Martino Palladini
Every project is a new map.
I've been drawing them for twenty years.
I've spent twenty years navigating the space between how systems work and how people actually use them. EU institutional apps, national infrastructure dashboards, healthcare platforms, environmental campaigns.
My background spans frontend development, art direction, and UX research. Which means I tend to be the only person in the room who's read both the technical specification and the user interview transcripts. It helps.
Maps are a running theme. I use them to think: service blueprints, system maps, user journeys, flow diagrams. I've taught the methodology in academic and professional settings. Something about making complex things navigable has always made sense to me, whether the territory is a government service or a 1987 RPG dungeon.
The same instinct applies to AI. I use it daily, and I've assessed its actual impact on complex processes. Instead of believing the pitch, these tools need to be tested in actual workflows. Useful tool. Not a magic spell.
Currently Director at DOS Design, leading design on a project in the public sector. In terms of complexity, exactly where I like to be.
Design creates value in complex organizations when it stops being a service and starts being a structural capability.
Maker, then lead, now someone who shapes the conditions for good design to happen at scale. The work has changed. The direction hasn't.
In practice: roadmaps, hiring criteria, team structures, stakeholder alignment, training programmes, process design. The artifacts vary. The goal is always the same: organizations that design better, with or without me in the room.
Make
User research, interaction design, and accessibility audits across public institutions, healthcare, and enterprise. WCAG compliance that doesn't start and end with a checklist.
Lead
Teams, roadmaps, training programmes. I make sure junior designers understand why they're doing what they're doing — not just how. And that the work survives the next brief change.
Shape
Service blueprints, system maps, process assessment. Most problems described as "UX problems" are actually process problems in disguise. I've been finding that out for long enough to do something about it.
Designing the delegate experience for one of the EU's most procedurally dense environments. Workshops, personas, iterative prototyping, and a live app used across the Council's Brussels operations.
A public-facing dashboard for national network infrastructure data. Making technical datasets readable for citizens, not just engineers. It ended up as both a digital product and a printed publication.
UX direction and frontend design for a telehealth platform, built during a period when nobody was quite sure what telehealth would need to become. Agile process, component library, single source of truth.
Brand concept, website, video series, infographics. Turning environmental policy communication into something people might actually read.
Three CAP strands unified under a single digital architecture: EIP-Agri, ENRD, and Evaluation. The starting point was the EU Commission Design System; the outcome included a negotiated separate visual identity and a pattern library that became the foundation for subsequent DG Agri projects.
Full case studies available on request. Process documentation, research artefacts, and design rationale.
Request accessHistoric Fencing
Competing in historical fencing tournaments. A system with precise rules, immediate feedback, and opponents who don't read the brief.
Retro Gaming & Tabletop
Collecting and playing games where the interface had to be self-evident. Affordance as survival mechanism. Also: board game design, LARP, and the occasional dungeon.
Science Fiction
Particularly interested in the gap between what SF imagined and what we actually built. The torment nexus was supposed to be a warning.
Cooking & Baking
A complete cycle in a few hours: preparation, execution, something on the table. When the rest of the work runs on yearly timelines, the immediate feedback loop is the point.
If you're working on something complex, public-facing, or both. I'm usually interested.