CREATIVITY IS INTELLIGENCE
HAVING FUN
A. EINSTEIN
It's all about people
From making a chair, developing a business plan, designing a policy, creating a new algorithm, up to designing our own life, everybody has the potential to become a designer by building knowledge and learning from daily experiences.
My knowledge transfer methodology is grounded in Piaget’s constructivism theory of learning and with my academic research background and pragmatic business experience I can deliver inspiring learning experiences for whoever is curious about UX research and UX design and wants to improve creative thinking, designing, prototyping, and storytelling.
I deliver bespoke, accessible online courses at the University of Cambridge - Institute for Continuing Education, run workshops and seminars to business leaders, experienced practitioners and early career professionals focusing on design theory, design practice, and design delivery.
Design
theory
Let’s start from scratch: for beginners or for who wants to have a fresh perspective on understanding the designer mindset, tools and methodologies for developing creative thinking.
Citiziner
Citizens as Designers
Democratization of Design knowledge is spreading all over the world, however there is still a huge creative-confidence gap when people have to find ways to effectively solve their problems. Designers have to address this gap by empowering citizens to become designers of their own solutions.
The Citiziner manifesto states how to enable designers to create flexible designs as well as how to empower citizens to tailor-make solutions meeting their specific needs.
Designing awareness
The missing link
The evolution of Design, leads designers to innovate on usability and user experience of recently marketed products, services and technologies. On the other hand, the lack of awareness from users when using new technologies or managing personal data represents major issues. Through this talk experiences on how to educate stakeholders by using UX Design as a tool to foster innovation and demystify technology-driven issues will be shared.
Design & planned obsolescence
We live in a decade where smart objects and Internet of Things are becoming part of daily life in different contexts. How obsolescence can impact on the Design of future objects and peoples' use?
This talk, as a result of research investigation, develops critical knowledge on the concept of premature ageing of technological devices and how the discipline of Design can be used as an incentive to extend life, improve the usability of existing products and improve user abilities.
Design Thinking
Is not for designers only
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO.
How Design Thinking can be useful to non-designers?
This workshop shows how Design Thinking could be applied in different fields and disciplines to stimulate creativity and prototyping.
Designing the experience
Design research has moved from need-finding, to framing methods to better understand the human experience and develop tailor-made solutions for peoples’ pains.
How do we perform research when we talk about the user experience?
What do we have to look for?
The talk enables early-stage researchers to better focus on the impact of their topic as well as identify key drivers to improve the research process.
Approaches and methods
User Experience Research
Methodologies and ethics
Several decades ago, R&D scenario was free of privacy and ethical constraints.
How do we do research with people, today?
What are the aspects we need to be aware of?
The talk will share examples and critical knowledge on how to run UX research studies, how to deal with ethical and privacy procedures and how to work with people in order to successfully deliver human-centered solutions.
Learning tools for startups
BigData, AI, ML
BigData is the new oil, AI is the refinery and the Cloud is the pipeline.
Where are we moving, with this fast pace, with the potential of AI, ML and BigData in the sharing economy?
This talk aims to transfer holistic knowledge on recent innovations, with different case studies of companies that fund their business model on BigData, AI and sharing economy.
Design studio
Everybody has the creative potential to become a designer.
How do you develop relations with people?
How do you design with people?
How do you prototype with people?
This Design Studio Lab is an intensive workshop series that offers deep holistic understanding, with practical exercises based on Design Thinking methodology: inspiration, ideation and implementation.
Designing Citiziners
Design
practice
Everybody can envision and prototype solutions. Having the right design tools together with creative thinking can empower people to identify and make meaningful solutions.
CAD Design
Various CAD software exist nowadays and designers have to understand how to express their creativity through CAD.
Ideating, sketching and prototyping are the key elements of the design process. CAD is a way to support designers to make their ideas tangible, to build functional prototypes and test them with people.
