About
My practice
Oosterwelder Innovation & Design (OID) is an independent design agency founded by industrial designer and innovation consultant Marnix Oosterwelder.
At OID, design starts with curiosity about users, technology, and social and industrial change. Analytical thinking and visual exploration help turn complex questions into clear directions.
Experience has taught me that the best results come from a team whose size and mix of disciplines fit the challenge. OID therefore works independently, while collaborating when needed with engineers, product managers, marketers, researchers and other designers.
This flexibility brings the right expertise together without unnecessary complexity. Sketching and visual thinking help connect perspectives, make ideas visible early and create something concrete to develop together.
Good collaboration can be rigorous without becoming cumbersome. Openness, commitment and a healthy sense of humour matter just as much.
Experience
In 1997 I graduated cum laude from Design Academy Eindhoven. Since then, I have worked in product development from different perspectives: as an industrial designer, lead designer, design manager, independent consultant and innovation and design lead. Those roles taught me to look at innovation challenges more broadly.
I have worked in design consultancies, manufacturing companies, technology businesses and my own design practice, on projects across medtech, consumer electronics, mobility, industrial equipment and systemic and societal innovation. This has taught me to move easily between strategy and execution, between users and technology, and between an initial idea and the details that ultimately determine whether a product really works.
OID brings that experience together in one independent design and innovation practice.
Bridging disciplines
I prefer to work close to an organisation and become part of the challenge. The best results come from intensive collaboration with people who each bring a different part of the relevant knowledge and expertise.
These may be founders, engineers, users, marketers, product managers, researchers or external development partners. My role is often to connect their different perspectives, separate what matters most from what matters less, and make opportunities and choices visible.
I can challenge, ask questions, structure and visualise, but I can also design and develop solutions myself. The result is not advice that sits beside the project, but a shared direction the team can use to move forward.
Insight based innovation
I believe strong innovation crosses disciplinary boundaries. A good idea only becomes valuable innovation when there is a shared understanding of what is really needed: for the user, for the organisation and within the technical reality.
At the start of a collaboration, I therefore try to understand what the real question is. From there, different innovation scenarios can be explored and translated into concrete concepts.
By making these visible and open to discussion early, and involving the relevant stakeholders, a direction gradually emerges in which ambition and reality come together.
For me, design is therefore not only about shaping a solution. It is also a way to help organisations make better decisions.
Award-winning design
Good design is not ultimately defined by an award, but by the value it creates for users and clients. In my work, this approach has led to products and product lines that became commercially successful, remained part of portfolios for many years and received international design recognition.
Work to which I contributed as a designer or lead designer has been recognised with Red Dot Design Awards, iF Design Awards, Core77 Design Awards and Goed Industrieel Ontwerp (GIO).
To me, these awards mainly confirm something more important: that a strong combination of usability, technology, business and design can result in products that make a real difference.
