Designing for prizes | Designing for profit
Designing for humans
makes me feel like a Super•hu•man
Designing for humans
makes me feel like a Super•hu•man
As a kid, I always wanted to learn everything about everything.
Today, I'm a designer who builds products and services to make change happen in people, culture and systems.
Today, I'm a designer who builds products and services to make change happen in people, culture and systems.
Who am I?
Hi,
I'm Daniel — @danieltsantos — service designer, facilitator, co-founder.
Some years back, I spent four years teaching design in India. Namaste ji! My multicultural life has made me understand the different nuances of cross-cultural communication, like identifying subtle variations in body language across cultures, for example.
After India, I lived for about 2 years in Manchester, UK, where I was the Design Lead at FutureEverything and completed my MA in Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island. During this period, I had the chance to work in a broad range of projects addressing big picture problems such as:
- How might we influence future cities to become more community-centred?
- Or, how to use citizen-driven science to improve food quality and address the disruption created by climate change?
Recently, I moved to Lisbon to join LabX – An Experimentation Lab to Innovate the Public Sector. Here I'm pursuing a lifelong dream: using design thinking methodologies to improve public services in Portugal. For example, my team has been working in experimenting a simpler, more comprehensive and more humane death and bereavement services.
To help LabX achieve its mission, my role is to design and test new solutions that help making better businesses, more efficient public services and improve the daily lives of both public servants and citizens.
I'm Daniel — @danieltsantos — service designer, facilitator, co-founder.
Some years back, I spent four years teaching design in India. Namaste ji! My multicultural life has made me understand the different nuances of cross-cultural communication, like identifying subtle variations in body language across cultures, for example.
After India, I lived for about 2 years in Manchester, UK, where I was the Design Lead at FutureEverything and completed my MA in Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island. During this period, I had the chance to work in a broad range of projects addressing big picture problems such as:
- How might we influence future cities to become more community-centred?
- Or, how to use citizen-driven science to improve food quality and address the disruption created by climate change?
Recently, I moved to Lisbon to join LabX – An Experimentation Lab to Innovate the Public Sector. Here I'm pursuing a lifelong dream: using design thinking methodologies to improve public services in Portugal. For example, my team has been working in experimenting a simpler, more comprehensive and more humane death and bereavement services.
To help LabX achieve its mission, my role is to design and test new solutions that help making better businesses, more efficient public services and improve the daily lives of both public servants and citizens.
What do I do?
I like to have an overarching view of the projects that I participate. Service Design, Organisational Design, UX Design, User Research, Interaction Design is what I do
Yes, I am a jack of all trades — Hi to all generalists out there!
Get to know on the below chart how I am shaping my skills*:
Yes, I am a jack of all trades — Hi to all generalists out there!
Get to know on the below chart how I am shaping my skills*:
* Skill list based on the skill levels for digital, data and technology roles for Service Design of GOV.UK. Bar charts are an illustrative way to depict expertise, it does not correspond to any specific metric
Here are some projects I'm proud of
Get to know some of the projects I have been working on recently
What do I stand for?
I stand for increasing Equality because it's a Human Right!
I stand for improving Democracy not as a tool, but as an ideal, because it lays out patterns for people to have freedom of choice and equal access to opportunities.
I stand for creating Openness because it builds trust between people.
And this is how I am willing to do new things:
I stand for improving Democracy not as a tool, but as an ideal, because it lays out patterns for people to have freedom of choice and equal access to opportunities.
I stand for creating Openness because it builds trust between people.
And this is how I am willing to do new things:
What is my goal?
Design is about problem-solving as it is about discovering and exploring new or hidden opportunities. Having a solid understanding of what's on stake helps to achieve the full potential of a design-led approach.
As designer, my goal is to explore the tension between humans, technology and systems, to design solutions that encourage the right behaviours by the people everyone using it.
As designer, my goal is to explore the tension between humans, technology and systems, to design solutions that encourage the right behaviours by the people everyone using it.
What excites me?
Currently, three things I am most excited about are learning, collective intelligence and participative dynamics for social good.
I am excited by:
1. Discovering opportunities to improve the quality of people's lives.
2. Creating people-driven decision architectures to build trust.
A well-balanced example of the mentioned above is this self-organised learning experiment conducted in a slum in New Delhi.
I am excited by:
1. Discovering opportunities to improve the quality of people's lives.
2. Creating people-driven decision architectures to build trust.
A well-balanced example of the mentioned above is this self-organised learning experiment conducted in a slum in New Delhi.
What do I focus on?
The collaborative process is based on people, evidence and data-driven decision making. My focus is on a journey of continuous self-improvement and personal growth.
These are the things I strive for:
1. Experimenting with things and learning from it
2. Solving problems with as little friction as possible
3. Organisational and systemic Co-design & culture design
These are the things I strive for:
1. Experimenting with things and learning from it
2. Solving problems with as little friction as possible
3. Organisational and systemic Co-design & culture design
Journey to become a designer
A brief peek into my background. Check my Linkedin for more details.