This workshop series aims to transfer skills and knowledge on CAD design and modelling.
Empowering designers
UX Design
Holistic case studies using
Participatory Design approach
The evolution of UX Design, with the introduction of deep understanding of user needs through psychology and cognitive sciences, leads designers to innovate on usability, affordance and User Experience of recently marketed products, services and technologies.
How to foster Participatory Design?
This talk showcases holistic case studies of applied Participatory Design and UX research.
Designing inclusive environments
How can we understand what we need without knowing what we want?
This talk aims to demystify technology constraints by explaining which features have to be considered when designing and promoting the use of smart technologies and accessible environments for ageing well.
User feedback evaluation of IoT devices and inclusive environments
Age Friendly Design
As the world's population is aging and Internet-connected devices proliferate, older adults are facing increasing difficulties when using new technologies. Assistive Technology and usability principles can be applied to create user-friendlier interfaces and new interactions.
This talk offers an overview of the main guidelines and examples for designing inclusive environments. Read my book to learn more!
Usability and accessibility as tools to foster inclusion
IoT is everywhere
and people?
With the advances of technology and the intersection of new services and new user needs, the design of solutions is strongly evolving.
How about people?
Where are they fitting during the design process?
This talk aims to bridge the gap between technology, design and people as the ultimate goal of successful design solutions.
Emotional Design
The impact of emotions in
customer satisfaction
In the last decades customer needs have changed: from decisions made on the basis of specific product features to emotional choices based on experience and attractiveness.
What is the role of Emotional Design?
What tools should we use to better frame and update our products and services before releasing on the market?
This talk and workshop aim to show case studies from business and academic background and stimulate creative thinking on how to develop new emotional customer experiences.
Design
delivery
After you understand peoples' needs, design and prototype, you have to make things happen.
Teaming with the right people, developing a business plan and market your idea are
just the right icing for a tasty cake.
Storytelling
Design, pitch and communicate
Storytelling is now a challenging part of everyday life. No matter if you are looking for a job, if you are selling a product or if you are designing.
The social activity of sharing stories is a fundamental tool of designer’s toolbelt.
This talk share experiences and explains through a story how to meaningfully engage with people and involve them in to the Design process.
How to communicate
Using social networks to leverage your profile, career and business
In the last decade the way we developed connections drastically changed.
Social networks and Internet connectivity empowered many people to establish connections with individuals all over the world.
How can we manage to use those services carefully and proficiently to foster our growth and reachability?
This talk aims to increase awareness by providing a snapshot of current social network services, their functions tailored to different needs and how to deal with privacy issues.
Go and get funded
A strategy for attracting funding for your business (academic or company)
Being a designer requires to get funds. Being a researcher as well.
That’s why is important to know how to get funded through grants and fellowships as an academic, as well as to get capital for your startup, your product or a new service you want to launch on the market.
Based on personal experience as designer and researcher this talk shows methods and strategies to use for funding hunting.
Best practices for building
teams for startups
Having a successful idea is not enough today.
Have a successful idea and create e team that will bring the idea to the market is the key.
This talk explores creative strategies for developing outstanding teams that will enable the development of impactful start-ups and successfully deliver solutions to the market.
Examples, case studies and open discussion are parts of the learn by doing method that this talk aims to deliver.
The future of jobs
How the job market is going to evolve by the time you’re going to be graduated?
What jobs are going to disappear and what are the jobs that are rising?
This talk is tailored for current undergraduate and graduate students, willing to explore opportunities to shape their capacity to adapt to market needs through creative thinking.
A resilience strategy
Ethics, privacy and integrity
in business
Evolution and best practices
The world is getting incredibly connected and the information sharing is improving every day. However, many different countries are developing policies and instruments to protect customers as well as companies from wild data sharing.
This class aims to develop critical thinking through a showcase of privacy policies evolution of the last decade. Being aware of data creation and how to ethically behave in a world where information sharing is key today.
