Five years back, our founding team at First Principle Labs sat with an unglamorous question: why do people do what they do? To be clear, this was not the sanitized boardroom version of the question, it was the real deal.
The question that sits underneath every product that flops despite “great features,” every policy that fails despite “sound logic,” every campaign that falls flat despite “perfect targeting.” Somewhere between what we build and what people actually need, there is a gap. FPL was built to live inside that gap.
Strip away the syllabus and F7.0 is this:
a room full of curious people, a set of real-world problems nobody has fully solved, and a methodology, we call it Deliberate Design, built to force you past assumptions and into evidence.
You do not learn behavioral science by memorizing biases. You learn it by watching a real person hesitate at a checkout page, or skip a meal, or avoid a form, and asking why, relentlessly, until you hit something true.
That is the whole premise. Not a hypothetical persona in a slide deck.
Every cohort before this one started exactly where you would start:
not knowing the answer, only knowing the question was worth asking.
You do not need a psychology degree nor a behavioral science masters. You do not need a design portfolio.
You need the thing that is genuinely hard to teach: a refusal to accept “that is just how it is” as an answer. If you have ever caught yourself mid-argument going “wait, but why do people actually…” and then falling down a rabbit hole for the next hour, you already have the instinct.
F7.0 just gives it structure, mentors, and a real problem to chase it into.
Real briefs: some from FPL's own clients, some from problems worth solving whether or not anyone's paying us to.
A circle of peers who become collaborators, then critics, then friends. Access to people who have spent careers inside behavioral design, product, and research, not to lecture at you, but to argue with your first draft of an idea until it is your third.
It is not easy. Past aspirants will tell you it rewires how you see everything: a queue, a form, a notification, a “why is not anyone using this feature we built.” Once you start asking why, you do not stop, we do not stop.
If that is you, F7.0 is opening its doors soon. Details on structure, dates, and how to apply are coming shortly. For now, sit with the question that started this whole thing five years ago, and ask yourself if you are ready to spend six months chasing it too.