About

About this blog

User Experience Design should do more than get users through a flow. Design should inspire, guide, and excite. And yes, design should be beautiful. To put it another way, design should elezea. In the spirit of this Swahili word that means to elucidate, explain, clarify, and relate, this blog contains reflections on User Experience Design and Software Product Management, and how we can all get a little better at what we do.

About the author

Rian Van Der Merwe grew up and studied Engineering in Stellenbosch, South Africa. In 2001 he took a scholarship to complete his Ph.D in Internet Marketing at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. While in Australia he met an American girl who seemed to be South African at heart, and his relentless pursuit of her eventually led him to move to California, where they got married in 2004.

Rian spent the next 6 years working in Silicon Valley. After 4 ½ years in eBay’s User Experience Design group, where his last position was as Sr. Manager of Product Strategy, he joined South African startup Yola.com in San Francisco as a Sr. Product Manager.

In March 2010, Rian and his family moved back to South Africa permanently where he now works at Yola’s Cape Town office. He is passionate about user experience and product management, and excited about the great opportunities ahead in the South African Internet space.

Disclaimer: You know this but I’ll say it anyway. The opinions in this blog are my own, and does not reflect the views of my employer.