Benjamin Kowalski

Design for Growth: Balancing Acquisition and Retention

Dropbox

DoorDash

Disqus

Popular Pays

Ben Kowalski

Design Director at Dropbox (early DoorDash)

Understand how acquisition and retention fit into the growth lifecycle, the value of each, and the key metrics.

Importance of acquisition and retention

Sign up conversion, viral loops, and more help get more customers to try or buy your product.

Tips to design better acquisition flows

Examples to help you keep customers happy and coming back to your product for years.

Designing with retention in mind

🥲 Do you lack of confidence to contribute to business strategy as a designer?🥲 Perhaps you've hit the 'design skill ceiling" and unsure how to take your career to the next level.🥲 You might feel powerless when communicating design solutions to business partners and wonder what it takes to become an high performing strategic partner to the business. I've created this course to help you overcome these exact challenges.👆🏼 Designers with the most success in our industry are business-aware. If you think narrowly and talk about "design and design only" without factoring in business growth and understanding how to share the value of design, your impact will stay shallow. From an alumni Lead Designer's review: "This is by far, one of the best course I've taken about combining business with design." Tap into the real live MBA strategies and success frameworks I've used to grow my own multi 6 figure business, as well as helping companies to secure millions in funding. This course will give you the skills, frameworks, scripts and adaptable knowledge necessary to influence design in your company and change the way you show up as a designer forever. The choice is yours:👉🏽 Continue as an average performer, or seize this unique learning opportunity to become a high-performing strategic design partner. If you can commit to put in the work for 4 weeks, approximately 4-6 hours/week, the outcome will surprise you. P.S. Reimburse the cost of this course if your company offer Learning and Development budget. Otherwise, seek accounting advise regarding related to your role should be tax deductible.

The one holistic course to shift how you think and talk about design forever

<ul><li>Understanding key business terminologies and how they relate to product design</li><li>Learn to connect design impacts with the business viability to gain buy in</li></ul>

Develop business Acumen and Become a Strategic Designer

<ul><li>Learn to expand your research toolkit that supports your design rationales</li><li>Deliver your design directions with confidence by applying effective storytelling techniques</li></ul>

Unblock Research Feedback Loops, Build Data-Backed Design Rationales to Gain Stakeholder Buy-in

<ul><li>Learn the importance of active listening and effective communication</li><li>Practise facilitation skills by planning and leading ideation workshops with actionable frameworks to follow</li></ul>

Build Facilitation Skills and Influential Advocacy

<ul><li>Learn how to measure design impact and track progress</li><li>Define your career goals </li><li>Identify milestones to step into senior roles</li></ul>

Measuring Impact and Level Up Your Product Design Career

Two x 30mins 1-1 follow up mentor calls

Bonus: 
 

Course modules

1-1.5hrWeekly module learningQ&amp;ACollaborations AEST (Sat) / PDT EDT (Fri)

Weekly Live Classes

1hrWeekly assignment learning reviewQ&amp;A AEST (Tue) / PDT EDT (Mon)

Q&A, Learning Reflection

Course schedule

Growth Designers Infuse strategic business thinking into your process, lead and inspire your team through planning and execution

Senior Designers You've mastered craft-focused skills and ready to elevate product thinking and develop strategic knowledge

Start-up / Freelance Designer Gain confidence in decision-making, become the key contributor to impact business strategic directions.

NOT for Junior Designers This course is best suited for anyone with any least 3 years industry experience or a career transitioner.

Who is this course for

What you’ll get out of this course

Gain new perspectives into business landscapes and increase your ability to make decision within and beyond the business eco-system. Becoming empowered to make strategic decisions and communicate business value through design.

Develop business acumen and become a savvy strategic partner

The art of facilitation is more than workshops. In this module you'll learn how to influence effectively. Learn how to align strategic goals, lead cross-functional collaboration, and increase design influence with new found leadership skills.

Increase design influence in the business by facilitation

Learn to apply minimum viable research frameworks to guide your designs and measure success. Connect business goals with the value of design. Become a persuasive storyteller with proven frameworks to follow.

Turn research insights into compelling product opportunities, learn to communicate the value of design

Life is so much more than "work". The art to create the dream career path is by aligning it with your true life vision. You'll learn to set effective goals for professional development, walk away with a plan to execute and evaluate towards your end goal.

