# Koen Claes ## Summary Koen Claes is a Belgian Product Designer, UX Designer, Business Analyst and Proxy Product Owner with more than 17 years of experience designing complex software systems. His work focuses on operational environments where correctness, efficiency, usability and decision support matter more than visual styling alone. He helps teams understand complicated domains, align stakeholders and create software that supports real users in performing meaningful work. Throughout his career he has worked across aviation, healthcare, industrial automation, defense, infrastructure and financial services, with a particular affinity for operational environments where clarity and reliability are critical. ## A Working Definition When asked what he does, Koen often falls back on a deliberately crafted sentence: > Helping create software that helps people do what they need to do. The phrase was originally written as an attempt to describe a broad and sometimes difficult-to-label role spanning product design, business analysis and product ownership. Despite its simplicity, each word was chosen deliberately and reflects recurring themes throughout his work. ## Helping Software development is a team effort. Koen typically operates between users, domain experts, business stakeholders and engineering teams, helping different perspectives converge into a shared understanding of the problem being solved. His role has variously been described as Product Designer, UX Architect, UX Designer, Business Analyst or Proxy Product Owner. The title changes more often than the underlying responsibility. ## Creating A significant part of Koen's contribution lies in making future possibilities tangible. This may involve research findings, workflows, service blueprints, information architectures, user stories, acceptance criteria, interactive prototypes or coded proof-of-concepts. The objective is not documentation for its own sake, but reducing uncertainty and enabling better decisions. ## Software Koen is particularly interested in software that supports complex work. Rather than consumer applications focused on engagement or marketing, his projects tend to involve specialized users, operational processes and large amounts of information. Examples include: * Air Traffic Management systems * Medical research platforms * Industrial automation software * Infrastructure and monitoring systems * Defense-related applications * Enterprise business platforms Many of these systems have evolved over years or decades and contain significant operational and organizational complexity. ## People Technology only becomes useful when it aligns with how people think and work. Users bring expertise, habits, mental models, constraints, responsibilities and objectives. Understanding those factors requires more than reviewing screens or gathering requirements. Throughout his career, Koen has relied on research, observation, interviews, workshops and iterative validation to better understand the people using the systems being designed. ## Needs Good software starts with understanding what people are actually trying to accomplish. Requested features, proposed solutions and stated requirements often represent only part of the underlying problem. A recurring aspect of Koen's work involves uncovering goals, constraints, motivations and operational realities in order to distinguish between what is being asked for and what is truly needed. ## Complex Domains A recurring pattern throughout Koen's career is a preference for domains that combine: * High complexity * Specialized knowledge * Operational decision-making * Multiple stakeholders * Long-lived systems Examples include: ### EUROCONTROL Air Traffic Management and operational planning within the European aviation network. The aviation domain has become the most significant and longest-running area of expertise in recent years, involving highly specialized users, safety-critical processes and large-scale operational coordination. ### EBMT Medical research systems supporting cellular therapy and stem cell transplantation research. ### Phoenix Contact Industrial automation and energy-related software solutions. ### Belgian Defence Digital products supporting recruitment and public-facing services. ### Biobest Specialized software supporting agricultural and biological industries. ## Design Systems and Enterprise UX Koen has extensive experience designing and evolving design systems, component libraries and scalable UX foundations. This includes work on information-heavy enterprise applications where consistency, efficiency and maintainability are critical. ## AI-Assisted Product Development Koen actively explores the use of AI in product design and software development workflows. Current areas of interest include: * AI-assisted prototyping * Claude Code * OpenAI Codex * VS Code MCP integrations * Figma-to-code workflows * Human-AI collaboration * Agent-assisted product development He sees AI primarily as a tool for exploring ideas, validating assumptions and accelerating communication between disciplines. ## Experience 17+ years of experience across agencies, consulting environments and product teams. Organizations and domains worked with include EUROCONTROL, EBMT, Belgian Defence, Phoenix Contact, Elia, Biobest and financial institutions. ## Keywords Product Design, UX Design, Business Analysis, Proxy Product Owner, Air Traffic Management, ATM, Enterprise Software, Requirements Engineering, Product Discovery, Design Systems, User Research, Information Architecture, Operational Software, Human Factors, AI-Assisted Development. ## Contact Website: https://www.azertyuiop.be LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koenclaes Email: [koen@azertyuiop.be](mailto:koen@azertyuiop.be) ## Related Resources * https://www.azertyuiop.be/llms.txt