Private training to set you up to design the Next Big Thing
Discover new-to-you processes — ones that have been trusted for decades to design and communicate about New Things
Learn how to dig deeply into any technology and understand how to best use it in your designs; and how to explain your designs to engineers, managers, and other stakeholders in the ways they need to hear it.
- Eight hours of private training
- Live practice and critique with other professional designers
- Continuously scheduled to be available when you need it
And if your dream project gets backburnered to next quarter, or you just need more practice exploring a particular technology or communicating with a particular stakeholder, you can join any booked private training again, for free.
Private training now, private practice when you need it
Eight hours is not a lot of time for all the information we’re trying to get in here.
It was a lot smoother and I was a lot faster this time for sure.
Design is a studio art, which means you learn it best by practicing it. Along with the four hours of practice in your training, you can join any subsequent booked private training again, for free, and get additional critique from other professional designers and the instructor. It’s a safe and reliable way to ensure your skills are always honed.
Communication skills could be your next step
Your company wants you to stay in Figma, applying the same old design system to the same old apps. A convincing pitch for a great new connected feature will take communication skills you can’t learn on the job. Learn to plan and create artifacts that build a shared understanding between you and your stakeholders to ensure your designs aren’t just understood — but also built as you designed them.
I can use the understanding for this to first better understand and then better communicate ideas with the rest of the team and stakeholders.
Legible learning to design peers and stakeholders
For orgs that value formal, tangible learning, you’ll be issued a digital certificate for completing the private training — and for every additional practice you attend.
You’ll also receive copious references to help validate and integrate these methods and practices into whatever formal design process your org practices.
Repeatedly vetted in the real world since 1989
The communication techniques in this training were founded in the late 1980s, building upon studies of scientists and amateurs collaborating to collect data.
The design techniques in this training were formalized in the late 2000s, when designers and academics developed methods and practices for non-engineers to make sense of technologies.
For over a decade, I’ve used these methods to teach designers how to explore sensors and prototype smart devices, without learning to code or becoming an electrical engineer, and now I’m broadening the scope to include any technology, including the current models of generative AI.
What you’ll learn in this training
In this practical, fully-participatory, hands-on training, you’ll learn:
- the basic principles of conducting material exploration of technologies,
- communication strategies to share your learnings with non-design colleagues,
- end-to-end examples of hardware and software that demonstrate these practices in use, and
- how to support your design colleagues through critique.
You’ll get to practice everything you learn by planning your own end-to-end material exploration of a software or hardware technology, get peer critique of your prototype documentation, and report out your final assessments to the entire workshop.
Training agenda
First two-hour training block
Introduction and initial exercises (30m)
- Introduction and level-setting
- End-to-end examples of relevant hardware and software and their material explorations
- Group exercise: collecting and identifying technologies underlying products
5m break
Applied material exploration (group) (30m)
- End-to-end example of constraint exhaustion and documentation
- Group exercise: planning constraint exhaustion and documentation
5m break
Applied material exploration (individual) (60m)
- Individual exercise and critique: planning constraint exhaustion and documentation
Second two-hour training block
20m break
Introduction to boundary objects (30m)
- End-to-end examples of relevant hardware and software and their boundary objects
- End-to-end example of evaluating boundary objects
- Group exercise: evaluating boundary objects
5m break
Applied boundary objects (individual) (60m)
- Individual exercise and critique: evaluating boundary objects
Optional practice pre-work
Resources for participants who want to conduct specific explorations on specific technologies
First two-hour practice block
Setup (30m)
- Recap
- Introduction to available reference resources
- Pair and group assignments for critiques and presentations
Applied material exploration and boundary objects, end-to-end (90m)
- Individual exercise and critique: planning constraint exhaustion and documentation
- Individual exercise and critique: documentation artifact as boundary object
- Individual exercise and critique: evaluating boundary objects
Second two-hour practice block
Applied material exploration and boundary objects, end-to-end (120m)
- Individual exercise and critique: planning constraint exhaustion and documentation
- Individual exercise and critique: documentation artifact as boundary object
- Individual exercise and critique: evaluating boundary objects
Why do designers need to explore technology as a material?
In the long series of steps of bringing a highly-technical product to market, whether that’s a “smart” or “connected” device or an AI-enabled feature or app, designers with primarily 2D design experience — interaction designers, UX designers, visual designers, artists — can find themselves left out of significant parts of the process.
Sketches and storyboards, animatics and videos, UI prototypes and industrial design mood boards: all of these things are design artifacts. These artifacts can explain ideas to other designers, maybe even to laypeople, but when a complex technology is a core driver for the feature or product, these artifacts don’t help the design get built: there are too many open questions, too many things for an engineer to make assumptions and bad tradeoffs about, too many things for the business to not recognize the value of and cut in the name of optimization.
