Flagship programme
Signal Architecture
An eleven-week table for people who already have an app and a pile of events, and who would like both to mean something.
What you leave with
A house taxonomy for your own app, a funnel that matches states rather than screens, and a one-page briefing a trustee can read without a glossary. You will also have a list of events you have permission to delete.
- Write event names that survive a navigation redesign.
- Separate user, session, and device without collapsing them in a panic.
- Annotate a retention curve so the room discusses the bend, not the colour.
- Place privacy labels beside the measurement plan, not after a complaint.
- Brief engineering with a page, not a deck of screenshots.
Weeks
Modules
1. The Measurement Ledger
What a product room is allowed to count, and the difference between a decision and a decoration. Students arrive with their current dashboard; we mark the charts that cannot change a release.
2. Event Grammar
Verbs, objects, and the properties that earn their keep. We write names as if they will be read aloud in a stand-up, because that is the test that most dictionaries fail.
3. Identity & Sessions
Logged-in, logged-out, backgrounded, reinstalled. Three stories that vendors cheerfully blend. The week is slow on purpose.
4. Funnel Reconstruction
States, not screens. Drop-offs that are really detours. Mobile backgrounding. The homework is to redraw one live funnel until an engineer recognises it.
5. Retention as a Story
Cohorts, windows, and the week that flatters the board. We practise captions more than we practise filters.
6. Experiment Hygiene
Exposure events, leftover flags, peeking, and the App Analytics that a test quietly poisons if nobody owns the assignment event.
7. Privacy Surfaces
UK GDPR language in the measurement plan, store privacy labels, and the events you should never have collected. We do not teach loopholes.
8. Briefing a Product Room
One page, three audiences. The final critique is public to the table and private to your company.
Instructor
Dr Iona Pell
Iona taught measurement inside two United Kingdom product houses before opening the Knowle table. She still prefers a pencil mark in the margin of a taxonomy to a new dashboard tile. Her notes on event grammar are the spine of Signal Architecture; the jokes in them are hers, and we have failed to remove them.
From people who sat it
“Funnel Reconstruction made our checkout look worse and our operations meeting look honest. I know which I prefer.”
Week four asked too much of a full-time job. I said so. The notes still got me through identity without pretending I had spare evenings.
Questions
Do I need a particular vendor?
No. The table is vendor-neutral. Bring whatever you already pay for. We will not certify you on a specific interface; those buttons move, and we refuse to sell a tour of last season’s menus.
Is there a real limitation I should know?
Yes. Signal Architecture will not make a chaotic app look healthy, and it will not replace a missing product strategy. If your events are noisy because the product itself has no spine, the course will show that clearly. Some students find that unwelcome. It is also the most useful hour we teach.
Can my whole team sit together?
The Cohort Table is individual seats. A team that wants a closed room should look at the Private Conservatory on the enrolment page.
What if I cannot travel to Knowle?
The remote table uses the same notes. You will miss the Front Street walk and the better biscuits.