Holistic career planning, craft your impact story to pitch for promotion

Any questions or challenges during the course, Instructor is only one message away to provide any support you need to maximise your learning experience.

Instructor 1-1 support when you need

From business strategy, communicating the value of design to career growth planning. Learn to become a high performing strategic designer 

Jacalin Ding

Principal Product Design Leader // Entrepreneur // Mentor // Speaker

Cohort 4

Cohort 5

UPDATEJanuary classes are full (the waitlist is also full). February is open for enrollment. I will open March shortly. Why Take This TrainingAs product leaders advance in their careers, three critical challenges emerge: Challenge 1: Measuring and communicating design success beyond design thinking and aesthetics.Challenge 2: Getting stakeholder buy-in for strategic decisions that impact business growth.Challenge 3: Balancing user needs with business objectives while considering broader systemic impacts. This course empowers technologists to become strategic leaders who can:⚡️ Connect design decisions directly to business outcomes and growth metrics⚡️ Build influence with stakeholders through data-driven design processes⚡️ Lead responsible growth initiatives that consider users, business, and ecosystem impact⚡️ Measure and demonstrate the ROI of design work in their portfolio Transform from a user-centered designer into a strategic design leader who can drive product led growth, influence decisions, align teams, and create measurable business impact while maintaining conscious design practices. Why Learn With SeraAs a Principal Product Designer turned Founder, Sera has led successful products from zero-to-one startups to public companies across Webflow, BetterUp, Hired, Zendesk, and Y Combinator. Her unique approach to growth design has driven remarkable results, including a 200% increase in acquisition. She has given talks and workshops at Uber, Ikea, Design X, the University of Hawaii, the University of Waterloo, and more. As an advisor and investor, Sera brings a decade of hands-on experience leveraging design for conscious business growth —a perspective she's distilled into actionable frameworks through workshops and talks that have helped thousands of designers step into strategic leadership roles. She has spent 1 year condensing everything she's learned about growth into this 2 week training. Her frameworks from this course have been adopted by teams at Instacart, Ikea, Turo, Zendesk, Walmart, and more. Continue LearningGraduates will receive a private invite to a growth design slack channel with peers who are navigating similar challenges.Participants will have ongoing access to course materials, frameworks, and templates (this includes updates). Training your team? Email for bulk pricing and private training: hi@the-craft.io.

Bridge the Gap Between Design Impact and Business Growth 📈

Provide a brief description for each module as a way to sell the value of what students will be learning throughout the course.

First Module

Second Module

Third Module

Course syllabus

Thursday & Friday 

Learn at the pace that feels right for you! Every week, you'll have access to recorded modules focused on various topics to help you go deeper on the content we cover live.

Self Paced Courses

Go through practical case studies and brain storm solutions to get a hang of the techniques you learn.

Case Studies

Mid-Level Designerswho want to become more strategic with their work going beyond end-users.

Senior &amp; Staff Designerswho want to lead, participate in business strategy discussions, and facilitate product led growth outcomes.

Design Teamswho want to align their processes with growth principles and/or create a growth team (e.g. acquisition, retention, etc.)

UX Researchers who want to expand their impact by combining user insights with growth metrics.

Technologistslooking to leverage design and integrate growth thinking into your product development process.

Early Stage Founderswho want to create a design driven company with product led growth.

Master the principles of sustainable growth through AARRR and the growth loop. Transform your approach to product building and measure impact; measure acquisition, activation, retention, monetization, and more.

A Strategic Framework for Growth Design at Every Level of Product Building 

Learn to leverage data effectively in your design process, speak the language of business stakeholders, and make decisions that drive measurable outcomes using quantitative and qualitative data that speaks for itself.

Holistic Data-Driven Design Leadership Skills 

Gain concrete techniques for building influence, documentation practices, presenting design work to business leaders, and getting buy-in for strategic initiatives. Turn stakeholder relationships from challenging to collaborative.

Practical Tools for Stakeholder Management & Executive Buy-in

Learn from successful growth initiatives at companies like Webflow. Go beyond theory with hands-on application of growth frameworks. Work alongside a team of designers, receive targeted feedback on your project, and leave each session with actionable strategies you can implement.

4 Workshops on Real World Scenarios to Exercise Growth Thinking 

Understand the limits to growth, how to growth sustainably, and how to think about systemic change through lenses that go beyond end-users and business goals. Use Sera's Sustainable Futures Prism and the Triple Piko from indigenous Hawaiians to apply systems thinking.

