To experience a story is to become part of it through the magic of interaction.

I'm Rick van der Wal and I love great design. I love it even more when great design tells an even greater story. As soon as I finished elementary school I knew I wanted to create those stories and have as many people interact with them as I could find. That was back in 1996, just as 'the internet' was starting to make itself known to the world.

Before all that, I was born. In 1984 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands to put a finer point on it. As early as second grade my need for a creative outlet got me into drawing, which in turn led an appreciation of Design with a capital D. Not merely the aesthetics of things, but that seemingly effortless phenomena when something works, looks, smells or acts exactly the way it was intended to do. By Design.

Following my passion I went to the College of Arts in Rotterdam. Drawing became digital illustration as Flash started to take over the web. I became fascinated by these noisy, animated micro-worlds created in the then ubiquitous SWF format. I made games, fansites and even the odd presentation in Flash, all published online on my banner-stuffed Braveheart website. During my graduation year a teachers upon seeing my 'portfolio' was entirely digital (on a writable CD disk) warned me being a 'web designer' was not a career but a hobby. An illusive a job as being a cartoon illustrator. It was better to stick with print package design or, if necessary, photography.

As anyone who knows me will attest, that is exactly the type of encouragement I needed to go into webdesign. I started working at a large marketing firm in Rotterdam. However, as a boy at the age of 16, my interest in webdesign quickly got overshadowed by the emergence of the Virtual Worlds. It wasn't so much the (massive) multiplayer games such as Everquest, Quake or even the groundbreaking World of Warcraft that captured my attention, but rather the vision of Neal Stephenson of the 'metaverse' as detailed in the dystopian sci-fi classic Snowcrash that set me on a path to explore virtual, three dimensional digital spaces. So much so this became the focus of my thesis during my graduation year.

Ever since I've been on this a narrow path on the intersection of design, interaction and the way in which digital space allows us to create uniquely immersive experiences. I become particularly interested in how these experiences are crafted. A lot of digital projects failed to reach their potential at that time. Bogged down by feature creep, overwhelmed by technical issues or poor design. Some projects just lost sight of their objective entirely, lost between the business side of things, the developing team and the users these projects are supposed to serve.

At the same time I started to see how a cohesive narrative, a story, could keep everyone engaged. Too often the 'why' of a digital project got lost between business cases, customer insight sessions or long list of technical and functional requirements. I noticed how quicker design cycles allowed more iterations to keep the project agile and the team involved throughout the process. And perhaps more importantly, by starting out with a solid foundation and shared vision we could avoid costly mistakes which would lead to missed deadlines, cut features or unforeseen budget issues, and eventually a disappointing experience of the application itself.

This is how I ended up here. I enjoy setting the trajectory of digital products towards success through storytelling, prototyping or consulting on how to improve the experience of an app or website. Meanwhile, I use much of my spare time running, watching tennis and developing my own projects which are scattered all over the internet (and soon even the App Stores aren't safe).

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