Design Mentors | Designed.org

2,036 mentors

Kat Bak
Design, Illustration, Writing at Kat Bak Freelance
- Illustration
- Product Design
- User Experience
- User Interface
Hi, I'm Kat. My pronouns are they/them. ‘Professional me’ is ‘real-life me’, but with better grammar and punctuation. I don’t have a ‘work persona’ - I’m always me. I work as a Product designer, writer, and illustrator. I'm not a rockstar, a ninja or a unicorn - nor will I crush it, smash it or kill it. I like to help bridge the common and occasionally tense divide between design and development silos, as well as advocate for the user perspective. I'm deeply interested in the social sciences, philosophy, art, design, and technology. I love learning - I'm always looking for the next course to take, books to read, DIY skills to YouTube, subjects to research, a pivotal event to wade through, or history to explore.
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Peri Smith
Principal Product Designer & Design Manager at Sprinklr
- Design Leadership
- Design Management
- DesignOps
- Product Development Process
Principal Product Designer & Design Manager with 10 years of product development experience. Happy to provide guidance on design ops and UX career development.
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Brenner Cruvinel
Design Manager at Zenklub
- Creative Direction
- Design Leadership
- Design Management
- Interaction Design
Hi! I´m a creative designer with 17 years experience in product design, design management, UX, UI, art direction, motion and VUI for some of Brazil's most impactful companies. I have a large experience guiding design teams to win, concept, deliver and deploy products & projects that breaks the status quo. My work in the largest latin america insurance company positively impacts the lives of millions of users every day, that's my purpose.
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Onur Senture
Co-founder, Designer at Orkestra Studios
- Design Systems
- Development
- User Interface
Multidisciplinary designer, focused on design systems and UI architecture behind component libraries used by millions of developers. Co-founder of Orkestra Studios. BS in Computer Science, Bilkent University.
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Jan Zheng
Bioinformatics Engineer at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research
- Design Systems
- Information Architecture
- Mobile Development
- User Experience
I’m Jan, a product designer who combines code, user research, and lean startup methods to tackle complex issues and difficult projects. I have experience with information architecture, data-heavy UX design, and front-end development. I prefer to use Vue or Svelte on top of Express/Fauna on Vercel. My goal is to work with a team to create engaging interactive experiences, either virtual, augmented, or location-based spaces. Since I have experience in both development and user experience/interaction design, I am willing to work both in development teams as well as information architecture and user interaction/experience research and design teams. Specialties: human-computer interaction, interaction design, user experience design, software development
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Vivid Savitri-Hampton
Head of UX at Breville Group
- Art Direction
- DesignOps
- Interaction Design
- Product Design
I have built and scaled teams in the EU, United States, Asia, and Australia.I choreograph experience and design for customers in digital products, food thinking, and video games spaces. My UVPs: - Team leadership and Design Ops - Product design leadership - Experience Design Strategy, Creative Direction, and UX Architect. - Experienced in scaling design team globally (the USA, China, Germany & Australia) My leadership philosophy is grounded in reality through the hands-on nature of my craft and steeped in the desire to build visionary products and push the boundaries of my team. I build, coach and lead multidisciplinary, multi-cultural teams to achieve exceptional outcomes. My strength as a professional is multi-faceted, encompassed experience in video games & product design. By acting as a bridge across industries and organisations, I bring a unique perspective on the architecture & outcome of a project. I believe it's essential for my team to understand the context of the work, building to solve business problems as well as meeting customer needs. This extends to satisfying business objectives, product monetisation, features prioritisation, stakeholder relationships and building culture — all while creating desirable products that provide a seamless, engaging, delightful UX. I have worked across Entertainment, Technology, Service Design, Education and Consumer Goods. Tactical skill: - UI Design, Chatbot/Voice UX & Dev, wireframes & prototyping, Design Thinking, visual design, UX/Design research & testing - Video Games: Ideation & game design direction, level design, play mechanic & balancing, narration development Master's Thesis topic: Artificial Intelligence & Design Autonomy. Areas of interest: AI (NLP, machine learning), Data Privacy incl. all aspects of tech, design & games.
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Lorena Maceratesi
Thesis Advisor for Master Degree at Interactive Design Master's Degree (MAEDI) at University of Buenos Aires
- Design Process
- Team Building
- User Experience
I am a UX Strategist and co-founder of Holistic Interaction. I research how people think and act and how to improve user-centric methodology and processes in companies. I promote teamwork through the facilitation of workshops. I am a Design Sprint facilitator, and facilitate innovation workshops and help companies to improve their services and products, creating better solutions and generating impactful results. Through these workshops, I seek to reduce the impact and risk gap of the products. My goal is to improve companies' processes and methodologies aiming at optimizing times and outcomes. Since I am an Audiovisual Designer, I love telling stories, and I have been doing this for more than 10 years through digital products. I have worked in different roles, which allow me to understand projects with a holistic approach. ⭐️ Design Thinker. Design Thinking Facilitator and Professor. 💡 Design Sprint Facilitator. ⚡️Google for Startups Accelerator Mentor.
