Tjeerd Hoek received his master degree cum laude in Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology in 1992. He joined Microsoft Corporation in 1994 as a Product Designer and has since worked in several of the major product teams at Microsoft, designing user interfaces for some of the most widely used software products and platforms in the world. Hoek was one of the Design Leads on Microsoft Office, defining the user interfaces used in all integrated applications of Office '97, Office 2000, and Office XP, many of which he helped become an integral part of the Windows platform. Moving to the Windows Division in 1999 he worked on various key platform interface improvements and design concepts for what later became Windows XP. After this, Hoek became responsible for User Experience Design of the MSN network, including key client applications such as MSN Messenger, MSN Email, and an integrated application for subscription-based consumer services. In 2002, Hoek returned to the Windows division to lead User Experience Design of the next version of Microsoft Windows, now known as Windows Vista, to combine the user experience of web-based applications and services with the best of client-based user interfaces. As Director of User Experience Design at Microsoft Windows, Hoek heads up a team of product designers who work with teams across several divisions to design the user experience of all major products, features and platform capabilities in Windows Vista, Including the interface for Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Windows Photo Gallery. Hoek designed interfaces for software products most people use every day on their PCs and platform capabilities leveraged by all major software products for Windows. Throughout his career at Microsoft, he has been a passionate influencer in an internal cultural shift towards high-quality user experience-centered design.

Mastermundo interview team: Irad Lee; Mark Ridder; Przemek Siemion; Rick Nijhout
Mastermundo visuals: Menno Steenvoorden; Rick Nijhout
Sound: Irad Lee
Editing / post production: Przemek Siemion
Mastermundo ( mastermundo.org/ )