Designing Public Services
The Portuguese Government is embedding an experimentation culture and mindset inside the public administration. To achieve that has created a lab! I moved to Lisbon to join LabX – the Experimentation Lab to Innovate the Public Sector, which is a pilot project to innovate the public sector. I am thrilled about the opportunity of belonging to this team of human-centred decision making activists. Our goal is to gather knowledge with design-led research about the problems that public services are facing. Then co-create solutions, prototype and test them in a way that improve not only public services efficiency but mainly the daily life of citizens and public servants.
I have been following LabX closely since it was announced publicly. So having the opportunity to join this new team which is being created is a no-brainer. Stay tuned and follow LabX's activity on Facebook and Twitter.
System thinking with service design
Service Designer experience
FutureEverything is an award-winning innovation lab for digital culture and festival based in Manchester. As their Service Design lead I have ownership over the service design and innovation programmes.
I approach my work using overarching disciplines and disciplines as Human-Centred and Participatory Design, Product/Service Innovation, Strategic Design and Agile Project Management, to produce and evaluate processes, methods and tools, to manage diverse stakeholders in a broad range of data-driven innovation projects. These projects themes relate to areas such as the Internet of Things, SmartCities, Social Innovation, Sustainable Growth, Citizen Science, Air Quality and Smart Citizen Mobility.
Before this, I had almost ten years of industry experience. Below, I shed some light on my path so far.
FutureEverything is an award-winning innovation lab for digital culture and festival based in Manchester. As their Service Design lead I have ownership over the service design and innovation programmes.
I approach my work using overarching disciplines and disciplines as Human-Centred and Participatory Design, Product/Service Innovation, Strategic Design and Agile Project Management, to produce and evaluate processes, methods and tools, to manage diverse stakeholders in a broad range of data-driven innovation projects. These projects themes relate to areas such as the Internet of Things, SmartCities, Social Innovation, Sustainable Growth, Citizen Science, Air Quality and Smart Citizen Mobility.
Before this, I had almost ten years of industry experience. Below, I shed some light on my path so far.
Mastering Experience Design
Service and experience design MA student experience
I joined the Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island, in Manchester, UK in January 2016. The MA it's full-time programme, where I have colleagues from 28 different nationalities. At Hyper Island, I worked with real client briefs and had industry experts coaching me.
Later in the summer, I joined FutureEverything as design lead, while simultaneously I developed my Industry Research Project — my MA final dissertation. The topic of my project was "How might Community-Centred Design methods help define the success criteria in CityVerve?" CityVerve is the Smart City and IoT demonstrator of Manchester.
I joined the Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island, in Manchester, UK in January 2016. The MA it's full-time programme, where I have colleagues from 28 different nationalities. At Hyper Island, I worked with real client briefs and had industry experts coaching me.
Later in the summer, I joined FutureEverything as design lead, while simultaneously I developed my Industry Research Project — my MA final dissertation. The topic of my project was "How might Community-Centred Design methods help define the success criteria in CityVerve?" CityVerve is the Smart City and IoT demonstrator of Manchester.
Teaching Design from West to East
Faculty Experience
The urge to explore contrasting cultures took me to India where I have lived for over 3 years. I joined Raffles Education, as full-time faculty, in the Graphic Design and Digital Media Design undergraduate programme.
I had prior teaching experience as visiting faculty, in the Web Design postgraduate programme, teaching Project Management at ESAD in Matosinhos, Portugal.
The urge to explore contrasting cultures took me to India where I have lived for over 3 years. I joined Raffles Education, as full-time faculty, in the Graphic Design and Digital Media Design undergraduate programme.
I had prior teaching experience as visiting faculty, in the Web Design postgraduate programme, teaching Project Management at ESAD in Matosinhos, Portugal.
Leading a webdesign team
Team Leading Experience
Before moving to India, I worked as Project Manager and Creative Director at startup at Porto.
At the time, our customers base was mainly small retailers and would offer them e-commerce and other digital solutions.
Before moving to India, I worked as Project Manager and Creative Director at startup at Porto.
At the time, our customers base was mainly small retailers and would offer them e-commerce and other digital solutions.
Working in large product design teams
UI / Product Designer Experience
I also worked in large product design teams, as UI Designer at Alert Life Sciences a multinational healthcare software house. There my role was converting the user journey of clinical workflows to visual prototypes.
I also worked in large product design teams, as UI Designer at Alert Life Sciences a multinational healthcare software house. There my role was converting the user journey of clinical workflows to visual prototypes.
Visual Designer (and the only designer) at a startup
Visual Designer Experience
In my first industry experience I started as Visual Designer at Ideavity, a startup in Porto where I mostly designed RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), in a time where the social web (or Web 2.0 as it is best-known) was starting to kicking off.
In my first industry experience I started as Visual Designer at Ideavity, a startup in Porto where I mostly designed RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), in a time where the social web (or Web 2.0 as it is best-known) was starting to kicking off.
