TRENDING 

Pragmatic Institute’s design practice has launched! Explore our new courses for designers.
Pragmatic Institute Logo
Register Now
Online and Public Training
We offer online and in-person training events all around the world with great opportunities to network with your peers.
Get Started >
Private Training
Prefer a private training, tailored for and delivered specifically to your company, in-person or online? Contact our account team for pricing and availability.
Contact Sales >
Pragmatic Institute Logo
Register Now
Online and Public Training
We offer online and in-person training events all around the world with great opportunities to network with your peers.
Get Started >
Private Training
Prefer a private training, tailored for and delivered specifically to your company, in-person or online? Contact our account team for pricing and availability.
Contact Sales >
Designer community icons

Expand the influence of your design team

With Pragmatic Design

Grow the Strategic
Impact of Design

an illustration of a designer and a business professional working together

Pragmatic Institute’s design practice empowers designers to contribute strategically. We help designers extend their reach by combining business acumen with user advocacy to uncover new opportunities to create value and strengthen partnerships across the organization.  

Our learning experiences are developed by design practitioners, instructional designers and industry leaders—focusing on interactive learning and practical application. With an ecosystem of training, resources and community, our design practice builds on Pragmatic’s reputation as a transformational partner to 200,000 alumni and counting.

Our Courses

Business Strategy and Design

Business Strategy
& Design

Increase your strategic impact as a designer

Gain a grounding in business strategy and the tools and vocabulary of key business stakeholders so you can confidently contribute to strategy conversations. Learn how to connect user-centered work to the advancement of business objectives, demonstrate return on investment, and strengthen cross-functional partnerships.
Learn More
Storytelling for Influence

Influence Through Storytelling

Harness the power of storytelling to grow your influence

Get tools and techniques to enhance collaboration with stakeholders, build influence, and change attitudes and behaviors through strategic storytelling. Learn how to design narratives that showcase design impact, advocate for user interests, align stakeholders around a common purpose and inspire teams to action.
Learn More

Pragmatic Design
Advisory Board

Our Design Advisory Board brings a real-world lens to strategic design.

These experts are enthusiastic and passionate about design advocacy, human-centered innovation and building the next generation of design leaders.

Meet the Board

  • Christine Fitts

    Director, Customer Experience, Integrated Delivery Lead | Pfizer

  • John James

    Director of Product Design | Spotify

  • Kim Moy

    Design Director | Capital One

  • J. Scott Sanchez

    Product Innovation Officer | Deluxe

  • Lauren Sinreich

    Senior Principal, Design Research | Coforma

  • Leah Udja

    UX Research Manager, Enterprise | Indeed

  • Lyndsey Williams

    Associate Director, User Experience Design and Research Operations | Moody’s Analytics

  • Elizabeth Zietlow

    Director, Experience Mapping and CX Strategy | Signet Jewelers

Meet Our Pragmatic Design Instructors

Shannon McGarity Lead Instructor Shannon McGarity has spent more than 20 years solving clients’ design challenges in roles ranging from head of product to UX director. Prior to Pragmatic, Shannon was a director at strategic design firms Cooper and Designit—leading teams on projects, creating curriculum, coaching innovation teams and teaching service design, design leadership and more. She is also a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, focusing on leadership coaching. [Photo by Corey Sipkin]
Teresa Brazen Instructor Teresa Brazen has spent 15+ years working in the design industry as a design consultant, educator, business leader and executive coach. She’s helped teams at NASA, Rail Europe, Cisco, Clorox, Charles Schwab and more adopt human-centered ways of working and designing products and services. Prior to Pragmatic, Teresa spearheaded the global expansion of Cooper Professional Education—a leader in design and creative leadership training—to 10 countries. Her mission today is to help professionals expand their potential and increase their impact.
Lisa Pertoso Instructor Lisa Pertoso is a learning designer, facilitator and organizational coach. The driving force behind her 20+ year career is helping leaders prepare for the future of work by developing our most important human skills: adaptability, communication, creativity, innovation, empathy and self-awareness. Lisa has educated design, tech, business and nonprofit leaders in the U.S., Asia, Australia and Europe. Her past clients include BMW Group, Brooklyn Public Library, Hyper Island, Parsons School of Design and TBWA. [Photo by Reuben Hernandez]
Previous
Next

Featured Resources

Find more expert insights, actionable advice and thought leadership in every format in the Pragmatic Design resource library.