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Michael Dumaine
UX Design Engineer at Perspecta
- Interaction Design
- User Centered Design
- User Interface
- Visual Design
My name is Michael, I am currently a working professional in UX Design and Strategy for a company called Revenue River out of Denver Colorado. I began my career as an Industrial Designer and slowly evolved into ergonomics and human factor design, which inevitably evolved into User Experience design!
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Aref Ahmadi Araghi
Product Designer at Happeo
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Instructional Design
- Product Design
Aref Araghi is a product designer & experience engineer I have 5 years of experience designing digital products. I have helped companies of all sizes create digital products and define their product strategies.
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Andrew Marcus
Founder, UI/UX designer at Kappa
- Mobile Design
- User Experience
- User Interface
- User Research
Professional UI/UX and Product designer, developer and startups founder. Run my own design studio for 10 years, now work in a bank as a Senior UI/UX designer, creating a complex and huge investment platform, full of infographics and table data.
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Jayajāta Kirk
User Experience Designer at John Lewis & Partners
- Design Leadership
- Design Management
- Design Process
- Design Strategy
Hello, I’m Jayajāta (pron. Jai-ya-jar-ta). I’m a Product Design Manager with over 15 years of experience. I bring teams together around shared goals, facilitating the creativity and alignment needed to deliver high-impact, user-centred outcomes.
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Ren Chang Soo
Adjunct Mentor, Design Thinking at INTI University
- Design Thinking
- Psychology
- Workshop Facilitation
Ren Chang helps leaders create conditions where people say yes to change. He is the Chief Emergence Alchemist at Interlock & Infinity, where he uses participatory methods - Flow Game, Open Space Technology, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® - combined with design thinking. He is also a Teaching Lead at IDEO U, helping professionals apply human-centered design to their real-world projects. Previously a coach at HPI d-school Potsdam, co-delivered design thinking bootcamps with Stanford d.school professors, and contributed to the This is Service Design Doing book. His unconventional path - telco engineering to occupational psychology to design thinking to risk innovation - gave him the cross-disciplinary lens to transform risk culture at a regional bank. He led a risk culture transformation across South East Asia - treating culture as a design problem - winning 4 industry awards including Asia Risk Awards. He writes Disney Design Thinking - a newsletter revealing how every Disney story is a design thinking masterclass in disguise.
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Konrad Synoradzki
Development Manager at Allegro
- Design Strategy
- eCommerce
- Product Design
- User Experience
Manager with 10 years of experience in managing technology and product teams in the eCommerce area. Working at the senior management level in terms of building the value of the customer base and mobile app strategy. Currently: Leading 70+ engineers and product managers in the area of customer activation Shaping strategy for the whole Customer part of Allegro (inc. category experience, horizontal approach, technology scalability, P&L) Creating a high-performing environment with full autonomy and responsibility for results Providing best-in-class customer value due to cutting-edge technology Products: - Allegro Family (award “Quality Leader”) - Allegro Coupons - Allegro App
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Amit Bassi
Design Lead at FarEye
- Product Design
- User Centered Design
- User Interface
- User Research
I make digital products work. Happier the user, profitable the business. A passionate User Experience and Interaction Designer, who loves to solve highly complex concepts into simple and easy flows.
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Niyati Shah
User Experience Designer at Flipkart
- Design Process
- Design Strategy
- Interaction Design
- Product Design
I am a User Experience Designer based in Bangalore. In my role, I drive end-to-end UX projects from user research to information architecture to final prototypes. I practice user-centered design approach to invent new solutions for a wholesome user experience.
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Rameena Jalil
Sr Product Designer at Pixelz360
- Product Design
- Storytelling
- User Experience
🎨 Design Alchemist: Crafting visually enchanting and functionally captivating experiences. 🚀 7 Years in Orbit: Navigating design's ever-evolving cosmos. 📚 Storyteller at Heart: Unraveling narratives within pixels. With seven years in the trenches of product design, I've weathered storms of innovation, trekked through the terrain of user experience, and conquered the peaks of aesthetic harmony. In my design odyssey, I've witnessed the power of mentorship firsthand. It's not about wielding buzzwords or flashy titles; it's about crafting narratives, shaping emotions, and infusing life into pixels. My passion lies in unraveling the untold stories within designs and fostering a creative ecosystem that thrives on genuine connections.
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Soren Hamby
Senior Manager of UX and Digital Design at Benjamin Moore & Co.
