Mentoring and teaching design were important aspirations since the beginning of my career.

Coming from an academic background in computer science mixed with professional design experience in the market, I felt a strong push towards living these two worlds, sharing knowledge and studying the best approaches to do so. Such intention led me to pursue a Master's Degree in Design, which allowed me not only to delve deeper into design methodology, history and theory, but also to learn a lot about didactic techniques and approaches to teach in the field.

Teaching Assistant at Miami Ad School (UX Strategy)

I had my first formal educational experience in the field when I was invited to act as a teaching assistant and group mentor for Miami Ad School's UX Strategy course. At that time, the program lasted around two months and the main focus was on giving students a through introduction to User Research. Moreover, the curriculum also involved UX Fundamentals, Prototyping, and Market Strategy.

As the teaching assistant, I was responsible for facilitating classes and for having recurrent meetings with each one of the groups to support them with the projects they wanted to elaborate.

After participating in one edition of the course (from July 2020 to September 2020), I've received lots of positive feedback and could collaborate for increased satisfaction towards the program. This led me to be invited to participate once more (from May 2021 to June 2021) as a teaching assistant for another cohort of the same program.

Teacher at Miami Ad School

After participating in the UX Strategy course, I've been invited to teach a couple of workshops about creative technology, generative design, and further intersections between design, data, and computing. These are topics I'm very fond of: they were the main objects of my Master's Degree and of previous research I've been leading since 2017. It was an amazing opportunity.

The first workshop happened in October 2020 and the second one in March 2021.

Mentoring @ DesignLab

My favorite educational experience so far has been mentoring at DesignLab — a school from San Francisco that offers online and cohort-based programs focused on UX Design. Something I've been doing since 2021.

The school has as the two main programs the UX Academy and UX Academy Foundations courses. Both are intensive programs in which students — depending on their level — spend months exploring a comprehensive kick-start for landing a job as a UX Designer. Besides having access to the learning-content and being provided with a sequence of assignments, each student is paired with a mentor who helps them navigate the journey.
As a mentor, I was responsible for having regular weekly meetings with students — in which they could ask questions about the content of the course, assignment, and career —, and also for giving feedback in each one of the assignments and projects that were submitted by them. 

I was also responsible for helping them with setting their portfolios, training for interviews, and for giving overall feedback of their performance to the school — that then decided if the student was approved or not in the program.