Coming Autumn 2026
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, Booking.com · 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
This challenge was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had
"This challenge was one of the best learning experiences I have ever had, because in a very short time it allowed me to test myself on different topics, with different objectives and outputs that were not always predictable"
Monica
Product Designe
Helped me get hands-on practice with strategic thinking in design
"The Why Before UI Challenged helped me get hands-on practice with strategic thinking in design. This is something I've read about on LinkedIn, newsletters, Medium articles, etc. but it's so different actually practicing it and being 'forced' to finish within a deadline. I'm learning a lot about time management and efficiency in the process too!"
Britta
Project Manager
It felt like working in a real-life environment, where every design choice needed a clear reason and impact
"It felt like working in a real-life environment, where every design choice needed a clear reason and impact, not just good visuals. Overall, this sprint pushed me in the best way, and I’m genuinely grateful for how much it helped me grow as a designer."
Tayma
Product Designer
I’ve started shift my focus from how an interface looks to why it should exist in a certain way.
"Since starting the challenge, my approach to design has become more intentional. I’ve started shift my focus from how an interface looks to why it should exist in a certain way. Im trying to spend more time clarifying user motivations, business goals, and problem definitions before even thinking about visual solutions."
Jessica
Product Designer
It's a looooot more hands-on that the courses I've been taking, so it has been super useful
"A great way for seasoned designers to up their game, and an amazing opportunity for rookie designers to learn from their more experienced peers.. It's a looooot more hands-on that the courses I've been taking, so it has been super useful, and I think it'll be super helpful when I have to work on case studies in job interviews."
Severine
Designer
I've already recommended this challenge to a few designer friends
"I've already recommended this challenge to a few designer friends, highlighting the range of challenge prompts which exposes you to different real-world scenarios of design. And unless you've worked with different companies/clients, you almost never get this kind of exposure or opportunity to practice"
Maya
Product Designer
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.
Inside the sprint - when you're ready
01
Bring your work into the room.
A small, capped group in a private Slack channel, with a real deadline. Your 2 sprint seats come with the course.
02
Defend it, live.
Share your call and defend it under real feedback from other designers, the closest thing to defending your work in an actual room. Plus, provide feedback on other designers submisisons.
03
See how the cohort approached it.
Watch how everyone else tackled the same brief, and close with a live recap and Q&A. This is the rep that actually moves your career.
A live sprint every six weeks.
Each sprint takes one brief and runs it live with a capped group (25–30) over 12 days: solo work, structured peer feedback, and a live recap to close. Course members get my personal feedback in every sprint, plus first access. Here’s the rhythm:
February
Onboarding
Tackle high uninstall rates during onboarding
March
MVP
Work with tight constraints and justify what made the list.
April
Rebuild from negativity
Reatain users before the product is ready
June
AI for hyper-personalisation
Make the business case for an AI feature without the hype.
July
Portfolio #1
Package your best work into a story that gets you hired.
August
0-to-1
Make the call when there’s no data and no user base yet.
October
Non-profit
Argue from intent when the data isn’t there
November
Portfolio #2
Package your best work into a story that gets you hired.
Seats are capped, and course members get first pick.
Want in on a sprint? Join the waitlist to hear when seats open and get first access.
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
Is the full course available now?
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What’s included in the course?
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What’s a sprint?
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Do I design from scratch?
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Can I join a sprint without the course?
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I’m already a senior designer. Is this still for me?
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Coming Autumn 2026
You already have the craft. Now build the case for it.
Learn to defend your decisions, tie your work to impact, and stop getting passed over by designers who can do what you can, plus explain it.