation to add the person who clicked the button to the resource in question. The "Your Reading List" view then shows all the resources you've added yourself to.
This is amazingly done, from the sketching (what app is that?) to the 3D printing timelapse, to the presentation of the final product, all the way to the music π https://youtu.be/BuEziDm9gQw
Making a Macintosh Studio
With all this talk of low-hanging fruit I decided to make a list to settle this debate once and for all. From lowest-hanging to highest-hanging:
1. π Strawberries
2. π Watermelons
3. π Cantaloupes/Melons
4. π« Bush Berries (Blueberries, Raspberries, Blackberries)
5. π Grapes
6. π Apples and π Pears
7. π Citrus Fruits (Oranges, Lemons)
8. π Peaches and π Nectarines
9. π Cherries
10. π BananasFigured out my personal seasonal theme: welcome to the Spring of Resetting π»
Small breakdown
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Short walk
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Small breakthroughIβm falling in love with Mastodon and mastodon.design all over again π
Now I just need to liven up my feed some more, so would love some follow recommendations β¨
Just π₯½π'ing with @rafa
Iβm giving a presentation next year and want to include some live demo parts. I hate the switcharoo you need to pull in those cases while presenting. Keynote (+ OBS) forms quite a neat solution nowadays!
Highlighted Projects
Crisp
Crisp is a grocery store app for locally sourced fresh food. Its mission is to improve the food system by effortlessly bringing better food to more people.
As Product Designer I help make the app look good and work smoothly, with involvement in the entire product chain: conducting user research, feature discovery, designing iterations in Figma, speccing tickets for developers, testing implementation, building and releasing to users, and monitoring adoption by writing SQL and dashboards.
My biggest achievement is the newly-launched Weekbox, our take on mealkits and a whole new paradigm for Crisp. I have designed every flow, from onboarding to cancellation, helped tailor the core proposition, and helped steer the rollout to production.
Beyond that I have contributed dozens of new features to the app, helped solve hundreds of bugs, set up the design system from scratch, regularly shipped the app to alpha / beta / production, led internal team meetings, and presented inspiration sessions to the whole company.
Riverside
As the first Design Engineer at online recording platform Riverside, I bridged the gap between the design and development teams by designing new features and creating prototypes, animations and code examples that would enhance the product further. I also set up and maintained the Riverside Design System.
The feature I'm most proud of is the Media Board, which lets you upload, preview, and record audio and video in your online studio. Small details such as the design of the Preview/Live toggle and the Grid View inspired by Launchpads were a delight to work on.
Invisible
Interface
Carried out in the scope of the MA Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island UK, my graduation thesis examines flow in digital tools, and aims to provide a new model to help digital designers create interfaces that cause (more) flow.
Check out the 15-minute summary video below
Check out the full thesisI tried my hardest to make it anything but dry
Dutch Coding Company
Dutch Coding Company is a web & app studio based in Eindhoven. I have had the pleasure of working with them on multiple projects, from mobile apps to animation-enriched websites. As part of their website redesign, I got to add animations and page transitions in numerous places.
To accompany the beautiful videos they made, I created a number of 3D device components that would spin- or flip around as you scrolled the page. In places where a handmade video couldn't be made, the device frame could be filled with a screen recording, and it would mirror the 3D transforms made by the device. Another highlight is the website's main menu, which includes staggered animations and a smoothly rippling wave at the bottom.
Eurostory
In 2015 I was approached by a group of authors to collaborate on a special project: a website about the serious side of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Everything about Eurostory is custom-built with attention to detail: a specialised block editor, a rich database of contest info, SEO optimisations, and a sleek design.
To top it off, during the Song Contest itself I get to make short vlogs about my experiences, finding my way as a videographer.
DebaTable
DebaTable is a technologically enhanced meeting table that mediates discussions and stimulates time-efficient debates.
It works by measuring and then visualising each participantβs speaking time within the past minutes. Additionally, a slowly expanding circle in the middle shows the discussion time left per topic, as voted on by each participant.
Other Projects
Gloei
I had the honour of being interviewed by Edward van de Vendel in a book about LGBTQ+ youth called "Gloei". After a successful book launch, we started an interview podcast with the same name: "Gloei, the podcast".
Edward interviews a member of the LGBTQ+ community about their life. Afterwards, he reads a poem inspired by that person. Each episode is accompanied by custom art work. I was in charge of the audio and hosting.
Board Year
Wervingsdagen is responsible for organising the largest career events of the Eindhoven University of Technology, helping 160 companies with 3700 students. I learned to collaborate with my fellow board members, work with 9 study associations, and maintain professional attitude towards client companies.
Light Art
Intermedia is an interactive light installation made for light art festival GLOW Eindhoven 2016. I programmed its 3 visualisations using a pretty complex technology stack (Kinect sensors, local networking, beamers, adaptive soundtrack). The result was a wonderful experience, with many strangers connecting with each other through a screen.
Get in touch
I'm @zenoachtig (It's funny in Dutch) pretty much everywhere.