Perceptual clarity > technical perfection

Rick Knops

Setting the scene

It was raining heavily while I walked through the hallways of the Philips buildings at High Tech Campus Eindhoven.

The campus is a maze. You move from one building to another through bridges and underground passages. Glass corridors. Badge-controlled doors. A network of connections you only start to understand after walking it a few times.

We had planned to go for a walk, but the weather decided otherwise.

So we met downstairs at the barista. One of the best coffee spots on campus. Affordable and genuinely good, a welcome upgrade from the fast automated machines scattered throughout the buildings.

Rick and I brought our own mugs, compliant with the strict no-more-disposable-cups corporate policy. We found a place to sit.

Outside, rain. Inside, AI, hospitals, beer making, and metro maps.

What he does

Rick works at the intersection of Philips, TU/e, and the hospital floor.

Formally, he’s doing an EngD in medical data visualization and AI. Unofficially, he translates complexity into something humans can actually use.

He studied AI before it became hype. Before AI was a pitch deck keyword.

What makes his work interesting is where he does it. He’s not just running usability tests behind a screen. He’s walking hospital corridors. Standing next to emergency staff. Observing how doctors move, decide, and interact under pressure.

He studies how patients flow through emergency care, not as isolated clicks, but as real people moving through space, systems, and stress.

And then he visualizes it.

What we talked about

Speed vs. thoughtfulness

Rick previously worked in a fast-moving FMCG environment sourcing products from Asia. Speed was everything. See what works. Scale fast. Iterate in the market.

Now he operates in a different rhythm. Healthcare is regulated. Complex. Slower.

But slower doesn’t mean stagnant. It means decisions carry more weight. It means understanding context matters more than speed.

Standing in a hospital hallway teaches you something a dashboard never will.

In emergency care, flow is everything. Not just digital flow, but physical movement. People under stress. Information under pressure. Decisions made in seconds.

That’s where his work lives.

Field over screens

What struck me is how deliberately he positioned himself in the field.

Not just analyzing clicks. Not just optimizing interfaces.

He walks with emergency staff. Observes how doctors interact with devices. Sees how patients move from intake to diagnosis to intervention.

He studies the choreography of care.

Because friction does not show up neatly in a spreadsheet. It shows up in hesitation. In handovers. In hallway bottlenecks.

You can’t redesign what you don’t witness.

Beer, creativity, and expression

Somewhere between AI and emergency departments, Rick casually mentioned he once helped build creative beer concepts with a Limburg brewery.

Back then he didn’t even like beer, until working on it made him appreciate it.

He experimented with chocolate infusions, coconut variations, and visual storytelling through Instagram. Physical product. Brand. Activation.

What stood out wasn’t the beer. It was his energy.

Different domain. Same mindset. Creativity applied wherever there is space to create.

Metro map

At some point, the conversation shifted to how he visualizes patient journeys. And this is where it clicked for me.

Instead of creating massive, engineering-perfect flowcharts, Rick builds metro maps.

A metro map is not geographically accurate. Stations that are kilometers apart might appear next to each other. Lines bend at perfect angles. Distances are distorted. And yet, you never get lost.

Because it’s not spatially correct. It’s perceptually correct.

It shows:

• Where you are
• Where you can go
• Where lines intersect
• Where decisions happen

Nothing more.

What makes metro maps powerful isn’t just distortion. It’s information design in pure form. Each metro line has a color. Intersections become transfer points. The system is simplified, but never ambiguous.

It removes noise without removing orientation.

Rick uses this principle to map how patients move through the hospital. Different lines represent different pathways. Transfer points show where professionals intersect.

The map simplifies reality. But understanding becomes sharper.

And that’s the paradox. You first need to understand all the complexity. Only then can you compress it into something usable.

That compression is design.

Reflections

Perceptual > perfect

The metro map metaphor stayed with me.

In my own work, I’ve seen teams venture out to capture the full product experience journey. After multiple workshops and Miro sessions, the output becomes a dragon that is perfectly accurate, but impossible to navigate.

By the time it’s called done, creating the journey has become a project in itself.

But maybe the question is different. Is this map perceptually clear enough for action?

You first need to understand all the complexity. Then you compress it into something usable.

Metro maps are the perfect analogy for an actually usable end product. Instantly, you can see what line to take to get from one station to another.

They are far from geo-spatially correct, but perceptually correct and easy to understand.

Rick created metro maps to visualize patient journeys through the hospital. That could be inspiring for my own team.

Field over desk

What I admired most is that he found his way into the hospital.

Not analyzing from afar. Not just studying dashboards. But observing real human interaction in context.

That’s where friction reveals itself.

It made me reflect on how I can move closer to where things actually happen.

Be impatient with action. Patient with results.

Having these coffees takes time. Sometimes they feel circular.

After several conversations, it seemed like the loop returned to where it started: Philips. Not unexpected in a city so deeply connected to it.

The world of design and tech is deeply interconnected. Opportunity often comes sideways.

These coffees might seem random. But I should just keep having them.

Have the coffees. Start the conversations. Don’t wait for perfect outcomes.

Curiosity compounds. It will eventually find a path to where you want to take it.

Networks are more interconnected than you think.