Martijn van de Zuidwind

A designer doing sites, apps & such

Mail
for inquiries

LinkedIn
for that connect

Work

KLIF
A condensed view of the landing page showing the logo, a sentence stating 'a theatrical game about conspiracy thinking in an online world', a password field and a button underneath the field that says 'start game'.

KLIF is a Serious Game about conspiracy thinking and online misinformation. Made for young people, the game offers an immersive look into the world of a teenager who loses herself more and more in conspiracy thinking.

Players must find out what happened to a young student who seems to have disappeared without a trace overnight. To do this, they gain access to her laptop and can search through numerous photos, videos, emails and other documents. Little by little, players construct a full story of what happened.

By playing the game, students gain a better understanding of how you can be tempted into conspiracy thinking, what the consequences of this can be, and how you can deal with this as an environment.

By designing multiple app interfaces and a consistent visual language, an abstract computer interface came together. The game is currently being tested at high schools in the Netherlands.

Thumbnail showing two floating app windows.

Warped backgrounds hinting at a warped reality? Check.

Thumbnail showing a modal asking for a password.

The password is 'password'.

Multiple people playing KLIF behind their laptops.

Lots of thinking faces playing KLIF. :-)

A paper manual inside plastic on a dark background. The front cover of the manual is visible and says (translated from Dutch) 'A serious game about conspiracy thinking and online misinformation, teachers manual'.

As KLIF is mainly to be played in classrooms, designer Nick Lutgerhorst and I designed a digital-first teacher manual.

Thumbnail showing a video of a girl speaking in the camera.

Teenagers are never to be trusted. They're full of disinformation, alternative facts and fake news.

Thumbnail showing multiple icons.

I'll never say no to designing some icons.

Client

Guiot Duermeijer

Reinout van Schie


Development

Rik Frieling


Design

Identity

Prototyping

Iconography

Visual design

Interaction design

Information structure

Teacher manual w/ Nick Lutgerhorst


Process & strategy

Project management

Digital strategy consultation


The actual site

KLIF

Smaller bits

Eurofiber – 2021

A collection of components designed for the new Eurofiber.

Eurofiber has been a provider of industry-leading digital infrastructure since 2000. Together with the crew at iO, I redesigned their site.

An animation showing the mobile menu opening up to reveal a multitude of links to solution and product pages. At the end of the animation, the menu is closed with a button on the bottom of the phone screen to form a loop.

Eurofiber has many products, which I wanted to present elegantly. No hamburger buttons. Through the new mobile menu, users are able to quickly orient around their many offerings.

An animation showing an overly large cursor moving inside the the frame to click on a card.

I see you looking at that cursor, thinking, "it can't be that big, right?". And you're correct about that. It's fake. But the funnel supporting different sized organisations isn't.

Kapitaal — 2020

Thumbnail showing Kapitaal's homepage.

They said Helvetica, black and white. We gave them Helvetica, black and white.

Thumbnail showing the navigation for Kapitaal's website.

Through information architecture, we kept the navigation structure simple as pie. Or hamburger, in this case. Sorry, designer jokes.

Video showing a button changing labels while it moves down. First label: book table. Second label: Really. You should book. Third label: Are you gonna book a table or what? Fourth label: JEEz Louis. HOW MUCH CONVINCING DO YOU NEED?

Scrolling through pages that contain buttons makes labels act funny. Because, why not be a bit forceful about booking a screen printing table?

It is always fun to pretend to work with Ramon & Carlien.
Project with Carlien Peijsel & Ramon Goedvree. Development by Rik Frieling.

No Seat at the table — 2020

Thumbnail showing a title card explaining No Seat at the Table.

No Seat at the Table is an online platform to exchange stories of gentrification, the housing crisis and the need for spatial justice.

The original bird illustration is created by Rajab Eryigit.

Thumbnail showing the opening animation for the website.

For this site, we created some fancy shmancy intro animations and different ways to discover stories of gentrification.

Thumbnail showing a mobile map-view.

Do you see that? No hamburger menu! On a mobile screen? No way. Just. Wow!

Thumbnail showing Minem pointing at a monitor that displays the website.

I like to take the time with clients to nail down certain steps in the design process. Minem and I are going through a review here.

Project with Minem Sezgin. Development by Rik Frieling.

Eneco — 2018

Thumbnail showing multiple designs for the Eneco app.

The Eneco app enables consumers to influence their energy bill by offering data on their power usage.

