Design Therapy

One-liner

Founders' real design and brand problems, diagnosed and prescribed with the tone and structure of a therapy session.

Description

A therapy-style format where you diagnose a founder's design or brand problem and prescribe the fix. Real problems, real prescriptions. The session framing does two jobs at once: it's a pattern interrupt (nobody else opens a design video lying on the sofa), and it reframes design problems as things you treat, not things you're stuck with. Each episode is a mini case study of how you think, so the education carries proof inside it.

The breakdown

The repeatable structure (every episode):

1. The session. Open top-down on you lying on the sofa or floor as the "patient", describing the problem in first person, in the founder's exact words.
2. The diagnosis. Name what's actually wrong - the real problem underneath the symptom they walked in with.
3. The treatment. Cut to the desk. Demonstrate the fix on screen, live.
4. The prescription. One clear takeaway, written like a prescription. The screenshotable line.

The one rule: the problems must be real. Discovery-call material, recurring pain points across founder briefs, things happening publicly in the industry. Invented problems make it a sketch; real ones make it a consult you got to watch.

What to avoid:

• Letting the gag eat the content. The therapy framing is the wrapper; the diagnosis is the value.
• Punching down at the patient. The founder on the sofa is your one person - treat their problem with respect, mock the problem, never the person.
• Drifting into how-to tutorials. Prescribe the fix and show the thinking; don't teach them to be their own designer.

Source material

• Real problems from discovery calls and client conversations
• Recurring pain points spotted across founder briefs
• Industry problems happening publicly
• Questions from DMs and comments once the series is live

Monetisation

• Figma templates and design libraries sold as "homework" tied to each episode
• Lead magnet: downloadable diagnosis checklist / brand audit template for email capture
• 1:1 consultancy with a Stripe link - "book a real session" CTA
• Longer term: a paid Design Therapy workshop or cohort

Episode seeds

• "Our brand doesn't reflect who we are any more" - the identity session.
• "Nobody knows we exist" - the positioning session.
• "Our website doesn't bring us any business" - the conversion session.
• The founder who redesigned their logo three times and fixed nothing - the real problem was never the logo.
• "We look like everyone else in our category" - the differentiation session.

Cross-references

• Pillar and intents: docs/foundation/content-pillars.md (01 Interactive Experiences, educate + prove).
• Boundary: Behind the Screen (01 Behind the Screen.md) reviews work that already exists out in the world; Design Therapy treats the founder's own problem, first-person. The person's five problems seed both - different chair, same patient.
• Source: Content Series Playbook (2026-07).