Head of Design · User-Centred Design & Research
I build design functions where research, not opinion, decides what gets built. At CloudBees I grew design from 3 to 9 and set up ResearchOps that spread into the wider product organisation. At Oracle NetSuite I turned an unused design system into the standard, one team at a time. Now Head of Product Design at Capcade, after 18+ years in design.
Capcade
Head of Product Design
- —Moved product work from build-first to test-first: understand the users, model for them and test the models, so the technology serves the UX rather than the other way round.
CloudBees
Lead Product Designer / Head of Design
- —Grew design from 3 to 9 across research, product UX and design systems, and set the team's hiring priorities and management rhythm.
- —My team's field interviews and journey maps showed platform incoherence forced sales to step in at almost every stage. That finding set the direction for a platform redesign customers called a 'quantum leap'.
- —My research team found developers spent most of their time fixing errors in pipeline logs; that finding became CloudBees Pipeline Explorer, designed by one of my reports.
- —Built ResearchOps that spread from design into product, earned a dedicated researcher hire and brought the Data Insights team into design.
- —Built and owned the product design system, with WCAG targets, automated accessibility checks before delivery and VPATs for large clients.
- —Prototyped the company's first AI chatbot dashboard (Beebot) at a hackathon, designing agentic onboarding flows.
Oracle NetSuite
Lead, Design Systems
- —Designed a WCAG-targeted UI catalog and component library from the ground up.
- —Wrote the design-system documentation that became the standard for product and engineering, and won adoption across three key teams, starting with Analytics.
- —Ran the design sprint that set the product-refresh strategy; led a team of 4 (UX, visual, content) while staying hands-on.
Mat3ra (Exabyte.io)
Lead UX Designer (contract)
- —Sole designer repositioning a tool as a platform: onboarding, information architecture and core flows.
Machinas
Art Director → UX Lead
- —Art-directed Hugo Boss and Esprit digital surfaces and turned their brand language into reusable UX: site-wide flows, a mobile grid, an Apple Watch storefront.
Monospace.Studio
Freelance UX Designer
- —Telanto: design system, brand refresh and marketing website (team of two). IESE: personas, story-mapping, IA and working prototypes.
- —Life Agency, Bologna: contract Art Director across the agency's clients (2013–15).
Leadership
- Building and growing design teams
- Design standards & maturity
- Stakeholder influence & change
- Hiring, mentoring & coaching
- Design sprints
Practice
- User research & ResearchOps
- Journey mapping
- Accessibility (WCAG, VPATs)
- Design systems
- User flows & IA
- Prototyping & testing
Technical
- AI-enabled products & agentic workflows
- Design-to-code (React, Git)
- Figma (advanced)
Languages
- English — native
- Italian — fluent
- Spanish — fluent
Founder — ShortStayApartments.com (2007–2011): bootstrapped a SaaS rental platform to 500+ listings; acquisition exit in 2011.
Senior Designer — Machinas (2005–2006): UI design for the Esprit global store.
BA, Computer Systems Analysis