The Influential designer: How to Use Data to Get Buy-In and Advance Your Career

4.6 (7)

·

4 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Tie Design Decisions to Business Outcomes, Present Insights That Make Stakeholders Act, and Create Design Portfolios that Attract Employers

Clients include

Designlab Learning
Northrop Grumman
Social Security
Intuit
National Cancer Institute

Course overview

Stop Being the "Make It Pretty" Person. Start Having an Impact with Design.

How many of your great designs collect dust because your recommendations are rejected?


Creating great designs is only half the battle. The other half is communicating the value of your work to others.


What's more, it's the key to future-proofing your design career. If you cannot showcase the value of design in 2025, you are a risk for businesses looking to save money.


How can you tackle the most common communication challenges designers face, like:


 • Getting your team to move beyond quick fixes

 • Showing the impact of your design decisions

 • Communicating design value effectively to non-designers

 • Getting teams to approve your recommendations

 • Building persuasive design portfolios that attract employers?


Boost your design process with Data.


It doesn't matter if you're part of a 5,000-person organization or the first Design Hire at a startup: using these frameworks helps you communicate your value.


Here's what you'll learn in this course.


Week 1: Design what businesses need

Spend an hour to save a month's work. Understand the business's needs and how design decisions affect business outcomes, and you'll save weeks of miscommunication and rejection.


Week 2: Don't present information: present insights

You might have remarkable user findings, but it doesn't matter if no one acts on them. Refine user findings using frameworks employed by Netflix, Meta, and Airbnb to harness to drive action.


Week 3: Integrate AI into your Design processes

Rather than learning a single AI tool, you'll learn how to integrate AI, in a few short lessons, into your design process.


Week 4: Learn Data Visualization, a powerful skill that drives action

Working with Data allows you to use the powerful tools of Data visualization and Storytelling to make a real difference. No creative writing experience is needed.


These aren't theoretical frameworks; they're practical tips that I've used to lead multi-million dollar Product-Led Growth Initiatives.


I've also successfully led these initiatives in low UX maturity environments, where I've worked with stakeholders that didn't understand what UX was.


What You'll Get Out of the Course

* A practical, step-by-step process for working with data and refining findings into actionable insights

* Real-world case studies from Meta, Nike, Netflix, and history demonstrating successful data-informed design strategies

* Hands-on experience creating effective data visualizations and UX stories that drive change

* Templates and frameworks I've personally used to lead multi-million dollar Product-Led Growth initiatives


If you're ready to design projects faster, show how design affects business outcomes, and persuade your team to take action, you should take this course.



--

Training Your Team?

Email kai@datainformeddesign.online for bulk pricing and personalized course options.

Who is this course for

01

Senior/Lead UX Designers who want to have a seat at the table, where their recommendations are listened and acted on.


02

Design Leaders and Managers who must influence founders, executives, and other leaders to make the right decisions for their users

03

Designers who have done good work on design projects but have ineffective design portfolios that get ignored by employers.

04

Designers who work in complex fields (like Healthtech, Fintech, or AI) who want to unlock the power of data

What you’ll get out of this course

Stop wasting time designing the wrong product

Spend an hour to save a month's worth of work. You'll learn how to ask questions that uncover exactly what Product teams want and need from Designers.

Show the value of design on business outcomes (without guessing at ROI)

If you've ever struggled to justify the "ROI" of UX, Data-Informed Design can help. Follow Step-by-step frameworks that spell out how design decisions translate into real-world outcomes

Working with difficult stakeholders? Get templates and scripts to help navigate these tricky scenarios

If your teams won't listen, I'll provide fill-in-the-blank templates I've used at UX-hostile organizations to make a real difference.

Become a future-proof designer by improving your design process with AI

The best way to integrate AI isn't by learning random tools: it's to understand ways it can help improve your design process.

Up to 2 hours of 1:1 Data-Informed Design coaching

You won't just learn theoretical concepts. You'll learn how to apply it to your work with 1:1 coaching with a Data-Informed Design expert.

No more presentation stress: create a UX story out of your work

When you have a UX story, you're always ready for interviews and meetings. Learn how to turn your design work into a UX story.

