UX for non-designers.
A one-day in-house programme for engineers, product managers, analysts and ops people who already make design decisions without the title. Run on your own product.
The people deciding design by accident.
Most products are shaped by people who were never trained to shape them. This day gives those people a method instead of an instinct.
- •Engineers, product managers, analysts and operations people who make design decisions without the job title.
- •Teams who have never worked with a designer, or who have one designer and a very long queue.
- •Teams where AI tools arrived before anyone agreed how they should be used.
- •Anyone who gets asked to make something more user friendly with no method behind the request.
Six things that stop the guessing.
Run against one real feature of yours, not a hypothetical one.
What a designer actually does, and what you can do yourself
Separate the parts that need a specialist from the parts your team is already deciding by accident.
→ a line drawn between what you keep and what you hand overFinding out what users need without a research team
Five conversations, run properly, beat a survey nobody acts on. We run one in the room.
→ a short interview guide your team can reuseThe assumptions you are treating as facts
Write down what the team believes about its users, then sort it into known, guessed and never checked.
→ your assumptions sorted, with the riskiest ones namedStructuring a flow before anyone opens Figma
Sketching, naming the steps, and arguing about the shape of the thing while it is still cheap to change.
→ a sketched flow for one real feature of yoursWhere AI genuinely helps, and where it will mislead you
Synthesis, first drafts and variations are fair game. Deciding what users want is not.
→ prompts that worked, and a list of what to stop asking itTesting something small before you build it
Put a sketch in front of five people, watch what happens, and change your mind cheaply.
→ a test you can run next week without hiring anyoneArtefacts, not just a good day out.
- •A sketched flow for one real feature, made by the people who will build it.
- •Your team assumptions written down and sorted into known, guessed and never checked.
- •An interview guide and a test plan you can run next week without a researcher.
- •Shared vocabulary, so design reviews stop being arguments about taste.
Before you enquire.
Do people need any design experience?
None. The day assumes no design background at all. It is built for people whose job is something else and who keep running into design decisions anyway.
Will this turn our engineers into designers?
No, and we would not claim it. One day gives a team a shared method and enough research skill to stop guessing. It does not replace hiring a designer, and where a problem needs one we will say so on the day.
Do you use our product, or a worked example?
Yours. We ask for one real feature or flow in advance and build the day around it, so what the team sketches and tests is work they are actually doing.
How is this different from your beginner course?
Our beginner course runs over ten weeks, for individuals changing career into design. This is one day, for a team staying in its current job and needing the method rather than the career.
Have you taught non-designers before?
Yes, and it is the majority of our in-house work. We have run in-house training for teams at the BBC, Google, GroupM, Wataniya Insurance, Deloitte and Lidl, including groups with no designers in the room at all. To be straight with you: we hold no before and after outcome data for any client engagement, so judge it on the curriculum and ask us to walk your team through it first.
Enquire about this programme.
Tell us who would be in the room, the feature you want to work on, and your preferred timing. We'll get back to you within 2 business days.