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luca de bortoli

about

I’m Luca.

Designer for complex systems.

I work on enterprise interfaces and design systems, with a background in UX research, semiotics and front-end development.

Bologna, Italy

hello@lucadebort.com/in/lucadebort
Luca de Bortoli

My path

How research and code inform my design work.

I started as a front-end developer in 2018, working on Drupal and content modelling while studying Russian literature and, later, semiotics. Code taught me how systems are structured; semiotics gave me methods to study how people interpret them.

My work moved toward UX research and product design through institutional communication, public services and industrial interfaces. Interviews and usability tests helped me understand where the structure of a product differed from the way people expected it to work.

Today I work freelance on enterprise UX and design systems. I define information architecture, components and tokens, with the states and documentation developers need for implementation. I also define qualitative and quantitative analysis methods and oversee the analysis, from data coding to interpretation of findings.

I build tools when a recurring task needs more than the available software provides: qlaude for reviewing AI-assisted qualitative coding, SenseKit for collecting research data and NotionViz for inspecting database relationships. These projects grow out of my research and design practice.

See this in my projects

Worked with

  • AltaSartoria
  • Etnograph
  • Pomilio Blumm
  • Nordlys
  • Almaviva
  • Wedoo
  • Cefla
  • Technogym
  • European Central Bank
  • INPS

Talks & materials

I share questions and methods that come out of my work: I think research and design get better when knowledge moves between the people who practice them. Here are two talks, slides included, that grew out of conversations with the community of practice I'm part of.

Let’s collaborate

I can contribute to a product team that needs to connect research with interface decisions, organise complex information or develop a shared component system. The case studies describe my responsibilities, the team context and the limits of the work.

Open to projects

Tell me what you’re working on