Ways WE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR life
We help people create and achieve meaningful, happier and more successful careers. Our unique method connects the Design Thinking approach with the science of happiness, with tools and practical classes to reflect, explore, create and experiment career possibilities. We offer guidance in the following formats:
One-on-One
In Groups
Our workshops are carefully crafted to empower individuals in creating happier lives and fulfilling careers. Through a unique blend of Design Thinking mindset, Sprints, and the Science of Happiness, we bring people together in practical activities that foster self-awareness, goal setting, career exploration, and experiential learning. With a comprehensive six-step approach and a toolkit of powerful resources, we equip participants with career superpowers, enhancing their clarity, efficiency, and agility.
For Teenagers
Our projects are customized to meet your needs
Online and in-person workshops
Live and interactive sessions for small groups (12 max. participants).
Online and in-person mentorship programs
Pack of sessions with tools and exclusive private guidance.
Language
All our programs are held both in English and Portuguese version.
Get in touch
A 6-week program with daily follow-up. Learn to create and build a meaningful career, with clarity, efficiency and agility.
Self awareness
Creativity
Career
Happiness
our Expertise
Design Thinking
The design thinking approach contributes with tools to better understand problems, bringing the focus to empathy with the user, prototyping and iterations between analyzes and results.
The Science of Happiness
The study of happiness helps us to develop self-awareness for career and daily life. We use scientifically proven exercises to design meaningful and successful opportunities.
Design Sprint
The Sprint brings optimization to the process, connecting research, development and testing efficiently. This prevents future problems and improve solutions in less time.
Design a
happier life
Become a creative problem-solving expert and gain freedom in your career. Learn to create and build a happier life, with more clarity, efficiency and agility.
Our toolkit is a pack of cards with step-by-step activities for you to discover new paths, putting into practice the career and life you want.
Portuguese version. For English version, please contact us.
some of our projects
Workshop for School - Elementary and Middle School based in Porto Alegre, Brazil
We developed and facilitated workshops for kids, teenagers and teachers. With playful and engaging activities, the students learned science-proven tools to cope with difficult times and live a joyful, meaningful life.
Design Sprint for coaching app, in Oslo/Norway
We participated as designers and had training on Design Sprint in a workshop for the development of an application focused on coaching professionals, with Lope.
Online workshops and mentorship for professionals and institutions
Development, workshops facilitation and mentorship to help people design meaningful and successful careers. Some of our clients: Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Marie Curie Alumni Association.
Portuguese & English version.
In-person workshops and mentorship for professionals
Development, workshops facilitation and mentorship to help people design their careers. Some of our clients are from the United States, India, Norway, Germany and Brazil.
Portuguese & English version.
Workshop Climate Change EIT - The Journey, Trondheim, Norway
We developed and facilitated a Design Thinking workshop for the largest climate innovation summer school in the world, Eit Climate-Kic – The Journey 2019, with the School of Entrepreneurship NTNU / Engage. The meeting aimed to increase the connection between the participants, brainstorming and prototyping ideas for the projects.
Happy Career Toolkit
A deck of cards with a set of tools to create and achieve a happier career where you find meaning and success.
Online courses to design a happier and successful career
Recorded classes to help people design their careers.
Portuguese & English version.
Design Thinking Workshops to NTNU course, in Trondheim/Norway
During one semester, we facilitated workshops for the NTNU Design Thinking class. Students learned the Design Thinking approach, developing projects to help city students be happier.
Design Thinking Workshop for SUBPRO, in Trondheim/ Norway
We developed and facilitated a Design Thinking workshop for SUBPRO program (Center for Innovation Based Research in subsea production and processing – Department of Chemical Engineering, NTNU). This meeting aimed to create a greater connection between students and to develop paths towards sustainable solutions in the area of oil.
ARTICLES ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
(written by our customers)
10 steps to define your career and re-discover your happiness
“I attended a career development workshop organized by the MCAA which was moderated by Júlia Müller Dias. Here’s what I gathered from this workshop and hope it helps all the readers too.”
Ashish Avasthi
Marie Sklodowska-Curie early-stage researcher currently pursuing his Ph.D. at BIONAND, University of Malaga, Spain
When Science Meets Design: A workshop with scientists and designers
“Scientists are experts in their research, and sometimes it blinds them to see other career options and possibilities that are one step away from being achieved. Focused on data analysis, technical writing and regulations, some days with imagination and ludic activities can take them out of their comfort zone and help them imagine possibilities not thought of before. I am convinced this workshop was a great initiative from the Brazilian MCAA Chapter to provide us with an effective toolbox to clarify some roads we were afraid to take because of the darkness we were facing.”
Ana Paula Mendonça
Editorial Board Member, MCAA Newsletter
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
“Peculiar Design team has helped me significantly in running workshops tutoring and giving student feedback in the Design Thinking course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Júlia facilitated the workshop and the way, she interacts with students is highly commendable. She masters the design thinking process and as such managed to keep the students engaged and motivated. Last, but not least, she is a great person to work with; reliable, responsive and pro-active.”
