Wim Houben

3520 Zonhoven, Belgium | wim@wimhouben.com | +32 494 10 19 98

Summary

Product designer with 10 years of experience translating complex challenges into elegant, scalable solutions — from enterprise platforms to early-stage startups.

Experience

Design System Product Owner - Swift | 2022-2024

• Achieved adoption across 70+ products, impacting 4M+ users.
• Migrated UX team from Axure to Figma, streamlining workflows and enabling scalable design collaboration.
• Managed development, backlog and cross-functional priorities.
• Implemented scalable design token architecture to support consistency and automation.
• Aligned cross-functional teams around a shared component library and design guidelines.

Design Thinking Lead - Swift | 2019-2022

• Championed organization-wide adoption of design thinking methodologies.
• Created and scaled a design thinking toolkit adopted across departments.
• Developed introduction to design-thinking workshop.
• Trained 100+ ambassadors, embedding human-centered practices across the organization.
• Facilitated 40+ workshops, aligning cross-departmental product teams.
• Significantly reduced time from idea to prototype through structured collaboration.

Facilitator / Designer - Limfit | 2021

• Partnered with early-stage startup to define and validate business idea.
• Delivered actionable insights that saved €40,000 in development costs.

Facilitator / Designer - Satsearch | 2019

• Led a design sprint to pivot and refine business strategy.
• Contributed to platform becoming the leading e-commerce site in the space industry.

UX Designer - Corsearch | 2018-2019

• Led UX design efforts for two legal-tech products from concept to market launch.
• Collaborated across design, product, and engineering teams.

UX Consultant - Human Interface Group | 2016-2018

UX Researcher (intern) - Centre for User Experience | 2015

UX Researcher (intern) - Mediasoft | 2015

Education

Master's in Management - KU Leuven | 2014-2016

Master's in Communication Sciences - KU Leuven | 2010-2014

Additional

Guest Lecturer Design Thinking - KU Leuven | 2020

Podcaster / Writer - wimhouben.com | 2025-present

Podcaster - Wonderkamer | 2023

Musician - Radiocosmo | 2021-present

Cook - Chiro Zolder | 2019-present

Leader - Chiro Zolder | 2009-2016

Skills

• Design & Research: Interaction design, wireframing, prototyping, UX research, usability testing
• Methods & Processes: Design thinking, workshop facilitation, agile and scrum, product strategy
• Technical: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, design tokens
• Creative: Visual design, storytelling, podcast and audio production