Australia

UX Design

UI/ Visual Design

Industrial Design

Branding and Identity Design

Service Design

Product Design

Customer Experience (CX)

Interaction Design

UX Research

Service Design Research

Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

pg.dip. Packaging

MA Design Leadership

Maria Camacho

Adjunct researcher

Public Speaking

Prototyping

Qualitative research

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Critical-thinking

Empathy

Team player

Leadership

Brand strategy

User research

Adobe Illustrator

Stakeholder management

Conflict resolution

Project management

Analytical skills

Partnership

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

Learn the tips to successfully manage a team in a remote environment.

Managing a remote team

How to maintain trust, commitment, accountability deliver results while handling conflict

Avoiding common dysfunctions

How to determine what is a good balance of skill sets for your organization's needs

Building balanced teams

How to identify star candidates, evaluate technical ability, and close hires

Hiring software engineers

Decision making as a software engineer or lead - how to become better at making the right choices

Making better tech choices

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

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

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

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

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

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

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

Conducting effective customer interviews

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

Design career path

Leading design teams across multidisciplinary client projects within the public, finance, utilities, and education sectors. As a member of frog’s leadership team, I oversee client relationships and pipeline development, while providing coaching and guidance to our design team members.

I co-founded and co-lead W2O, an initiative to address urban waste in Colombian cities. Through design thinking/innovation workshops and an online community, we enable heterogeneous stakeholder groups to understand the challenges and co-create ways forward. Together with the steering committee, we attained the support of industries, corporations, government, universities and trade associations.

I envisioned, designed, and successfully implemented an extensive revamp of the Bachelor of Innovation and Design according to industry needs and cutting-edge design innovation skills, substantially increasing enrolment, student satisfaction and industry involvement.

I created, coordinate and lecture various units on design innovation and design management for the Master of Design Strategy & Innovation, the Bachelor of Innovation & Design and its double degree with Engineering majors. All units involve working on projects with industry.

I Initiated and co-led seven industry-funded projects from large global industries and academic partners, addressing complex innovation challenges via design thinking with remote and interdisciplinary teams.
Outcomes:
-	Sonae/Continente, Portugal: Flip, “phygital” shopping experience platform.
-	OP, Finland: SME Bee, Business Financial Coach, digital platform.
-	Expanscience/Mustela: Enhance, baby care experience service/system and app.
-	Innospring, China/US: SkyCatcher, smart mailbox of the future.
-      Yanmar, Japan: Wheeebo electric watercraft for marine activity https://www.wheeebo.com/en/ 
-      Yanmar, Japan: Vineyards spray system and digital information system
-      Sonae/Berg, Portugal: Ghisallo, easy bike for urban commute.

I assisted Swinburne Design Factory in establishing the ME310 Design Innovation course in affiliation with Stanford University and the Sugar Network. I secured the first project, a collaboration with Colombian multinational Totto and Stanford University that resulted in T-Track, a smart backpack.
I also coached projects with academic and industry partners in Finland, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Australia.

To transfer design innovation knowledge to the organisation by training the executive team, developing innovative and competitive product/systems and documenting a successful innovation case study. During the nine-month project-based training program, we coached the team to create a new construction formwork system (Forsa Plus) that today represents 30% of the company's sales. Moreover, the training program enabled the team to embed innovation in the organisation and define an innovation policy.
Services contract for Forsa and Javeriana University.

Forsa is a global company based in Colombia, offering comprehensive building systems. I acted as a contractor for Forsa and Javeriana University.

Colombina is a global food company, the largest in Colombia.
Project: Expanding Colombina’s Innovation Culture and Capability:
-	Analysis of current innovation culture and capability at the executive level.
-	Co-creation of an innovation policy, model, processes, and project roadmap.
-	Design innovation knowledge transfer and pilot project.
Project co-funded by the Colombian Government with resources from Interamerican Development Bank (IDB). Developed with the Centre for Consultancy of Javeriana University.

Innovation project and knowledge transfer. Challenge: Improve the salesforce’s productivity. Project result: a new sales strategy supported by a suite of digital tools to simplify the selling process, improve interaction with potential clients, and better salespeople's work experience. Contract with the Centre for Consultancy of Javeriana University.

SUGAR is a global network that brings together students, universities and companies for the future of innovation through a new learning experience. SUGAR network facilitates human-centered design to young minds.

A project conducted in the SUGAR Network officially lasts nine months and results in a high-fidelity prototype. After the final concept is handed over to the corporate sponsor, it has the possibility of being implemented in the market and students can even have the opportunity of being integrated inside the company.

I founded and directed this BA program, as an update to traditional graphic design education in Colombia. The Bachelor of Visual Communication Design was created to offer strategic and cutting-edge communication design education, previously inexistent in the country.

ME310 Design Innovation is a Stanford University graduate global course in which students collaborate to solve real innovation challenges posed by industry. I initiated, managed, and taught this joint course at Javeriana University, securing extensive industry funds to develop world-class, nine-month projects. In my time, we worked in projects with companies like Panasonic (Japan, US), Telefonica (Spain, Colombia), and Autodesk (US), and industries in the financial, manufacturing, and communications sectors among others. I also secured further academic collaborations with Aalto University (Finland), St. Gallen University (Switzerland), UNAM (Mexico) and Paris des Ponts (France).

For ten years I was an academic partner of Stanford's Center for Design Research in the ME310 Design Innovation Program, working on real industry innovation challenges with Prof. Larry Leifer.

Bridget Tirivaviri

Student

Lucy Serret

Head of UX Design

Tiana Liu

UX Intern

Mohinder Singh

Senior Web Designer

Michaella Ballas

Product and Visual Designer

Rashmi Babre

Design Director

I can help you clarify your ideas and reach decisions, or provide some specific design advice.

Maria Camacho🇦🇺

About Maria Camacho

Expertise

Sessions with Maria Camacho

What mentees say