Tiago Varandas

Founded and ran an Amsterdam-based design studio serving DAOs, AI companies, and sustainable startups across 90+ delivered projects.

Led end-to-end product design for Web3 and AI clients, including Sky Ecosystem (previous MakerDAO) and Sense Protocol, spanning UX research, design systems, and high-fidelity prototypes.

Directed a distributed network of researchers and designers, building cross-functional workflows from user interviews through to production-ready design.

Designed and shipped governance interfaces, developer portals, and conversational AI products for protocols managing billions in on-chain assets.

Won 1st place at Flow Hackathon 2023 and reached Top 5 at ETHDam 2024, accumulating 44+ design accolades, including a Webby Award nomination, One Show merits, and Awwwards SOTM.

Facilitated AI and Web3 design sprints for technical teams, translating complex protocol mechanics into accessible, user-tested interfaces.

Designed and shipped digital products across 90+ projects for international clients, including the United Nations, ETH Berlin, Bot-Hive, and Healthplus.AI, spanning governance interfaces, developer tooling, and AI-powered UX.

Judging alongside a panel of specialists formed by the most important designers, creative directors, bloggers and agencies in the industry, with the challenging task of assessing the talent and effort invested in the web projects that are submitted to Awwwards on a daily basis. Awwwards Judge since 2013

Led product design strategy across a full decentralized finance super-app for 5+ years, owning end-to-end UX from discovery through shipping across trading, staking, vault management, and governance.

Drove the MakerDAO to Sky rebrand end-to-end, coordinating visual identity, product language, and launch across web app, marketing, and community surfaces.

Championed design system evolution over four years, scaling consistency across multiple products and cross-functional teams.

Pioneered AI-assisted design workflows within the team, improving velocity and output quality across the product org.

Represented design in executive reviews, stakeholder presentations, and public community events, including ETH Denver, Devcon, and DAOist.

Shipped core decentralized finance product flows, including asset swapping, staking, vault management, liquidations, and governance voting across the Ethereum mainnet and major L2S.

Designed multichain interaction patterns that maintained consistency and predictability across multiple networks, reducing cognitive load for complex cross-chain actions.

Designed transaction trust and safety systems, including approval flows, execution states, failure states, and recovery paths, contributing to zero UX-attributable incidents across the platform's lifetime.

Owned onboarding architecture and navigation structure, improving discoverability for first-time and returning users across a growing product surface.

Delivered the Developer Portal and Governance Voting Portal, serving protocol contributors and governance participants at scale.