United States

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

✊🏿🏳️‍🌈 Diversity & Inclusion

Derek Torsani

Product Designer, Design Systems

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

How to successfully prepare and position yourself for a job promotion?

How to get promoted

How to ask for a promotion and negotiate for salary raise?

Negotiating a job offer

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Talk to people who've broken into the tech industry and learn their stories.

Breaking into tech

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

Methods of prototyping and solution validation. When to use which kind of prototype (eg. Webflow, Notion, etc)

Prototyping methods and tips

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Methods and models of exploring, deciding and delivering design.

Building a design process

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Managing being the only designer at your company and working with non-designers.

Being the only designer

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Ways and resources to improve your design skills.

Improving design skills

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

How to create personas, and leverage them in design.

Creating and leveraging user personas

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

Learn the best ways to answer technical interview questions with frameworks

Acing technical interview questions

How to conduct interviews, what to ask, and how to analyze your results? (eg. user interview)

Derek Torsani🇺🇸