My background

I’m the Head of Design at Xceed. We are a small team, nine people total, including me. Currently, we’re growing fast. Two of my teammates, Annabella and Valeria, use Uxcel as their learning platform. Annabella works in marketing and content design, while Valeria is our Senior Product Designer. The rest of the team uses other resources like Built for Mars by Peter Ramsey, mostly through personal accounts.

We’re not a big company, we’re around 60 or 70 employees, and we’re at that stage where we want to grow faster. We’re validating a lot of different ideas, both with our brand and with clients. Because of that, we’ve created a department that blends marketing and design instead of keeping them in separate silos. We try to build cross-functional teams that can communicate better and move faster, especially since we’re a staff augmentation company.

My challenge

To support our team’s growth and adaptability, I needed to:

  • Find a credible certification path for design: Design certifications are not as straightforward as tech ones like AWS or Azure. It was hard to find something that truly fit.

  • Build personalized learning paths: I needed to understand how to support my team’s development. The Skill Graph helped me see where each person needed to grow.

  • Upskill across disciplines: Annabella comes from a marketing background but now works closely with the design team. Valeria wants to transition into product management. Everyone needed targeted learning.

  • Assign and track learning efficiently: Every month, I assign one course per person based on their Skill Graph results. All courses must align with their goals and company's needs.

Finding my solution

I’ve been using Uxcel since the early days, maybe four or five years ago. I was an early adopter. Back then, I had a subscription, and I loved the platform. When we needed certifications at Xceed, I remembered Uxcel and recommended it to the team. We started with a free trial, and Annabella and Valeria really liked it.

The Skill Graph has been the most useful feature for us. It helps me understand how to help my team with their learning paths. Annabella is learning content design and UX writing. Valeria is focused on product management, especially metrics and things like that. I assign them specific courses, and if they want to take others, we can talk about it.

I really like the new courses, especially the AI courses. That’s what we’re most interested in right now.

I’m more of a book person, not a fan of video courses. Before Uxcel, I worked at Platzi, which is one of the biggest tech companies in Latin America. I had already taken most of their UX and UI courses, and I wanted something different. Platzi was all video-based, and I wanted to learn from another source.

Uxcel had a yearly promo at the time, so I joined again. It was really fast, kind of like Duolingo. I could learn from my iPad while sitting in a café or at home, much easier than juggling Figma on one screen and a video course on the other.

The effect on my career

Since we started using Uxcel, collaboration in the team has improved a lot. A few months ago, I had to be the bridge between team members to get a project done. But now, especially with Valeria and Annabella using Uxcel, everyone is more collaborative. They each have a learning path and understand how to apply their knowledge.

Another big impact is ownership. Because they’re learning new things, they’re taking more initiative. Annabella, for example, said she wanted to apply her new skills by launching campaigns or helping with UX writing for clients. She even suggested creating an outlet for our products, which is something free that we can offer to clients. That way, we can engage them or maybe get hired for new services.

Advice to other professionals

Yes, I would definitely recommend Uxcel. In fact, I already did! Recently, I spoke at a college conference here in Oaxaca and recommended the platform.

To me, Uxcel means concise and precise knowledge. There’s not a lot of trash content; what you get is high quality and straight to the point. The Skill Graph helps you know exactly where to improve. It gives you a vision of what you need to work on to become the professional you want to be.

You can go straight to the content byte you need and remind yourself of something important. In a world full of overwhelming information, that’s really valuable to me.