UX Insiders Builds Peer Support for In-House UX Teams

UX work inside an organization often depends on more than design skill. Stakeholder reviews can derail decisions, business cases can stall, and teams may have to respond to new claims about AI without established practices to guide them. Paul Boag’s planned UX Insiders community aims to give in-house practitioners a place to compare notes and get outside perspective.

A peer group for in-house UX work

Launching with Smashing as a partner, UX Insiders is a paid community for designers, researchers, UX leads and others championing user experience within organizations. Boag says many practitioners work alone or in small teams, where colleagues may share the same organizational blind spots. A broader peer group can offer advice from people who have faced similar challenges elsewhere.

UX Insiders is designed specifically for people working in-house. That boundary is intended to help members speak candidly about their organizations and keep the group focused on peer support rather than agency or freelance sales pitches.

Calls, Slack and shared working materials

The membership centers on a weekly call, held Tuesdays from 3:30 to 4:30pm UK time (10:30am ET, 7:30am PT). Members can bring a current problem, ask a question or share a success. Calls are recorded and summarized for anyone who can’t attend.

A private Slack channel gives members a place to get input between calls, including feedback on a difficult email. The community will also maintain a shared library of business cases, templates and research plans that members have found useful.

Boag will host every call and says he expects to be in Slack most days. He points to his experience running Agency Academy, a community for agency owners that has met weekly since July 2024, as a basis for the format. In his experience, members often provide the most useful advice to one another.

Applications and founder rates

Prospective members apply first; the process takes about a minute and checks that applicants work in-house. The first 25 members can choose founder pricing: £49 per month, billed annually at £588, plus VAT, or £59 per month plus VAT when paid monthly. Members keep that rate for as long as they stay. Employers can also pay by invoice, which may allow the fee to come from a training budget.

UX Insiders is scheduled to launch on Tuesday, 5 January 2027. No one is charged before launch. If fewer than 15 people have joined by Friday, 11 December, the community won’t go ahead and applicants won’t pay. Applications for founder spots are available here.

Separate option for agencies and freelancers

UX Insiders is reserved for in-house practitioners. Agency owners and freelancers can instead consider Agency Academy, which offers a Thursday call and a Slack community; members also pass work to one another.

Through the end of November, Smashing readers can join Agency Academy for £59 per month plus VAT, or £49 per month plus VAT when billed annually at £588. The stated rate is reduced from £79 per month and remains in place for as long as a member stays.

For practitioners navigating internal constraints and unsettled approaches to AI, the practical value of UX Insiders will depend on whether members share candid, useful experience. Its weekly conversations and resource library are built to make that exchange part of the routine.