Level-up your leadership and facilitation while deepening your understanding of the most advanced OOUX tricks. If the OOUX Certification gave your X-ray goggles, this program will turn you into an MRI machine for complexity.
Crystalize your OOUX practice with this small-group coaching program, delivered live by Sophia Prater. It's part-lecture series, part-on-the-job training, and part intimate-Mastermind-group — and 100% "highly recommended" by Cohort 9 Advanced Strategists as the perfect next step to OOUX leadership and mastery.
The Advanced OOUX Certification Program is designed to let you practice leadership, coaching, mentoring, and consulting in a safe, supported container. You'll be learning facilitation skills that will position you as an effective leader in your workplace.
Continue to drop the guesswork — become even more confident in articulating your design decisions.
This program is not for everyone. It's tailored for Certified Strategists aspiring to lead with OOUX — at their organizations, with their clients, and in their own work. It's for those who already are (or who want to) start OOUX-consulting on the side and/or more effectively bring OOUX to their team.
Not only will you form deep connections with your mentees, you'll collaborate with and connect with your fellow mentors — the most skilled OOUXers and some of the smartest product design people on the planet. Speaking the OOUX language with your peers is a unique joy.
All the while, you'll continue to experience more seamless collaboration with your cross-functional team at work: even better conversations with your developers and even better questions to your stakeholders. More collaborative flow and even fewer frustrating miscommunications.
When you are facilitating the ORCA Process at work or charging a client for OOUX coaching, you want to be able to spot a Junction Object from a mile away. You want to see opportunities for conditional logic. You want to recognize a misplaced attribute, expertly shaking an Object Map into place. (Snap, snap, snap go the puzzle pieces.)
Most importantly, you want ORCA to be putty in your hands. You want to feel comfortable remixing it, flexing it, and making it your own. This program will take your existing expertise to the next level — helping you solidify and leverage advanced OOUX power moves.
If you are operating in an exceptionally complex environment and OOUX is helping but you feel like it could help even more — you are right. The Advanced Program will accelerate your OOUX skills in a way that might otherwise take years of practice.
THE "excellent" next step for Certified
OOUX Strategists looking to
amplify the power of ORCA.
Lively weekly sessions with Sophia and your fellow Advancies — interactive, collaborative training that you’ll look forward to each week. (Wednesdays at 11am EST — recordings provided.) You'll also be locked into lifetime access to the high-quality prerecorded advanced training (the self-paced version!) once we create it (likely in 2025).
You'll be able to attend as many of the 10 live cohort office hours — asking your own questions ... and taking the opportunity to practice answering questions as well.
You’ll decide on your own advanced OOUX content-creation project to help position you as a leader in the field. Together, we’ll work through it to make it amazing. You'll also have the other mentors to help you work through your project.
The Advanced Program is a true commitment — you’ll be responsible for coaching a group of mentees through the program and providing feedback on their assignments, offering short 1on1s, and setting up 2-3 small-group office hours over the course of the program.
“What I did not expect is that mentoring a pod would have such a profound impact on my understanding of the ORCA process.” - Yavor Stoilov
Start preparing for the Advanced Program now with the 15 Advanced Moves Course. The cost of this "Advanced Program highlight reel" will go toward your Advanced Certification enrollment.
Over the past 3 years I have consistently used the ORCA process with my clients, and have witnessed its success in enhancing team efficiency and creating intuitive user experiences, regardless of the industry or level of complexity of the interface. After seeing that impact, I became determined to integrate OOUX into my career as a UX designer and strategist. The Advanced Certification Program was exactly what I needed to take my skills to the next level. It went beyond the foundational ORCA methodology, equipping me with the expertise to effectively teach, lead, and facilitate OOUX. One of my favorite parts of this program was learning how to go beyond the basics, exploring ways to bend the rules and make the most of the process. You will gain practical experience for applying the methodology in real-world workshop and training scenarios.
This program is not for a typical UX designer; it is tailored for leaders who aspire to shape how industries communicate, collaborate, and create intuitive digital interfaces and experiences.
