Business Foundations for Designers

Jacalin Ding

Product Leader, 2xFounder, Seed-B Raised

Entry Level Business Acumen For Junior / Mid-weight Designers

🎁 Introductory Price: Take 20% Off for first 50pp: 20OFF

Many junior and mid weight designers face these challenges:

👉🏽 Produce outputs without understanding the business priority behind it
👉🏽 Unable to explaining decisions beyond “it’s better for the user”
👉🏽 Fear about AI will replace their skills to build

You don’t need a business background, a senior title or access to create impact. It's time to go beyond “How do we design this?” to “Why is this worth doing?”

This course is the answer to connect your design skills with practical business knowledge - starting from the basics.

✅ Learn how businesses make money, what shapes their priorities

✅ Learn how your design decisions can shift the needles

✅ Build the confidence to ask strategic questions

✅ Communicate product thinking to business partners with confidence

Products, employers and AI tools will change. Understanding priorities, making thoughtful decisions and communicating your contribution are transferable knowledge you can take into every role that follows.

📍
If you're a senior/lead or above, ready for more advanced business strategic challenge, AI Powered Strategic Design Accelerator is for you.

What you’ll learn

Apply each lesson to a current, past project, at your own pace.

Identify who uses the product, who pays, how money comes in and the main costs.
Use business-stage and competitor examples to explain what matters for your design decisions.

Use the Strategy Tree Framework to connect direction, goals, product priorities to your design initiative
Explain your expected contribution and identify the weakest assumption to evaluate
Show the value of everyday work

Learn to evaluate business, product and customer metrics that fit your project
Able to identify what should improve and what must not get worse for customers. Identify the evidence you still need.

Build a business case-study draft around your decisions, rationales, with supporting reasoning and evidence.
Explain choices, tradeoffs and your role for a portfolio, interview or promotion conversation.
Recognise your impact beyond design deliverables

Learn directly from Jacalin

Jacalin Ding

Contact

Product & Design Leader | 2x Business Founder | Seed to Series B Advisor

Course alumni from:

See all products from Jacalin

Who this course is for

Junior to mid-level designers who want to understand business priorities and contribute confidently in product discussions.
Designers preparing a portfolio, interview or promotion story who want to explain the choices and business value behind their work.
Senior designers been on crafts and ready to step up and fill in foundational business gaps as well as improve communication skills.

Prerequisites

Beginner Friendly
No Business Background Needed

What's included

30 Self-paced lessons across six topics

Build business foundations through recorded lessons and practical examples. Work through the topics in order and revisit the business-model examples that fit your project.

Four connected assignments

Use one project throughout: follow the money, map your contribution, choose meaningful measures, and assemble a business-aware case-study draft. Each step builds on your earlier work.

Guided worksheets you can reuse

Use the shared MIRO worksheet and case-study structure to organise your thinking. Keep evidence, assumptions and unknowns clear as you apply the learning to your own work.

Certificate on completion

Share your achievement

Build with your own project

Walk away with a finished case study and full clarity to how and why it matters to the business

Community of peers

Engage within self-paced learner community to exchange ideas and uplift each other's work

Certificate + Linkedin credential

Share your new skills on Linked profile with your employer

Maven Guarantee

Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.

Course syllabus

27 lessons • 4 projects

Let's go 🚀

Start here: Welcome to Maven

2 items

Make the most out of this course

4 items

Course Modules

How do businesses make money?

2 items

How design adapts as a business grows

4 items

Understand business competition

2 items

Connect design decisions to business outcomes

5 items

Know what to measure—and why

6 items

Communicate your design impact with confidence

6 items

Free resources

Testimonials

I want to let you know how helpful and practical l've found your course, taking it was one of the best decisions I've made for my career.
My mindset shifted a lot ever since, and I’ve actually found the content becoming even more valuable as I’ve progressed into a more mid level position.
Charmaine Kwok
Product Designer @ Sapia.ai
Jacalin expertly delivered a wealth of practical skills and methodologies from her extensive experience, which were conveyed in a well-structured and applicable manner.
It has transformed my perspective on myself as a professional in the design industry. … I wish I'd taken this course sooner.
Junnan Ma
Design Lead @ Australian Ethical · (Was a UI Designer at course completion in 2023)
Your course truly helped me connect my designs with business outcomes and showcase stakeholder value and my own value through my ikigai!
Iha Jain
Product Designer @ Amazon
Even as a junior designer, by end of course I was leading new strategic design workshops and initiating conversations around north star metrics at work!
Lynn Teoh
Product Designer @ Humm group
This course has been one of the best investments in my career. It has given me the confidence to connect design to business outcomes and understand how businesses make strategic decisions.
Olayinka Fadare
UX Designer @ Randstad
Jac's approach to measuring design value and communicating with stakeholders is inspiring. She has taught me to analyse challenges beyond design.
Man Hin Ma
Senior Product Designer - ex-Zip, ex-Eucalyptus