About Me

They say life is a palette of colours; mine is a digital artboard with a selection of pixels from my personal and work experiences stirred together.

I’m Maria Petritsopoulou

I place emotional intelligence in the centre of good and responsible UX.

I am a User Experience & Interaction Designer with many years of experience in EU and commercial projects. I enjoy taking complex briefs and turning them into usable and useful digital solutions. I like diversity and I feel confident collaborating with international teams either face-2-face or remotely.

I live in Stockholm, Sweden since December 2016 and I work at eGovlab – Stockholm University, a technology innovation hub.

In my free time, I enjoy being close to nature either walking, hiking or sailing. I am also an amateur photographer and I find cooking to be a creative and a decompressing process which I love to do. A good book also can be the best company.

Years in EU projects

London, Athens, Stockholm

R&D and innovation projects

International work travels

My current project

Currently, I am part of the DE4A project, a H2020 project dealing with cross-border data exchange between EU citizens and public services. In the ‘Sustainable impact and new governance model’ work package, I am asked to explore and define the differences between human-centricity vs user-centricity in digital public services and define the human-centricity in digital government as a service and digital government as a platform. In the meantime, in the ‘Semantics interoperability solutions’ work package, I am learning about the data vocabularies while I am expecting the ML part to commence where I will get the opportunity to explore the UX and ML aspects. Since this is ongoing work I have nothing to share at the moment.

While you are here feel free to explore some photography from my personal collection or scroll further down to see my experience timeline.

Photo gallery

Experience timeline

2016 – Current

eGovlab Stockholm University

Stockholm, Sweden

Senior Interaction Designer

Creating wireframes/protoypes/UIs for EU or R&D projects
Co-creation: Participated in numerous workshops and I have created my own exercises
Usability workshop: Created survey and I’ve been a facilitator and an interview
Research & data analyses

2007 – 2016

Gov2u

Athens, Greece

Head of Designer

Leading the design team
Managing the smooth workflow of the projects
Key communication person between the client, development and the design team
UX Design/UI Design and front-end developer

2005 – 2007

The Mortgage Time Group

London, UK

Web Designer & Front-end developer

Designed & build the company’s website
Numerous microsites for the group’s different activities
Online forms and calculators
Advertising banners

Publications

The Learner’s Perceptions of an Integrated System for Learning Management of Non-Cognitive Skills

M Petritsopoulou, T Karunaratne, M Glinos

European Conference on e-Learning, 406-XV

2003 – 2004

MSc Enterprise Graduate in Multimedia

University of Teesside, UK

Enterprise skills for the cultural industries
Business venture development for the cultural industries
Learning & independent study
Multimedia design
Web authoring & internet
Multimedia project management
Visual & sound effects

2000 – 2003

BSc Multimedia

University of Teesside, UK

Communications & introduction to sociology
Multimedia authoring & technology
Advanced WWW
Business online
Database system
Human-Computer Interaction

Other Certificates

A.I. for everyone – DeepLearning AI
UX Research Hypotheses Design – UX Prodigy
Introduction to UX Research & Design – UX Prodigy
Scrum for Value
Fine-Art Photography – Orama

Other Diplomas

Telematics Technician – IEK Ilioupolis
Software Engineering – ELKEPA
Financial Services Executive – IEK Ilioupolis

"I have worked with Mary and have never before been so impressed by a colleague, both in terms of her capacity and skills at her job, but also as a team player and someone who made it fun to work with! In her work as a UX designer and project lead, she has demonstrated leadership skills and critical insights that have led the project to success. She has always been an advocate for the team but always keeping the project's goals in mind. Her judgement and expertise have always made her a professional in the true sense and I for one, am very grateful for my time with her in projects, as well as a colleague in the office who always made it fun to come to work!"

Somya Joshi, Head of Unit: Governance & Institutions — Stockholm Environment Institute

"Maria is definatly the best colleague that I could wish for! she is not just an amazing interface designer or a brilliant designer but far more important, for me she is a great team player. Flexible enough to let brainstorming grow and determined and professional to get the task done."

Pooyeh Mobini, Senior Project Manager in SCANIA

"I have worked with Maria for 7 years; I was the Director of Programme Development and Maria was in my team as Head of Design and we collaborated in more than a few European and international projects. As a professional, Maria is charismatic. She has a deep and thorough knowledge of her craft and in a ever-changing field she was always up to date with all new, modern and updated technologies."

Gregory Liongaridis LPC, CPC, Corporate Communications & CSR Manager at Aegean Motorway S.A.

"Maria is a self-motivated UI designer, with an eye for detail and the goal of creating interfaces that stand out and users love. I've had the opportunity of working with her on several projects and she has delivered every single time. I would be thrilled to work with her again in the future!"

Eleftherios Chamakiotis, Software Engineer at SCYTL

"Maria is a great designer and a hard working colleague. I had the pleasure of working with her for a year at Stockholm University/eGovlab, collaborating on the same project team in which she displayed remarkable organizational, analytical and team-playing skills apart from her skills as a designer. She always strives to provide the most thorough and efficient solution that matches the requirements of the clients and the complexities of each project. Maria would be an asset to any team."

Nikos Zeris, Founder & CEO at Crystalweb