Koen de Greef

The best climbers aren't the strongest.
They're the ones who look first.

That lesson, learned hanging off a boulder in Fontainebleau, is how I approach design: look first, understand the problem, then build. It has carried me from research at Eindhoven University of Technology, through digital accessibility at NS, to designing with and for AI at FIDDS.

Koen de Greef, smiling, wearing a shirt

The story

I'm Head of Design Services at FIDDS, working at the intersection of design and AI from the AI Innovation Center on Eindhoven's High Tech Campus. With over a decade in UX and software development, I help organisations bring a human perspective to how they design with and for AI, so the technology they build actually gets used. AI Design Systems are the latest way I help teams build fast without sacrificing quality: making your design system the source of truth that people and AI agents share.

Before FIDDS, I was a design strategist at NS (Dutch Railways), where I championed digital accessibility on the road to the European Accessibility Act and worked on how design was organised within ComIT, the division behind NS's traveller-facing digital products. The work that stays with me isn't a deliverable: it's a father telling me his blind daughter now travels to her grandparents on her own, using the app we made accessible.

I started out in research at Eindhoven University of Technology, publishing on game design for children of mixed physical abilities. Different field, same question: how do you make technology work for the people who actually use it?

Selected work

  • Twinq · AI strategy

    FIDDS

    Brought a design perspective to the AI software development lifecycle: an AI Design System and prototyper, implemented and adopted by the teams.

  • Twinq · UX design

    Less or More & FIDDS

    From journeys to flows to screens for a 25-year-old VvE software product, and design set up as a discipline inside the organisation.

  • NS · Digital accessibility

    NS

    Strategy, implementation and adoption of digital accessibility for the NS app and websites.

  • NS · CMS migration

    NS

    Migration strategy towards a new CMS, approached from design and internal usability.

  • Konekti

    Less or More & FIDDS

    UX design of the application and part of the AI experience design within it.

  • Terwa

    Less or More

    Design of an application for modelling and calculating structural fastening products.

  • AO Smith

    Less or More

    Design of the company's data portal.

What I stand for

  • Look first, then climb.

    Most failed projects were lost before anything was built. Understand the problem and the people, then move fast.

  • "It works" is not "people can work with it."

    Adoption is the real finish line, for AI, for accessibility, for everything. Technology that isn't used is just cost.

  • Leave every campsite better than you found it.

    Borrowed from the scouts: every time you touch code, content or design, leave it a little more accessible than before.

Experience

  1. 2025 – present

    Head of Design Services · FIDDS

    Leading design services at the intersection of design and AI: AI Design Systems, AI experience design, design research and product design. Based in the AI Innovation Center, High Tech Campus, Eindhoven.

  2. 2023 – 2025

    Design strategist · NS (Dutch Railways)

    Design ops and strategy for ComIT, the NS division behind its traveller-facing digital products: championed digital accessibility on the road to the European Accessibility Act, shaped the CMS migration strategy and the vision on platform and channel level.

  3. 2014 – 2023

    UX designer, UX lead, operational manager · Less or More

    Nine years at a design agency, growing from UX designer to UX lead to operational manager, leading and coaching a team of twelve designers and researchers.

  4. 2012 – 2014

    Game designer & researcher · Eindhoven University of Technology

    European research (M4All) on motion-based therapy games, published at Games for Health Europe, alongside a BSc and MSc in Industrial Design.

Outside work: boulderer, woodworker, hiker, and guitar player (poorly, but enthusiastically). Father of two daughters.