PRIVATE COHORT — CURRENTLY IN SESSION
The Shaping Course
An eight-session rehearsal program that turns UI designers into product designers — on the work already on your plate.
8 sessions · Every two weeks, 1 hour each · Small cohort (5 designers) · One live project, start to finish · Homework is your actual job, done differently
The moment everything changed
You've probably had this moment already. A product manager shares a link in Slack. It's a working prototype — clickable, styled, not bad at all. They built it over lunch with an AI tool. No brief, no handoff, no Figma file. No you.
And somewhere underneath the polite "nice, looks great!" you typed back, a quieter thought: if they can do this part without me… what exactly is my part?
You're not imagining the shift. The professional whose job is receiving briefs and translating them into artifacts is being automated right now. Not in five years. This quarter.
But hold that fear next to this fact: at Gamma — one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world — a quarter of the early team were product designers. Not cut. Over-hired. Because when AI commoditizes execution, someone still has to deeply understand the problem, the user, and the business — and that someone is worth more than ever.
Same industry. Same moment. Two completely different futures. The difference isn't talent. It's altitude — whether your value lives in the screens, or upstream of them, where the decisions get made and the tools can't reach.
You already know this stuff. That's not the problem.
You've read the articles. You know you should "ask why" and "understand the problem first" and "do research." You could give a decent talk about it.
And yet — when a request lands on Monday morning, you open Figma. When two PMs both say "urgent," you do both, in the order they arrived. When someone asks "what do you think we should do?", you answer with a question.
Research on product teams found that 98% of people asked to write opportunities write them as solutions. Staying in the problem space is the opposite of how our brains are wired. Nobody escapes that wiring by reading about it.
That's not a knowledge gap. It's a reps gap. Nobody becomes a confident public speaker by reading about speaking. You become one by speaking — in a room safe enough to be bad in, often enough that it stops being scary.
This program is that room. Almost no lectures. One concept per session, then two weeks to apply it to the project already on your desk, then you come back and show what happened. Eight sessions, eight reps, on work that actually ships.
What actually happens to you across eight sessions
Session 1 — you stop taking briefs at face value. You learn the Ten-Minute Gate: four questions you answer before Figma opens. Within the first two weeks you'll have caught at least one request that was a solution wearing a problem's clothing.
Session 2 — you learn what your PM's week actually looks like. How PMs are measured, why briefs arrive solution-shaped, and the difference between pushback that earns respect and pushback that earns eye-rolls. You'll interview your own PM — and what you learn will surprise you.
Session 3 — you ship something ugly, on purpose. You learn to match the fidelity of your output to the certainty of your input — and you send a rough greyscale flow to a PM instead of a polished mockup. This is the scariest rep in the program. It's also the one where the ground shifts: nobody dies. The conversation gets better.
Session 4 — you replace opinion with evidence. Guided by a research practitioner, you run your first scrappy usability test: five people, twenty minutes, one task. Design debates run on two fuels — opinion or evidence. Opinion debates are won by seniority. Evidence debates are won by whoever watched a user last. From this session on, that's you.
Session 5 — you stop being a vending machine. You build a visible priority stack and run your work from it. When the second PM's "urgent" request lands, you have a sentence you've never used before: "Here's where it slots — and here's what moves if it jumps the queue."
Session 6 — you make AI your intern instead of your replacement. You take one step of your current project — research synthesis, divergent concepts, a testable prototype — and direct an AI tool through it. The designers who thrive aren't the ones defending the old process. They're the ones directing the new tools.
Session 7 — you stop polishing your first idea. Your first idea feels like the answer because it's the only one you've looked at. This session you learn to genuinely diverge: three real directions before you commit, one pushed to an uncomfortable extreme — and a defensible reason why the others lost. If you can't name two directions you rejected, you didn't explore. You decorated your first guess.
Session 8 — you sell your work like a product person. You present one real project, end to end, on a narrative spine: problem → who and why → evidence → decision → ask. No screen tours. A story that ends with the room making a decision — and two weeks later, you deliver it again to your real stakeholders. The cohort was the rehearsal.
And here's the hidden curriculum: you present every single session. Five structured minutes, eight sessions running. By the capstone, presenting your thinking isn't a performance anymore. It's just how you talk.
The before and after
Opens Figma the day the brief lands → Runs four upstream questions first, every time.
Sees the PM as a source of requests → Knows how their PM is measured, and designs for that reality too.
Polishes everything, always → Ships rough work early and confidently.
Debates opinions → Brings evidence from real users.
First come, first served — for everyone → Runs a visible priority stack.
Asks "what do you think?" → Brings options and a recommendation.
Falls in love with the first idea → Puts three genuinely different options on the table before committing.
Worries AI will replace them → Directs AI through the grunt work, and keeps the judgment.
Presents screens → Sells decisions.
How it works
Eight sessions, one hour each, every two weeks — roughly four months end to end. Small cohort: five designers. Everyone presents every session.
Each participant carries one live project from first question to final pitch. Homework is that project, done differently — zero synthetic exercises. If you "don't have time for the homework," you've misunderstood it: the homework is your work.
One concept per session. A short pre-read, a 15-minute walkthrough, then reps. We never teach anything you won't use within two weeks.
A shared board tracks all eight sessions. What you tried, what surprised you, what you'd do differently. By the end it's a visible record of your growth — the kind of evidence that promotion conversations are made of.
Who this is for
This is for you if: you came to product design through visual or graphic craft — and that craft is genuinely strong. You're respected, busy, and quietly aware that the job is changing under your feet. You're tired of being downstream of every decision that matters. And you're willing to be a beginner at something for eight sessions.
This is not for you if: you want a certificate more than a change in how you work. You can't commit one hour every two weeks plus applying the session's rep to your live work. Or you're looking for advanced Figma techniques — this program assumes your craft and builds around it.
The promise, plainly
A few months from now, the people you work with will notice before you do. A PM will mention that your questions changed. Someone will ask you to weigh in earlier than they used to. You'll catch yourself saying "I recommend" without rehearsing it first.
You won't be a different person. You'll be the same designer — operating one altitude higher, where the tools can't reach and the decisions get made.
The screens were never the point. Come find out what is.
The first cohort is already running
The Shaping Course is currently in a private pilot with a closed cohort of five designers. I'm refining every session of the curriculum with real people on real projects before opening it up. If you want in when public enrollment opens, join the waitlist — waitlist members hear first and get priority on the limited seats.
Join the waitlist →
One email. Your name and why you're interested. That's it.