Currently, I work as Director of User Experience at the Information Technology Services of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) — the most prestigious Portuguese school of engineering — where I’m responsible for three units: a Multimedia and E-learning Unit, a HelpDesk Unit and a Microcomputer Unit. My work at IST mainly involves management, user experience, customer service, productivity methods and workflow optimization.

Previously, I worked as Chief Executive Officer at Enough Pepper, mostly know for developing Survs, an online survey application, highly acclaimed by the international media (such as the Washington Post and Techcrunch) and users. Building an award-winning project (considered the best application of its kind by .net magazine) like Survs was a fantastic experience. I had the luck to manage an awesome team in a totally self-financed project that is still considered a case study by the big players in the space.

Before that, I worked as a consultant of Internet Banking on the Web Site Management team of Millennium bcp — the largest private bank in Portugal. This was my first experience in the corporate world, I had to wear many hats (web designer, content manager, information architect, …), which was not only very rewarding but also essential to building my holistic view of the web.

I’m a very active promoter of the user experience field, always eager to mentor and help newcomers to the craft. I founded the Portuguese User Experience Network (REPUX), published several articles about user experience and I’m the curator of the design patterns library of Instituto Superior Técnico.

My passion for research began during my degree in sociology, but I soon started to open my toolbox to other fields of knowledge, like user and market research. This approach is paralleled in the way I try to extend the disciplines of user experience beyond their traditional use, often combining them with management practices and productivity methods.

I’m available for freelance work through SensesLab, a design strategy and user experience collective which I co-founded. We’ve been working with clients like Vodafone, Randstad and Seedrs (this year winner of the London Web Summit contest), among others.