2 Frameworks that go Beyond End-Users and Business Goals

Learn from industry leading growth experts on how teams operate, core principles, and a behind the scenes look at projects and measurable outcomes. 3 recorded talks and 1 live session.

4 Guest Speakers From Top Companies on How to Apply Growth (Netflix, Miro, Webflow, Growthmates) 

The playbook includes guides to sustainable growth, metrics, case studies, and more. It's your cheat sheet to get more done in less time.

[BONUS $120 value] Growth Playbook, 1 Year Membership to Conscious Technology, & Private Slack Access

<ul><li>Complete beginners</li><li>Designers experienced with growth hacking</li><li>Technologists comfortable with using metrics and tracking success</li><li>People looking for a quick fix</li><li>Technologists looking to achieve goals at the expense of people &amp; climate</li></ul>

Who is this course NOT for? 

Elevate your design leadership: connect creativity to business growth, measure your impact, and transform stakeholder relationships. 📈⭐️🌎

Sera Tajima

Cohort 3

Is your app getting traction and showing the signs of a product-market fit? Do you have dozens of ideas, features, and marketing tactics to test now? During the course you'll discover the key concepts of product-led and marketing-led growth as well as ready-to-apply tactics that will help you grow your app business. You'll explore all the app marketing channels and PLG mechanisms worth focusing on and prioritize your work on them

Take a structured, full-funnel approach to growing your app's userbase & revenue

<ul><li>You'll examine the performance of your app across the whole funnel to see if it's ready to scale</li><li>You'll build a hierarchy of metrics and break down your goals to find the most impactful levers and growth opportunities</li><li>You'll define how to measure success and calculate the impact of various growth scenarios and marketing activities.</li></ul>

Your app is getting traction, now what?

<ul><li>Plan tactics to not only get a user to download your app but to also become active in it</li><li>What is good retention, how to measure it, and how to keep it moving forward</li><li>Will your product benefit from viral loops? Explore different types of virality, and ways to build them into your product</li></ul>

Activation, retention, virality, and their importance for sustainable app growth

<ul><li>Analyze all revenue-related metrics and find the parts of the revenue funnel with the highest impact</li><li>Plan and prioritize experiments aimed at increasing trial opt-ins, upgrades, renewals, or resurrecting paying customers</li><li>Review your pricing &amp; packaging strategy to make sure users get the value of your paid offer</li></ul>

Improve your app's monetization and LTV:CAC ratio for sustainable growth

<ul><li>Paid user acquisition on mobile: search ads, social media ads, influencer marketing, and others</li><li>Organic acquisition: ASO for AppStore and Google Play</li><li>How to test creatives in the everchanging landscape: the What and the How</li><li>Non-obvious tips for optimizing paid campaigns' performance</li></ul>

How to acquire new users: which channels to focus on

We'll meet for live workshops at 17.00 - 18.30 CET. We'll go through the material, do light exercises in breakout rooms, and I'll answer all your pressing questions during the Q&amp;A at the end of each workshop.

Five live workshops

Throughout the whole course and after it's over I'll be answering all your questions in our Slack channel.

AMA / Q&A

In between workshops you'll be looking into data, your users' needs, and work on the strategy, tactics, and roadmap for growing your app. I'll be happy to give feedback on your projects!

Weekly projects

Founders (Seed-Series A/B) who want&nbsp;to learn the mechanics and design a winning strategy for scaling the app's revenue and acquisition

Paid UA, ASO, CRM experts trying to break into growth roles, build a holistic approach to marketing, and work closer with product teams

Product Managers who want to understand the value of marketing and approach growth not only through the lens of product features and UX 🚀

Marketing executives turning a mobile app into an extra revenue stream or transitioning from digital marketing into mobile 🎯

Other professionals working in app growth teams and interested in learning about app growth, user acquisition, retention, and monetization

This course is for:

During this course you will:

<ul><li>Break down your growth goals and KPIs into actionable metrics&nbsp;and measure the impact of moving each of them. </li><li>Assess the growth of your app and identify your biggest growth opportunities.</li></ul> Bonus: Templates for funnel analysis, scenario

