Product Strategy for Designers by Femke on Maven

Advocate for your ideas, strategically influence product strategy, and step up your design career. This course provides actionable frameworks to navigate ambiguous product challenges, ground design decisions in strong rationale, and gain cross-functional alignment. Led by Femke—Design Manager at Gusto and former Uber designer—the program equips you with the communication, storytelling, and strategic skills needed to transition from executing handed-down briefs to actively shaping the product roadmap.

Throughout the course, participants learn how to communicate effectively with senior leaders, present design rationale with conviction, and establish impactful design principles. The course combines self-paced video lessons, practical templates, worksheets, and weekly interactive live working sessions alongside expert Q&As with industry leaders. Students also gain lifetime access to content and recordings, access to a peer community, and a certificate of completion.

Who this course is for: This course is built for in-house designers operating within design teams who work daily with product and engineering peers. It is ideal for challenge-driven product designers (typically 1–4 years into their career) seeking to increase their influence, drive meaningful change, and contribute directly to product strategy and roadmapping rather than receiving pre-determined solutions.

Course Syllabus:

• Module 1: Introduction to Product – Explore product-thinking design, strategies for influencing product decisions, and drafting PRDs and problem/opportunity statements.
• Module 2: Developing a Product Strategy – Define a product vision, build actionable roadmaps, and clarify the designer’s strategic role in product strategy.
• Module 3: Building Conviction & Crafting Principles – Learn to build strong conviction around design decisions and craft design principles across different altitudes.
• Module 4: Leading Through Communication – Master documentation, stakeholder management, meeting facilitation, and delivering structured rationale and feedback.
• Module 5: Become an Engaging Storyteller – Learn the mechanics of effective storytelling and structure presentations that resonate with stakeholders and leadership.
• Module 6: Influencing Design Culture – Develop persuasive pitches and design initiative proposals to positively shape your team's design culture.

Key Outcomes: By completing this program, you will gain specific frameworks to get stakeholder buy-in, transform ambiguous problems into structured plans, present your work with confidence, and position yourself as a strategic partner to product management.