Staging environment

Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work

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4 Weeks

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Cohort-based Course

Master data storytelling: the skill that turns UX work into presentations executives understand, trust, and act on immediately.

Clients include

Designlab Learning
Northrop Grumman
Social Security
Intuit
National Cancer Institute

Course overview

The Difference between Good and Great Designers? Getting Executives to Buy-in

You're a good designer. Your work solves real problems and creates genuine value.


But here's what separates good designers from great ones: great designers get executive buy-in.


While good designers focus on craft, great designers focus on communication.


While good designers present features, great designers present business impact.


While good designers show what they built, great designers prove why it matters.


The gap isn't in your design skills. It's in your communication.


When you present research findings, executives are trying to connect dots to million-dollar decisions.


When you recommend design changes, they want to understand the measurable impact.


It's not that your work lacks business value.


It's that you're not communicating that value in terms executives understand and trust.


Without this skill:

You'll stay excluded from strategic conversations: While others make critical product decisions without design input

Your best insights will be overlooked: Because stakeholders can't see the connection to business outcomes

You'll be seen as tactical, not strategic: Limited to executing ideas instead of shaping them

Your value gets questioned: As leadership struggles to measure design's ROI


The solution isn't better design work. It's better data communication.


Every department that gets executive respect, sales, marketing, product, speaks in data.


They measure impact, quantify outcomes, and present compelling business cases.


That's how they earned their seat at the strategy table.


As one Design Director told me: "The difference between good and great designers is the great ones can come with data... they bring a package of insights and data that helps sell their ideas and what they've created."

This course teaches you that essential skill.


When you master data-informed communication, you'll:

Get invited to strategy meetings: Because you bring measurable insights about design's business impact

Gain influence: Using data your company already has

Become a strategic partner: By connecting design decisions to business results

Earn the recognition you deserve: As someone who bridges design and business understanding


You don't need an MBA.

You need a systematic framework to measure, validate, and communicate design impact in executive terms.


This 4-week program transforms good designers into great ones:

Week 1: Align Design with Business Goals and Measure Design Impact

Week 2: Turn Problems into Compelling Data Visualizations That Get Buy-In

Week 3: Validate Design Solutions from Multiple Stakeholder Perspectives

Week 4: Present Your Work with Persuasive 5-Minute Executive Presentations


Limited to 15 students for personalized coaching.


Training Your Team? Email kai@datainformeddesign.online for bulk pricing.

Who is this course for

01

Designers who want to use data to bypass office politics and prove their value immediately

02

Designers tired of watching 'strategic' roles like PMs get promoted while their insights are ignored

03

Designers in low-UX maturity environments where relationship-building isn't enough

04

Mid-level designers whose great ideas get dismissed by skeptical executives

What you'll walk away with

Data-Informed frameworks that make even skeptical stakeholders approve your designs

Have clear frameworks to immediately show your design impact in meetings, presentations, performance reviews, and interviews.

ROI experiments that prove your design value in business outcomes, not opinions

Stop talking in hypotheticals and opinions. Show experiments that prove your design value in business outcomes

Templates to turn any design project into a compelling business case study

Not sure how to talk about your design work in an effective way? You'll get templates that provide you with step-by-step instructions

Scripts to present user research that gets immediate executive buy-in

Not sure what to say when talking with decision-makers or executives? You'll get scripts to help you in crucial situations

60 minutes of 1:1 Data-Informed Design coaching

You won't just learn theoretical concepts. You'll learn how to apply it to your work with 1:1 coaching with a Data-Informed Design expert.

What’s included

Christopher Kai Wong

Live sessions

Learn directly from Christopher Kai Wong in a real-time, interactive format.

Lifetime access

Go back to course content and recordings whenever you need to.

Community of peers

Stay accountable and share insights with like-minded professionals.

Certificate of completion

Share your new skills with your employer or on LinkedIn.

Maven Guarantee

This course is backed by the Maven Guarantee. Students are eligible for a full refund up until the halfway point of the course.

