About Nico van Zyl

What I do

I work across product strategy, interface design and production frontend development. That range is useful when a team needs to move from an ambiguous problem to a coherent interface, a reusable system and a shipped product improvement without losing the reasoning between those stages.

My work includes early product definition, user experience, interface architecture, design systems, accessibility, prototyping and implementation. I am usually most useful on technically complex products where structure, state and consequence must be made understandable to the people using them.

Current work

I am Head of Product Design at Altostrat, a network operations workspace for engineers, teams and agents. I also co-founded, designed and built Owners Circle, a platform for enthusiasts to manage and enjoy their cars.

Previously, I led design and development at Simvida, redefined Stream’s logistics interfaces through a design system, helped woom align its shopping experience with its bicycles and created Luminary, a shared design language used by multiple product teams.

• Career timelineDated career, venture, product and client history.
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How I work

I prefer evidence over theatre: name the change, the person and the constraint; make system state visible; test ideas against real content and production behavior; encode decisions that should survive; then release the work into a feedback loop. The Black Index records these principles in more detail.

• The Black IndexFive connected records about making useful products.
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