2 Tools to Leverage UX Metrics for Internal Buy-in and Product Success

User experience metrics can help you create a story around the value UX brings to a cross-functional team and quantify that impact. Senior UX Manager Leah Ujda shares how to use two powerful tools to overcome common challenges and build buy-in for UX work.
Read More >
Article

Ethics in Storytelling: A Guide for Designers

As designers, we make decisions about how to tell stories, whether describing a user’s journey or explaining our choices in designing a product. How can we ensure our storytelling is ethical? In this Pragmatic Design
Read More >
Ebook

How to Advocate for Design in a 6-Minute Activity, with Adam Cutler of IBM Design

Sometimes designers feel that they are in a fight, and they approach advocacy as a fight. But you’re never going to change minds by fighting.” Adam Cutler, a Distinguished Designer and a founding member of IBM Design, shares how designers can build influence.
Listen Now >
Podcast

Get the details on new courses and check out our latest thought leadership and resources for designers.

Subscribe
Design Ebook Cover Graphic
Testimonials

What your peers are saying

Storytelling, like products, deserves thought, care and user-centricity. I liked how this course solidified concepts by connecting them to real stories and examples—weaving in learning with interactive and engaging activities. I realized the importance of not just what you say but also how you say it.
Yvonne RomeroDesign Lead at ustwo
I loved everything about Business Strategy & Design; it was valuable and fun. The course helps you better understand how to align with business needs and partners, speak the same language and manage expectations in both directions. Now, in early conversations with project teams, I can actually inject my understanding and perspective and start to influence what the strategy might be.
Matt RussellExperience Design Senior Manager at Pfizer
Influence Through Storytelling was an engaging course that offered great collaboration with new folks and an intuitive process for storytelling. Now, I can improve my storytelling to have a more compelling rationale for designs and get buy in. And I can communicate more effectively with the cross-functional team.
Steffi GogoiSenior User Experience Designer at ADP
Business Strategy & Design shows how design tools can be applied to business and product goal setting. The emphasis on using design skills to solve internal communication, prioritization and cross-functional problems—not just product ones—was a really helpful takeaway. And the through-line of examples made it feel pragmatic.
Eric BellPrincipal Product Designer at Vineti
Storytelling is not just about presenting mocks! In this interactive course, you’ll learn effective storytelling methods and apply them to your real-world scenario. Everyone on my design team should take this class.
Holly TiwariPrincipal Product Designer at Stitch Fix
Business Strategy & Design is a great course for designers and design leaders alike! It shares how business and product strategy are defined to better inform your design approach and priorities and help you communicate more easily with cross-functional team members. It provides a lot of useful, actionable frameworks.
Ashley WillhiteHead of UX at Addi
Influence Through Storytelling gives a blueprint on how to build your storytelling skills and present design work to just about anyone.
Magdalena KabelisProduct Designer at Fidelity Investments
Business Strategy & Design shares great insights into how design impacts business goals and vice versa. I would especially recommend it to designers who work closely with product managers.
Filip AleksandrowPrincipal Designer at Microsoft
Previous
Next
Pragmatic Strategic Design Certification

Pragmatic Design Certification

Stand out from the crowd with Pragmatic Design certifications. Our certifications enable you to easily share your strategic design skills with your network.

Stay in the Know

Get the details on new courses and check out our latest thought leadership and resources for designers.
Get Updates

Subscribe

Subscribe

Training on Your Schedule

Fill out the form today and our sales team will help you schedule your private Pragmatic training today.