I have been a researcher at Novay (formerly known as Telematica Instituut) since 1993. My research interests range from social to technical subjects, and include mobile user experience measurement, Living Labs methods and tools, the role of context information in informal communication, social network analysis, presence and instant messaging, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), groupware, distributed object computing and peer-to-peer architectures.

Currently, in the Amsterdam Living Lab project, I investigate the value of Measurement Systems for evaluation in a Living Lab setting. I am also the lead researcher for the exploration, evaluation and further development of Xensor, an extensible Living Lab Measurement System that exploits the hardware sensors and software capabilities of contemporary mobile devices like PDAs and smartphones to capture objective data about human behaviour and social context (e.g., proximity and communication), together with objective data about application usage and highly subjective data about user experience (e.g., needs, frustrations, and other feelings).

Earlier, I was the lead researcher and chief designer of Live Contacts, a new mobile availability service based on research into the role of context information in informal communication between knowledge workers.

Ages ago, I managed the design and implementation of CoCoWare .NET, a free and open architecture and platform for component-based groupware that supports end-user composition. The CoCoWare .NET Platform was developed in the GigaCSCW project, the CSCW research project of GigaPort, the Dutch Next generation Internet applications research program. I also contributed to the design and implementation of groupware systems in the research projects Platinum and MESH and conceived the collaborative compound document editing paradigm.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Twente in 1998. My Ph.D. thesis was entitled "Working Apart Together : Foundations for Component Groupware". I received my cum laude master's degree in Computer Science, also from the University of Twente, where I graduated on distribution aspects of graphical user interface software.

I authored several papers in international conferences and was recently conference co-chair for the MobileHCI 2008 conference and served as organizer and reviewer for various other conferences and workshops.