Designers in this situation need to demonstrate a deeper, empirical understanding of the underlying technology to stay in the room when engineering and industrial decisions are being made, and they need different ways to communicate their design and its evidence that are better suited for an audience that is not other designers.
Those tools are material exploration, and boundary objects.
I was surprised to see how this applies to industrial design — and humbled by the amount of considerations it takes to launch a physical product.
Takeaways
- An understanding of the principles of material exploration of technology
- An understanding of boundary objects as the intermediary between your experience and your design, and the needs of your product and engineering colleagues
- A worked practice project
Scheduling
As a private, professional training in the studio model, you will be paired with one or more other design professionals throughout the workshop for ideation and critique. As such, training sessions are only scheduled when at least two participants have signed up. Your booking will move to the next date for that timeslot if no-one else registers in time.
( )| Slot | Times | Days | Upcoming dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekday mornings, Eastern | 8-10a ET () |
M-Th | November 3-6 December 1-4 |
| Weekday mornings, Pacific | 8-10a PT () |
M-Th | November 3-6 December 1-4 |
| Weekday afternoons, Eastern | 4-6p ET () |
M-Th | November 10-14 December 8-11 |
| Weekday afternoons, Pacific | 4-6p PT () |
M-Th | November 10-14 December 8-11 |
| Weekday mornings, Singapore | 8-10a SGT () |
M-Th | November 17-20 December 15-18 |
| Weekday mornings, Central Europe | 8-10a CET () |
M-Th | November 17-20 December 15-18 |
| Weekend half-days, USA | 10a-2p CT () |
Sa-Su | November 8-9 December 6-7 December 20-21 |
Please contact me via email, phone, or text to discuss custom scheduling for private groups of 4+, including teams, corporate, on-site in-person, and full-day (8+ hour) trainings: , .
Prerequisites
No technical experience necessary.
Extensive academic and industry references will be provided.
Full, active participation is expected throughout.
Non-designers without experience in the studio critique model of providing and receiving constructive feedback in the workshop setting will have pre-reading.
Target audience
Designers (especially those with solely 2D design experience), researchers, product managers, and other non-engineering professionals who need to design a hardware or software product where technology is a critical aspect, and who want to learn a framework for doing so.
A private, professional training from Tertile, LLC principal Vitorio Miliano
Tertile, LLC conducts research, prototypes, and training for new works. Recent projects include workflows for local, offline, text-based audio editing; implementation of LLM precursors for literary/creative works; and design and development of custom AI tools for conference workshops.
Vitorio Miliano has over a decade of experience in product management and software development, and fifteen years in research and design. He applies interdisciplinary design and research methods to rigorously solve business and product problems; and has a track record of successful, evidence-based, outcomes-focused decisions at the program and product levels.
Prior to Tertile, Vitorio Miliano has launched emerging technology applications such as a healthcare news briefing on the Amazon Alexa platform, and a 3D environment used by NASA to visualize the International Space Station. He founded the user research practice at The Advisory Board Company; and the industry-leading developer relations program at Epic Games, makers of Fortnite. He conducted a multi-year technical and legal analysis of the risks of reverse-engineering, presented at an industry security conference; and a multi-year analysis of the professional needs of design and development communities, presented across two issues of an academic journal.
Frequently asked questions
Billing
Trainings booked via credit card are not charged until the participant joins the training.
Materials
All original materials provided to participants are licensed by Tertile, LLC for their private, personal use, and are not to be shared or redistributed. Licenses are revoked in the event of a post-training refund or chargeback, and all materials must be destroyed.
No-shows, late starts, or early departures
As a private, professional training in the studio model, failure to attend a booked training, joining a booked training late, or departing a booked training early, has a significant negative impact on both your learning and the ability of other participants to learn. Any participant with a scheduling situation not communicated to the instructor in advance may be subject to penalties.
Cohorts
“Cohort-based” learning platforms can have benefits for instructors, but have drawbacks for professionals looking to learn in a private fashion with other professionals. Your next project won't wait for a six-week cohort that doesn’t start for another two months. You won’t get the same kind of attention in a 100-person, 50-person, or even 20-person cohort as you would in private instruction. You won’t receive the same quality of critique from students and other non-professionals on a public learning platform, as you would from other professionals in private instruction. You may not be able to stay anonymous taking a cohort-based course, as it benefits the platform to advertise names, headshots, titles, and employers of participants.
Terms of service and privacy policy
Payment for and participation in training is governed by Tertile, LLC's terms of service (PDF) and privacy policy (PDF).