A small-group practice cohort for product designers
Shape the decision. Not just the screens.
You can deliver good design and still be brought in after the important choices are made.
Shaping is a six-week live cohort for practising the conversations, recommendations, and decisions that help you contribute earlier. Bring a real workplace challenge. Understand what is keeping you downstream. Try a different response—with feedback before and after.
Six weeks · Four to six designers · Live online · Personal feedback · 30-day follow-up
Planned next cohort. Dates, fee and application details are not yet confirmed.
Register interest
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Receive the confirmed schedule, fee, and application details when the next cohort is ready. Registering interest does not reserve a place or create an obligation to join.
./recognition
Perhaps the brief arrives with the solution already attached. You see a problem, but the conversation moves on. You prepare another version instead of challenging the assumption.
Or you make a thoughtful recommendation, only to find yourself discussing button placement while the important trade-off goes unspoken.
These situations do not all have the same cause. Sometimes a skill needs practice. Sometimes a familiar response gets in the way. Sometimes the organisation limits what is possible.
Shaping helps you examine the situation and practise a useful next move.
./outcomes
During the cohort, you will practise clarifying a brief, raising a concern, making a recommendation under uncertainty, and explaining the decision behind your work.
You will leave with a record of what you tried, feedback on your approach, and a practical plan for continuing.
The aim is not to win every argument or stop doing hands-on design. It is to contribute more deliberately to the work you deliver.
./method
Each workshop combines a short concept, a real situation, and rehearsal with other designers.
Between sessions, try a small experiment during your normal work. Bring back what happened—including the awkward parts and the attempts that did not work.
Psychology helps us examine the response. Product experience keeps the discussion grounded. Practice makes the next attempt more deliberate.
Situation
What happened, and what decision or conversation matters?
Context and pattern
What shaped the response: skills, habits, incentives, authority, relationships, or risk?
Rehearsal
What could you say or do differently?
Experiment
What is the smallest useful action you can safely try?
Review
What happened, and what does that suggest—not prove?
./curriculum
WEEK 1
Read the situation
Separate personal habits, missing skills, and organisational constraints.
WEEK 2
Question the brief
Clarify the problem without turning the conversation into a confrontation.
WEEK 3
Express disagreement
Rehearse the useful concern you keep editing out.
WEEK 4
Recommend under uncertainty
Make evidence, assumptions, and trade-offs explicit.
WEEK 5
Make the decision clear
Present a recommendation and a specific ask—not a tour of the screens.
WEEK 6
Build your practice
Review what happened and decide what to repeat, adapt, or stop.
Approximately 30 days later, we meet again to review what continued and what needs adjusting.
./included
Six live 90-minute workshops, a private 20-minute onboarding conversation, weekly written feedback on one focused submission, a practical fieldbook, and a 60-minute group follow-up.
No large video library. No requirement to share confidential work. No promise that one conversation will change your organisation.
Plan on roughly two to two and a half hours a week, including applying a small experiment during your normal work. Sessions are live online and in English; the platform is confirmed before the cohort starts.
./who-its-for
The best buying trigger is a current situation, not a vague wish to grow.
A STRONG FIT
An employed or actively contracted product designer who:
– Can independently deliver competent design work.
– Works with product managers, engineers, or other decision-makers.
– Has a current project or recurring situation in which they can try small changes.
– Wants greater involvement in problem framing and decisions without necessarily moving into management.
– Is willing to practise conversations, receive feedback, and examine their own assumptions.
– Can share anonymised situations without disclosing confidential work.
NOT THE RIGHT FIRST OFFER FOR
– Beginners who need foundational UX instruction.
– Designers primarily seeking visual-design or software training.
– Jobseekers whose immediate need is portfolio or interview support.
– Staff/principal designers seeking organisation-wide leadership development.
– People managers seeking management training.
– Anyone expecting treatment for anxiety, burnout, or other mental-health concerns.
– Someone whose circumstances make workplace experimentation unsafe or impractical.
Being excluded from this cohort does not mean someone lacks potential. It means the format would not serve their immediate need.
./facilitator
I am a product design leader with a master’s in psychology. ListenIn Labs is where I examine the patterns that shape how designers work—including the ones I recognise in myself.
In Shaping, I bring that lens to real product situations. We look at what happened, practise an alternative, and return to the evidence of what happened next.
./early-cohort
This is an early public edition of Shaping. The format is intentionally small so I can work closely with participants and refine the programme through delivery.
If you join, you are paying for the sessions, preparation, and feedback described here—not a promise of proven career transformation.
./faq
Is this a product-strategy course?
Not a broad one. We work on specific situations where product judgment needs to become action: clarifying a problem, discussing a trade-off, making a recommendation, and navigating disagreement. You should already be comfortable with the fundamentals of product design.
Do I need a project of my own?
You need a live working context where you can try small changes. That can be one project or a recurring situation, such as receiving briefs or presenting recommendations. You do not need control over an entire project.
What if my project changes?
We adapt the practice to another relevant situation. The cohort is organised around decisions and conversations, not finishing one project on a fixed schedule.
What if the problem is my organisation?
That is part of the work. We examine authority, incentives, access, and constraints—not just your response. Sometimes the useful outcome is recognising what you cannot reasonably change alone.
Do I need to be confident speaking in groups?
No. You do need to be willing to practise. Rehearsal happens in a small group, and you can discuss participation needs privately before joining.
Will sessions be recorded?
No. Participant discussions and rehearsals are not recorded. You receive the exercises and session materials, and can use the normal feedback submission if you miss a workshop.
Will this help me get promoted?
It may help you practise behaviours relevant to broader responsibility, but promotion depends on many factors outside the programme. There is no promotion, salary, or job-placement guarantee.
Is this therapy?
No. It is professional development focused on workplace decisions and behaviour. It does not provide diagnosis or mental-health treatment.
Can my employer pay?
Yes, once invoicing is configured. The programme can be described as practical development in problem framing, stakeholder communication, and decision-making. Employer funding does not give an employer access to private participant reflections.
Planned next cohort
Receive the confirmed schedule, fee, and application details when the next cohort is ready. Registering interest does not reserve a place or create an obligation to join.
Register interest
↗
ListenIn Labs
A psychologist’s field notes on working in tech.