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I'm Isabel.

A design lead and senior product and service designer based in Oslo, Norway.

Thanks for visiting my site. If you want to know more about me, you've come to the right place. If you'd rather skip the reading and grab a coffee instead, find me on LinkedIn or through Tentativ. We'll figure out the rest.

Class
Design lead
Base
Oslo, Norway
XP
Designing since 2018
Special move
Asking "what if?"

Right now

  • Leading a strategy process for employer services at Nav.
  • Designing for job seekers and employers on arbeidsplassen.no.
  • Running Tentativ, my consultancy.
  • Developing a game on the side. More when it's ready.

Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.

The first thing you should know about me is that I live for stories.

Stories of imagined worlds. Stories of our own. Stories about the past, and about futures that haven't happened yet.

I love them because they mess with my understanding of the world. A good story isn't something you just sit through. You think and feel through someone else's eyes for a while, and you come back a little rearranged.

Most of all, stories ask one question over and over:

What if?

What if this was different? What if this thing was real? What would people do?

After a few thousand stories, I'm fairly sure that question is why I became a designer. I get to ask it every day, and then go and find out.

The surface

I'm also a regular human being. Here's what I'm up to when I'm not working.

  • Playing really good video games

    1000+ games beaten and counting. Game overs are just user research.

  • Making a game

    Building one on the side. More when it's ready.

  • Reading and collecting novels

    Give me a good book or graphic novel and I'm set.

  • Lifting heavy stuff

    Disciplined enough to keep a tight regimen, relaxed enough to enjoy rest days to the fullest.

  • Frontend development

    I build things by thinking and typing. This site, for example.

  • Cooking and baking

    I enjoy making food. I love eating it even more.

  • Digital art

    Using technology to make pretty pictures.

  • Makeup and fashion

    Being glamorous every day.

  • Writing

    Putting words into sentences to create meaning. Sometimes it works. See Words.

  • Creating content

    Videos on the internet. Around 5.5 million people have spent 476,600 hours watching my stuff so far.

  • Chores

    Let's be honest. Life is mostly this.

My path

The next thing you should know about me is that I never intended to become a designer.

Growing up, I wanted to be three things: a lawyer, an engineer and a psychologist. Ambitious kid. Indecisive kid.

I liked building stuff. Snow forts, sandcastles, Lego, and a frankly unreasonable number of video games. Math was my favourite subject. Engineer, surely.

Then I started to want work that mattered more directly to people. So in 2011 I started studying law. What's more meaningful than defending people?

Turns out law is mostly about interpreting what's already been decided. Precedent, correctness, order. Important, but not the kind of change I was after.

So I switched to psychology. Help people directly. Actually make an impact.

Also not quite. I learned we were mostly trained to treat symptoms, while a lot of what makes people struggle is caused by bigger, systemic decisions. So I leaned into work and organisational psychology, and judgement and decision making. The short version: humans are pretty bad at making decisions. In groups, we're worse.

I still wanted to change things. I was also a broke student. So I got my psychology degree and signed up for informatics.

That's where I found design, and it clicked.

  1. Level 1Law
  2. Level 2Psychology
  3. Level 3Informatics
  4. Level 4Design

Looking back, design is all three of my childhood jobs in one. I get to build things, understand people, and shape the rules we live by. And I get to ask "what if?" for a living.

Design is, after all, turning intentions into reality.

Where I've been

  1. 2025 –

    Founder and CEO · Tentativ AS

    Product and service design for Nav and Aizen.

  2. 2021 – 2022, 2024 – 2025

    Head of design · Bredvid AS

    Mentoring, growth plans and onboarding programmes for designers and developers.

  3. 2018 – 2025

    UX designer → senior UX designer · Bredvid AS

    Consultant for Nav, Telia, Multiconsult, NKF and GET/TDC.

  4. 2014 – 2017

    Lab assistant (part-time) · Oslo universitetssykehus

    Pipettes and textbooks, side by side.

Where I studied

  1. 2017

    BSc Informatics: design, use, interaction · Universitetet i Oslo

  2. 2016

    BSc Psychology · Universitetet i Oslo

  3. 2011 – 2012

    Law, 70 ECTS · Universitetet i Oslo

Purpose and philosophy

The final thing you should know is why I spend my life on this, beyond making a living.

Why

Before I'm done, I want to see society flourish. Meaningful, empathetic, ethical, fair and sustainable progress. Not just faster, shinier stuff.

I genuinely believe good design is one of the keys to getting there. Not a joke.

We've seen what careless, greedy or just plain bad design does. Systems that leave people behind. Services that make people feel stupid. Products that burn the planet for a quarterly report. Leaving things to chance, and to terrible design, isn't an option anymore. We need people with good intentions and the skills to act on them.

How

My best shot is helping the people I work with do good design, and do it well.

In practice that means a few stubborn habits:

  • Act on evidence and understanding, not the loudest opinion in the room.
  • Bring empathy into every decision, especially the boring ones.
  • Build things together, through conversation and friction.
  • Invite different perspectives in early, and keep them in.
  • Don't converge too soon. The first idea is rarely the best one.
  • Care about beauty and craft. It matters more than people admit.
  • Work for the good of everyone, not the few.

One person can only do so much. So I share what I know through workshops, mentoring, writing and example, even when it feels a bit audacious.

Fit

Now you know who I am and how I got here. You get to decide if we should work together, or just have a chat.

We should work together if...

  • You have an important problem and want meaningful change for people and society.
  • You know the value of good design and care about outcomes, not output.
  • You want a design partner who supports you and challenges you.
  • You want to get better at working with design and strategy in your organisation and need somewhere to start.
  • You need someone to lead design, facilitate a messy process, or untangle a strategy.
  • You got this far down the page without closing the tab. Nice.

You will get

  • Holistic, ethical problem solving.
  • A tuned sense of quality, taste and elegance.
  • A sparring partner, facilitator or coach.
  • Someone who cares more about people than technology.
  • Someone who turns not knowing into a strength.
  • Someone who doesn't give up until we're done.

You won't get

  • The answers you want instead of the ones you need.
  • Someone who follows orders without asking why, and whether it's worth doing.
  • Buzzwordy design speak. I say what I mean, without being a jerk about it.
  • Poorly designed products and services.

That's it

Well done. You made it to the end.

Hopefully you've got a picture of who I am now. It got a little heavy in places. That happens.

I've also been lucky. Free education in Norway meant I could change direction twice without it costing me everything. Not everyone gets that chance, and I try not to forget it.

Thanks for checking out my site. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

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