FAQs

Shift Nudge is a professional interface design training program for working designers. It teaches a proven framework for typography, layout, and color, with a 1,000+ video critique vault and a professional community.

Shift Nudge is taught by Matt D. Smith (MDS), a designer with over 20 years specializing in interface design. MDS is the creator of the Float Label pattern adopted by Apple, Google, and many others, and designer of popular Figma plugins Contrast and Flowkit.

PRO membership is $1,997 a year. One charge, once a year. The full picture, including the capped VIP seat, is shown right after you apply.

Yes, and we email you before your renewal date. You can cancel anytime in the customer portal linked from your receipt, or by emailing us, and you keep full access through the end of your paid term.

Access ends when your year does. The trained eye you built goes with you. The vault, the critiques, and everything new stay with the membership.

Membership is a single annual charge. If that doesn't work for you, contact us and we will look at options.

Yes, and many members do. The Expense template makes the ask for you, and we provide invoices with your company details, before or after purchase. If your approval runs past your join-link window, email us and we will work it out.

You have 60 days to go through the full Shift Nudge system. All we ask is that you put in the work. Either 10 practice pieces from the UI training, a built project from the Claude Code training, or your portfolio built from the Portfolio Workshop. Any one of those counts. See full details here. VIP members are additionally asked to submit work for critique at least 4 times and attend at least 4 live sessions.

Members in 90+ countries. Everything is online and recorded, and regional pricing is applied to your join link automatically when you apply.

The price shown is what you pay. If we are required to collect tax in your location, it will be shown at checkout before you buy.

The full membership details and your private join link arrive by email within a few minutes.

Email us. We handle these person by person and we will figure out the right path with you.

Shift Nudge integrates into your day-to-day work, and the curriculum stays with you as a field guide for whatever design challenge comes up next. The reviews are full of designers who came in with the same fear and finished.

Yes. The minute you join, you can hand Shift Nudge AI, in members-only Beta, the screen you're stuck on and get a critique built on MDS's own method. Post in the community and working designers tell you what they see. And live critique from MDS happens on the weekly VIP calls, where priority goes to members who submit work and attend regularly.

5-7 hours a week for the interface design training at the recommended pace. Some members take 8 weeks and some take 36. The Claude Code training is 20 lessons, watchable in about a week, with roughly 8 hours of practice. The Portfolio Workshop is four 90-minute sessions. Everything is recorded and your access runs the full year, so most members run the interface training first and layer the rest in whenever it fits.

The principles don't age; the lessons do, so the curriculum keeps evolving and everything new ships to you, included. In the last year alone: the Claude Code course, the Portfolio Workshop, and Shift Nudge AI.

Working designers at any stage, newcomers included. Plenty of members come in with five, ten, or more years of experience and use the training to raise their own bar. If you want to get better at design, this is the place to be.

Yes. Every lesson includes its own design exercise, and the later exercises build into complete projects you own and can show.

The lessons use Figma, and Figma 101 is included if you are new to it. The principles apply in any professional design tool.

No. The 8-week schedule is the guide, and the modules are fully open, yours to move through in any order your work demands.

Yes. An official certificate of interface design when you finish, shareable on LinkedIn.

No. Claude writes the code; you direct it with your design judgment. The course starts at a blank terminal on purpose.

20 lessons, most between 5 and 17 minutes, so you can watch the full course in about a week. The 24+ hour behind-the-scenes content works to complement the lessons for anyone who wants more depth.

A Claude account, a free GitHub account, a free Vercel account for deploying, and a Mac for the iOS chapter. A paid Claude plan, currently starting at $20 a month, is enough for the course.

Yes. The course builds Color Shift, a supplied project with public repos. Employer work never has to touch the tools.

The judgment and the workflow are the durable layer, and the curriculum keeps evolving with everything new included.

Weekly critiques and Q&A, at US Eastern times. Times can change, and members are notified in advance. Every session is recorded, so you can watch any session later.

A deliberately small, capped group, small enough that the work in hand actually gets seen.

Live critique slots go to VIP members. We prioritize members who submit work and attend regularly.

Every session is recorded and the recordings are part of VIP, so a week you miss is never a lesson you lose. The critiques reward attendance, and priority goes to members who attend with work ready. If the live calls rarely fit your calendar, PRO is the better buy, and the VIP seat is here if your schedule changes.

Each launch window opens a limited number of seats. When they're gone, they're gone until the next window. The cap applies to new members joining in a window; once you're in, renewal is automatic at your rate and your seat stays yours.

The Shift Nudge system as a critique on demand. Point it at a screen, yours or your AI's, and it shows you what to fix, why, and the principle underneath. Works in Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex, on your own AI account.

Yes. It stays part of the membership. Right now Shift Nudge AI is in members-only beta.

Your critiques and the screens you submit are stored in your account and shared only through links you create. The AI processing runs on your own AI account, and we retain review data as described in the Privacy Policy.

Yes, it runs on your own AI account, so the AI processing happens on your plan and your costs stay transparent.

Team plans include transferable licenses that can be reassigned while active. Private workshops are available as an add-on. Request a demo.

Both. The same system that fixes your screens gives your feedback a vocabulary, and team plans give the team a shared standard.

No. The 60-day guarantee covers individual memberships only, and team sales are final. If you want to try the training before buying for your team, buy one individual membership for yourself or a teammate. That purchase is covered by the 60-day guarantee.