Design Storytelling with Data: How to Pitch Why Your Work Matters
Kai Wong
Medium.com's Top Design Writer.
Your Research Is Solid. Your Designs Are Strong. Learn How to Get Them Approved.
You Know What Users Need. Now Learn How to Get Stakeholders to Listen.
You've done the research. You've identified the problems. You've designed the solution.
But it still gets treated like a 'suggestion', and de-prioritized.
You're not here to win arguments: you're here to help people. But you can't help anyone if your work never makes it to production.
The problem isn't your design. It's your communication.
As one Design Director told me: "Designers get shot down, not because they do bad work, but because they can't communicate to businesses."
That's what Design Storytelling with Data teaches: translating design work into business impact that gets you hired, trusted, and promoted.
In this 4-week program, you'll learn to:
Connect design decisions to business outcomes executives track
Create data visualizations that make problems impossible to ignore
Craft case studies that show strategic thinking, not just process
Present with frameworks that get teams to take action
Your work is valid. You've seen the impact. All you need to do is translate your work into a narrative that gets buy-in.
What you’ll learn
Stop Getting Overruled: Communication frameworks that position your recommendations as strategic decisions, not design preferences
Learn the 9 Product Goals framework to identify which metrics your design work actually impacts.
Master the "Ladder Technique" to identify which Product Goal your Design Projects are about
Practice extracting metrics from from a real-life case study from Meta
Learn the Goals → Signals → Metrics framework to connect business objectives to user behavior
Practice translating vague requests ("improve the experience") into specific, measurable outcomes
Use the Core Challenge framework to make complex user problems instantly understandable
Use the Talk It Out framework to identify which Data Visualization best expresses your point
Understand how to find data that helps you craft an effective data visualization
Learn the ICE Prioritization framework to evaluate which design solutions move the needle on key metrics
Learn to create hypotheses, which tie design decisions to business outcomes
Understand how to effectively use data to turn ideas into evidence-based recommendations
Use AI to practice presentations and understand things from a PM/Executive view
Create a 5-minute story, a universal UX Story that can be used everywhere
Learn how to use Problem-Agitate-Solution, the persuasive framework that's sold billions of iPhones
Learn directly from Kai
Kai Wong
Medium's Top Design Writer| 13 Years Designing in Low Maturity Organizations
Who this course is for
Designers who want to use data to bypass office politics and prove their value immediately
Designers tired of watching 'strategic' roles like PMs get promoted while their insights are ignored
Designers in low-UX maturity environments where relationship-building isn't enough
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Kai Wong in a real-time, interactive format.
Lifetime access
Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.
Community of peers
Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.
Certificate of completion
Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.
Maven Guarantee
This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.
Course syllabus
12 live sessions • 33 lessons • 5 projects
Week 1
Feb
3
Workshop 1: Align Design with Product Goals to start having an impact
Workshop 1 Lessons: Align with Product Goals
Feb
5
Workshop 2: Want to talk about the Value of Design? Track Business Outcomes
Workshop 2 Lessons: Track Design impact on Business outcomes
Feb
6
Office Hours
Week 2
Feb
10
Workshop 3: The most important question to answer is "So What?"
Workshop 3 Lessons: Identifying the core problem that matters to your audience
Feb
12
Workshop 4: Turn your Core Challenge into a Data Visualization
Workshop 4 Lessons: Turn your Core Challenge into Data Visualizations
Feb
13
Office Hours
Schedule
Live sessions
2 hrs / week
Tue, Feb 3
6:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Thu, Feb 5
6:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Fri, Feb 6
4:30 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)
Projects
1 hr / week
The exercises help create a final project, which is an effective Data Story draft presentation
Async content
1 hr / week
Follow along with not only pre-recorded videos, but concept cards and templates as well
Testimonials
"Kai brought structure and clarity to our transformation stories — distilling complex, multi-layered design challenges into simple, human narratives that reveal how design drives real organisational change."
Jean-Baptiste Kaloya
VP, Product Design at BPIFrance
Frequently asked questions
$599
USD
2 cohorts