Wouter de Bres

One for the road. One for the dirt. Both equally good for the soul.

They made some good progress on our bus. Our daughters named him Bennie. Hopefully Bennie will be ready in time for summer vacation. 🤞

Letter T exploration

> Bad ideas are fertilizer. You need them. They are not a detour on the way to the good version. They are the ground it grows from. Really enjoying this completely free book from Wouter de Bres. productdesignpsychology.com

Congrats on publishing! Lovely animation ☺️

I finally found an excuse to bring back the classic dancing hamsters and confetti @fubits.dev 🎉❤️

Good humans, I wrote a book. Took me 10 yrs. Share it with anyone who wants to understand the minds they're designing for and the mind they're designing with. 40 chapters free to read. 📘 productdesignpsychology.com ❤️

The more you look at your design, the less qualified you are to judge it. That’s when your own mind starts lying to you. productdesignpsychology.com/04-your-mind...

For all 40 chapters in my book, I created an illustration. It was a challenge to develop a unique style and come up with concepts that matched each chapter’s topic, but I’m happy with how they turned out. 📘 productdesignpsychology.com

Every work day I start here on the couch with a coffee, making my todo list for the day and going through emails and chats. Often with some piano music playing in the background 💆‍♂️

The feedback came in. The screen was confusing. People got stuck. The evidence was obvious. And still, you defend it. Because the design stopped feeling like work and started feeling like proof of whether you were actually good at your job. 📘 productdesignpsychology.com/03-design-fo...

You might have called it experience. A lot of the time, it was just you designing for yourself in a room full of people who are nothing like you. 📘 productdesignpsychology.com/01-nobody-th...

It's finally live. Product Design Psychology is a free online book about psychology and design. Not just how psychology shapes the decisions your users make, but also the decisions you make as a designer, and the organization you work in. 📘 productdesignpsychology.com

I had an absolute blast riding through the mountains of Sardinia.

A weekend trip on an old motorcycle through muddy forest tracks is good for the soul.

Working on the illustrations for my book Product Design Psychology. After almost a decade 🙈 of starting, stopping, and starting again, I’ve finally reached the fun part.

Another dream unlocked: We bought a 1970 Volkswagen T2a campervan. Might still need a tiny bit of work, but we can’t wait for many family road trips in this classic.

Couldn’t resist adding this gem to my design book stack.

What it feels like to ride a motorcycle (🔊sound on)

My little office space is coming together nicely—it’s amazing how much joy and productivity this cozy, creative corner is bringing.

Prints arrived! 🎉

Make life a ride.

Fed up with pretty much every digital PM tool and todo app out there, I’m going back to good old paper and pencil for my task list.

My friends Max & Dieter

Loving the energy and impact my new intern is bringing.

Step by step, my new office space is coming together. Made some good progress: ✅ Laminate flooring ✅ Desk ✅ Chairs ✅ Banana lamp ✅ Balloon lamp ✅ Plants ✅ Coffee machine Next up: a bookcase, a rug, and some wall decor. Maybe a couch or a lounge chair.

Finally found (and ordered) an office chair that’s not just ergonomically solid but also an absolute beauty: the Enova Aria EAR-001B, designed by Marcelo Alegre.

Having fun designing a sleek and simple personality test.

Just got the keys to my new office! Needs a lot of work, but I’m excited to turn it into a creative space where my best designs will come to life.

Career advice

Business is going well, which makes me confident to take a next step: rent an office space. Found a perfect little space next to school of my daughters, which allows me to still have lunch with them every day. I love working from home but when clients come to visit it will be nice to have an office.

Probably a bit too complex for a logo, but it was still fun to work on!

Branding exploration.

My new Hansker ergonomic mouse arrived. Feels natural and comfortable straight away, the only thing I miss is the little horizontal scrolling wheel for my thumb.

Designing some fun, simple games for Givvio, an app to help social initiatives raise more money for their causes.

Working on an admin interface for a fundraise game app.

For the fundraising game app I’m designing, we needed some fun user avatars. After exploring various ideas and styles, I settled on these colorful animal avatars.

To celebrate a client’s 5th anniversary, I designed this visual and swag. It was fun to take on a more artistic project alongside my usual product work.

Autonomy is addictive.

Spending hours searching for a domain name that I will probably never use is my kind of Sunday night.

This logo project turned out better than I expected. Delivered all the files to the client and ordering hats to finish up the project.

Work in Progress

“I have never tried this before, so I think I can do it.”

The main use case for my Midjourney subscription currently is generating bedtime story images for my daughters:

Designing this logo was pure joy… literally.

So many people in the tech world obsess over hitting an imaginary “finish line”—exits, titles, salary goals, funding. Reality is, that finish line simply doesn’t exist. Instead focus on enjoying the ride. Life is happening now, not someday.

After setting a rough vision for the visual style and presenting that to the company, we can now focus on building the actual design system that we called Kiln. So fun to go deep into the visual details. I will never get bored of playing around with grids, grayscales and shadows.

Getting married and taking a month off from work. I got a feeling July is going to be good month.