Become the designer who can defend any decision in the room.
This course trains the judgment that gets you hired, promoted, and heard. Work real product briefs at your own pace, then bring them into live sprints to defend your calls with other designers.
By Miranda Slayter · Principal Designer · 13 years in product design
Defend your design decisions in a way that gets you the offer, the promotion, and the room.
Most designers only have design arguments to reach for: hierarchy, patterns, heuristics, best practice. That’s what we were all taught, and it’s not enough. The designers who get trusted can read the business goals and tie their decisions to what leadership actually cares about.
The catch is most designers never get to practise that. Your company doesn’t track much, the data’s locked away, or nobody showed you how a design choice connects to a metric. So the skill that decides your career is the one you get the fewest chances to build.
Why Before UI is where you build it. Real briefs, real insights, real OKRs, where you make the calls and defend every one against the goals that matter. Not videos you half-watch. The actual work, in a place where fumbling costs you nothing.
Join hundreds of designers who are finally being heard:
“This forced me to articulate my thinking and ask ‘why’ for every decision. It’s changing how I approach design entirely.”, Sammie, Sr. Product Designer
“It felt like working in a real-life environment, where every choice needed a clear reason and impact, not just good visuals.”, Tayma, Product Designer
“More hands-on than the courses I’ve been taking. Super useful for case studies in interviews.”, Severine, between roles
If you want to be seen as a designer whose judgment is trusted, get pulled into decisions earlier, and stop having your work scrapped over a question you didn’t see coming, this is for you.
Who Why Before UI is for
Not for complete beginners or anyone after visual-execution practice. This is about the thinking, not the pixels.
Loved by experienced designers everywhere
Rated 4.3 by 94% of designers
The problem nobody trained you for.
Design education teaches you to make the thing. It doesn’t teach you the business it lives inside. Most of us were never shown how a design decision connects to a metric, what an OKR actually asks of us, or how to read the data a PM takes for granted. And plenty of us work somewhere that tracks almost nothing, so there’s no chance to learn it on the job even if we wanted to.
So when someone asks how your work moves the business, you reach for the only arguments you have, hierarchy, patterns, best practice, and they don’t always land. Nobody ever made it your job to know more, or gave you the data to practise with.
You don’t fix that by reading about it. You fix it by working real briefs with real metrics and real goals until thinking in those terms stops feeling foreign.
In partnership with Mobbin - giving you access to real product walkthroughs access to world's most extensive app design library
Build the skills AI can’t do for you.
Master the thing nobody taught you: taking a messy, constrained brief and producing a decision you can defend to anyone in the room.
Inside the course - start today
01
Learn the framework.
Every module opens with a lesson video from me (7-10 minutes) on a specific method: how to frame a rationale, defend under pressure, make a business case for AI, decide with no data. Seven modules, seven frameworks you keep and reuse for the rest of your career.
02
Get the brief.
A real product (Wolt, Coursera, and more), a real scenario, real research insights, real business OKRs, and the existing UI to work from. Get started today and take as long as you want getting ready for the sprint.
Plus 3 months of Mobbin free, so you can study the real screens of the apps in each brief.
03
Study real submissions.
You get 10-15 past designers' takes on the same brief, so you see the range of ways it can be approached and learn from real work, not theory.
04
See what great looks like
A recap video where I walk through standout submissions and the mistakes most designers make, so you can see where you went right and where you can do better.
Defend it, live.
Join a live design sprint at any point.
Bring a brief you’ve already worked on, or use the sprint as your first run at it. It’s a capped group in a private Slack channel, same brief, real deadline.
You defend your call under real feedback and give the same back, then close with a live recap where you see how everyone else approached it.
Two sprint seats come with the course.
The seven modules
Each one teaches a framework, then hands you a real brief to use it on. You make the call, defend it in writing, and compare your thinking against every other designer who has worked the same brief.
The Rationale Formula
Learn the structure that make a design decision defensible, then use it on a food delivery app losing people before their first order.
Prioritization
Learn two ways to prioritise between options and defend what got cut, then prove a new feature is worth building at all.
Stakeholder Pushback
Learn to anticipate the questions stakeholders ask before they ask them, then redesign a rejection flow for users who have already been let down.
Designing AI Powered experiences
Learn what changes when a product guesses instead of staying static, then design and defend one AI-powered feature on a learning platform.
0 to 1 Discovery
Learn to work out what you need to know before you design anything, then build a discovery plan from a one-line prompt and nothing else.
Impact without Data
Learn to argue impact when there is nothing to measure and never will be, then redesign for a non-profit with no analytics.
Impact Driven Case Study
Learn what a hiring manager reads and in what order, then turn any brief you have completed into a case study.
Before module one there’s a short Foundations primer on OKR and metrics. Skip it if you already work with those regularly.
Learn from someone who’s done it where it counts.
I’m Miranda, a Principal Product Designer at Booking.com. 13 years in product design, working where design meets the actual business: multi-year vision, high-stakes tradeoffs, and the rooms where the calls get made.
I learned these skills the hard way, watching good work get scrapped because I couldn’t explain why it mattered. Since then I’ve spent years teaching them, coaching designers from senior to lead, and running this challenge for hundreds of experienced designers. I’ve seen exactly where people get stuck, and what moves them past it.
Why Before UI is the thing I wish I’d had a decade ago, built from everything I had to figure out alone and everything I’ve since watched click for the designers I’ve coached.
-Miranda
Principal Designer · 13 years in · Founder, Strategic Studio
Frequently asked questions
Can I expense this course with my company?
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Absolutely. Many designers have. I have an expense request template you can use here: https://shorturl.at/a0EvO
How does this help designers stay relevant with AI?
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There's a full module dedicated to designing AI experiences focusing on passive and active intent, transparency, and trust.
I’m already a senior designer. Is this still for me?
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Yes. This isn’t fundamentals. It’s the part that gets harder as you get more senior: defending decisions, framing problems, and making your judgment legible to people who don’t think like designers.
What’s included in the course?
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It's a self-paced course with 7 modules that you can start immediately Each module has a video lesson introducing you to a new framework, a real brief to work off, and a recap video with common mistakes and what good looks like. It also comes with 2 live sprint seats to use whenever you want, and lifetime access to the Slack community.
What’s a sprint?
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A live run of one brief with a small, capped group in a private Slack channel over about 10–12 days: solo work, peer feedback, and a live recap and Q&A. Course members get my personal feedback and first access; solo sprint joiners get feedback from the community.
Time required to complete it?
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I recommend spending about 5-10 hours on each brief and no more than 1 week to keep a good momentum. At that rate it will take you roughly 2 months to complete it. But it’s self-paced so you make the call on how you spend your time.
How do I combine the self learning and the live sprints?
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Personally, I would go through all modules and pick which ones I want feedback on the most and join those ones. But if you struggle with self-motivation jump into one asap so you can work against a deadline alongside other designers.
Join Why Before UI
4.3 · 300+ designers
The course
Instant access to 7 modules a teaching video, real designer submissions to study, a product brief, and a video recap for each
6 real-product briefs real products, research, & business goals to design against
3 months of Mobbin free study the real, current screens of the apps in every brief
An impact case study proving you can work with real business insights ready for your portfolio or manager
The Sprints
2 sprint seats included bring your work into an exclusive community and get feedback
My personal feedback in every sprint you join, as a course member
Total:
$397usd
Join for instant access →
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