Experience Beyond Design

I did not arrive at UX through screens. I arrived here through people.

For years, I worked in places where you quickly learn that people rarely say everything they carry. In youth work, someone could walk into a room with attitude, silence, humour or anger — but behind that behaviour there was almost always something deeper. A story. A need. A fear. A way of being understood or misunderstood.

My training as a youth worker gave me words for that: group psychology, leadership, communication, conflict management, inclusion and human behaviour. But the real learning happened in the room, face to face, when theory had to meet real life.

Music taught me another side of the same lesson. As an artist, producer, songwriter and within music publishing, I learned how emotion, rhythm and storytelling can reach people before words do.

Travel added another layer. Moving between Sweden, Asia and Europe showed me that what feels obvious in one culture can feel completely different in another. The same situation can create different reactions depending on someone’s background, expectations and lived experience.

That is why UX felt natural to me.

It brought together what I had already been doing for years: listening, observing, questioning assumptions and trying to understand why people think, trust, hesitate and choose the way they do.

For me, design is not only about interfaces.

It is about people — and the stories behind their actions.