Hello & please don't call me professor

I am a passionate instructor, PhD student, and UX designer currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. My teaching career began in 2007 when I received my first teaching assignment at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). I was woefully unprepared and had no clear sense of what this new job entailed. But the students were kind, and lucky for me, I had just stumbled across my passion.

Teaching for the 21st century

I was in equal measures delighted and terrified to give a TEDx talk on the overall theme of 'Interconnectedness'.

From 2012 to 2021, I developed and taught courses in product development, social innovation, and user experience (UX) design at the University of Waterloo's Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business and a course on customer experience design at the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, a course that I continue to teach. In 2017, the University of Waterloo awarded me with a Teaching Excellence Award for my work in the classroom. Since moving back to Vancouver in the summer of 2021, I joined Emily Carr University of Design + Art and the University of British Columbia's School of Information to continue teaching project-based design courses.

In 2018, I co-founded Carbonlabs, a design strategy firm, with my friend and business partner Nada Basir.Currently, I'm pursuing my PhD at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Education. I'm interested in holistic student assessment in online, project-based design courses. Yup, pretty much the kinds of courses that I teach.

I expressed my thoughts on teaching in my Teaching Philosophy and in my 2017 TEDx talk, "Teaching for the 21st Century" (you can watch the talk below).

Decorating my office with students

A few years ago, the University of Waterloo ran a photo competition asking us faculty members to share photos of our offices to see which had the best decorations. Here are mine—the GBDA class of 2018.

University of Waterloo

Starterhacks is a student-led hackathon for designers and developers. I was happy to run a workshop on how best to come up with a worthy idea (ideation) and prototyping techniques.

University of Waterloo, Faculty of Arts

From 2012 until I left Waterloo, I facilitated a UX design mock lecture at the annual March Open House. It was always so rewarding to see incoming (and potential) students and meet their parents. To only see them again four years later at graduation.

University of Waterloo, School of Interaction Design and Business

Our campus in Stratford organized a design hackathon based on storytelling. I was happy to do a short session on how stories shape design.

Some of us get lucky finding a mentor. Ginny has been the reason I wanted to teach at the University of Waterloo and has been a good friend ever since I joined her team.

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Hello & please don't call me professor

Teaching for the 21st century

Teaching & Design

Decorating my office with students

Starterhacks

March Open House

Story Camp

Mentor

Unique