Figma for Designers & Teams
Signature Course No. 280 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Figma for Designers & Teams course, in the Communication & Influence category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
A product interface lives or dies twice. Once when it is designed, and again every time it must change — the rebrand that must touch four hundred screens, the new state nobody designed, the developer who built the wrong thing because the file never said which thing was right. This course teaches the craft of the second life as seriously as the first.
You learn the file as a structured document. Frames, layers, and the canvas; drawing with real content at real extremes; the component model that gives every repeated element one source of truth; variants and properties; auto layout and constraints set deliberately; styles, variables, and tokens holding the visual language in one governed place; and libraries shared without losing control of them.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Structure That Stays True: Files, Components, and Responsive Design — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Rebuilt Checkout File; then, Module 2 — Design as a Team Sport: Systems, Collaboration, and Handoff — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Handoff Package.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — a tangled checkout file rebuilt as a structured, componentised design whose prototype answers the client's real question; and a developer-ready handoff package a team in another city can build from without a single guessing meeting.
The course is principle-first throughout. It teaches Figma through principles that survive version changes, not click-paths that expire with the next interface redesign. Where a platform fact genuinely matters, it is framed as published at the time of writing — verify the current position inside the product before you rely on it. The course teaches the tool itself; it assumes you bring design judgement with you.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Figma for Designers & Teams is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
Already enrolled? Enter the course →
Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with your own files. Open the messiest file you touched this month and read only its layers panel — can you say what each top-level frame is, and which page holds the current truth? Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Rebuilt Checkout File for Module 1 and The Handoff Package for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Structure before styling. A file is a document with an architecture, and every later discipline in the course is only possible because the structure underneath it is sound.
Module 1 builds the model. The canvas and its layers, drawing habits that keep early work clean, the component model, variants and properties, the layout engine, styles and variables, libraries, and the prototyping layer that turns static structure into behaviour a reader can test.
Module 2 builds the team disciplines. Advanced prototyping, developer handoff, design-system governance at scale, collaboration and branching, accessibility checked inside the file, extension judgement, file hygiene, review and sign-off that leave a record, and the written team standard.
One decision, made once. The component model, variables, and libraries exist so that a choice lives in exactly one place and stays true everywhere it is used — and the file speaks for you at review and at handoff.
What you will learn
- Structure any file so it can be read, searched, and changed: frames and layers with intent, pages with jobs, names that survive a search
- Build and use the component model properly: components, instances, overrides, variants, and properties — one source of truth per repeated element
- Make designs that respond instead of breaking: auto layout, constraints, and resizing behaviour set deliberately for every container
- Run a shared visual language: styles, variables, and tokens with owners, names, and a change process a team can trust
- Prototype at honest fidelity: flows, interactions, overlays, and interactive components that answer the question actually being asked
- Hand off without meetings: developer-ready files, specifications, and asset delivery that a developer can build from directly
- Work as a team inside one tool: collaboration, branching, review, sign-off, accessibility checks, file hygiene, and the standing team standard
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Figma for Designers & Teams, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Rebuilt Checkout File and The Handoff Package
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people whose files other people must trust
Product and interface designers — in-house or agency — who design in Figma daily and know their files are harder to change than they should be; and designers joining a team with a design system who must work inside components, libraries, and conventions they did not create, without breaking them.
Design leads and design-system maintainers — who own libraries, publish updates, and field the question of why one team's screens look different from another's; and designers who hand work to developers and are tired of handoff meetings that exist only to explain what the file should have said on its own.
Career movers into product design — fluent in visual tools generally — who need Figma's specific model: its components, its layout engine, and its collaboration habits. This course assumes you can already draw a competent screen and bring design judgement with you; it teaches no visual-design fundamentals.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Rebuilt Checkout File
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Figma for Designers & Teams is Signature Course No. 280. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.