“I was impressed by Júlia’s ability to quickly appropriate a very technical subject
and understand the specificities of the environment we’ve been studying. She
remarkably took on the entire field study in Brazil and demonstrated impressive skills
in ethnographic research. The research protocol we set up was demanding and she
managed to apply it with brilliantly.
Her observations of the tools usage were very accurate, sharp and helped us to
identify and gather very valuable findings. Júlia has a very good sense of situations
and good researcher reflexes. She conducted the interviews with a lot of intelligence
and empathy and was really careful about investigating and understanding each
point of view in a situation.
Furthermore, it was very easy to work with her. She was super involved in the mission
and was super reliable and available. I considered her a key element of my team and
I’m really looking forward working with her and Peculiar Design team again.”
“I had the opportunity and satisfaction of having the Peculiar team helping me with research and design on a project of mine. The dedication, mobilization, detailing capacity, and speed with which they performed this service was impressive. The involvement and knowledge gave me enormous confidence in the results of the work.”
“Julia was my colleague for 6 months while she stayed in Norway. She was part of our team in Løpe and did an amazing job as a designer, design thinker, design sprinter and creative. We collaborated on a project – Life Sprint – about helping individuals designing their lives. She is such a happy and nice human being, and she have a lot of great ideas and passion for what she do. I highly recommend working with Júlia.”
“We had the pleasure of having Julia visiting us for about six months. Her workshop on design thinking was a great success. The students really liked it. We will would love her to come back again and give more workshops with Peculiar Design team.”
“We hired Peculiar to carry out a strategic research consultancy in the area of food, aiming to identify aspects that would make it possible to expand our offers with Grêmio fans, at the Porto Alegre Arena. From the beginning, they were curious and receptive to the peculiarities that involve the segment, demonstrating a knowledge of the national and international market, always respecting the idiosyncrasy of the place. The result was excellent and extremely detailed work that identified mistakes and successes of the team that performs the service, in addition to sincere testimonials, and experiences of fans in different areas of the stadium. In 2019, we held Copa América games with in-house catering, for the first time, based on some premises defined in the work done by Peculiar.”
about us
Peculiar was born from the desire to build a better world through design. Founded in 2014 by a group of designers with extensive experience in the national and international market, it has been developing projects with a great diversity of clients, partnerships with SEBRAE and with universities.
Currently, it is coordinated by one of its founders, Júlia Müller Dias.
Júlia Müller Dias
CEO and Happiness Designer
Product designer, specializing in strategic design and the science of happiness. Julia’s work focuses on helping people find the job they want and build a happier day to day. She has worked with several international companies, including Sanremo, Termolar, Unknowns (France), NTNU and Løpe Design (Norway), and as a partner/founder of several startups. She is currently a partner at Peculiar Design and a professor at Enihilo (Frankfurt).
julia@designpeculiar.com
Roberto Faller
Experience Designer
Combining design and research to reveal the personal and human side of our everyday experiences, Roberto enjoys creating products, games, and services that engage audiences in a meaningful way. He holds a PhD in Design from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he has worked on large-scale projects for various initiatives, including incubator spaces and cancer prevention services. Roberto honed his analytical and leadership skills by earning a BS in Industrial Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Materials Engineering. A former professor of product design, Roberto skillfully applies user-centered design principles to develop and test new concepts and bring new ideas to life.
roberto@designpeculiar.com
Johnny Nolen
Facilitator and Event Manager
Striking the perfect balance between data-driven and people-focused, Johnny strives to elevate those around him through human-centered design. Johnny has 17 years of business leadership experience and currently serves as President of the Board for Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County (CAPS), a local chapter of a national anti-poverty non-profit. With a background in biochemistry, Johnny has a passion for building dynamic, integrated systems that are effective and intuitive to manage. His proven operational strategy ensures organizational longevity by championing financial and ecological sustainability and prioritizing employee-positive workspaces. Johnny is also a board game designer and hopes to create experiences that bring friends and family to together in this digital world.
johnny@designpeculiar.com
Pavlo Bazilinskyy
Developer and Data Expert
Pavlo Bazilinskyy is an assistant professor at TU Eindhoven focusing on AI-driven interaction between automated vehicles and other road users. He finished his PhD at TU Delft in auditory feedback for automated driving as a Marie Curie Fellow, where he also worked as a postdoc. He was the head of data research at SD-Insights. Pavlo is a treasurer of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) and was a director of the Research and Innovation unit of the Erasmus Mundus Association (EMA)
pavlo@designpeculiar.com
Marco Masia
Training expert
Expert of Academic Entrepreneurship, Marco is technology transfer manager at the University of Vienna. He is also founder and managing director of MARMAS GmbH, a company working at the intersection between research, innovation, and policy. Earlier he worked as Executive Coordinator of the Initiative for Science in Europe, and as Assistant Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Sassari, Italy. He holds a PhD in Physics (Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain) and an executive MBA (Frankfurt School for Finance & Management, Germany).
marco@designpeculiar.com
Work
with us
We are always looking for professionals interested in building a better future for everyone. Do you identify with this? Send a text or video telling a little about your motivations and what you have been doing to put this into practice.
Let’s build a happier future?
GET in touch
Fill out the form below or send and email to julia@designpeculiar.com