A new school of thought
On small classes, high bars, and building the future of design education
Previously, we looked at how Kelin Carolyn Zhang is teaching RISD students to build with AI. Today, we’re exploring a different experiment in design education that started with a bet.
“I’ll literally just train three other people and show you they’re going to be better than all the people in your [program],” Naheel Jawaid told a skeptical friend considering a traditional design bootcamp. That friendly wager became the initial pilot for Silicon Valley School of Design (SVSD), where Naheel now accepts just eight students at a time. In an era of massive open online courses and AI-powered learning, SVSD is hands-on, high-stakes, and wholly human.
I heard of SVSD after my husband critiqued their latest cohort in October, and came home blown away by the skill-level and output of his students. I wanted to know more.
Starting small, thinking big
After years at Google working on everything from Maps AR to wearables, Naheel noticed something about small, focused teams: They moved faster, learned more, and produced better work than their larger counterparts. “I love these small concentrated things,” he tells me. “When you’re a small thing, you have to punch above your weight.”
That observation became a founding principle for SVSD. With just eight students in the current cohort (up from three in the pilot), it’s deliberately tiny. But small doesn’t mean simple—Naheel is building what he hopes will become design’s answer to Skull and Bones, complete with its own mythology and alumni network.
“I want this to be known as the place that pushes students to their limit,” Naheel says, “helping them become the sharpest version of themselves.”
The anti-bootcamp-bootcamp
When I first talked to Naheel about his program, what struck me wasn’t just what he was doing, but what he wasn’t doing. While many coding bootcamps and design programs optimize for scale, SVSD goes the opposite direction.
Prospective students go through a selective application process. Rather than evaluating based on design skill or experience, Naheel looks for students with the right mix of ambition and attitude—it’s about potential and fit.
This approach might seem elitist, but it serves a purpose: creating an environment where every participant raises the bar for others. “I’m not trying to democratize design education,” Naheel tells me. “I’m creating an environment where exceptional talent can flourish under pressure. It’s about creating the types of designers who make you excited to come to a critique, the ones who hand you a phone with a functional prototype of an exciting new idea. Those are the designers who inspired me in my career, and SVSD is going to seed more of those into the industry.”
This pressure comes not just from the program’s intensity, but from its intimacy. When you’re one of eight, there’s nowhere to hide. Every critique is personal. Every project matters. But, so far, the strategy is working. Former students have landed roles at Tesla, top VC firms, and various startups. More importantly, they’re building things that excite them—and Naheel.
The taste engine
While Kelin’s RISD students are learning to rapid-prototype with AI, Naheel’s cohort is developing something more ineffable: taste. “Most students don’t know what good design looks like,” he explains. “They need an engine for developing that discernment.”
This “taste engine” isn’t about personal preference—it’s about developing a sophisticated understanding of what works and why. Students analyze curated collections of exceptional work, breaking down the mechanics of successful design. It’s less about tools (though the bar in the class is to make functional prototypes) and more about training the eye and mind to recognize quality. If a student shows up to class with something aesthetically terrible, Naheel sends them to “design jail” where they must study these images and return being able to talk about what’s good and why (and vice versa).
He shared a story about a business major who came into the program with rough work but quickly developed an eye for quality. “Now everyone wants him as a project partner because he sees things others miss,” Naheel adds. This ability to discern quality turns out to be as valuable as technical skill—perhaps more so in an age where AI lowers barriers to creation. SVSD equips students with the discernment that, arguably, only humans can bring to design.
The economics of excellence
SVSD’s main program costs in the thousands for six months—not insignificant, but as Naheel points out, “Given the outcomes we’ve seen, it’s comparable to students who pay hundreds of thousands for college, yet it’s far more tailored.” Past students have made back the cost of the program and then some in their first internship out of the program. It also enables Naheel to focus on his cohort full-time.
In parallel, he also hosts the “Free Design School,” monthly livestreams for college students, where Naheel presents a product design problem and invites them to solve it together. “I try to give them a chance to get inside my thought process and ask the ‘dumb questions’ until they feel like they get it,” he says. “I want it to feel like the experience I had bugging more senior designers in crit sessions.” Past topics range from breaking down the results from a three-day product sprint to an overview of the product design career landscape.
In these sessions, Naheel can reach a wide audience—helping potential students get a feel for his teaching style, values, and approach. In addition, Naheel takes his talks on the road, speaking on campuses across the country. This two-tier approach solves an interesting problem: how to build reputation and trust while maintaining selectivity. The Free Design School and campus talks let Naheel provide value at scale, while also generating a pipeline for SVDS.
Charting a course for a changing world
“Our world is changing,” begins the SVSD overview video narrated by Naheel, “and it’s because technology is taking over how we interact with every part of it.”
What’s fascinating about SVSD’s approach is how it cuts against the prevailing winds of tech education. While most programs optimize for growth, Naheel optimizes for intensity. While others automate feedback, he doubles down on personal critique. While the industry rushes to embrace AI, he focuses on the deeply human skill of discernment.
This isn’t luddism—SVSD students use modern tools, including AI. But they learn to use them in service of taste rather than letting tools drive the process. It’s a subtle but important distinction in an age where technology often leads and humans follow.
Two paths forward
Last month’s conversation with Kelin and today’s look at SVSD reveal two compelling visions for design education: One embraces technology’s capacity to accelerate learning and democratize creation. The other creates pressure cooker environments where intense human interaction forces rapid growth. Perhaps most importantly, both approaches prepare students not just for today’s jobs, but for tomorrow’s challenges. Whether through technological fluency or refined taste, they’re equipping designers to shape the future rather than merely respond to it.
The industry needs both: designers who can build quickly with new tools, and designers who can discern what’s worth building in the first place. The real innovation might be in recognizing that these aren’t competing approaches, but complementary ones.
Both approaches share a core belief: that traditional design education isn’t keeping pace with industry changes. These experiments in education aren’t just about teaching design—they’re about redesigning how we teach. In that sense, they’re design projects themselves, prototypes for how we might better prepare the next generation of creators.
What’s clear is that we need more experiments like these—more educators willing to question assumptions and try new approaches. Whether it’s learning to build with AI or developing a discerning eye, the goal remains the same: preparing designers not just for the jobs that exist today, but for the ones they’ll need to create tomorrow.
—Carly
I'm loving this series on different approaches to teaching design! The typical institutional machine slowly lurches along. It's invigorating that people are challenging and pushing beyond traditional methods to help invent the future.