We continue our series of blog posts profiling the members of the Layar team with our next interviewee: Klasien van de Zandschulp. Layar has welcomed many new fresh faces to the Amsterdam office in the last several weeks (including yours truly) and Klasien, a new addition to the user research and interaction design team, is already helping to make Layar better and easier to use.

Klasien is a native Dutch gal, and seemingly stereotypical being born on a farm in Ede.

“My parents are farmers so I was born and grew up on their farm among the cows,” she says “I have an older brother, older sister and a little brother, and they are all farmers except for my little brother. We used to walk on wooden shoes - “klompen” - but now they replaced them for plastic ones.”

Her older siblings remain farmers, but Klasien sprung free from her home to study Digital Communication and Multimedia Design in Arnhem. Following school she worked for several years at a publisher creating Websites and eBooks, but then moved on to work at Mediamatic Lab as a project manager and interaction designer.

“My previous job was at a television station where I introduced the utilization of social networks and integrated these free services into the concept for the website I was working on,” says Klasien. “Focusing on using the website alongside the TV channel, I optimized the way a user experiences the website channel streams.”

As if her work experience couldn’t get any more new media, Klasien is now improving the experiences of the users of Layar’s Augmented Reality platform. “My main goal is to create a smile on the face of the end user, and keep it there,” she says.

As for the things that keep a smile on her face, Klasien says her three biggest interests outside of technology are music, music and music. She likes DJ’ing music, going to concerts and festivals and her favorite musician is Andrew Bird (at least according to her Last.fm profile).

Klasien and the user experience team have been conducting interviews and sessions with users to discover ways in which Layar can be improved. If you’d like to participate in the user testing group, email Klasien at klasien@layar.com. You can also get in touch with her via her LinkedIn profile!