BUILDING DESIGN CAPABILITY FOR TEAMS THAT LEAD.

Most of our workshops and programmes work best with between 6 and 20 participants. Smaller than that and the collaborative dynamics that make the learning stick don’t quite land; larger than that and it becomes difficult to give individuals meaningful feedback and attention. For larger organisations, we sometimes run parallel cohorts or a train-the-trainer model — worth a conversation if your team is bigger.

For a standalone workshop or masterclass, we can usually move from first call to delivery within two to three weeks. For a multi-week capability programme, allow four to six weeks from brief to kick-off — we need time to design the curriculum properly and align on logistics. If you have a tight deadline, tell us early and we’ll work around it where we can.

Both. Our Shoreditch studio is a live design agency environment and it’s a genuinely different experience — there’s something about being in that space that shifts how people engage. But we regularly deliver on-site at client offices across the UK, and we run everything online too for distributed teams. The content and quality don’t change; the environment is just a variable we work with.

Honestly, this depends on what you’re trying to change. Before every programme we agree on two or three things that would tell you it worked — these might be behavioural (the team runs their own research sessions), process-based (discovery becomes a standard part of the sprint cycle), or output-based (a specific project moves forward differently). We check in against those at the end of delivery and again a few months later. We don’t rely on post-course satisfaction surveys as a proxy for learning.

UX and product design, service design, design thinking and innovation, user research, product management, design leadership, AI for design and product teams, and design systems. We can also work across these — some of our most effective programmes are cross-disciplinary, particularly for non-design teams who need a working vocabulary across the whole process rather than depth in one area.

Yes. For most programmes we build in a follow-up session four to six weeks after delivery — a chance to review what’s landed, what hasn’t, and where the team needs more support. We also offer resource packs, templates, and access to our practitioner network. For longer-term relationships, some clients keep us on a retainer basis to provide ongoing critique, coaching, and occasional top-up sessions as the team grows.

Yes, and we’d argue mixed teams often produce the best results. The more experienced people bring context and credibility; the less experienced bring fresh questions and often challenge assumptions that have calcified. We design sessions so both groups are challenged appropriately — which means the facilitation has to be active and responsive, not scripted. It’s one of the reasons we don’t use pre-recorded content.

Larger providers offer scale and process. We offer practitioners. Everyone who delivers for us is an active designer, researcher, or product leader — they’re working in the industry, not just teaching it. That means the methods are current, the examples are real, and the feedback is honest rather than diplomatic.

We’re also genuinely bespoke — we don’t have a catalogue of courses we slot teams into. If that level of customisation matters to you, we’re probably the right fit. If you need something standardised and auditable at volume, we’d rather tell you that upfront than overpromise.