smeidu

I was born and raised in the cozy Upper Austrian countryside and also spent part of my childhood in the big city of (West) Berlin. I moved to Vienna for university at the age of 18, where I fell deeply in love with all things design at the intersection of technology. There, I started interning at an upcoming web 2.0 agency, and for more than eight years, I worked for clients like BMW, MINI, and Siemens. But I was hungry for something more, so I moved to Berlin. During my two years there, I got to know the city and eventually created an app startup as an homage to Neukölln. Then I moved further north to Copenhagen to study at the truly life-changing Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

After graduating, I co-founded another startup, called Flying, which I brought back to Vienna and developed until 2014. I've always had a professional interest in accessibility, so I also founded an open-source project, BlindMaps. Shortly after, Google made me an offer, and I ended up in Munich for four years — with side trips to the Silicon Valley, New York, and Tel Aviv — where I worked with many amazing and smart Google colleagues on UI standards, accessibility, and account settings projects across the Google universe. Eventually, I felt compelled to move "home" and returned to Upper Austria and Vienna to establish my own studio, where I helped clients to invent products from scratch (Twice, Alles-Clara), before I went to outer space with Planet in late 2022.... to be continued