I am Michael Noe – a 42-year-old UX designer and entrepreneur. I live with my 15-year-old son in Aarhus. I play music, I’m geeky about technology and have recently been inspired by my son to try gaming.
As a user experience designer, I am passionate about creating designs that not only meet the needs of users but exceed their expectations. I understand the importance of designing products that are not only functional but also pleasing to use, especially when it comes to the success of the business.
I follow a classic design thinking approach, which includes researching new domains, conducting user interviews, prototyping and validating through user testing. The process is always iterative and I prefer to take an MVP approach by launching and validating one feature at a time. I am technology-agnostic and have recently focused on native apps and commercial websites.
I have launched four digital companies in the past 12 years, three of which have been sold and are now successful under new ownership. My latest company, Wedbox, currently employs 13 people.
I have a passion for developing ideas, driving change, and launching products. I have experience in seeking venture funding and have managed collaborations with near-shore development partners. Additionally, I have experience in the music industry as a guitarist, with knowledge of business plans, funding, album production, and marketing.
Through both necessity and interest, I have acquired fairly comprehensive knowledge about technology – both front-end and backend. It has been my responsibility to define the stack of technology used for most of the products I have been part of creating. Ranging from development languages to hosting, staging environments, backup solutions, performance and so forth. In Wedbox I was responsible for 6 developers – running an agile setup with me as a product owner.
I have for years been developing business websites based on WordPress, as both designer and front end developer, but also setting up rather large eCommerce websites.
A few of the technologies I have worked with architecturally are native apps and surrounding frameworks, Google Firebase, hybrid mobile (React Native), CSS, HTML, Angular and PHP. And lots more.
When I graduated from the Royal Music Academy I pursued a goal of becoming a professional musician playing the guitar in multiple ambitious bands. For a couple of years, I was successful at this publishing no less than two studio albums and touring live around Europe and in Canada. I parked the ambition of a full-time musicians lifestyle, as I got passionate about entrepreneurship.
I still play as a hobby – although still ambitious on the creative side. One of the bands I am playing with is called Phosphor Kid. Give us a listen here
I think that the creativity and the ability to perform that I learned as a musician is still relevant to my work as a UX designer – communication and creativity is a big part of digital design.
