Customer Obsessed Design for Product Management
Customer Obsessed Design
Overview
6-week online program
Why do people love their Dyson vacuums more than their Dustbusters?
How did Salesforce quadruple average contract value for key clients while dramatically improving customer satisfaction?
How did Airbnb advance from an inflatable bed in the founder’s apartment in 2007 to a $100B valuation in 2020, during a pandemic?
In Customer Obsessed Design for Product Management, the people who make stories like these possible will show you exactly how they do it. It’s more than just paying attention to your customers. It is an obsession with understanding your customers’ needs.
Using the tools of customer-centric design, ethnography, innovation, and storytelling, you will learn how to conduct successful customer and user interviews, extract important customer insights from those interviews, share those insights with key stakeholders in your company, and galvanize action around those insights. You will learn how transformative customer experiences are created.
Features, Dates, & Cost
Online
- Instruction hours will be live, in real-time, with professors and classmates, held on Wednesdays from 9:00 am-12:30 pm PST, for six weeks.
- Before the first live meeting and between live meetings, the program will continue online, with short video lectures, interview examples, class discussions, readings, and field assignments.
- Participatory, active program design, with an emphasis on small group exercises and conversations, and peer coaching with classmates.
- Optional coaching sessions will be available, please plan to reserve 4 hours between each week
- Lab platform
- Exclusive networking opportunities and access to the program alumni community
- Customer Obsessed Design for Product Management Certificate of Completion
Wednesdays from 9:00 am-12:30 pm PST
*These programs are run as live sessions and require active participation in breakouts with peer discussions. Your engagement in these sessions are critical to the program experience for you and your fellow classmates
We recommend registering prior to Sept. 21st due to pre-work assignments. Program experience may be affected if you enroll after the recommended date. Please note: seating is limited and capacity may be reached prior to recommended reg date.
Who It's For
Customer Obsessed Design for Product Management was created for product development and product management professionals who want to differentiate from their competitors and create world class customer experiences. This training program is relevant whether your customers are B2B, B2C, within your company, or external to your organization.
Specific job roles that can benefit from attending the program are:
- Product Managers
- Product Marketers
- Product Designers
- Program Managers
- UX Designers
- Engineers
- Marketing Professionals
- Research & Development Professionals
Want to approach your employer about professional development and request employer support? Read the Employer Payment Assistance Guide.
Faculty
Program Coaches
Kim Fisher
Kim Fisher is a former software CEO and Product Management Executive who now focuses on designing courses for, and coaching, Product Managers. She has also led incubators for start-up companies.
Tim Gray
Tim Gray is a product management executive with over 20 years of experience in consumer and professional software markets.
Jesse Kulp
Jesse Kulp works at Google and has been working in UX in one form or another for the better part of the last 17 years, including time at Amazon, Bloomberg and BMC in the cloud monitoring space, along with some time at a few smaller start-ups and design consultancies.
James Moed
James Moed heads up the design team at Viasat focusing on delivering internet connectivity to rural areas and hard-to-reach populations.
Vivek Rao
Vivek Rao is a lecturer at Berkeley Haas, where he teaches human-centered design, foresight, and innovation methods to MBA and EWMBA students. In addition to his work at Haas, he also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering in the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.
Adam Mansour
Adam Mansour is a user experience researcher at Google, focused on user-centered development of early-stage enterprise products. He currently designs clinician-focused products at Google Health, and has previously worked on Google Cloud, building products for small business recruiters, hiring managers, and jobseekers.
Sample Curriculum
Group Programs
Certificates
Certificate of Completion
Signal your professional achievement to your network and get recognized for your completion! Upon successful completion of the program, UC Berkeley Executive Education grants a verified digital certificate of completion to participants that you are encouraged to add to your profiles.
Note: This program results in a digital certificate of completion and is not eligible for degree credit/CEUs. After successful completion of the program, your verified digital certificate will be emailed to you directly. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of UC Berkeley Executive Education.

Participants in the Certificate of Business Excellence (COBE) program will earn a mark of distinction from a world-class university, gain access to a powerful global network, and enjoy the flexibility of completing the program in up to three years. A UC Berkeley Certificate of Business Excellence allows individuals to create a personal learning journey structured by our four academic pillars to gain management essentials in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Finance to drive both personal and organizational development.
Testimonials
"Customer Obsessed Design for Product Management has given me a fresh perspective and a new set of tools I can start using in my role as a product manager. In particular, the strong focus on ethnographic interviewing, sensemaking, and customer-centric roadmapping has helped me structure my work moving forward."
- Senior Director Identity Product Manager, Salesforce"Customer Obsessed Design was by far the best virtual class I have taken, and only wished more of my teammates had joined me."
- Product Manager, ServiceNow“From the pre-work all the way to the final week, Customer Obsessed Design was the most rewarding and engaging virtual course I have taken. Rich live sessions combined with actionable practice homework as well as amazing additional group sessions meant that you definitely can find the learnings that you seek.”
- Product Marketing Manager, Adobe“I have been interviewing customers for a few years now, first as a UX Designer and now in a more specialized customer research role. This course helped me refine my approach, by applying a thoughtful structure to my customer interviews and informing choices I used to make based on instinct and best guesses. This class was immediately applicable. What I learned in the classroom on Thursday morning I was able to apply later in the afternoon both as a practitioner and as a manager.”
- Customer Research, McMaster-Carr“The Customer Obsessed Design team’s expertise and enthusiasm shine through! The professors share a clear approach, explain why it works, and then provide the most amazing and concrete examples from their own experience--ranging from new endeavors to large companies learning to re-invigorate their approach to product development. The team was full of energy, making the online experience feel engaging and personal for everyone. I have been inspired to apply what I learned in many areas of my business already.”
- Global Digital Commercial Manager, Schlumberger