Hi! Nice to meet you.
I design and develop experiences that make me smile, and help people be their best selves.
- 👨🏼💻
Creativity and
codeMy 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.
- 🛠
Invisible tools
I love the concept of digital tools: Interfaces that help you create, work, discover, and grow in any way you find important – without being in your way.
- ✨
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 ->
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 – 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 ⚓️🚢
Introducing Shiplog: a menu bar app to keep track of running deploys on Vercel and Netlify
Sometimes I wish macOS window screenshots would include the name of the app somewhere, so I can learn about the software people use to make all that cool stuff!
- Marked as sensitiveSpoilers for the Barbie movie
Click to viewMy biggest commentary would be that she didn’t have to become human at the end. It would’ve been more satisfying for her to become Just Regular Barbie instead of Stereotypical Barbie (she basically become Just Regular Barbie already).
Barbie was fantastic.
Caught the last fleeting moments of a brand I once loved.
What’s happening?
New post on my site! A little bit over a week ago I attended the Young Creators hackathon here in Amsterdam – it was a blast and we ended up winning 🏆
Here's a retelling of every emotion we felt and every product decision we made over the course of those 24 hours:
https://zeno.zone/blog/the-four-phases-of-attending-a-hackathon
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 – from idea to (winning) sol...
Really enjoying retro btw, very nicely crafted app https://www.retro.app/download
Retro - Feel Good Social
Retro is a social app that feels like a joy, not a habit. Here, you’re posting for yourself as much as your friends. It’s a friends-only ph...
👎 Writing a blog post
👍 Spending all night tinkering with blog template
“Notify When Left Behind” working perfectly tonight 🫣
Well that’s the most intense operation I’ve ever done in Figma
🦅
🛹I love how I can boost tweets through the bird.makeup mirror 😍
More like AI Pain amirite
Gayest experience yet: washing down my prep with an iced latte while on a boat
Variables in #Figma look very interesting, but the fact that variables get removed on nested components severely limits their applicability 🧐
Mentally preparing myself for today’s #Formula1 race to be a very boring one, hoping to be wrong
What if we all just Mastodon’t
Wishing for a Mastodon “Close friends” publicity option
Highlighted Projects
Riverside.fm
As Design Engineer at online recording platform Riverside, I bridged the gap between the design and development teams.
My work included designing UI, speccing it for developers to implement, and creating prototypes and code examples of animations that would enhance the product further. I also set up and maintained the Riverside Design System, and learned a ton about creating reusable components.
From the moment he joined, Zeno played an important role in shaping Riverside’s UI and UX. He brought structure to our new design team by independently conducting user research, collaborating across teams, and setting up an extensive component library in Figma. He thinks like a developer when he needs to, which has made implementation a breeze and made our product shine.
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
This is a very valuable piece of work with a clear deep understanding of the issue in the area and a realistic, understandable model delivered in a very professional and academically robust manner.
The flow funnel is giving me and the team a better understanding and a handle to talk about the difference in skill/experience levels of our users. It was a revelation to see this mapped.
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.
Zeno works end-user focussed, with a critical, introspective attitude and tremendous work ethic. However, the secret sauce is his attention for detail - the little animations and micro interactions - that elevates everything to a blissful experience.
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.
Zeno is the perfect example of a multifaceted designer. He is perfectly able to translate our wishes into a well functioning, beautiful interface, but he also comes up with ideas we didn't know we wanted to incorporate – but we do. It's been a constant joy to work with him.
DebaTable
DebaTable is a technologically enhanced meeting table that mediates discussions and stimulates time-efficient debates.
It works by measuring and then visualising each participant’s 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.
In his Final Bachelor Project, Zeno clearly demonstrated his time at the University shaped him into a skilled designer with an eye for detail and one who is never afraid to learn new things. I very much appreciated his 'making approach’ in this project and have always been impressed with his professional attitude and his reflective stance.
Other Projects
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.
LGBTQ+ Volunteering
Leading a team of 15+ graphical designers in creating bimonthly edition of Expreszo, the biggest LGBTQ+ youth magazine of the Netherlands. When Expreszo moved from a paper publication to online, I helped in developing the web platform, creating the theme and modules of the website.
Get in touch
I'm @zenoachtig (It's funny in Dutch) pretty much everywhere.