The first thing you should know about me is that I live to experience stories.

Stories of imagined worlds. Stories of our own. Stories about the past. Stories about the future.

I enjoy stories because they challenge my understanding of the world. They are tools to contemplate on what is different.

To me, a story is like traveling to a whole new place, where the destinations are boundless. I could go anywhere, at any time. Fortunately, that’s always where I want to go.

Experiencing a good story is not a passive experience, it’s an attentive activity. Being enveloped in a story helps me actively think and feel through the eyes of others. It helps me train my imagination, and it extends and recontextualises my own preconceptions about how things are supposed to be.

Most of all, they help reframe and pose questions about our own reality. What if this situation was different? What if this thing was real? How would that affect the world around us? What would people do differently?

- What if? -

After experiencing thousands of stories, I believe this questions is the reason why I became a designer.

As a designer I get to ask myself “what if”-questions every day. I get to use my imagination to challenge reality and the status quo. I get to drive us toward something new. Something better.

Growing up, I wanted to be three things. A lawyer, an engineer, and a psychologist.

As a kid I liked building stuff. I built forts in the snow, sandcastles on the beach, and spent most days with legos and video games. I was a nerdy kid. Math was my favorite subject in school. I was on track to become the ideal engineer.

When I got to high school that changed.

I was doing STEM-subjects, and I was steadily losing interest. Isn’t it ironic how subjects like math, chemistry, and physics, while trying to explain the phenomena of the universe, end up feeling soulless?

I wanted to work with something that was meaningful for humans, and my priorities changed. I ditched STEM, and started studying law at university the age of 19. What’s more meaningful than defending innocent people?

I quickly learned that the legal system wasn’t all about protecting people. It was mostly about how to interpret an established truth. A truth that didn’t deal as much in right or wrong, but in correctness and precedents.

I was cynical. The law appeared to me as archaic decisions by past politicians about how to maintain the status quo of society. Incentivise order. Who is guilty? Who should be punished?

It didn’t care much about actually solving the problem. There had to be a better way.

So, after two years studying law. I pursued a degree in pshychology. I sought to learn more about humans, and help people more directly. Actually making an impact.

At least so I thought.

Through my studies I quickly learned that we were training to treat symptoms, not causes. I found that many of the mental illnesses we face in society were caused by societal decisions and issues much larger and systemic.

I wanted to focus in on the topics that dealt with these issues instead of treating the symptoms. I studied cognitive-, behavioural-, work- and organizational psychology. How people work together in societies and groups. Phenomena like stress, anxiety, perception, decision making, loss aversion, teamwork, and leadership.

Turns out humans are pretty awful at making decisions. As groups we’re even worse.

Many decisions we’ve made in society are based on greed, poor evidence and terrible opinions. It has led us down paths that are hard to return from. Not only are we limiting ourselves as a species, we are destroying our world at the same time. I wouldn’t be able to have much impact through treating the symptoms.

Luckily, I was a naïve young student, and I still wanted to change the world.

I was also a poor student. So I got my diploma and I signed up to study computer science.

That’s when I discovered the world of design, and I knew I was on the right track. Through design I could help create a better future.

In hindsight, I feel like design encompasses all I wanted to do growing up. I wanted to shape society into an egalitarian place. I wanted to build things that could support us into the future. I wanted to understand human beings. To help people live their best lives.

And as any good designer does, I keep this in my mind at all times. I hold it firmly.

I know what I want to see happen through my design.

Design is, after all, making intentions into reality.