Hello, I am Michiel Stam
What i love to do
I love creating designs and prototypes for digital products. From responsive web apps to iOS- and Android-apps. I believe in inclusive design to create a great experience for all users.
Experience
For more than 15+ years I have helped brands like NPO, Nedap Healthcare, BNR Nieuwsradio, Sanoma, OTX Logistics, RH Marine, Hema Foundation and Chordify developing their digital products and services.
Inclusive design
I firmly believe that design should be an empowering force for all. I am eager to bring my expertise in web accessibility (from knowledge of the WCAG-guidelines, screen reader optimization to writing inclusive copy) to a project.
Digital products I worked on
NPO.nl
For NPO I worked on concept, design and prototypes of a new portal, npo.nl. I presented designs, iterated on them and tested high fidelity prototypes to validate the product with users. I helped NPO by designing website structure and (content) components to disclose and promote digital channels from 13 broadcasters to users. Also I co- developed an accessibility monitoring tool to ensure the resulting website complied to WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The result is one of the first websites that adheres to WCAG guidelines within the public broadcasting portfolio of websites.
BNR Dutch Podcast Awards
The website for voting for and announcing the winners of the annual Dutch Podcast Awards. An initiative of BNR for which I created a concept and design for the mobile and desktop webapp. The voting flow in the old website was not very user friendly, so for the new website we redesigned this flow to select and nominate your favorite podcasts more easily.
When a user wanted to vote for a podcast, they were required to go through the entire list of more than ten categories, page after page. We have made this much easier by splitting up the categories, offering a button to directly submit the user's choice and providing a clear summary at the end of the flow. Especially on mobile, this was a huge improvement.
I presented the new designs to stakeholders and made a prototype that was especially useful to test the new voting flow.
Hema Foundation
Hema Foundation and Mercis released a book of nijntje (Miffy) to encourage parents to read with their children. It was handed for free to parents and the app that we designed alongside this book helps to learn words via games and storytelling. The voice in the app asks additional questions at each scene about which the child and parent can talk about.
I worked on the concept and design, created prototypes, edited and mixed the audio files and collaborated intensively with developers to produce and deliver the app on time. I was responsible for the app-submission proces and promotion in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Unfortunately, the apps are not available in the stores at the moment, but I do still have a the app on my phone to demo it in person.
Chordify
Chordify is a platform with a website and apps that let you search and play chords for any song, from guitar to piano.
While working at Hiro we designed the app for both iOS and Android from the ground up, using the brand input from the folks at Chordify. I designed many core parts of the interface for phone and tablet screen sizes, tested and iterated on designs and developed new features together with our developers and Chordify.
Although most of this design work was done a few years ago, the app still uses almost all of the core mechanics and designs we created for the app.
NPO Start CMS
In the NPO CMS, curators can prepare and publish the streaming content for the website NPO Start for the coming days. Curators had to do a lot of busy work to publish content for the right platform and didn’t have a clear insight in what was scheduled for the coming days. In short the clients question was: “Can you improve the workflow for curators in our cms?”.
I started by conducting interviews with the users of the CMS; the curators of NPO Start content. I selected the most imported issues together with NPO. Then I designed a new workflow in several design/development sprints. The result was a practical and modern visual cms with that is less prone to errors being made in planning content and that gives curators more control over their work.
Nedap Healthcare
Ons Formulierenbeheer is an application in which healthcare workers can create their own digital forms in order to gather data about progress of treatments and create measurement instruments to analyse and evaluate. I worked on interface design, prototyping and created a first design system for the application. This was a major improvement compared to the old, very complex application that could only be used by specialists. The new application made it much easier for healthcare employees to create a form themselves.
To iterate and improve the application even further, I did user research together with our team. I co-wrote scripts and conducted interviews with users of the application in all kinds of organisations.
Together with the team I came up with new ideas for onboarding and creating forms in an easier way that could be implemented to improve usability and reduce complexity.
Royal Dutch Navy
While working for Hiro I designed an app for the Royal Dutch Navy that allow personnel to practice emergency situations in a safe environment on shore. The application consists of a backend in which instructors can prepare trainings and a tablet app that simulates the audio communication on a ship.
The goal was to create a flexible setup in which students and teachers can train. The application can simulate multiple types of communication equipment on a ship and train teachers and students on how to act in the event of an emergency. I ensured that the app could display a complex communication environment in a simple and clear way for the users. Already during the first tests, the instructors and students were very enthusiastic and this continued until the final delivery.
This project was done in cooperation with RH Marine and Moving Media.
Karang Guitar Tuning app
Karang is an easy to use guitar tuner app. Users can tune their guitar in just one strum with this polyphonic guitar tuner. At Hiro, I participated in design research, user interviews and made sketches and mockups and designed the final production version of the app.
Gituru
Gituru is a new way of learning to play guitar. It's a an intuitive and responsive teacher that guides you through the lessons conversation-style. The Gituru-app listens to what you play and gives you live feedback on your playing. It's a pretty revolutionary new way of learning to play guitar!
While I was working at Hiro we designed the app together with the folks of Gituru. worked on the concept of the app, thought out the mechanics and design of the chatbot interface. After a while Gituru asked us to rework the designs for the lesson overview screens that they had made. In a new iteration of 3 sprints I designed a new onboarding, a new flow for users in choosing lessons, have a better notion of progress and increased motivation. Also I presented new ideas to stimulate users returning to the app and practice.
Skills
- Requirement gathering, storyboarding, persona development
- Information architecture
- Prepare and conduct user interviews
- Write scenarios and user stories
- Produce visual designs
- Produce low and high fidelity prototypes
- Develop and maintain design systems
- Code HTML, CSS and a little Javascript
- Photography
Tools
- Figma
- Sketch
- Framer
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Miro
- Git
- Logic
- Pen, paper and lots of sticky notes
Other activities
Guitar player
I have co-written and recorded 4 albums with the Dutch indie pop band MOSS: Ornaments (2012), We Both Know The Rest Is Noise (2014) Strike (2016) and HX (2022). Besides playing on recordings I performed at live club shows and at festivals like Lowlands, Pinkpop, Down the Rabbit Hole and Best Kept Secret amongst others. I have played guitar on the first record of the band Klangstof called "Close Eyes to Exit" (2016), played live with this band on Best Kept Secret and as a support act of Alt-J at Ziggo Dome. Recently I played guitar on Robin Kester's debut album Honeycomb Shades (2023).
Vintage Citroëns
I own a few classic Citroën cars and love to restore, repair and maintain them myself. I made a little website about my adventures with these cars about owning and foremost driving them.