2017–2023 · Porto, Portugal

The New Digital School

TNDS was an international digital design school that ran between 2017-2023. It aimed to rethink the way digital design topics, such as UX and Product Design, were being delivered in high-education.

Students and teachers laughing together in the school's studio in Porto.

It proudly announced itself as a no-curriculum, no-assessment, no-teachers kind of school. Instead it worked in an open-studio environment and provided the students with masterclasses and learning session from industry leaders such as Vitaly Friedman, Verne Ho or Aaron Walter, and live projects with real companies. The main aim was to empower new designers with the best and most pragmatical sense of how design was applied in the real world.

Printed TNDS learning-path charts with hand-drawn lines plotting each student's progress from the guidance stage to the independence stage, month by month, towards roles such as UX Designer and Front-end Developer
The TNDS Learning Framework, 2017

In the years it ran, TNDS trained 30+ people in 5 full-time cohorts (from 10 countries, and 19 different professional backgrounds), as well as dozens more in it’s community workshops.

TNDS Post Mortem

“When we set out to create The New Digital School, our goal was twofold.

→ Firstly, we wanted to offer a new learning alternative to anyone starting a career in UX. This was a response to the disconnect between academia and how digital design was applied at the time.

→ Secondly, we aimed to use this as an experiment to see how we could create a high-quality and efficient learning experience in general. This was based on our past experiences with optimising higher education.

Although it started as a project to improve learning efficiency, it soon became clear that it had significant personal and social impact in the people at and around the school.

From the early days of setting up a new school studio inside a fish market to teaching online during post-pandemic times, we always made a conscious effort to document as much of our work as possible. Now, we want to share our knowledge with others, hoping it will be useful.

This document will not cover everything you need to run a similar school but it includes reports from our experiments, lessons learned, and intimate reports that you probably won’t find elsewhere. I hope you find some value in it.”

Hope you learn something with it. ❤️
— Tiago Pedras

In The story, you’ll find a detailed summary of the years before and while the TNDS programs ran. You’ll also find lessons and relevant articles in chronological order that you click in to better understand the reality at the time.

Read the full story

In their words

  • I'm very proud to have been part of the first class of TNDS. In an era where the academic world is outdated (specially talking about design), schools like TNDS show us how it should be. I learned so many both hard and soft skills throughout that year, that after 10 months I felt honestly confident and prepared to start working as a digital product designer.

    Ana TNDS1, Digital Product Designer and former graphic designer 2017 in the story LinkedIn
  • TNDS singlehandedly launched my career as a UX designer in less than a year. Prior to joining the school, I had no idea as to what UI or UX even meant. Not only did the school educate me about the various facets and fields of design through erudition and client projects, it also equipped me with the skills needed to lead a successful design career.

    Harita TNDS2, UX Writer and former lawyer 2018 in the story LinkedInRead more about Harita’s path
  • TNDS is not just one more course out there. It’s a fundamentally different approach to learning UX design. It focuses not only on theory and hard skills, but also on setting a right mindset. How to think differently, question everything and justify decisions. And Tiago is veeeery good at teaching those things. Also the program gave me real practical experience and helped to build confidence for starting a new career.

    Julia TNDS4, Product Designer and former marketeer 2020 to 2023 in the story LinkedIn