Course syllabus

12 live sessions • 30 lessons • 5 projects

Week 1

Oct 13—Oct 19

    Oct

    13

    Workshop 1: Align Design with Product Goals to start having an impact

    Mon 10/134:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 1 Lessons: Align with Product Goals

    4 items

    Oct

    16

    Workshop 2: Want to talk about the Value of Design? Track Business Outcomes

    Thu 10/164:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 2 Lessons: Track Design impact on Business outcomes

    5 items

    Oct

    17

    Office Hours

    Fri 10/173:30 PM—4:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Week 2

Oct 20—Oct 26

    Oct

    20

    Workshop 3: The most important question to answer is "So What?"

    Mon 10/204:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 3 Lessons: Identifying the core problem that matters to your audience

    4 items

    Oct

    23

    Workshop 4: Turn your Core Challenge into a Data Visualization

    Thu 10/234:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 4 Lessons: Turn your Core Challenge into Data Visualizations

    5 items

    Oct

    24

    Office Hours

    Fri 10/243:30 PM—4:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Week 3

Oct 27—Nov 2

    Oct

    27

    Workshop 5: Create Design Hypotheses to turn Recommendations into Solutions

    Mon 10/274:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 5 Lessons: Creating Evidence-based Design Recommendations

    3 items

    Oct

    30

    Workshop 6: Test (and validate) your solutions working with an AI PM Second Brain

    Thu 10/304:00 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 6 Lessons: Understand your boss with "PM" second brains

    5 items

    Oct

    31

    Office Hours

    Fri 10/313:30 PM—4:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Week 4

Nov 3—Nov 8

    Nov

    3

    Workshop 7: Craft the universal UX Story, a 5-minute story

    Mon 11/35:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 7 lessons: Structure Your UX Story

    4 items

    Nov

    6

    Workshop 8: Turn your Narrative into a Persuasive Story through PAS

    Thu 11/65:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Workshop 8 Lessons: Deliver Your 5-Minute Strategic Presentation

    4 items

    Nov

    7

    Office Hours 4

    Fri 11/74:30 PM—5:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Bonus

    Apply these methods to your work with a 60 min coaching call

    1 item

What students are saying

Meet your instructor

Christopher Kai Wong

Christopher Kai Wong

Top Design Writer on Medium (325+ design articles). Data-Informed Design Expert.

Kai has over a decade of UX experience in data-centric fields like Healthcare, Federal, and B2B/SaaS UX. His designs have impacted millions of vulnerable populations, including patients, senior citizens, and medical professionals.


He has often worked as UX team of one, communicating the value of UX to teams and organizations that may not fully understand. As a result, he has learned better, more effective communication by understand effective data-focused viewpoints.

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work

October Cohort

$599

Dates

Oct 13—Nov 9, 2025

Payment Deadline

Oct 12, 2025

November Cohort

$599

Dates

Nov 10—Dec 7, 2025

Payment Deadline

Nov 9, 2025
Get reimbursed

Course schedule

3-5 hours per week

  • Mondays and Thursday

    12:00-1:00 PM EST

    I will have live lectures with Q&A, reviewing this week's lessons. These will also be where I review student's exercise and provide live feedback

  • Pre-recorded lectures

    1-2 hours per week

    In these lectures, I'll dive into the specifics around Data, Narrative, Visuals, and more. This will be a more detailed videos on the stuff I cover live on Mondays and Fridays

  • Weekly projects and exercises

    2 hours per week

    These exercises, paired with the lecture, will help you practice the concepts you learn from lectures

Free resource

White paper: How 15 Global Design Leaders are Thriving in 2025

I interviewed 15 Global Design Leaders about how to thrive in 2025, when Designers are increasingly asked to show their value.


How are some designers thriving, and what they doing? You can read about it here.


Ready to learn how to apply these patterns of success at work? Enroll in the course to learn how.

Get the white paper

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work

October Cohort

$599

Dates

Oct 13—Nov 9, 2025

Payment Deadline

Oct 12, 2025

November Cohort

$599

Dates

Nov 10—Dec 7, 2025

Payment Deadline

Nov 9, 2025
Get reimbursed

$599

USD

·

4 Weeks