DARK UX ACADEMY
Apply

Founding Cohort: Unignorable · Starts Sept 7 · Capped at 20

The designers who get paid $300k aren’t better at design. They’re better at explaining their value.

The best designer on the team and the best-paid designer are almost never the same person. Unignorable is the 6-week cohort that closes the gap. You’ll learn the business acumen, influence, and narrative that decide who gets promoted, who gets paid $250k to $350k, and who gets thanked and forgotten.

Apply for the founding cohort See the 6 weeks
◆The operating system behind $305k and $350k design offers, and a $56M product win at Crunchyroll.
01
The problem

You already know you’re good.

You know your users better than the PM. You catch the edge case the eng lead missed. You’ve shipped work you’re genuinely proud of.

And you keep watching people with worse ideas and better politics get the promotion, the headcount, the seat at the table you can’t get into.

You find out about the roadmap decision on Tuesday. It shipped Thursday. Nobody asked you. You present the work and someone senior nods, says “interesting,” and does the opposite.

You’re the most talented person in the room, and you’re losing anyway.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: it’s not going to fix itself. The people getting paid $300k aren’t better designers than you. They’re better at explaining their value. That’s a different skill, and no one taught it to you, because design school and every portfolio course on earth pretends the work speaks for itself.

The work does not speak for itself. Someone has to speak for it. Right now that someone isn’t you, and it’s costing you a promotion cycle and six figures.

02  /  The reframe

I spent years thinking the problem was the portfolio. I was wrong. The problem was influence.

Business acumen

How your company actually makes money, and how to tie your work to it in a sentence a VP feels.

Influence

How to read the room, build trust on purpose, and stop getting treated like an order taker.

Narrative

How to re-tell the work you’ve already done as a business case that makes you impossible to pass over.

This is not a portfolio review. It is not “design thinking.” It’s the missing layer.

03
The receipts
$305k
$350k
Comp wins

I’ve taken laid-off senior designers, people who thought they’d have to step back in scope and comp just to get hired again, into total-comp offers at $305k and $350k. Same designer, different positioning and negotiation.

$56M
Project MIA · Crunchyroll

I spent two years pushing a funnel reorg that people ranked well above me fought the whole way. When it shipped, it lifted conversion around 30%, and in its first quarter it earned about $56 million. That’s the difference between doing good work and doing work the business can count. I’ll teach you exactly how I got it funded, defended, and promoted on.

$20k
Executive advisory

A design founder pays me $20,000 a year for this operating system at the executive level. It doesn’t stop working when you get senior. It compounds.

04
What you leave with

In 6 weeks you don’t walk out with notes.

You walk out with a stack you can use in your next 1:1, your next review, or your next interview.

  • ◆A value narrative. Your biggest project, re-told as a business case with a number attached.
  • ◆A signature win story. The one story that makes a hiring panel or a promo committee stop arguing.
  • ◆A power audit of your org. Who actually decides, who you’ve been ignoring, and how to talk to each of them.
  • ◆A Frame script for the next high-stakes meeting you walk into.
  • ◆A real ask, scripted and rehearsed. A promotion, headcount, funding, a new job. You pick it, we build it, you run it.
  • ◆A brag doc and a quarterly highlights deck you’ll keep using for the rest of your career.
  • ◆A 90-day plan for making the promotion inevitable or landing the role.
05
The 6 weeks

Six modules. One outcome.

Sequenced on purpose: business acumen is the gate, everything after it ladders to the same result. From order taker to trusted expert.

Module 1 · Week 1

Think Like a Capitalist

Reframe your work from craft to capital. Learn the four ways any business measures value, money, time, risk, and reputation, and how to lead with the right one.

You build → your Value Scorecard
Module 2 · Week 2

Your Value Narrative

Turn your biggest project into a number and an analogy a VP feels. The same move that got a two-year bet funded when the jargon kept killing it.

You build → your signature quantified-win story
Module 3 · Week 3

The Influence Operating System

The Trust Framework, the Power Audit, and the Frame. Diagnose the trust you’re missing, map who really holds power, and learn to open a room as the expert instead of the order taker.

You build → your org’s power audit + a Frame script
Module 4 · Week 4

The Ask

A five-step structure for any high-stakes ask, applied to the five that matter: a promotion, headcount, funding, prioritization, and a new job.

You build → one real ask, scripted and rehearsed live
Module 5 · Week 5

The Artifact Stack

The brag doc and the quarterly highlights deck: the artifacts that keep your value visible instead of invisible. The weekly visibility rituals come as a downloadable toolkit. For job seekers, this doubles as your case-study layer.

