Beyond Faster Horses: My 20-Year Quest to Design Tomorrow

The Spark (1998)

Where most childhood obsessions fade, mine ignited a career. At 12, I discovered Photoshop—not just a software program, but a portal to possibility. Those early digital experiments, pixel by painstaking pixel, weren't merely youthful curiosity; they were the first brushstrokes of a professional journey that would parallel the evolution of digital design itself.

Education & Early Career (2005-2008)

At Hyper Island (2005-2007), I didn't just study digital design—I inhabited it. Theory became practice almost immediately as I stepped into my first role as Creative Director at Adocca Entertainment while still completing my education. By January 2008, as a Mobile GUI Designer at Ocean Observations, I was creating interfaces for screens so limited that every pixel demanded purpose.

The Digital Transformation Era (2008-2012)

At Junkyard.se (2008-2009), as Interactive Director, I faced digital retail's frontier challenges—transforming skepticism into confidence through design when e-commerce was still earning consumer trust. Each interface element had to answer the unspoken question: "Why should I shop here instead of in-store?"

The smartphone revolution demanded not evolution, but reinvention. As co-founder and Interactive Art Director at yo.se (2009-2012), I navigated the seismic shift where familiar interaction patterns dissolved and reformed. Buttons became gesture zones. Menus became swipes. Design became invisible. This wasn't merely adapting to change—it was channeling disruption into intuition.

Cross-Cultural Design Immersion (2012)

My Tokyo chapter with Ocean Observations (May-August 2012) taught me that truly effective design transcends technological understanding—it requires cultural fluency. In four transformative months working with Japanese clients, I learned that interfaces must speak not just to universal human behavior, but to cultural context.

Interface Innovation (2014-2016)

At Topp Innovation, design moved beyond rectangles. Creating interfaces for Samsung's Gear S2 meant designing for circles wrapping wrists. Building Ford's automotive dashboards balanced information density with driver safety. Developing applications for Doctors Without Borders meant interfaces that performed under extreme conditions where usability wasn't just about convenience—it was about saving lives.

Goodbye Horses: Design Philosophy Embodied (2009-Present)

Goodbye Horses AB, founded in 2009, is more than my company—it's my design philosophy made manifest. The name itself challenges conventional thinking: just as Henry Ford understood that innovation meant creating automobiles, not "faster horses," meaningful design solves problems users don't yet know they have.

For over fifteen years, I've navigated clients through digital transformations across:

• Social platforms when "social" became the new interface
• E-commerce when shopping became experience, not transaction
• Mobile interfaces that transformed from feature-sets to extensions of ourselves
• Wearable technology that placed computing directly against our skin
• Smart home systems that made technology ambient, not apparent
• IoT and AI integration that required humanizing intelligent systems
• Blockchain applications that demanded making the complex comprehensible

Blockchain & Web3: The New Frontier

The blockchain challenge mirrors every technological shift before it: how to make revolutionary technology feel evolutionary to users. My approach strips away technical complexity to reveal the human benefit—creating interfaces where the technology recedes and the value emerges.

The Through Line

Twenty years. Countless technological revolutions. One consistent approach: designing not for devices, but for humans. Not for the present moment, but for the approaching future.

The pixels have multiplied. Processing power has exponentially increased. Screens have transformed from desktops to pockets to wrists. Yet the fundamental challenge remains unchanged: building bridges between human intuition and technological possibility.

As a creative mercenary, I don't simply witness technological change—I shape it. My greatest satisfaction comes not from the interfaces I've designed, but from the moments when technology seems to disappear, leaving only the pure connection between human need and elegant solution.