- Accessibility
- Design Thinking
- Interaction Design
- Service Design
I'm bent on changing the world through diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. Design has the unique ability to affect systematic change, and technology can change lives. I'm an accessibility nerd and I can only see with one eye, so I have a lot of first hand experiences with assistive tools. I had temporary vision loss in one eye and permanent vision loss in the other. I'm one of the few designers that has one foot on each side of the threshold and can test with context. I consider this my superpower when it comes to accessibility. I not only am/have been the target user for assistive tools for vision, but I have gained so much understanding of what it means to have a disability that affects your autonomy. I am driven by inclusive design. I help businesses leverage their most valued resources - people and passion - to create innovation and social change. My top 5 hits: - Inclusive design - integrated through lived, academic, and professional experience - Accessibility expert - #a11y - Design community manager and strategist - connecting communities with UX, data, and UXR for four years - Design advocate - Team leadership from conceptualization to production - Human rights advocate and DEI professional - human rights are not political, Black Lives Matter, and inclusive design and technology shifts culture and society Inclusive design and accessibility are integral parts of transforming society. I thrive in my passion and drive for designing creative solutions and industry-changing thought leadership. With my lived experience as a lens, i focus on combining business ideas with respect for people and their experiences. I work with radical transparency. Service design is optimized and friendly, while data pairs with my advocacy for innovative, holistic standards. As a subject matter expert, I regularly connect my formal academic studies with social efforts. I also am a tech community public speaker and contributor to multiple articles, podcasts, and more. Ultimately, my specialization is transforming skeptics into champions for designing in community context, inclusion, and accessibility, from entry-level to C-suite. I utilize various tools and structures to facilitate this: - Mindfulness - Emotional Intelligence - Creative Exercise - Self-directed Learning - Redbull - Design-tool agnostic - Psychological safety for teams and users - The Power of a Positive ‘No’ - Data with emphasis on respect for users If you were drawn to my process or projects, consulting, public speaking, leadership, or specialized technical skills, please feel free to reach out. If you are an underrepresented person in tech or design, feel free to reach out for a chat or mentorship. Outside of professional connections and experiences, my personal life revolves around: - Networking with innovative products, tech groups, and incredible people - Speaking at public forums and podcasts regarding the advancement of the tech industry - Disability Advocacy & Rights - Queer Visibility Projects - Social Equity & Advancement - Digital & Physical Art - Outer Space - Enamel Pins If you would like to discuss current topics, please don’t hesitate to chat on Twitter @sorenfyi. Let’s build for everyone!
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Ben Parsons
Electro-mechanical engineer at Sontay
- Design Management
- Industrial Design
- Product Development Process
Over 10 years experience as a Design Manager in new product development, now working as Electro-mechanical engineer. Also worked as a freelancer 10+ years using solidworks.
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Anshika Agarwal
Founder & Community Lead at MiraKod
- Branding & Identity
- Career Advice
- Career Transitions
- Design Strategy
I’m a designer and mentor with over 7 years of experience in branding, packaging, social media, and community building. My journey has been about creating purposeful designs and fostering connections that empower others to thrive in their creative careers. As a mentor, I focus on more than just technical skills, I aim to help mentees with soft skills like communication, confidence, and navigating the complexities of the design industry. Whether it’s portfolio reviews, career planning, or tackling specific design challenges, I’m here to provide tailored guidance and support. My goal is to help mentees grow holistically, building skills and confidence for the long run
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Tessa Chung
Principal Product Designer at Yahoo
- Augmented Reality
- Interaction Design
- Product Design
- Virtual Reality
I began my design career with a focus on graphic design. Over time, my focus has evolved into UX & UI Product Design for mobile and web applications. I’ve spent the past 10 years designing and shipping native iOS and Android, web, and OTT TV products to market. I'm also getting my feet wet with VR/AR design and other spatial interfaces. I love problem solving and applying creative solutions while researching new technologies and learning new skills. It's truly a blend of my past life in science with my current life as a designer.
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Joel Barr
UX Researcher at VMware
- User Centered Design
- User Experience
- User Research
Built the qualitative capability for United Healthcare. Led teams of junior researchers. Led research on supply chain and merchandising for Lowe's Home Improvement.
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Radka Newton
Academic lead of Help to Grow Programme at Lancaster University Management School
- Design Thinking
- Entrepreneurship
- Service Design
- User Research
I am an education service designer with experience in Higher Education sector. I am passionate about transforming education with design empowering educators to become innovators. I also teach design thinking and innovation in the context of entrepreneurship and management.
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Yair Golan
Head of Design at Optibus
- Creative Direction
- Design Leadership
- Product Design
- User Experience
Hi, I’m Yair! In the past 5 years, I’ve been helping law enforcement agencies onboard the transformation into the future of digital policing.
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Sunil Kumar
Chief Manager (Design) at Reliance
- Design Thinking
- Fashion Design
A dedicated and proactive fashion and design professional with 8 years of experience in the value retail segment as well as luxury retail sector. A Fashion design professional with 8 years of design and managerial experience in the Apparel retail sector, with proficiency in design and thinking.
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David Hoogland
Brand Strategist and Designer at Two-Spirits
- User Experience
- User Interface
- Visual Design
David is a brand, ux, and visual designer. Over the last 12 years he teamed-up with 100+ startups and scale-ups and led (digital) design teams within corporates such as Nike, Rabobank, KPN, Relx (Reed Elsevier), Erasmus, Tony's Chocolonely, Dierenbescherming, NOS, ID&T. Running a startup / creative studio for over 6 years working with a very diverse set of clients David has aquired a rather unique set of skills. This allows him to easily identify strategic opportunities and quickly turn them into tangible design deliverables. His experience running a business, working freelance, working with and within agencies, and leading corporate projects as a brand, ux, and visual designer and being an experienced startup coach is a valuable asset to any design team.
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