The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
🎥 Workshopping to Freelance Success [Miro board included]
Dear Reader,
Today's advice letter comes from Géro Sauerwein, a freelance product designer in Berlin and alumni of the Fountain Institute's workshop course.
Two years ago, Géro set a goal to make as much money freelancing as she did at her old agency job.
Well, she hit her goal! And in this month's meetup, she shares her secret weapon: ✨The Collaboration Kickoff Workshop✨
Last night, she gave a talk for our monthly meetup on how to communicate with clients right from the beginning of projects.
The talk was clear and highly actionable for anyone that wants to freelance or lead projects.
| Watch the Talk |
Géro covers:
- How to set expectations with clients
- How to run a kickoff workshop
- Lessons learned from doing it the wrong way
​Check out Géro’s Collaboration Kickoff Workshop board in Miro here.​
Until next week!
Jeff Humble
​Designer & Co-Founder
​The Fountain Institute
P.S. We just launched Experiment Cards 2.0! Download the cards and get the instructions in this blog post. Start testing your team's assumptions!
And if you want to get serious about testing and UX metrics, sign up for the FREE 5-day short course on designing product experiments.
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
The System You Can't See By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Here's a question I get more than any other: "How do I handle the person who talks too much?" Or the flip side: "How do I get quiet people to speak up?" And every time, I want to say: you're asking the wrong question. Not because those moments aren't real or frustrating. They are. But because treating them as people problems is like looking at algae blooming in a pond and asking, "how do I fix the algae?" You don't. The algae isn't the...
I Bought a Mac Mini to Try OpenClaw, the Most Hyped AI Tool of 2026 by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, You've probably heard of OpenClaw 🦞 by now. 145,000 GitHub stars. Headlines everywhere. "The AI that actually does things." This tool is the O.G. dream of AI...automation, not slop. This was the missing piece to my automation system. I had to try it. So I bought an entry-level, 2024 M4 Mac Mini for €590 (on sale in Germany, but they're reportedly selling out in the U.S.) and spent two days trying...
Why Decisions Feel So Hard Right Nows By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, Over the last few months, I’ve been talking with design and product leaders across very different organizations, large companies, smaller teams, fast-moving environments, and slower ones. And I keep hearing the same thing. Their teams are being asked to make decisions faster than ever, and yet, deciding feels heavier than it used to. Not slower, exactly. Just harder. At first, people often explain this in familiar ways: too...