Design better.
Grow faster.
Get seen.

The major difference is that with the Design League you will have a personal coach. Your coach will help you:

• Set your learning objectives so that you would gain more value over a shorter period of time.

• Get one hour of 1:1 coaching with your coach every month, included in your membership.

• Boost your career by building a solid professional portfolio and reaching out to the right audience.

• Like the Student and Professional memberships, the Design League also gives you unlimited access to all our courses and textbooks.

People usually start working with a design coach for one of these reasons:

• You're stepping into something big, like leading your first design team, taking on a redesign with real business stakes, or making a career switch into design, and you want support getting through it well.

• There's a real gap between where you are and where you want to be. Maybe you're strong in UX but need to build UI skills, or you know the craft but haven't led people before.

• You want to get to your goal faster than you would figure out alone.

• You're stuck between a few paths and can't tell which is right.

• You've outgrown the skills that got you here. Being great at design execution got you promoted to a lead or senior role, and now you need different skills, like influencing stakeholders or managing a team, to keep growing.

• Design work has taken over more of your life than you want, and it's costing you somewhere else.

• You know you're strong at certain things but you haven't figured out how to actually use that strength to move your career forward.

Coaching is a thought-provoking and creative collaboration that inspires you to maximize your professional potential. This is particularly important in today's uncertain, complex, and highly competitive environment.

The coach's responsibility is to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what you want to achieve

• Encourage your self-discovery

• Elicit your own generation of solutions and strategies

• Hold you responsible and accountable, for both your achievements and areas requiring improvement

This process will help you dramatically improve your outlook on work and life through improving your leadership skills and unlocking your potential.

Our coaches are design experts with 10+ years in the field, selected for their expertise.

You'll choose your coach right after signing up. Their role is to help you reach your professional goals through a real coaching partnership, similar to the strongest professional relationships you've had elsewhere. Think about what made those work and what mattered to you in them.

A few tips for choosing your coach:

• Check their profile: specialization, native language, time zone, and availability, and pick someone who fits your schedule and preferences.

• Consider how their working style complements yours, whether that's for your own growth or your team's.

• Talk through your coaching goals with them, matched to their specialism and how they like to work with individuals or teams.

If you'd like to switch coaches later on, that's completely fine. Sometimes a different fit just works better at a different point in your journey.

Design League is billed monthly. Simply start the sign-up flow and go to the last step, the checkout page. That's where you'll see exactly which payment methods are offered to you.

If you need further support, send us an email to [email protected].

The Interaction Design Foundation Design League suggests a number of typical activities that will help you organize yourself when working towards achieving your professional goals, as well as how to make the best use of your Design League membership.

These include taking training courses, participating in activities and discussions of the professional community, authoring professional articles or books, speaking at conferences, or playing a local leadership role. In addition to this, you can create your own custom activities according to your personal needs.

Your coach will be there to help you decide which activities are optimal for you. To choose your activities within the Interaction Design Foundation Design League: 

• Open your profile by clicking the “Profile” link on the Interaction Design Foundation navigation bar.

• Click the “Interaction Design Foundation Design League Control Panel” link at the top of your profile page.

• On the Interaction Design Foundation Design League Control Panel, scroll down to the “Choose Your Activities" section.

• Explore available activities and courses to get an idea of what you could do. Take note of those that might be of interest to you.

• Talk to your coach to discuss your goals and the upcoming actions that you are plan to take in order to achieve them.

• Open each activity that you have decided to perform, and then click “Save to my activities” button.

Everything happens in your Design League Control Panel. You can message your coach there at any time, and either of you can propose a time for a call. The other person accepts or declines it right in the chat, so you both have a record of what was agreed.

The coaching itself happens over video call, usually Zoom, though your coach may prefer a different tool. Sessions typically run 30 to 60 minutes and focus on a specific topic or set of topics.

Try to agree on a time at least 24 hours ahead, so you both have time to prepare. That prep might be defining the questions you want answered, identifying options, or pulling together supporting materials.

After the call, your coach logs the session, and the time is counted toward your monthly hour.

Your Design League membership includes one hour of 1:1 coaching every month. You and your coach decide how to use it. Many members find that two 30-minute sessions work better than one long one, because it gives you time to act on what you discussed and come back with questions.

Your hour is for the month it is granted in, so it does not carry over into the next month. You can see how much coaching time you have left in your Design League Control Panel.

Your membership includes one hour of coaching a month, and that is the time IxDF pays your coach for.

If you would like more than that, talk to your coach directly. Some coaches are happy to spend extra time with you because they also learn from these experiences, but it is entirely their choice.

If you have a bigger piece of work in mind and want to talk through the options, email us at [email protected].

In your first sessions, briefly walk your coach through your experience, your current situation, and your career and life goals. From there, you'll work together on a path to reach them, and later sessions will focus on checking your progress and adjusting course as needed.

Along the way, you might talk about things like:

• Which courses or self-study materials would actually help you right now

• What certifications to aim for and what they require

• Projects or professional activities your coach thinks are worth pursuing

• Specific job roles or employers you're targeting, and what it takes to meet their bar

• How to position and pitch yourself as a professional in the industry

If your current coaching partnership isn't the right fit, you can switch to a different coach. Just go to your IxDF Design League Control Panel, scroll down to the list of available coaches, and choose the one you'd like to work with instead.

You are free to switch without giving a reason. That said, we are always working to improve the program, so if you have feedback on what was not working, we would genuinely like to hear it.

If you need further support, send us an email at [email protected].

There's no limit on how many times you can change coaches. That said, if you're thinking about switching a second time within the same month, reach out to us first. It could just be that finding the right fit is taking a bit longer this time, and we're happy to help point you toward a coach who might be a better match.

You can cancel anytime from the Billing tab in your profile. If you'd rather keep learning at a lower tier instead of canceling entirely, you can downgrade to a Professional membership from the same tab.

Of course you can. Your coach won't do the project for you, it's still yours to drive, but they can help you move it forward faster: shifting your perspective on a problem, helping you get unstuck on a decision, or suggesting approaches you hadn't considered.

You can also post about your project in one of our forums and get input from other designers in the community.