OOUX and the ORCA process are extraordinarily flexible and applicable in so, so many ways within the design world and beyond. The Advanced OOUX Certification Program introduces you to how this process can scale well beyond the traditional "design process" and help support better decision-making in project scoping, roadmap definition, research planning, service design and operations... basically everything that influences the design and delivery of a digital experience. Ultimately, this program demonstrates the way in which OOUX can change the way you *think* about design as well as the execution and delivery of an experience -- and empowers you to invite others to see things differently as well.
Other than the intrinsic value of becoming an even more powerful complexity-wrangler and an even more graceful leader in OOUX-style collaboration and facilitation, we provide a laundry list of benefits to honor OOUX Advancies.
The Advanced Certification Badge on your OOUX.com profile, on your OOUX Forum profile, and on Linkedin.
A formal recommendation from me (Sophia) on your OOUX.com profile and as a Linkedin recommendation.
Testimonials from your mentees (I know they will love you!) on your OOUX.com profile.
Certificate double-stack! We’ll add your slick Black-Belt Advanced Certification above your core OOUX Strategist Certificate. So legit.
Your OOUX.com profile will become a landing page for you to sell your services. OOUX.com gets thousands of hits a month and we will be driving traffic to your profile. You’ll be able to add a paid booking link to your profile so that people can book consulting calls with you. We recommend charging ~$100/hour for these calls.
One of our top goals on OOUX.com is to promote our Advancies and their services. You’ll show up as a nestie in several places. On the “What is OOUX?” page, your definitions will be featured. You’ll be front-and-center on the “Community” page. Your Leadership project will also be featured there. Every chance we get, we will be linking people to YOU!
Paid opportunities with Rewired, as they arise … co-facilitating ORCA Sprints, co-leading workshops and events, coaching positions with company cohorts and more. (Basically, when I need help with anything, you are on my short list.)
The Advanced OOUX Certification took me quite by surprise. I had (very) recently graduated as a certified OOUX Strategist, and decided to keep the momentum going. What I did not expect is that mentoring a pod would have such a profound impact on my understanding of the ORCA process. It made me much more conscious of how I would communicate OOUX decision-making not only to my mentees but also to clients, teammates and stakeholders. Paired with the wonderful mentoring experience, with Sophia's collaborative lectures, I gained deeper insights of every step of the process, making me more confident in adjusting my approach to different contexts and scenarios. ORCA became a more flexible tool in my hands.
This program is for people who want to lead an OOUX revolution in their organisations.
When the opportunity for this Advanced Certification Program came up, I jumped on the chance to be part of the first cohort. Since about 2018, OOUX has been uncontested as my favorite design tool, so the opportunity to extend and expand my skills was a no brainer. Beyond gaining valuable insights on advanced topics that I can use in my own application of OOUX, I now feel firmly on the path to being able to teach and mentor others more effectively, as well as potentially market and sell my expertise in OOUX to help organizations design better systems.
If you believe in this approach and see the incredible value of OOUX like I do, this program is an excellent next step after the base Strategist Certification.
The Advanced Certification Program had significantly deepened my understanding of OOUX. One of the most rewarding aspects of the course was the opportunity to mentor other people. This new experience challenged me to not only apply what I learned but also to articulate these concepts clearly. I now feel more confident in my OOUX skills and better equipped to tackle complex design challenges. Highly recommended for anyone looking for the next step after becoming a certified OOUX strategist!
The OOUX Advanced Certification gave me a wonderful opportunity to explore the inner workings of the ORCA process and provided me with the tools to improve how I use OOUX with my customers projects, how I mentor and coach OOUX strategists, and how I run ORCA sprints and workshops. Working as a mentor for the OUX Strategist program provided me an opportunity to experience different viewpoints of the strengths of the ORCA process and allowed me to grow my understanding of the process and its deliverables. Each week the group of advanced OOUX strategists examined in detail a couple of the ORCA steps, dissecting the process, as well as having group discussions that allowed us all to share how we have customized the process and deliverables for different projects. This was invaluable - I have added the experiences from 6 amazing and accomplished Strategists to support my body of work and improve my own OOUX capabilities.
My mind was opened up to a number of possibilities with OOUX and ORCA that I had not imagined prior to this course - new processes, new deliverables, new way of thinking. The ORCA process can be seen as a toolbox of steps to be tweaked, reordered, and added to in order to better understand the problem domain and deliver applications that better meet the user needs, are more maintainable, and are a lot more fun to develop.
