Design Director accelerating careers

Dan Winer

Winter 2024

Cohort 1

Spring 2025

Fall 2025

Setting strategic direction, making high-stakes decisions, and translating vision into execution.

Persuading stakeholders, presenting ideas, and getting buy-in across an organization without formal authority.

Build confidence, drive business impact, and become a strategic partner, not just a design executor.
 

10+ years helping designers increase their influence and get promoted.

Strategy and Influence for Product Designers

Product designer

Senior Product Designer

Product Designer

Senior UX Designer 

UX Designer

This course is your blueprint for transitioning from executor to strategic partner: someone who influences product direction, not just UI.What You’ll Gain:• A path to promotion: Build skills that help you get promoted. Learn how to align your work with business goals, influence decisions, and lead with clarity.• Practical tools for immediate impact: Get frameworks and templates you can apply right away to make better decisions, communicate value, and influence direction.• Confidence to lead: Whether it’s running discovery, presenting to stakeholders, or shaping strategy, you’ll build the confidence to lead. Why this course is worth itEach week, you’ll complete a focused project using the templates and frameworks provided, then get direct, personalised feedback from a design director. You’ll leave with:• Tangible outputs you can use at work to drive alignment and influence decisions• Confidence to speak the language of the business and lead conversations• A strategic mindset that sets you apart from execution-focused designersThis is not a theory-only course. You’ll be doing real work, with real guidance, and building skills you can use immediately.

From pixel pusher to design leader

Articulate the value of your design work to gain influence with leadership

Lead product discovery to shape what gets built, not just how it looks.

Present your work with impact to build trust and influence stakeholders.

Create a design vision to align your team and guide long-term strategy

Connect your design decisions to business metrics to prove your value.

Reshape your role from a design executor to a strategic partner.

You have at least 1–2 years working as a product or UX designer in a tech company or startup.

Experience in product design

This course isn’t for those new to UX or still learning the basics; it’s for designers ready to take their skills to the next level.

Not for beginners

You want to move beyond execution and learn how to influence product direction and business outcomes.

Looking to grow your strategic impact

Aspiring design leaders: For designers aiming to transition into leadership roles, seeking to increase their influence.

Ambitious designers: Mid-level designers aspiring to senior and beyond roles, eager to be seen as strategic partners.

Overlooked design teams: Where advocacy is critical to elevate the role of design within product and engineering-led organisations.

Learn directly from Dan Winer

Dan Winer

Courses

Strategy and Influence for Product Designers