BREAKING IN: Next Up: Michiel Knoppert

Next Up: Michiel Knoppert

Motorola Cliq

A while back, people started calling Michiel Knoppert an “Experience Designer”, “Design Strategist” and—his personal favorite— “Unicorn”, so when he looked over his shoulder to see where he strayed from being a “Product Designer”, he realized he’d been on an unintentional, yet inevitable journey. Adding new skills to his design toolkit helped him understand and create desirable solutions for increasingly connected and complex problems. Maybe a simple title of “Designer” to describe Michiel suffices, for now.

Michiel graduated cum laude as an industrial design engineer at the height of the dot-com bubble and got to experience the last bit of that ride. His first 7 years as a professional were spent at Springtime in Amsterdam and New York, where he worked on projects for renowned international brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola and Toyota. There he designed anything from new skateboard concepts to sex-toys, futuristic soccer robots , fuel-cell carts and strollers. His work has been published in design magazines, won prizes and got exhibited, yet almost none of it was actually produced. His next job would lead him to launching actual products to market.

Share this:

At Motorola in Chicago, he started working on the next-gen accessories and wearables with Scott Wilson. When Scott left to start MNML, Michiel went on to lead the product design for Motorola’s first Android phone project and for awhile the entire Android portfolio. Following success at Motorola, Michiel went to Dell, where he helped start an advanced design group, building a satellite studio in Amsterdam.

For the past four years, Michiel along with his team at Dell, has been scoping likely futures and building scenarios for the next series of products. They’re getting close to bringing some new experiences to market that will change the way we use computers.