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Nieuwe waterweg

Fairway Planning

Company

Port of Rotterdam

Time

2026 – Present

Role

Service & Product Designer

Service Design
Technical Prototyping
Product Ownership
Technical Research

Summary

Concepting a decision tool for the Harbourmaster that combines data from weather, traffic, emergency services and vessel planning to improve the port's safety and efficiency.

Work is confidential and cannot be shown publicly.

Service Design

The Challenge

The Harbourmaster's team relies on data from multiple disconnected sources — weather forecasts, vessel planning, traffic systems, and emergency services — to make real-time decisions about fairway safety and efficiency. Combining these streams manually creates cognitive overhead and increases the risk of missed signals.

What I Did

  • Service Blueprinting — Mapped the end-to-end service across all data sources and stakeholders to surface the opportunities and pain points of integrating weather, traffic, emergency, and vessel planning data.
  • Opportunity framing — Translated blueprint findings into design directions and prioritised them together with the team.

Work is confidential and cannot be shown publicly.

Technical Prototyping

The Challenge

Early concepts needed to be validated against real data and genuine user needs before committing to an implementation path. Static wireframes couldn't adequately stress-test the interaction model for a high-stakes operational tool.

What I Did

  • Vibe-coding prototypes — Initiated and built technical prototypes using real port data to expose edge cases and design gaps that wouldn't surface in static mockups.
  • User validation — Tested prototypes with Harbourmaster staff to verify that the design held up under actual operational conditions.

Work is confidential and cannot be shown publicly.

Product Ownership

The Challenge

The project needed a clear structure to hand off to an implementation team without losing design intent or leaving open questions that would stall development.

What I Did

  • Work packages — Outlined discrete work packages that scoped the implementation clearly and reduced handoff ambiguity.
  • Research questions — Defined open research questions the implementation team would need to answer to move forward confidently.
  • Preliminary roadmap — Built a preliminary roadmap aligned with stakeholder priorities to give the incoming team a grounded starting point.

Work is confidential and cannot be shown publicly.

Technical Research

The Challenge

Understanding what statistical and AI models could realistically deliver for port planning predictions — and where their limits lie — was critical to setting the right expectations for the concept and avoiding over-engineering.

What I Did

  • Domain expert interviews — Spoke with data scientists and domain experts to map out the capabilities and limitations of statistical and AI models for predicting port planning scenarios.
  • Feasibility framing — Used these insights to ground design decisions in what is technically achievable, steering the concept away from infeasible assumptions.