A general menu in the Eneco app

During my time we utilised click data, interviews and surveys to simplify the interface and user flows. We improved the menu through a card sort.

Thumbnail showing a close up of a stepper and a feedback message.

By following the Jobs to be Done model, we focused most of the redesigned interactions around the goals users have.

Thumbnail showing part of the sprint team during a usability test.

We also realised a bigger shake-up of the app through a design sprint.

Project with Dept & Eneco.

HR Projectadvies — 2018

As an interim project manager Erik Jan helps large corporates go through organizational changes. The renewed site expresses who he is: an expert with an approach that connects people.

Thumbnail showing an illustrated character drawing a checkbox.

We rewrote and restructured Erik Jan's previous website using a priority guide. We also used the guide to build wireframes. Not that that's related to this guy.

Thumbnail showing 4 combined illustrations.

When in doubt, add more illustrations. In this case, we created some abstract ones related to typical HR practices and skills.

Nick, chilling on the a museum floor.

I couldn't find a photo of Nick and me working on this project, so here's a photo of Nick in Voorlinden.
Project with Erik Jan van Dalen. Design & development with Nick Lutgerhorst.

Info

Martijn, looking straight into the camera.
Martijn, but now he's staring at paintings.
Also Martijn.
Also, also Martijn.
Also, also, also Martijn.
Also Martijn, but still no visible face.

I'm Martijn, a digital designer from Utrecht (NL) with around 10 years of professional experience.

While I focus on tinkering with interfaces and designing for curiosity, I appreciate being involved in branding as well. 

I like to think about friction in interaction design. 

Technology is an instrument meant to help us, which means it shouldn’t intrude when we don’t need it. By thoughtfully adding small amounts of friction to well-considered places, I believe that we can strike the right balance between maximising usability and maintaining an appropriate distance.

Another way I’d like to look at design is that it is a way of making the technology we use feel considerate, warm and natural. While this isn’t technology’s default state, I believe that we should use design to give us back some of that warmth. 

This means we should be focused on anticipating and solving a user’s problems before they ever have them. Ideally, a tool should be so intuitive and caring that we forget that it’s technology at all. It should just be there when it’s needed, and absent when it’s not.


Currently

Digital product designer at Parta – a method & platform for decision-making processes

Freelance designer – helping out friends, design studios and organisations

Guest lecturer at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences – Communication and Media Design


Previously

Lecturer at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences – Communication and Media Design's specialisation 'Human Centered Design'

Digital designer at iO

UX designer at Hike One

UX designer through secondment at SchaalX

Designer at Studio Airport


Collaboration is essential to create relevant work. In my freelance practice, I experiment with different approaches of collaboration, be it with clients, specialists in related fields and designers new to the game.

I’ve developed a strong interest in socially driven projects by being involved in ones such as restaurant Syr and Parta. It's also why I started lecturing at Communication & Multimedia Design in Utrecht. Are you working on a socially driven project? I’m always open to learn more. ☻


Some clients I worked for

University of the Arts Utrecht

Dutch Ministry of Culture, Education and Science

Into the Great Wide Open

Amsterdam Art Council

Sportbedrijf Rotterdam

Emergence Magazine

White Ribbon UK

Restaurant Syr

Zware Jongens

Greenpeace

Kapitaal

Pfizer

eBay


Main skills

Interaction design

Digital branding

Visual design


Also fine at

Concept development

Project management

Design education

Usability testing

Design Thinking

Design systems

Workshopping

User research

Iconography

Prototyping

UX writing

Kanban

Scrum

Agile

GTD


I play around in

Final Cut Pro X

Affinity’s suite

Adobe’s suite

Keynote

Sketch

Things

Notion

Figma

Miro

Jira

Office (with a face like this: 😤)


Mentions

It's Nice That – Tom Heerschop

Commarts – Tom Heerschop

Volkskrant – Syr

DUIC – Syr

NU – Syr

European Design Award – Amsterdamse Kunstraad

Honorable Mention – Amsterdamse Kunstraad

Honorable Mention – Tom Heerschop

Honorable Mention – Go Short

Honorable Mention – Inspire

DesignRush – Ruff


For inquiries

Mail me


If you’re into PDFs

Curriculum Vitae


Development by

Eurico Sá Fernandes and Jori Regter


Shout out to

Nikita Kuijpers. She shot the photo of me giving a talk.