About
Transformation is usually painful and the fear of change can limit profound innovation.
Also, unconscious transformation can lead to futures that nobody wants or needs, like highly stressed or disengaged employees, disconnected partners and customer apathy, while social, emotional, and environmental impacts are left out of the equation.
Cocoon exists to address the natural fear of the unknown. To stimulate creativity, make the transformation process a systemic one, with meaning, sustainable, and pleasurable for all.
How we make it happen
We believe in three essential elements for a successful business transformation.
Process
A process of transformation with 5 stages. Starts with intention setting and ends with flying.
Environment
A comfortable environment set upon co-creation and collaboration principles.
Talent
Is the potencial of transformation that blooms when it has the right environment and process.
Cocoon process
In business transformation, as we enter the cocoon, we need to set a common intention and then face reality as it is, by listening to customers, employees and all the stakeholders directly or indirectly affected by the business. Then it’s time to drop old products, services and business models and give way to a new vision of a purposeful and profitable business that delivers sustainable experiences for all.
Setting
Set a common intention among key players.
Feeling
Sense global pain points, pleasure points and root impediments.
Cocooning
Let go of what is and let the new emerge.
Emerging
Prototype and crystalize the new vision.
Flying
Implement, measure and co-evolve a sustainable solution.
Cocoon environment
Cocoon is a nurturing and favourable environment for transformation to occur. We believe that the customer experience will only change if the organisation changes itself. So we carefully design every aspect of this environment to involve all business and project stakeholders to make co-creation possible.
Talent
We are a team of multidisciplinary and highly experienced eco-centered designers, ready to facilitate and lead the full design process, from systemic design to user interface design.


Anabela Fernandes
Managing Partner
Systems Designer
Transformation Facilitator
With a long career dedicated to create meaningful experiences through design and leadership in the corporate world, she gradually became an expert in co-creation, customer behaviour and organisational engagement.
Extroverted, with an incessant creative spirit, when she’s not working or giving big parties to her friends, she plays the guitar, paints, writes poetry and loves to sing Fado. She also finds time to coach business women who seek to reach balance between their personal and professional lives.


Sara Felizardo
Managing Partner
Business Designer
Sustainable Innovation
Passionate about social development. Her mission is to inspire clients, partners, and employees with the will and confidence to develop new digital solutions and business strategies that contribute to sustainable progress on a social, economic, and environmental level. Curious and persistent, she loves encountering a good challenge to solve.
Sara enjoys running outdoors and having a good time with family and friends. Associated with several volunteer initiatives, in recent years she has been dedicating herself to the animal cause.


Alex Duarte
Lead Digital Product Designer
Pattern Explorer
Alex brings in his methodical and organized way of living and likes to challenge the saying that creativity can only exist within chaos. Admires the scalability and modularity of the design without giving up on delighting the user.
He loves history, likes to understand the origin of things and the parallel that exists between different societies in different geographies and times. He’s passionate about music and is always keeping the rhythm in his imaginary drums.


Carina Olival
Lead Service Designer
Inclusive Design
Carina is an expert in the field of Service Design and Customer Experience Strategy.
For her, design is about creating problem-solving strategies that begin long before what your eyes see. She is passionate about inclusive design and loves to create different ways for people to participate in an experience.
She loves the blue sky days for a bike ride with her camera. Traveling and exploring new places with the company of her loved ones is one of her greatest pleasures.


Ida Sandes
UX Researcher
Sustainable Design
Ida believes in the match between Communication and Design with an innovative approach to change the world. She’s keen to embrace sustainable practices to make our planet a better place. With a Culture Studies and Journalism background she understands well human behaviours combined with creative narratives.
Passionate about sunny days and outdoor activities, Ida is a sociable free spirit who is always on the lookout for great stories to live and share.


Luís Luz
UX / UI Designer
Front-end Web Developer
UI Engineering savvy professional combining design and software development practices. Joins multidisciplinary teams of Experience Designers and Software Engineers to research, envision, and integrate digital interfaces into enterprise level products and applications.
An architecture graduate, he appreciates the physical and digital nuances of life, exploring electronics and automation, as much as traveling to hike, bike, dive and mind food.


Ricardo Rodrigues
Lead UX / UI Designer
Creative Innovation
Ricardo lives in a world of infinite possibilities, pushing ideias to its limits, combining vivid imagination with a desire for practical solutions. A visual researcher always looking towards improvement and how these can be brought and applied to its projects.
Expressive and emotional. Passioned about detail, spends a reasonable amount of time looking at the world through a camera lens. Musically inspired-Jazz enthusiastic, rock lover and guitar explorer.


Teresa Felix
Happiness Manager
Teresa believes that happy people contribute to a better world. Therefore, she seeks to promote a happiness-driven approach with all those around her - whether they are colleagues, customers, suppliers or partners. “Observing, listening, and caring are the keywords for the job”, Teresa says.
A dreamer by nature, she tries to keep one foot on the ground but loves to travel even if it's inside a book. Cooking for those she loves and being present in the lives of others is part of her nature.


Vanessa Silva
Lead Designer
Design Ethics
Vanessa is a multiskilled designer with strong design direction and decision making proficiency applied to UX, UI, digital product design and innovation. Currently extending knowledge and applied experience in ethics applied to design problem solving and co-creation in the digital environment.
Listens to a lot of audiobooks, enjoys art, gardens, tea and exploring the fascinating connections of geopolitics and their impact on western societies.


Sara Leal
Service Designer
Business Analyst
What Sara loves the most about Design is the key role of collaboration in the process of problem-solving. To actively listen to others, with curiosity, and to join the dots between different points of view in order to arrive at one common solution.
Sara uses that same curiosity in her own approach to life, she’s eager to understand herself and the world better and to use that same knowledge to make her own decisions.