01 / How I Work
From the brief to the build
The brief usually arrives as a data problem. It's also a question of who gets to see what, and who was in the room when that got decided. So I start where those decisions get made: research and facilitation, with the people the product is for, not just the people paying for it.
From there I design close to the build. My prototypes are live HTML, real charts, real interactions, real data where possible, because the fastest way to test whether something serves its users is to put a working version in front of them. At Zimmerman I built and maintain the shared charting library used across the product suite, so every design decision is one I've also had to implement, document, and keep consistent. Embeds, prototypes, and specs live in GitHub; for AI-assisted builds I write markdown spec files precise enough for a coding agent to execute.
02 / How I Got Here
Trained in systems
I hold a product-service-system design master's from Politecnico di Milano, and I've stayed in Milan since. I trained first as an industrial designer in İzmir — designing physical things taught me to think in systems before I'd touched a screen, and moving to digital products only changed the material.
Over the years I've built an international design community across Milan, Istanbul, Hamamatsu, and Stockholm through the design events I keep showing up to. An Erasmus year at IADE in Lisbon, working on game design, sits in there too.
03 / Outside Work
Third spaces, on purpose
Outside work, I'm drawn to how people gather. I take part in solidarity work; local mutual aid, sometimes wider initiatives. I follow the city's music scene with a geek's ear, more interested in the room than the lineup: how people move, why a place becomes a ritual. And I keep to the smaller third spaces such as a book club, a craft network that meets to make things together.