Hello! I’m Alejandra.
Welcome to my portfolio.
I'm a UX Researcher and Graphic Designer based in Barcelona.
I research human needs and design solutions around them.
I start with people.
Most projects start with the problem. I start earlier: locating what users need, even if they don’t have the words to name it yet. That research defines the design challenge.
I've done it where it's hardest.
15 years across entrepreneurship, social impact design, and NGO work (including 5 years researching and designing for activists, human rights defenders, and communities operating under political risk across 19 countries). That context doesn't leave your practice.
I understand how research connects to product decisions.
PM-trained and certified. I know how features get prioritised, how roadmaps get built, and how to frame a research finding so it changes what gets built, not just what gets reported.
Work
Service Design & Research
Inspiratorio’s Learning Experience (2020-25)
A training platform for Latin American activists operating under high stress, high expectations, and the weight of real-stakes work. The challenge? Design an accessible online experience where users could feel safe enough to learn and experiment with an innovative approach.
OYE! (2016-22)
An online community designed for people who believed in gender equality but rejected the feminist movement. The challenge? Design a behavior change experience that meets people where they are (not where feminists wanted them to be).
Let Yourself Go! (2015)
[Master’s Final Project] A platform for young Latin American women navigating sexual health information. The barrier wasn't access. It was shame.
→ Project page coming soon
Product Thinking
The AI was wrong. The product said nothing. (2025)
An independent PM case study on why ChatGPT Plus users were churning. The finding: not that the AI hallucinated, but that the product left users alone with the consequences.
Personal Initiatives
ReCrea (2011-12)
Co-founded an advocay collective of Colombian digital artists whose livelihoods were threatened by copyright legislation that didn't know the difference between theft and remix. We took the argument to Congress.
Ugh! del Futuro (2013-15)
I founded a branding studio and civic design lab for the creative sector, held together by one argument: frustration with your city is only useful if you do something about it.
333 Mermeladas (2014)
A crowdfunding project built to fund a transatlantic move. Concept, production, identity, photography, and sales were entirely in-house. We hit the target.
Web design and online marketing
Inspiratorio CommsLab series (2020-22)
Landing pages designed for trainings and conferences targeted at Latin American human rights activists. Every event reached capacity within minutes.
→ Project page coming soon
Brand strategy and visual identity
GuoquiToqui (2013)
An educational children's content studio with bigger ambitions than their brand was communicating. The design challenge was building an identity flexible enough to hold both: joyful children's programming and documentaries about Colombian social problems told with humor.
Plan9Media (2013)
A production studio tired of needing personal connections to get commissions. The brief was to build a brand strong enough to do the talking. The answer was "master storytellers": a positioning built around what only they could claim.
Raiz Mestiza - Lili del Sol (2019)
Lili del Sol is a Colombian musician based in Valencia, Spain. Her “Reiz Mestiza” album is an exploration of both Latin American music and her own identity. The album artwork was designed as an explorer’s log of her journey into her Colombian and Latin American roots, using collage as a metaphor for "mestizaje" (cultural mixing).
Want a deep dive into my skills?
Here are some case studies about my projects. Take a look! 👇
About me
I grew up in a city and country that everyone kept saying was broken: Bogotá, Colombia. While in university studying graphic design, social media arrived, and suddenly an entire generation was using the internet to demand something better. Occupy Wall Street. Los Indignados. The Arab Spring. In Colombia, the “One million voices against FARC” mobilization. I was inspired. I started exploring how design could support social change.
The answer started to form in an unlikely place: advertising. While working as a planner, I learned the role psychology plays in how marketers persuade us to do one thing over another. I then found the First Things First Manifesto, a manifesto written by designer Ken Garland in 1964 that argued that the greatest effort of those working in design was being wasted on consumer noise. There were better things worth using those skills for. I've never stopped believing that.
Fifteen years and a service design master’s degree later, I'm still asking the same question I asked in my 20s: if we're going to use design to influence how people behave, what's worth doing it for? That question has taken me from branding to NGO work, from behaviour change research to learning experience design, from Bogotá to Barcelona.
The discipline changes. The question hasn't.
Now I’m setting my aims at the tech sector and AI-powered products, especially those with edge cases affecting vulnerable users.