that want to get to senior and beyond faster
Advanced UX Design for the Real World
Accelerate Your UX Design Career
You got hired as a UX designer, but do you actually know how to shape the user experience?
Go beyond the tactical junior skills and learn the strategic senior skills that will help UX get a seat at the table in your company.
with Jeff Humble and Hannah Baker
Join the waitlist to be notified of upcoming cohorts.
Gain the skills to become a UX leader in six weeks of workshops
Work on real-world projects designed to take your company's UX practice to the next level. Build confidence with newfound capabilities in research & collaboration. Learn live through engaging workshops and build an international network of designers.
- Understand the whole design process and how it should connect to your company's process
- Learn how to understand customer needs with a research plan that actually gets buy-in
- Learn how to turn your collected research data into company wisdom that refocuses your product on the customer
- Learn the secret art of facilitation so that you can bring your team into the creative process and practice leadership in a productive environment
- Create and deliver presentations that inspire change without pixel-perfect visuals
- Turn your course learnings into a tangible pilot project that will set you up for leadership and direct impact
Who this course is for
UX Designers
Product Designers
that want to learn how customer insights can create innovative products
UI & Visual Designers
that want to dive deeper into the why behind the visuals
Meet your instructors
Jeff Humble
Hi, I’m Jeff! I love designing learning experiences where people explore new concepts. I’ve worked as a UX, UI, and product designer at startups for over ten years. I helped thousands of UX/UI designers break into the design field in my time as Head of Design of CareerFoundry. This program is based on hundreds of conversations with mid-career designers, and it’s the program that I wish I would have had when I was early in my UX career.
Hannah Baker
Hi, I'm Hannah! I have been creating participatory learning experiences for over fifteen years. I began the first ten years of my career path as an artist and educator, then transitioned into brand and web design. I'm now combining my past two career paths to create learning experiences for designers in the middle of their careers.
In this course, you will deconstruct your design process, discover genuine user needs through planned research and synthesis that will build towards a pitch of a pilot program for your company.
Cohort-based Courses
A New Type of Online Course
Interact in Real-Time
Learn online in live workshops where you are a collaborator, not an audience member. The virtual class format is highly interactive where you will use collaborative tools like Miro, Notion, and Zoom.
Build a Global Design Network
Join an international group of mid-career designers from innovative companies all over the world. Explore advanced topics in a safe online community of like-minded designers that will grow with your career.
Make Career Moves
Work on an advanced design project inspired by real-world challenges at your current position and receive expert feedback from a lead-level designer and build an asset to ignite your next career move.
What our alumni are saying
I feel that this course pushes Product (UX/UI) designers to think beyond the pixels to become more strategic thinkers who can start to influence product direction and vision. This course affirmed for me parts of design that are very important and not taught in traditional design education, things such as facilitation and questioning assumptions. I highly recommend this course for any product designer who wants to involve more critical and measured thinking in their work.
Kenji Kaneko
Transitioned into Product Design Consultant after course
This course was exactly what I needed, to level up on my skills as a Junior UX designer and progress from there. We learned techniques on how to bring the discovery phase to life and make vital parts more visible. It is superb to know very practical and hands-on tips and tricks for the real working world.
Anja Lena Sack-Hauchwitz
Went from Junior UX to Product Designer after course
In 6 weeks, it led me to analyze the relationship between me as a designer and my current organization, which enabled me with a bird’s-eye view of the current design/development process and inspired me to come up with solutions to existing problems following the methodologies taught in this course.
Chang Jiang
UX Designer in a new position at a larger company after course
This course helped me grasp approaches to design in a holistic and interconnected way. What I valued most was the emphasis on designers being more than just "doers", but also as thinkers and the influence, we can really have in our practice.
Randy Barias
Designer working in more strategic projects after course
Learn with a comprehensive curriculum
UX Strategy
You will assess your design process and your organization's structure utilizing a lean journey map and stakeholder map methods to identify the internal levers that drive the user experience for your customers. This week will give you a big-picture lens to determine the bottlenecks in connecting your user needs to the product.
UX Research
You will gain the background, skills, and frameworks to influence leadership as to why discovery is essential. You will use the UX Research Canvas to find time to get real customer insights even in fast-paced agile working environments. Gaining the research skills to make more effective products that anticipate customer needs rather than react to customer wants.
Design Synthesis
Learn how to analyze and synthesize research with collaborative data walls and the Advanced Affinity Mapping method. Discover the missing step of research and turn those piles of data into conquerable problems for your team.
Facilitation & Collaboration
Learn how a facilitator's mindset can help you elevate concerns with stakeholders before collaborative work. Gain the skills to confidently walk into any co-working session knowing you will leave with a plan to drive the product further.
Presenting for Impact
Learn the Presentation Process to create goal-focused presentations and make your team finally “nod their heads and smile” in full understanding of your design process.
Design Ops
Operationalize what you've learned with a tangible pilot project that will give you an opportunity to make a real impact and make your next employee review a success celebration.
Be the first to know when the next cohort starts
Join the waitlist to be notified of upcoming cohorts.
How much time will this course take a week?
This course will have 2 live workshops a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 18:00-20:00 CEST. Outside of live classes assignments will take 2-5 additional hours a week.
Can I take this course with a full-time job?
We designed this course specifically for working designers with full-time jobs. The majority of the work for the course happens in the live classes so all you have to do is block those times off and show up ready to learn!
Do I have to attend all of the live sessions in real-time?
We strongly recommend you attend all of the live sessions. This course is designed to be experienced live. However, we understand that things can come up so we record all of the sessions for you to rewatch later.
Will my company pay for this course?
The majority of our students have their companies pay for the course in whole or part. Use our guide on How to Convince a Design Manager to Pay for a Course to get started. If you have never asked for a professional development budget before, reach out and we can help: hello@thefountaininstitute.com
What does a course project look like?
Rather than using hypothetical prompts, we encourage you to find opportunities at your company to work on in your course project. We spend the first week of class on uncovering a good course project so don't worry about that until class starts. If you want to see a few examples of past student projects, check out Saran's project or Chang's project.
What's the refund policy?
For an overview of our policies, see our Terms & Conditions.
What sort of tools and methods will I learn?
We teach methods that you won't find anywhere else like Advanced Affinity Mapping and Collaborative Data Walls. Check out our UX Research Canvas for a free sample of a course asset.
What is the course experience like?
For a sneak peek into what it feels like to take this course, read some reviews of the course experience on our blog.