I was born, raised and studied in Thessaloniki, Greece. A diligent student from a young age, enrolled in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where I got to focus on Machine Learning and Multimedia processing — and also on developing my social and collaboration skills.

After a short passage from a renowned greek research institute, where I worked on algorithms for video object segmentation, I decided to move to the Netherlands to pursue design. I knew it was quite a leap from my engineering studies, but I also felt excited and aligned taking this path. I graduated with a Professional Doctorate in Engineering and a traineeship at Philips, where I worked alongside skilled sound engineers creating the Soundbar, a compact Surround Sound System of Philips and had the chance to apply both my engineering and user research skills.

As Philips was pivoting into a leaner company and closing departments in the Netherlands and Belgium, I packed and moved to Vienna to work at the Center for Usability Research and Engineering (now USECON). This was a exciting and formative time: I worked on Active Assisted Living Projects (AAL) supporting older adults and apart from cultivating empathy for this stigmatised and often ignored target group, I got to consume tons of HCI papers and studies, experiment with all kinds of user research methodologies — from contextual inquiries and focus groups to field observations — and work with developers on top-notch prototypes. In 2014, our lead took some of us from the institute with him at the Technology Acceptance Department of the Austrian Institute of Technology to continue our research.

At the Austrian Institute of Technology, I was responsible for User Experience Design and Research for eWALL, a Smart Home, eHealth project that aimed to support cognitively and physically impaired older adults by monitoring user's symptoms and basic daily activities performance and offering suggestions on a big interactive screen in user's home. The project was led by Aalborg University and a dozen of academic and commercial institutions were involved. In the consortium meetings, I realised the importance of visualising ideas, — an insight that later inspired the name of my company, Visual Prototyping. Visuals, in the form of infographics and in early stages, sketches, allow for better visualisation of ideas, especially for complex projects and higher engagement. Research output is often only based on text or poorly executed visuals, and our brain has a lot of its capacity dedicated to processing information through visuals. I saw an opportunity there and started investing in my visual and animation skills to showcase our ideas and to help our group visualise what we were trying to make. While I was learning myself, I started teaching it to others. My workshops on visual prototyping were given in a lot of science departments of University of Vienna, but also to product people, freelancers from other domains, etc. I felt it was important to increase awareness on image making, typography and symbols and to discuss why some visuals achieve their communication and others don't. I later felt the urge to explore other topics in my lectures, such as Bauhaus, Absurdism, Illustration and UX, etc.

Developing interaction concepts for eWALL showed me my next move; I wanted to design commercial products, from User Interface to User Research. In 2019, I founded my company, Visual Prototyping, to work on the design of commercial products and continue on the side my visual workshops.

Since then, I've had numerous clients from different fields and I've worked in all aspects of Product Design: from gathering requirements, to Design Systems, UI design, user research, DesignOps, Service Design and Analytics. Many of my projects are featured in this portfolio. I have enjoyed my involvement with many different industries and people and I feel I learnt a lot on the way. What I am looking forward to in my future projects, is to ground my work around more holistic user experience practices, including user and trend research, Brand Experience and Service Design, in order to serve as a strategic design partner at the core of product direction.

I believe that my website reflects that evolution— there's plenty of hands-on work and parts that reflect my strategic direction. I hope you enjoy exploring it.