A guest lecture in the Master’s Degree in Marketing and Communication at the University of Barcelona, covering user experience, conversion rate optimization, dark patterns, project management, and how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way products get designed and built.
University of Barcelona, Master in Marketing and Communication
With students from the Master in Marketing and Communication at the University of Barcelona.
Turning user research into measurable conversion gains.
Where persuasive design ends and manipulation begins.
Running design and development work as a discipline, not an afterthought.
I was invited to lecture in the Master’s Degree in Marketing and Communication at the University of Barcelona, teaching a hands-on session built around the practical, cross-functional skill set that eCommerce and digital marketing roles increasingly require: user experience research, conversion rate optimization, and the judgment to manage the tools and workflows now used to design and build digital products.
One block was dedicated to dark patterns: the manipulative UX techniques, confirmshaming, hidden costs, forced continuity, that push short-term conversion numbers up while quietly eroding trust. We walked through real examples and drew a practical line between persuasive design that respects the user and design that exploits cognitive biases to extract a click or a payment.
We also covered project management as a design and development discipline in its own right: scoping a UX or CRO initiative, sequencing research, design and testing, and keeping stakeholders aligned so that good ideas actually ship instead of stalling in review.
The final block looked at how artificial intelligence is changing the day-to-day work of designers and marketers, from AI-assisted wireframing and rapid prototyping to using AI coding assistants to turn a design decision directly into a working interface, compressing a process that used to take weeks into hours.
“Good UX and real conversion gains come from the same place: understanding what a person actually needs in the moment they need it. AI just closes the gap between that understanding and a working product.”
Victor de la Fuente
Fifteen-plus years leading eCommerce strategy sit directly behind this course: the same UX, CRO and AI-assisted workflows that move a company’s conversion rate are what future marketers need to understand before they run a campaign, a landing page or a product launch of their own.
Leading eCommerce and social media strategy, now translated into a hands-on university curriculum.
Conversion rate optimization gets a bad reputation whenever it slides into dark patterns, and I think that reputation is earned every time a team treats a short-term lift as the only metric that matters. The teams I trust are the ones that optimize for a user who understands what they agreed to, not one who was tricked into it, because the second kind of win always shows up later as churn, chargebacks or a damaged brand.
AI raises the stakes on both sides of that line. The same tools that let a small team prototype and ship a better, clearer checkout flow in an afternoon can just as easily be used to mass-produce manipulative interfaces at a scale no human design team ever could. That is exactly why I spend as much time in this course on ethics and project discipline as I do on the technology itself: the skill that will not go out of date is knowing which changes deserve to ship.
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