This course is aimed at OOUX strategists who are comfortable with the ORCA process as taught through the certification course, but want to expand its capabilities and tweak and modify the process to better fit their way of working and the needs of each unique project. Knowing when to bend and break the rules makes you such a powerful and valuable employee or consultant.Also most valuable were the friendships developed with the fellow attendees. Having a group of high powered strategists, with years of experience, and who are willing to share their knowledge and experiences and step in and answer any of your questions made this a fun, exciting, and most delightful experience.
You'll get lifetime access to all video recordings and resources. And as we update the materials — you'll get those enhancements, too.
It's a big deal. During your core OOUX Certification, your only responsibility was you. If you didn't keep up with the program — you were only letting yourself down. In the Advanced Program, you must take your commitment to the program incredibly seriously. A group of strategists-to-be will be counting on you for timely feedback on their assignments.
That said, the time commitment of the Advanced Program is less than the core OOUX Certification! Expect to spend about ~4 hours a week receiving coaching and about ~3-4 hours a week giving coaching.
Yes! But this time, the test is on the front-end of the Program. You'll take an application test to qualify for the Program. At the end of the program, you'll need to have fulfilled your coaching duties to your mentees, completed all training content, and completed your OOUX Leadership Project.
The application test will ask you about how you are using OOUX in your work, your commitment to the program, and will also test understanding of OOUX.
Yes! Don't worry, we will always level-set before we go deeper into advanced concepts. That said, if you passed the application test and are accepted into the Program, please feel so confident that you are READY for this training! Also, you've taken the 15 Advanced Moves Course, riiiiight?
The Advanced Program is for Certified OOUX Strategists (with an unexpired Certificate!) who enjoy OOUX so much that that truly want this to be central to the work they do. Running ORCA Sprints, playing in Object Maps, and consulting on OOUX sounds like a dream job.
You are actively using OOUX in your work — even if you are "quiet OOUXing" right now. On the test, you'll be asked about your current OOUX practice and how much you are using it in the field.
You also want to help take OOUX and expand and grow it. You want to position yourself as a leader and a guide within this community — and within the wider UX and tech industry. You want to share OOUX and even add you own unique perspective or skills to OOUX.
You might be on a path to self-employment or creating additional income streams — and you'd love help growing your business and offering your skills.
YES! Receiving your Advanced Certification "counts" as Recertification. Meaning, you are in the "half-off" club for another 3 years. You can return to recertify in the core or the advanced programs for half-off the going rate.
... And I am so excited to get to know you more. Actually, my desire for an intimate coaching group of OOUX superstars is a big reason why I created this program. As OOUX scales and more people sign up for training (or get signed up by their bosses!), I've had to cut back on the amount of individual attention I can give during the core Certification Program. The Advanced Program allows me to refocus, connect, and trade notes with my people.
I started the mentoring program around Cohort 3 as a way to get much-needed help during the core Program, while giving mentors the opportunity to learn-by-teaching. Over the years, those mentors continued to ask me about a next-level certification. They also wanted deeper training on the stickiest (and often most valuable) OOUX concepts. And they wanted more guidance on facilitating ORCA Sprints and workshops.
It wasn't until a few months before Cohort 9 that I asked, "What if I formalized mentoring into that next-level certification? What if mentoring was actually part of this training?" I know what some of you might be thinking. Yes, from a business perspective, I'll admit — this clicked for me. Could I create a program so transformative and valuable that people would actually invest in the opportunity to mentor? They say that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. And that was a damn good question.
So, I began outline a new curriculum. With a few hours, I had poured out a detailed outline of powerful content that I knew would over-deliver and give my A+ systems thinkers exactly what they were asking for. During Cohort 9, I brought my heart and soul into the creation of a robust new layer of training and coaching. And as it turns out, mentoring provides the perfect playground to integrate deepened skills and gain confidence in leadership and facilitation. Win-win.
So, are you ready?!
Thank you to all the mentors over the years, and special special thanks to Allie, Richard, CSJ, Yavor, Karen, and Alex who helped shape the program during Cohort 9.
You'll be in really amazing company! Here's our current roster of Advanced OOUXers.
