Teaching, Speaking & Ethical Practice
I believe responsible practice needs to be taught, not just modelled.
Across universities, professional communities, and institutional teams, I work to make ethical and human-centred approaches tangible to the people building the systems of tomorrow.
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IMPACT
- 80% of participants shifted to active responsible design practice after a single session
- 100+ people reached through public teaching, speaking, and advocacy in events
- 3 Swiss higher education institutions engaged as lecturer, researcher, and expert assessor
- 7 Master's students mentored across real institutional research challenges
- 20+ stakeholders coordinated across academic and organisational contexts
Guest Lecturer Responsible Design in Action @University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGB)
2026 / Online, Switzerland / Fachhochschule Graubünden (FHGR)
MY ROLE
Curriculum design: developed a 60-minute lecture, including interactive exercises, real-world case studies, and a live facilitated group activity using the Consequence Scanning methodology.
Facilitation: delivered the session to BSc. Information Science students, focused on clarity and engagement throughout.
Impact measurement: designed and ran a pre/post poll to document learning shift, producing a concrete evidence base for teaching effectiveness.
Ethical framing: positioned responsible design not as a framework to follow but as a daily lived practice, grounding abstract ethics in real current decisions.
Context & Challenge
Design ethics is often taught as theory, with frameworks, principles and checklists. What students rarely get is a practitioner showing them how it actually plays out in the messy middle of real work. This lecture was built around that gap: using a live current dilemma from my own practice at UNICEF as the opening case, before moving into landmark examples of design decisions that travelled into policy and law.
My approach
The session opened with a live poll asking students how responsible they felt for their project's impact. Results were shown live, then revisited at the end. More than an ice breaker, the poll provided important insights abotu the shift of perception that the session would bring to the participants.
before and after results, clear positive trend towards more responsible and ethical practice
The central case study traced the ripple effect of the infinite scroll mechanism from one engineer's decision to Brazil's 2026 national ban. The case was presented and followed by a practical activy, where the students were invited to map intended, unintended, and potentially catastrophic consequences using the Consequence Scanning tool.
Impact in numbers
- from 33% to 80% of participants reported responsible design as an active part of their decision-making at the start of the session
Expert Assessor, Bachelor Graduation Presentations @Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU)
2026 / Lucerne, Switzerland (HSLU)
MY ROLE
Invited to evaluate and provide feedback on final Bachelor's degree projects ain the course Design Management, International.
Assessed student work on conceptual clarity, execution, and growth.
Connected with students to understand their process and reflect on outcomes.
Why it matters
Working with students at the threshold of their careers, where ideas meet reality, requires asking the right questions and helping them see what they've actually built, not just what they intended. This is where learning happens.
During one afternoon, I assessed 7 works from students aiming to solve problems in medical areas, child care, corporate and learning environments. Focusing on understanding the thinking process, rather than only evaluating the final results, my approached involved on asking the questions that would push for reflection:
“What would you tell yourself, if you could go back on time?”
“Is there anything unsolved yet?”
“For your project to be implemented, what do you need the most: budget or permission (or something else)?”
Industry Mentor, Academic Research Projects @University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons (FHGB)
2023, 2025-2026 / Online, Switzerland / Fachhochschule Graubünden (FHGR)
MY ROLE
Mentoring: served as industry mentor for two Master's research projects in UX Design, connecting academic teams with real institutional challenges and stakeholders at Sunrise UPC and United Nations Volunteers.
Applied Research leadership: co-led the Sunrise accessibility project on the verge of the European Accessibility Act, applying student research to inform how accessibility standards could be implemented directly into the company.
Stakeholder coordination: facilitated collaboration between student researchers and internal stakeholders across corporate and UN institutional contexts
Academic research projects succeed or fail at the boundary between theory and practice. Students bring rigour and fresh perspective; organisations bring complexity, politics, and real constraints. The mentor role sits in the middle, keeping both sides honest and making sure the work produces something genuinely useful, not just academically sound.
Sunrise case
Accessibility became a central focus in the evolution of Sunrise Design System, specially with the introduction of the EU Acessibility Act, that made it a mandatory feature.
Anticipating the policy, in 2023 I initiated and led an accessibility research project with the the University of Chur (FHGR), auditing products for compliance. Findings shaped new standards for color contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text, and semantic structures, which were embedded into the system.
United Nations Voluteers case
While allocated at the digital team of United Nations Voluteers, I introduced a research project with FHGR to better analise and propose improvements in the digital onboarding process of volunteers. A particularity of the UN volunteers (and the United Nations system in itself) is the high diversity of users. From senior population in conflict zones to young adults in the Global North, people from different walks of lives were taken into account in the project.
The project outcomes were used as baseline for sprint planning of the digital team, with a positive stakeholder engagement throughout the process.
Public Speaker, Digital Practice & Ethical Design @IxDF Zurich, SDD Zurich, UX Schweiz, Ladies that UX
2022 - present / Switzerland / multiple locations
MY ROLE
Community talks: regular speaker at Swiss professional design and technology communities on topics including accessibility, ethical design practice, technology adoption in complex environments, and human-centred approaches in public sector systems.
Audience: practitioners ranging from junior designers to senior product leaders across Swiss corporate, agency, and nonprofit contexts.
IMPACT IN NUMBERS
- 100+ professionals reached
- Topics: accessibility, ethical design, digital adoption, public sector innovation