Joannes Vandermeulen
Joannes studied Archaeology and Oriental Linguistics at K.U.Leuven. He founded Namahn in 1987 as a one-person consultancy and has since built the practice into one of about 20 people. As well as leading his business, Joannes has a busy agenda lecturing at universities and product design schools internationally and frequently speaks at conferences. His passions outside work are evolutionary biology, cognitive science and futurology, not forgetting his wife and three children.
How did you first start in the business of human centered design?
A fortunate chain of events: at the beginning of the 1980s, I worked as an executive secretary in Brussels and Manhattan. I developed a fascination for computers and discovered my talent for written communication. I made presentations on Total Quality Management using the Apple Lisa. I wrote user manuals for senior executives and designed crude digital dashboards for project managers, using Microsoft Multiplan. As a participant, I observed the gap between what people need and what they got. When I came to write my first user interface style guide in New York (using Interleaf on a Sun workstation), I discovered the discipline of human factors engineering and user interface design. I read the first edition of Shneiderman's "Designing the User Interface" and then I knew was onto something.
People are central to the work you deliver. You also have a people-centered approach to running your business…
Yes, we practice open-book management in complete transparency. We function entirely as a team, each of us is exposed, with nowhere to hide. The people I work with have a right to know what's happening in the company. Namahn only attracts people who embrace this openness and feel comfortable with it. We like to be challenged intellectually but we also put high value on our lives outside work.
There's plenty of space in the Namahn building, so how do you plan to use it?
After 12 years in residence, we are now making use of 90% of this big building. In addition to the apartment of my family, the Namahn offices and the music studio of the Belgian composer Walter Hus, we have created areas for design, for music, for theatre, for dance. Our architect Wim Cuyvers is highly provocative about public/non-public space. His designs play with geometry, light and space – and this space is for both action and meditation. Wim has challenged us to make part of the space semi-public. Our neighborhood is one of the poorest in Brussels. It's troubled and struggling but also very proud. As part of this community, we can certainly share what we have created. We're trying.
What are your plans for Namahn?
I'm still busy making us into the most distinctive and reliable supplier of user-centered design for digital products in Belgium and I certainly want to make the team even more valuable to clients. We want to move to a higher ground. We're heading towards designing for digital products with a high level of complexity – technical, socio-technical or organisational– where a lot of stakeholders are involved. The complex behind-the-scenes systems I'm talking about are those used by a small group of specialised operators, where a good interface is not so much an added value (in terms of likeability and learnability) but a fundamental requirement. These are called "safety-critical systems", for example, emergency response, supervisory control, traffic management and intensive care. We're poised to deliver our services to clients in the surrounding countries and already do so in Germany and The Netherlands. On client assignments, we have travelled from Bangkok to Los Angeles. Some of us like to travel.
