Product leaders call me for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s to help invent and build a next-generation product, other times to train their team in the latest design methods. But lately, there’s one call I get more than any other:
“We’re facing a big shift, and we’re not sure what to do next.”
The specifics vary but the themes are the same: Why don’t our products and processes work like they used to? What does AI mean for our business and our customers? How do we respond to seismic changes in [business / government / media / culture]? How do our teams keep up with technology that moves faster than we do? How do our people and products adapt to moments like this, and does our team have what it needs?
Hey, sometimes you just need a little help.
You’re not alone. In only the past few months, we’ve helped People Inc., Cigna, Stanford, Indeed, and a raft of startups with those strategic questions. In fact, so many of our recent engagements have started there that we’ve formalized some new offerings to complement our traditional design projects.
These are lightweight, impactful engagements that give your team the strategic boost and product vision to help you see around the corner:
- Sentient Design workshops to build AI literacy
- Sentient Design sprints to explore AI opportunity
- Product strategy intensives to define product direction
- Strategic retainers for ongoing guidance
Up close and personal
All of these new engagements have you working closely with me (hi, I’m Josh Clark). I bring 30 years of applied product strategy across 100+ client companies. I often work alongside a small team of smarties who add fresh design, research, and implementation insights.
Our Sentient Design practice guides Fortune 100 companies and startups alike in applying AI in ways that are both valuable and responsible. AI is naturally a big focus right now, but it sits alongside shifts in media, government, and business that demand a rethink of what digital products should do: what you need to make and why.
More than making digital experiences, we also help make sense. I’ve found that intimate, intensive engagements help to cut through this tangle. Here’s a high-level overview of how we can help navigate it all. We often tune the fee, scope, or timeline to fit specific needs, but here’s the gist:
Sentient Design workshop (1–2 days)
$15k–$25k ($10k–$15k remote). Team training on AI product design methodology with Sentient Design authors Josh Clark and Veronika Kindred. Learn to design radically adaptive, AI-mediated experiences.
You get: Hands-on learning and practical techniques from the creators of the framework. Learn more
Best for: Design and product teams seeking to establish literacy and technique in AI experience patterns.
Recently: In the past three months, we’ve conducted a dozen of these workshops (both in person and remote) for internal teams at enterprise companies, startups, and agencies.
Sentient Design sprint (4 weeks)
$80k. Rapid exploration of emergent AI-powered experiences to deliver key outcomes. Josh and team will guide your multi-disciplinary team through an intensive deep-dive into Sentient Design concepts to identify the experiments to pursue.
You get: Several scrappy candidate prototypes to consider taking forward.
Best for: Teams exploring “what’s possible for us with AI?” and who need to learn the terrain to identify possible direction and opportunity.
Recently: We built AI prototypes to ease design system usage and maintenance for one of the nation’s largest health insurers.
Recently: We crafted a coherent UX strategy around Sentient Design experience patterns for an AI-powered public affairs platform.
Product strategy intensive (8–10 weeks)
$120k–$300k. Fast but thorough product conception, validation, and demonstration. This engagement figures out what you should build, complete with backing research, rough prototypes to prove it works, and roadmap to execute.
- Josh Clark leads your team ($120k–$150k), or
- Josh Clark leads a blended team of yours and Big Medium’s ($240k–$300k)
You get: Strategic clarity, a product brief, and working demos that your team can test and stakeholders can see.
Best for: Teams asking “what should we build and why?” who need both strategy and proof that it works before committing to production.
Recently: We guided the vision and design for People’s new mobile app, reimagining a media publication for a new generation.
Strategic retainer with Josh Clark
$15k–$20k/month with quarterly commitments. Ongoing partnership where I work directly with your leadership team on product strategy, organizational design, and product direction. Think outboard chief product officer focused on emerging technology, AI, and upskilling your team.
You get: a standing monthly strategy session plus ongoing access for check-ins and reviews between sessions.
Best for: Organizations needing consistent strategic guidance without full-time executive hire.
Recently: I’m currently riding shotgun for a global hotel brand and an industrial manufacturing giant.
Full design strategy and execution too
On top of those new engagements, we continue to do our bread-and-butter projects of complete product strategy, design, and front-end development. We field full production teams to do the research, strategy, design, and front-end development to take you right into implementation. These teams can build design systems, websites, applications, and more.
While we can build things for you, we prefer to build things with you. We love to collaborate with product teams to lead production work that we take on together. Along the way, we teach by demonstration to help level-up your team. Depending on the project, a production engagement is a three- to twelve-month project ($400k–$1M+).
A different kind of partner
These aren’t typical offerings, but Big Medium’s not quite like other agencies or consultancies (we are both and neither). We’re structured to be flexible—sometimes you need the strategic guidance of a solo advisor like me, sometimes you need a full design team, sometimes you need both. We’ve got you covered.
None of these engagements is mutually exclusive, and it’s not uncommon for one to lead to another (e.g., a workshop leads to a product strategy intensive, or a Sentient Design sprint leads to a production engagement, etc.). Clients tell us they like this menu because it lets them take what they need and make decisions as they go.
Like I said, people call for all kinds of reasons. This new set of engagements rounds out the whole need—and fits our brand of friendly, seasoned partnership, too. Let’s figure out what fits you. Shoot me a note.
