Yevhen Holota
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Design Mentoring

Teaching designers to think, not just to design

Education
Design Mentoring
Role: Mentor, curriculum designerFormat: Online and offline, groups and 1:1Scope: Curricula, reviews, webinars, learning materials
  • I started mentoring almost as soon as I started designing. After my first design course in 2015, the school’s founder asked me back to mentor the next group.
  • Reviewing student work grew into years of teaching: curricula, webinars, assignments and learning materials.
  • More than 700 students went through my groups and 1:1 sessions, from first time in Figma to working Junior and Middle designers.
The path I built
  1. Instruction
  2. Practice
  3. Understanding
  4. Reasoning
  5. Independence
Problem

Students learn tools, but the job needs thinking

Most beginners arrive asking “What should I do?”. Knowing Figma or CJM doesn’t help when the task is messy and nobody tells you the steps.

  • Theory, theory, theory, exam: by the time people practise, they’ve forgotten why.
  • Two students in one group need opposite things, but get the same lesson.
  • One big critique at the end comes too late to act on.
  • Too much criticism at once makes people afraid of the next try.
  • People treat a method as the process, not as a tool for a specific decision.
Research

I learned to see where each person really is, not just their level

  • Reviewed hundreds of student projects and saw where people got stuck again and again.
  • Looked at six dimensions per student: product thinking, visual craft, tools, UX, independence and communication.
  • Tried different formats over the years and kept what moved people forward.

Insights

01

Thinking is the core skill

Turning chaos into structure, a problem, options and a decision you can explain.

02

Seeing comes before theory

People understand a principle once they’ve noticed the difference themselves.

03

One level isn’t enough

Strong UI can come with weak product thinking, and vice versa.

04

Motivation is fragile

Feedback must be specific, but not crushing.

Hypotheses

  1. H1

    If practice comes first (about 20% theory, 80% doing), people understand the theory because they have something to attach it to.

    Curriculum
  2. H2

    If each person gets a next step sized for where they are, they keep moving instead of getting stuck.

    Strategies
  3. H3

    If feedback is a loop of small reviews, not one final verdict, people act on it right away.

    Feedback
  4. H4

    If feedback always says what works, what to fix and what improved, people stay motivated to try again.

    Motivation
Decisions

How I set up the teaching

DecisionInstead ofWhy
Do, see, understand, do again
Lectures, then an exam
Theory sticks when there’s practice under it
Show the difference first, explain later
A typography lecture for a weak UI
By V4 people see the difference themselves
A strategy per starting point
One path for the whole group
A beginner needs momentum; a Middle needs a wider system
Short reviews in Figma and on video, also shared with the group
One big critique at the end
Small steps are easy to act on, and others learn too
Compare with the person’s own last version
Compare with other students
Progress stays visible and motivating

There’s no universal process. With experienced students, the question moved from “what’s the right method?” to “what do I need to learn to make this decision?”.

Programme

How the programme worked

What I taught

Tools change. The ability to think stays.

Everything from UI to career, held together by product thinking.

Product thinking
  • UX
  • UI
  • Research
  • Information architecture
  • Figma
  • Prototyping
  • Motion
  • Design systems
  • Portfolio
  • Communication
  • Career
  1. Chaos
  2. Structure
  3. Problem
  4. Information
  5. Options
  6. Decision
  7. Solution
H1 · Curriculum

Do, see, understand, do again

A course is a product too: users, flow, pace and drop-off points.

20%Theory
80%Practice
  1. Do
  2. See
  3. Understand
  4. Do again
  1. 01

    Tools

    • Frames
    • Text
    • Color
    • Figma basics
  2. 02

    Visual craft

    • Composition
    • Typography
    • Spacing
    • Visual hierarchy
  3. 03

    Interface

    • Components
    • Auto Layout
    • Screens
    • Responsive layouts
  4. 04

    Experience

    • User flows
    • Information architecture
    • Scenarios
    • Prototypes
  5. 05

    Product thinking

    • Research
    • Evidence
    • Decomposition
    • Decisions
    • Metrics
  6. 06

    Professional practice

    • Handoff
    • Communication
    • Presentation
    • Portfolio
    • CV and interviews
H2 · Strategies

Different starting points, different next steps

Knowing the gap is half the job. The other half is a step the person can actually take.

High motivation, low experience

Give momentum

  1. Reference
  2. Reproduce
  3. Result
  4. Questions
  5. Experiment

Repeat a result one to one. The fear of the tool goes away, then independence comes step by step.

Low autonomy

Make the next step smaller

  1. Button
  2. Component
  3. Section
  4. Page
  5. Flow

Smaller scope, clearer tasks, more short tries, so the person keeps moving.

Strong UI, weak product thinking

Ask why

  1. Why?
  2. For whom?
  3. What happens before?
  4. What happens after?
  5. What supports this?

Questions instead of answers, and taking apart real products to see the decisions behind screens.

Middle designer

Widen the system

  1. Design systems
  2. Development
  3. Metrics
  4. Research
  5. Handoff

Not “draw better”, but prototyping, motion, HTML/CSS/JS basics and talking to engineers.

H3 · Feedback

Several short reviews instead of one final critique

Each round small enough to act on, each review building on the last.

  1. Attempt
  2. Feedback
  3. Reflection
  4. Iteration
  5. Review
01

Written

Comments right in Figma, next to the element.

02

Video

5 to 30 minute reviews that show the reasoning, not just the verdict.

03

Iterative

Short reviews along the way, not one at the end.

04

Shared

Students learned from reviews of each other’s work too.

H1 · Practice first

Let people see the difference before explaining it

Change this, move that, align these. V2, V3, V4, and then the theory.

  1. Correction
  2. Repetition
  3. Pattern recognition
  4. Explanation
  5. Principle
  6. Independent use
H4 · Motivation

Fix the work, protect the motivation

Specific enough to act on, never a stream of criticism.

  1. 01What worksSo the person knows what to keep.
  2. 02What to improveSpecific, and only what matters now.
  3. 03What got betterCompared with their own last version, not with others.
Result

The real result is a different way of thinking

  • 700+ students over 10+ years, online, offline and 1:1.
  • People moved from “what should I do?” to explaining the problem, the options and their choice.
700+
students online, offline and 1:1
10+ years
in design education
Beginner → Middle
different experience levels
Before
“I designed 10 screens.”
After
“I noticed users struggle with this flow, read reviews and discussions, tried a few approaches and picked this one because…”
  • OutputReasoning
  • InstructionsDecisions
  • ScreensScenarios
  • MethodsTools
  • ExecutionOwnership

Many students went on to their first design jobs. That’s their achievement. My part was helping them learn how to think about the work.

Conclusions

The best result of mentoring is when the mentor isn’t needed anymore

  • Teaching made me understand my own decisions: if I can’t explain it simply, I don’t get it yet.
  • Give direction, not answers. Adapt to the person. Question the tools.
  • The same habits now shape how I work with product teams and how I grow other designers.