This week started on a high note with the opening of restaurant De Klub at Vechtclub XL—the creative workspace in which our Utrecht studio is located. It is a lovely space serving good food and drink (including fine coffees) but most importantly a great place for serendipitous encounters with other Vechtclub residents and people from outside of the building.

Much of my attention was dedicated to getting project FUNKOROGASHI set up. On Monday I adjusted the proposal we had sent out earlier with a new concept Alper and I had come up with in Berlin the previous week. On Thursday I headed over to Eindhoven for a meeting with the client. We discussed and adjusted the concept, then went out for a tour of Strijp‑S which will be the site of the project. When I got back I immediately banged out a third iteration of the proposal and sent it out, ready for signing.

Meanwhile Alper went hunting for a rather elusive Beestenbende bug. With help from the mighty Chris Eidhof he eventually managed to locate and fix it.
We were also pleased to sign a contract for a new project with KLM which we’ve codenamed KUMA. It’s concept development, which includes workshops and studio work, aimed at providing insight into the possibilities of game-based learning for a particular application domain. This will kick off next month and we are very much looking forward to it.
Dutch news weekly Vrij Nederland published a piece on coffee and was kind enough to include a link Cuppings—our super simple app for finding great coffee near you. This immediately propelled it into the app store charts again.

I finally found the time to write up and publish the talk I gave some time ago at a Behavior Design Amsterdam meetup. It’s an attempt to describe an alternative approach to design for behaviour change which puts people first and strives to increase in stead of diminish their agency.
Throughout the week we had numerous meetings. Alper welcomed a group of students from Belarus to the studio who were on an outing organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He also entertained friends-of-the-studio Ernst-Jan Pfauth and Justus Bruns. I met with curator Ine Gevers to discuss games and art, visited our friends Perceptor at their the Hague studio and talked interaction design education with Viktor Wijnen who has just become head of the game and interaction design program at the Utrecht School of the Arts, my alma mater.
We also visited a Utrecht escape room and once again failed to solve it in time. I did however manage to nail one whole puzzle, largely thanks to its visual nature.
The week ended for me with a very welcome monthly Bierclub (“beer club”) in the sun at De Klub. Over the weekend I watched a few games of Dota 2 at The International and Smash Bros and Street Fighter at EVO. Meanwhile in Berlin, Alper tells me he caught up on email.
Week 255
This week started on a high note with the opening of restaurant De Klub at Vechtclub XL—the creative workspace in which our Utrecht studio is located. It is a lovely space serving good food and drink (including fine coffees) but most importantly a great place for serendipitous encounters with other Vechtclub residents and people from outside of the building.
Much of my attention was dedicated to getting project FUNKOROGASHI set up. On Monday I adjusted the proposal we had sent out earlier with a new concept Alper and I had come up with in Berlin the previous week. On Thursday I headed over to Eindhoven for a meeting with the client. We discussed and adjusted the concept, then went out for a tour of Strijp‑S which will be the site of the project. When I got back I immediately banged out a third iteration of the proposal and sent it out, ready for signing.
Meanwhile Alper went hunting for a rather elusive Beestenbende bug. With help from the mighty Chris Eidhof he eventually managed to locate and fix it.
We were also pleased to sign a contract for a new project with KLM which we’ve codenamed KUMA. It’s concept development, which includes workshops and studio work, aimed at providing insight into the possibilities of game-based learning for a particular application domain. This will kick off next month and we are very much looking forward to it.
Dutch news weekly Vrij Nederland published a piece on coffee and was kind enough to include a link Cuppings—our super simple app for finding great coffee near you. This immediately propelled it into the app store charts again.
I finally found the time to write up and publish the talk I gave some time ago at a Behavior Design Amsterdam meetup. It’s an attempt to describe an alternative approach to design for behaviour change which puts people first and strives to increase in stead of diminish their agency.
Throughout the week we had numerous meetings. Alper welcomed a group of students from Belarus to the studio who were on an outing organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He also entertained friends-of-the-studio Ernst-Jan Pfauth and Justus Bruns. I met with curator Ine Gevers to discuss games and art, visited our friends Perceptor at their the Hague studio and talked interaction design education with Viktor Wijnen who has just become head of the game and interaction design program at the Utrecht School of the Arts, my alma mater.
We also visited a Utrecht escape room and once again failed to solve it in time. I did however manage to nail one whole puzzle, largely thanks to its visual nature.
The week ended for me with a very welcome monthly Bierclub (“beer club”) in the sun at De Klub. Over the weekend I watched a few games of Dota 2 at The International and Smash Bros and Street Fighter at EVO. Meanwhile in Berlin, Alper tells me he caught up on email.