Vanessa

Deliyanni

Work

Work

Work

About

About

About

CV

CV

CV

Contact

Contact

Contact

Vanessa

Deliyanni

Vanessa

Deliyanni

Work

Work

Work

About

About

About

CV

CV

CV

Contact

Contact

Contact

About

Clear Image of Fredrick

I'm Vanessa, a product designer with over a decade of experience designing digital services, internal tools, and systems that people rely on, mostly at Camden Council, on problems where the complexity is real and the design has to make it feel manageable.

I'm drawn to the kinds of problems that are messy, important, and often easier to avoid than untangle.

How I got here

Design was the thing I knew I wanted to do long before I knew what to call it. I left Greece on my own for the US to study it, worked as a designer there, and later moved to the UK, where I eventually joined Camden and took on a role outside design that taught me how services really work, the operations, the constraints, the people behind them.

When I moved into UX, it felt like the best of both worlds. The craft I'd always loved, and the thinking I'd grown to love alongside it.

Design was the thing I knew I wanted to do long before I knew what to call it. I left Greece on my own for the US to study it, worked as a designer there, and later moved to the UK, where I eventually joined Camden and took on a role outside design that taught me how services really work, the operations, the constraints, the people behind them.

When I moved into UX, it felt like the best of both worlds. The craft I'd always loved, and the thinking I'd grown to love alongside it.

Design was the thing I knew I wanted to do long before I knew what to call it. I left Greece on my own for the US to study it, worked as a designer there, and later moved to the UK, where I eventually joined Camden and took on a role outside design that taught me how services really work, the operations, the constraints, the people behind them.

When I moved into UX, it felt like the best of both worlds. The craft I'd always loved, and the thinking I'd grown to love alongside it.

How I work

You can't fix what you don't fully understand. So I spend time getting to the bottom of a problem, how a process really works, where it breaks, who it affects, before deciding how it should change. That includes designing for the people who are easy to overlook, not just the ones who are easy to design for.

I care about accessibility, because a person's needs don't matter less depending on how they access something. I care about evidence, because a decision you can back with research is stronger than one you can only back with opinion. And I care as much about how something works as how it looks. The two are never separate to me, and the part I find most satisfying is the designing itself, seeing the thinking come together into something real.

You can't fix what you don't fully understand. So I spend time getting to the bottom of a problem, how a process really works, where it breaks, who it affects, before deciding how it should change. That includes designing for the people who are easy to overlook, not just the ones who are easy to design for.

I care about accessibility, because a person's needs don't matter less depending on how they access something. I care about evidence, because a decision you can back with research is stronger than one you can only back with opinion. And I care as much about how something works as how it looks. The two are never separate to me, and the part I find most satisfying is the designing itself, seeing the thinking come together into something real.

You can't fix what you don't fully understand. So I spend time getting to the bottom of a problem, how a process really works, where it breaks, who it affects, before deciding how it should change. That includes designing for the people who are easy to overlook, not just the ones who are easy to design for.

I care about accessibility, because a person's needs don't matter less depending on how they access something. I care about evidence, because a decision you can back with research is stronger than one you can only back with opinion. And I care as much about how something works as how it looks. The two are never separate to me, and the part I find most satisfying is the designing itself, seeing the thinking come together into something real.

How I think

There's a line, usually attributed to Pascal,

There's a line, usually attributed to Pascal,

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

Making something simple is harder than leaving it complex. It takes more time, more thought, more understanding, and when it's done well, none of that shows. A clear page, an obvious next step, a journey someone moves through without a second thought, the work that went into it is invisible by design.

That used to bother me. Now I think it's the point.

When it's done right, the work vanishes into the result.

Outside the work

I left Greece over twenty years ago to build my design career abroad. Now, after more than twenty years away, I'm working towards moving back, closer to family and the life I want to build there.

It's a big part of why I'm building towards remote work, so I can do work I care about from where my life actually is.