About Stijn Nering Bogel
Stijn is a product designer at Koos Agency, where service design and product design come together to build digital systems that scale. He has worked on complex, high-impact platforms such as the Dutch COVID Passport, the Dutch Digital Identity Wallet, and Careem — a leading super app by Uber in the Gulf region.
With a solid foundation in accessibility and inclusion, Stijn focuses on designing systems that work for diverse users, contexts, and cultures. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, design leadership, and craft — turning complexity into clear, human-centred experiences.
What is your vision on our UX industry?
I believe the UX industry is at a turning point where good intentions are no longer enough. We often say we put humans first, but the real question is: what does that mean when business metrics, roadmaps, and scale are in the lead? For me, the next step for UX is design activism — not as protest, but as responsibility.
As digital designers, we should be held accountable for deeply understanding the impact of our work. We are literally shaping the virtual reality in which themes such as exclusion, discrimination and polarisation have become issues of the digital society.
We are designing abilities, cultures, and lived realities. That responsibility should live inside our systems: in design systems, workflows, governance, and decision-making — not only in research decks.
The hot topic for designers is accessibility, but it’s often framed as a limitation or hurdle that needs to be conquered. Working closely with my colleagues at Koos, diving into accessible and inclusive systems, made one thing very clear: accessibility is not a limitation — it’s a sign of design quality. It forces clarity, better structure, and more intentional decisions.
What excites me most today is that new technologies allow us to design systems that adapt — to different cultures, languages, abilities, and contexts. When accessibility and inclusion are treated as first-class design inputs, they don’t slow innovation down. They make it stronger, more resilient, and, honestly, more beautiful.