You build → a completed brag doc + highlights deck
Module 6 · Week 6

Make It Inevitable

Staying? Engineer the promotion so it’s a formality. Leaving? Position to compete for $250k to $350k, with a real preview of comp strategy.

You build → your 90-day plan + positioning one-liner
Capstone · Week 6

The room, live.

You present your narrative and artifact stack, get it pressure-tested in front of the cohort, and leave with a plan you’ll actually run.

06
How it runs

A cohort, not a video vault you’ll never finish.

Every lesson is pre-recorded, so you work through the modules and templates on your own schedule. You post your work in the cohort threads and get eyes on it from the room. Once a week there’s live office hours to bring your questions and your work. One kickoff, weekly office hours, everything else is yours to run at your pace.

Format
Pre-recorded+ weekly office hours
Live time
1 + 1kickoff + weekly office hours
Cohort cap
20next cohort is 90 days out
Commitment
3–4hper week, including posting work
07
The filter

Who this is for. And who it isn’t.

✓ This is for you if
  • You’re a senior in-house designer or design leader who’s stuck, under-leveraged, and tired of watching worse politicians win.
  • You just got laid off or you’re job-hunting, and you refuse to step back in scope or comp to get hired again.
  • You’re up for promotion this cycle, or you should be, and you can’t figure out why it isn’t happening.
  • You care about craft and you’re done pretending craft alone is enough.
× This is not for you if
  • You’re chasing your first design job. This assumes senior skill and a few scars.
  • You want a portfolio review or a design-thinking refresher. We don’t touch your Figma.
  • You want to be liked more than you want to be paid. The Dark UX layer is about power and protecting yourself in a political org.
08
The ladder

The front door, not the whole house.

Unignorable gives you the frameworks, the templates, and the cohort around you. That’s most of what most people need. When the work gets specific to your exact situation, that’s the private 1:1. Start here. You’ll know when you’re ready for more, and so will I.

Start hereThis one
Unignorable

$2,000 · 6-week cohort. Frameworks, templates, cohort threads, your artifact stack.

Next
Career & Comp Leap

Private 12-week 1:1. Bespoke strategy and live negotiation surgery for your exact move. By application.

For $250k+ seats
Executive Mentorship

Private annual advisory for leaders already in a senior seat. By invitation.

The founding cohort

$2,000USD

This is the lowest this will ever be. You’re getting the founder rate, and your feedback shapes what the product becomes.

Runs September 7 to October 16, 2026. Doors close Friday, September 4. Waitlist gets first access.

Apply for the founding cohort

Includes the full 6-week cohort, every pre-recorded module and template, the live kickoff and weekly office hours, the private cohort space, your complete artifact stack, and a complimentary Career & Comp diagnostic call to map your next 90 days. My 1:1 clients pay $7,500 to $10,000 for the bespoke version of this.

My guarantee is not a free trial. Do the work, post it every week, and if by the capstone you don’t have a value narrative and artifact stack you’d put in front of a VP, I’ll refund you in full. It’s a deal for people who show up.

09
Who’s teaching

I’m James Hsu.

I ran design at Crunchyroll, where I pushed a funnel reorg that earned around $56 million in its first quarter after two years of people above me telling me no.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of designers and coached senior ones into $305k and $350k roles. I run Dark UX Academy because the smartest designers I know keep losing to worse ideas and better politics, and nobody was teaching the part that actually decides it.

I’m not going to teach you to make prettier work. You already can. I’m going to teach you to make it count.

10
Questions
Is this self-paced?
The lessons are pre-recorded, so you fit them into your week. But it’s a cohort with a real start and end date, a room posting work alongside you, and weekly office hours. The material is self-paced. The accountability is not.
I’m not job searching. I want to get promoted where I am. Is this for me?
Yes. Half the work is engineering a promotion in your current org. Module 6 is built for exactly that.
What if I can’t make office hours?
They’re recorded, and the whole curriculum is pre-recorded anyway, so you never fall behind. The only thing you show up live for is the kickoff, and even that gets recorded.
Will this help my portfolio?
Wrong question, and I mean that as a favor. A better portfolio is not what’s between you and $300k. Positioning, influence, and narrative are. That’s what we build.
Is this the same as your 1:1?
No. The 1:1 is bespoke strategy and live negotiation surgery for your specific situation. Unignorable teaches you the system yourself, in a group, for a fraction of the price. It’s where most people should start.
How much time per week?
Plan for 3 to 4 hours: the module, the template, and posting your work.

You can keep being the most talented person nobody promotes. Or you can spend 6 weeks becoming impossible to ignore.

Apply for the founding cohort