How can we empower designers to confidently build their most critical and responsible work?

Alex has been mentoring and coaching full-time as Lead Educator at BrainStation, developing a world-class experience for user-experience design learning. His successful experiential learning models have impacted 300+ adult students making him an authority in design learning techniques.

Alex supports the career growth of emerging or established designers looking to build intention and direction to their design career and craft.

Design Career Navigation

For practicing designers looking to build a meaningful career beyond the limitations of their workplaces, Alex works with UX design professionals of all levels to dive deeper into self-awareness, intention of practice, to improve one's personal craft, expression, and relationship to design.

Emerging Practicing UI/UX Designers

You started work in the UX industry but your manager isn't quite the design mentor you expected. You're feeling insecure about the lack of opportunity to grow into a strong competent designer – and coffee chat conversations only take you so far.

Meet with Alex for weekly conversations to work hands-on towards actionable goals, in order to achieve the career growth you need. Get critical feedback on your work, build strong self-awareness to your career trajectory, and gain opportunities to work on complex passion projects outside of your job to build strength, skill and intention towards your craft.

Seasoned Practicing Product Designers

You've been working in the industry for several years and have been progressing your career with respectable job titles and a healthy salary to validate your competency – but you're deeply questioning your relationship to personal value and purpose within design. You question if your career is the meaningful track that brings deep value; and if it is worth continuing this trajectory or approaching with a complete new perspective.

Work with Alex through weekly conversations to deconstruct and uncover the deeper underlying questions of value, motivation, and intention towards your craft and career. Work together to reveal neglected personal values to clarify a growth plan that engages a holistic picture of your life, circumstances and goals, in order to build a meaningful career.

Design Career Transition

For individuals who are interested in transforming their existing career into the rewarding practice (both creatively and financially) of UX design. Specifically offering to those who have prior foundations in design and/or relatable skills, who are looking for more cost-effective and highly-customized learning alternative to comprehensive bootcamp courses.

Closely-related Industry Professionals

You've been working several years in a design field relatable to user-experience design (such as advertising design, marketing, print design) and want to transfer your related skills into working directly in the UX industry. You seek a highly-customized action plan to remap your skills from your previous profession to that of user-experience design rather than enrolling in a comprehensive bootcamp course.

Instead of quitting your job and enrolling in a full-time bootcamp course, consider the alternative of enrolling part-time while keeping your job and meeting weekly with Alex. Get direct, highly-customized feedback on your weekly learning subject and how it relates to your current profession. Gain critical insight on your project work, build self-awareness towards your career trajectory and where you fit within UX Design, and gain opportunities to work on complex passion projects to build your portfolio into the competitive market.

Graphic Design Graduates

You want to be respected and valued for the work that you're capable of performing, you've heard great things about what working in the UX industry can yield, have the appropriate visual-design skills needed to be a great design professional – but don't want to spend tens-of-thousands to go back to school just to realign your professional skills.

Graduates of graphic design have the technical foundations in visual design to become extremely successful UX designers, however tend to lack the strategic thinking and technical know-how required to become a competent UX professional within the industry. Alex specializes in working with students with prior design experiences, to develop highly-customized and accelerated learning plans to leverage unique strengths to stand out in a crowd of applicants.

    Coaching for Professional-Development

    The following are examples of engagement topics for career-building. Mentees are asked to select particular engagement topics to bring structure to the engagement:

    • self awareness, the personal narrative, identity development
    • craftsmanship and intent; building critical objectivity
    • impact, agency, and responsibility
    • expanding cognitive capacity & making connections
    • design standards vs design expression
    • creative process roadblocks
    • strategic and honest communication
    • structured career growth
    • meditation and consciousness development

    The following are examples of engagement topics for career-transitions. Mentees are asked to select particular engagement topics to bring structure to the engagement:

    • self awareness, the personal narrative, identity development
    • expanding cognitive capacity & making connections
    • strategic and honest communication
    • structured career outreach
    • handcraft & hand drawing communication
    Coaching Structure

    Professional Experience (10+ years)

    • Product design lead for over 10+ products ranging from consumer apps to commercial-grade platform solutions; product ownership integrating agile/scrum product management workflows
    • Complex service design & platform design experience for end-to-end retail services supporting multiple touchpoints
    • Design team lead & mentor: culture/team building, directing, resourcing structures, process building, cross-team functions

    Educational Experience (3 years)

    • Lead educator developing and executing design-learning curriculum reaching an audience of over 300+ learners
    • Directly taught over 200+ adult professional students in full-time 10-12 week intensive courses to transform individual careers
    • Andragogical experimentation on learning methods for highly personalized experiences in scalable learning structures
    • Guest lecturing for classes up to 140 students
    • Formal training in classic design pedagogy through Bauhaus method, at Carleton University School of Architecture & Urbanism

    Mentorship Experience (10 years)

    • Mentoring and supporting personal and professional growth of individuals for over 10 years; focusing on creative growth
    • Community & leadership development: founder of two design communities including multi-disciplinary design studio space and UX design collective

    Testimonials

    "Without a doubt, Alex has been one of the most influential figures in my career in UX. He mentored, taught, and guided me through a process of rediscovering the way I learn. The nature of humans is to feel in control; Alex created a comfortable and digestible framework for me to embrace vulnerability. In doing so, he nurtured my problem-solving mindset to adopt systems thinking and trusting the process of design-as-a-process."
    - Leon Li, Head of Product, Co-Founder @ Phyxable

    "Alex regularly incorporates the philosophy and history of design in many of his teachings, and uses those insights to better inform students on the impact of the work they will be endeavouring on. He is excellent in instilling purpose behind every aspect of UX and UI design principles, which spills over throughout everything a student in his care would use. This is the crux of Alex’s teaching philosophy, and I highly value it."
    - Toby Abraham, App Consultant at Sparkrock

    "Alex has a unique mind and shows in his approach. He teaches content in a way that doesn't appear pre-meditated, but rather in the moment. When he explains concepts, it feel like you're being told a story which makes for a better learning experience."
    - Salvatore Commisso, Product Designer at 7shifts

    Visit Alex's LinkedIn for testimonials from prior students/mentees on what it's like to work with and learn with Alex.