Decide which parts of the app growth funnel and methods to focus on

<ul><li>Learn the paid and organic strategies to drive efficient user acquisition.</li><li>Apply the best practices, current trends (like UGC), and creative experimentation strategy.</li><li>Learn how to optimize the channels' performance in the post-IDFA era.</li></ul> Bonus: Channel matrix template

Develop your user acquisition strategy and define the marketing channels' mix

<ul><li>Examine the potential of viral and content loops for decreasing your CACs.</li><li>Review the state of your activation and retention to make sure they contribute to user and revenue growth.</li></ul> Bonus: Templates for engineering your product viral and referral loops

Dive into product-led growth and learn how to integrate additional growth loops into your app and power up your user acquisition

<ul><li>Build and prioritize a roadmap of monetization experiments to scale revenue.</li><li>Optimize your paywall, pricing, packaging, and discount strategy to increase conversion rates.</li><li>Apply top tactics for revenue growth.</li></ul> Bonus: Experiment launch and analysis templates, interview guides.

Maximize subscriber conversion, retention, and increase LTVs
 

Apply Product-led & Marketing-led Growth principles. No 'hacks' but a structured approach to growth by creating value for users and business

Ekaterina Gamsriegler

Cohort 7

Cohort 8

An advanced-level course for senior and rising design leaders ready to address the most common challenges Design Leaders face. Learn how to build your durable design operating system to withstand scale, restructuring, evolution, and growth. Establish mechanisms and high-leverage activities that maintain quality and effectiveness for your teams and for the business. Course Topics + Content Build and activate high-impact teamsApply effective organizational design, strategic planning, and performance measurement Define and optimize your operating systemEstablish rhythms and rituals, shape a positive design culture, streamline processes and workflows, and build a robust reporting and communication strategy Identify the most effective design team structuresLearn how to choose the right team structures for your organization Activate your team’s strengths through organizational designAnticipate common challenges within and across teams and learn strategies for effectively addressing them Create your organization’s ideal design teamTogether, we’ll design and build your design team and organization 7 Live, Interactive Sessions, with timezone-friendly options for most APAC/EMEA/AMER locales - One Welcome Kickoff Session- Three Live, Interactive Learning Sessions including Q&amp;A sessions with guest experts- Two Office Hours / Q+A sessions with Kristin for personalized guidance- One Reflection/Wrap-up Session

Design Your Organization's Operating System 

If your events are recurring and at the same time, it might be easiest to use a single line item to communicate your course schedule to students

Tuesdays & Thursdays

Feel free to type out dates as your title as a way to communicate information about specific live sessions or other events.

May 7, 2022

Schedule items can also be used to convey commitments outside of specific time slots (like weekly projects or daily office hours).

Directors+ of Design and Operations leading teams across a portfolio of products and services.

Senior Leaders and Practitioners who are establishing, evolving, and leading a Design Organization or Operations practice.

Operations leaders who want to sharpen skills, learn new approaches and methods, and accelerate their organizations.

You'll learn how to establish mechanisms, routines, and high-leverage activities that maintain and enhance culture, quality, and community as you grow.

Best practices to build infrastructure that scales

<ul><li>Design and structure a high-performing design organization.</li><li>Effectively prioritize and plan work to maximize impact.</li><li>Utilize visual staffing tools to manage resources efficiently.</li><li>Implement accountability measures to maintain high-quality standards.</li></ul>

Build and activate high-impact teams

<ul><li>Establish effective rhythms and rituals that enhance team productivity and alignment.</li><li>Shape a positive design culture that fosters innovation and collaboration.</li><li>Optimize processes and workflows for greater efficiency.</li><li>Develop and implement robust reporting and communications</li></ul>

Define and optimize your operating system

<ul><li>Learn approaches and tactics that address common organizational and team challenges</li><li>Mitigate these challenges via a fixed vs. flexible framework</li><li>Gain new strategies to keep your team focused and thriving</li></ul>

Identify and anticipate the most common team and organizational challenges 

Guest Experience: Experienced leaders will join to share their stories and give examples of how they navigated similar challenges Instructor Experience: You'll learn directly from Kristin's first-hand experience establishing and leading multiple large-scale global design orgs

Access to first-hand experience and guidance customized to your unique situation

Included are multiple, moderated Q&amp;A sessions with Kristin and other industry leaders so that you can get expert advice on your unique challenges and aspirations.

Lightning Lessons

Design for Growth: Balancing Acquisition and Retention