This course includes

12 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

77 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

7 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jun 2—Jun 8

    Jun

    2

    Workshop 1: How aligning design with business makes better products faster

    Mon 6/24:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 1 Lessons: Design what businesses need

    8 items

    Jun

    5

    Workshop 2: How to track Design Impact on Business Outcomes

    Thu 6/54:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 2 Lessons: Track Design impact on Business outcomes

    8 items

    🔍Extended Learning and Templates

    3 items

    Jun

    6

    Office Hours

    Fri 6/64:00 PM—4:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Week 2

Jun 9—Jun 15

    Jun

    9

    Workshop 3: Understanding what data your team needs to know

    Mon 6/94:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 3 Lessons: What does the business need to prioritize?

    9 items

    Jun

    12

    Workshop 4: Analyzing user insights and finding evidence for your recommendations

    Thu 6/124:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 4 Lessons: Turning Knowledge into design recommendations

    8 items

    Jun

    13

    Office Hours

    Fri 6/134:00 PM—4:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    🔍Extended Learning and Templates

    3 items

Week 3

Jun 16—Jun 22

    Jun

    16

    Workshop 5: Building a second brain with AI

    Mon 6/164:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 5 Lessons: Improve your design process with an AI second brain

    9 items

    Jun

    19

    Workshop 6: Building second brains to empathize with your team

    Thu 6/194:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 6 Lessons: Empathize with decision makers through AI second brains

    9 items

    Jun

    20

    Office Hours

    Fri 6/204:00 PM—4:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    🔍Extended Learning and Templates

    0 items

Week 4

Jun 23—Jun 29

    Jun

    23

    Workshop 7: Craft your Perfect Data Visualization Hook

    Mon 6/234:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 7 Lessons: Turn your Insights into Data Visualizations

    9 items

    Jun

    26

    Workshop 8: Building a UX Story through frameworks

    Thu 6/264:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    📚 Workshop 8 Lessons: UX Storytelling: How to persuade your team to take action

    13 items

    Jun

    27

    Office Hours 4

    Fri 6/274:00 PM—4:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    🔍Extended Learning and Templates

    5 items

4.6 (7 ratings)

What students are saying

Meet your instructor

Christopher Kai Wong

Christopher Kai Wong

Senior Product Designer at Nanthealth. Top Design Writer on Medium (52k following). Data-Informed Design Expert. Designed for 1m+ users.

Kai has over a decade of UX experience in data-centric fields like Healthcare, Federal, and B2B/SaaS UX. His designs have impacted millions of vulnerable populations, including patients, senior citizens, and medical professionals.


He has often worked as UX team of one, communicating the value of UX to teams and organizations that may not fully understand. As a result, he has learned better, more effective communication by understand effective data-focused viewpoints.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

The Influential designer: How to Use Data to Get Buy-In and Advance Your Career

June Cohort

$599

Dates

June 2—29, 2025

Payment Deadline

June 1, 2025
Get reimbursed

Course schedule

3-5 hours per week

  • Mondays and Thursday

    12:00-1:00 PM EST

    I will have live lectures with Q&A, reviewing this week's lessons. These will also be where I review student's exercise and provide live feedback

  • Pre-recorded lectures

    1-2 hours per week

    In these lectures, I'll dive into the specifics around Data, Narrative, Visuals, and more. This will be a more detailed videos on the stuff I cover live on Mondays and Fridays

  • Weekly projects and exercises

    2 hours per week

    These exercises, paired with the lecture, will help you practice the concepts you learn from lectures

Free resource

Learn how to turn down requests from executives without running into trouble.

Many designers don't know how to say no, which leads to trouble. When an executive comes by with a half-baked idea, it isn't easy to know what to say.


This is a script that I've used to politely refuse requests with data without running into issues getting fired.


Want to know how you can use it in with your work? Enroll today.

Get this free resource

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

The Influential designer: How to Use Data to Get Buy-In and Advance Your Career

June Cohort

$599

Dates

June 2—29, 2025

Payment Deadline

June 1, 2025
Get reimbursed

$599

4.6 (7)

·

4 Weeks