Instructor Profile: Burak Dogramaci

Tell us a little about yourself and your current work outside of Experience Haus? 

I am an entrepreneur and design studio owner based in London. I established Component Product Foundry in 2018. What started as a solo consultancy grew into a creative UX studio working in partnership with larger agencies to deliver UX projects for healthcare, finance, retail, automotive and e-commerce fields.

I started my career as a customer experience researcher in 2014, helping a boutique service design firm called Ethnogram after getting my master’s degree in marketing communications. During that time I also started learning to code, design and build websites as a self-taught freelancer. These two career paths turned out not to be so different when I discovered with UX design was and how I could apply them together for my clients moving forward.

My entrepreneurial journey has provided me with many valuable lessons and different aspects I need to think about when dealing with businesses. I use the UX skill set I’ve cultivated through years of experience to navigate through this journey, always keeping an open mind to learn new perspectives and find various ways to overcome obstacles.

Did you have a specific goal you wanted to achieve before you started teaching at Experience Haus? Do you think your time here so far has kept you on the right track?

I have previously mentored, taught occasionally and helped others with my knowledge, but students I’ve met in Experience Haus allowed me to understand their learning journey across a longer period of time and track their progress, assisting and coaching them session after session to help them build the right mental models around their creative output and thinking processes.

What is your teaching philosophy?

I am a practical and resourceful learner who can find information quickly and I intend to teach my students to be as resourceful as possible, supporting them to develop the mental pathways to get unstuck, think of solutions on the go and find necessary information to help them make the right decisions or test their assumptions.

I believe that learning requires different modes of thinking and experience in implementation, and therefore should involve more than just lectures in a classroom. I prefer combining my lessons with hands-on experiences, and small workshops to allow experimentation and discussions to keep the students engaged, fostering their confidence to self-express and build their design intelligence to advocate and express their ideas.

What do you enjoy most about teaching at Experience Haus?

As a self-taught entrepreneur, I know the importance of having real-life experience while honing your skills, and that the reality is often different from what is taught in learning environments.

The real-life startup projects come to Experience Haus from startups or accelerator partnerships and guiding students through understanding those real challenges might be the most exciting part.

How would you describe your dream classroom?

A dream classroom is one where learning can adapt to student needs. Every student has a unique goal, learning pace and ideal learning experience they want to have – as an instructor, I enjoy adjusting how I deliver knowledge to fit their preferences and create a responsive learning environment.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I expect our understanding of design to change drastically in the upcoming years due to how the industry is changing with AI, the productisation of visual design output as well as the decoupling of UX design and research operations to focus more on strategic decision-making and data analysis for product decisions.

Within this landscape in mind, I see myself and my studio helping clients navigate through identifying their customer’s needs in a volatile future while continuing to share my insights and industry experience to encourage future designers to solve harder problems and inspire them to grow their definition of design to cover further ground than mere visual implementation.

How do you keep up to date with your industry and the courses you teach?

I curate the knowledge I consume diligently by following industry thought leaders, learning from academic and industry experts in addition to publications, podcasts and reports, while growing my library of design and business books.

To keep my mind fresh and open to new ideas of the future, I follow different industries and gather design inspiration from any resource I can find, from print publications to alternative cultures.

Get in touch with Burak

linkedin.com/in/burakdogramaci/