UXD includes design consultation ride-alongs in order to expose students to the work of other teams and to give some coaching on how to give thoughtful critiques of design work in progress.
A primer for giving table Design consults in the context of this course.
Have in your mind what the elements of a "good" UXD Project is. Remember that it does not have to be a great design. It has to be a problem space that allows students to learn from accessible "users" so that they explore the tools of UXD that give clues about how to improve ideas iteratively.
It's OK to give contradicting advice - if you have a recommendation that differs from what your ride-along partner or instructor says, feel free to state that and give the advice anyway. Getting ideas from multiple perspectives IS part of the learning in a Design Depth course.
Remind teams of the goal of the day or phase (given on the class session page).
Consider yourself to be a coach (assistant coach in this role). Note that people you are talking to have different comfort levels with the given topics. The goal is ensure team success, but we can always pick up cues and talk to individual students about how they can reach personal success.
How to read and react to students comes in different formats:
1 on 1 mentoring vs 1 to many guiding. Note that different techniques come in to play for holding conversations in each of these contexts.
When a person has a hard time understanding something you are talking about, you can try to explain what you said in different ways, you can try to introduce a related concept using a close example, or you can ask a person or team to say back what they heard from you to determine whether there was a communication error.
Frame your recommendations as "this is a consideration" or "here is how what I considered to be appropriate next steps" or "here is a scenario that you might want to think about."
Keep in mind what is at stake if a student follows your advice, let them know when they should cut bait following a particular path.