The Creating Design Clarity (CDC) Course Guide: What You Get, How It Works,
(And What to Expect)
Everything you need to know about Your Unique Home Design Personality® before you enrol.
Your Unique Home Design Personality® is a structured online course built on the Austin Home Method® — a proprietary methodology developed by architect and interior designer Kristina Cope over 35 years of NZ residential practice.
The course guides homemakers through a complete design personality discovery process, producing two foundational documents at the end: the Fearless Home Project Workboard® and the Ultimate Design Brief. It takes 8–14 weeks part-time, costs NZD $497 (~USD $295) as a one-time payment (or 3 x NZD $197 (~USD$117), and comes with a 365-day money-back guarantee.
This guide explains exactly what the course contains, how it is delivered, and what changes when you complete it.
Key Takeaways
- The course contains 10 structured pillars plus 3 bonus modules — delivered online with lifetime access and fortnightly live Q&A sessions.
- It takes 8–14 weeks part-time at 2–4 hours per week — 80% of students complete within 10 weeks.
- The two deliverables are the Fearless Home Project Workboard® and the Ultimate Design Brief — reusable across every future project.
- It is not an interior design course — it teaches you about yourself, not about design rules or trends.
- The course is backed by a genuine 365-day money-back guarantee — the most generous in the industry.
What is a "design personality?"
Your design personality is the unique combination of your preferences, lifestyle, sensory responses, and personal history that determines what makes a space feel truly right for you. It goes beyond style labels – it’s your personal design compass — the invisible thread that connects every great design decision you will ever make for your home. Once you know it, every home decision becomes clearer and more confident.
The Creating Design Clarity (CDC) Course Guide: Everything You Need to Know Before You Enrol
Before committing to any course, you deserve a clear, honest picture of exactly what it contains, how it works, how much time it requires, and what you will have at the end of it.
This guide provides that picture for Your Unique Home Design Personality® — without the sales language and without the omissions that make most course guides less useful than they should be.
What the Course Is — and What It Isn't
What it is: A structured self-discovery process that guides homemakers through uncovering, documenting, and applying their unique design personality — producing two foundational documents that can be used with any design professional or taken into any DIY project.
What it isn’t: An interior design course. CDC does not teach design rules, specification processes, trend identification, or technical knowledge. It teaches you about yourself — your colour relationships, your sensory preferences, your emotional responses to space, your lifestyle needs. The design knowledge that follows from that understanding is more useful and more durable than any amount of trend-based instruction.
This distinction matters because it defines who the course is for and what it produces. If you want to learn interior design as a discipline, there are excellent courses that teach that. CDC is for the homemaker who wants to understand themselves deeply enough to make great design decisions — independently or in partnership with a professional — for the rest of their life.
The Course Structure — 10 Pillars
The course is built on a pillar structure — ten sequential stages that build on each other, each one producing a documented output that contributes to the final design brief.
Pillar One — Welcome and Orientation
Introduction to the course methodology, how to get the most from the process, and the first questionnaire — focused entirely on you. This pillar sets the foundation for everything that follows.
Pillar Two — Observation Identity Workboard® (You)
The first of the three foundational workboards. This pillar guides you through finding your why, getting out of your own way, and building an Observation Identity Board® that captures your instinctive visual responses.
Output: Observation Identity Statement.
Pillar Three — Intention Planning Workboard® (Feelings)
The feeling-first stage. This pillar guides you through the Intention Planning Board® — a document that captures how you want your spaces to feel rather than what you want them to look like. Includes the first use of the Imagination Technique — a guided visualisation that accesses the subconscious design brief most homemakers carry without knowing it.
Output: Intention Planning Statement.
Pillar Four — Seasonal Personality (Colours)
The breakthrough pillar. The Seasonal Personality Quiz — built on colour psychology — identifies which of four seasonal archetypes most closely matches your natural aesthetic. Your colour palette, preferred patterns, shapes, textures, and styling instincts are all anchored here. For couples, this pillar identifies the overlap between two personalities, turning potential conflict into a shared foundation.
Output: Seasonal Personality Profile.
Pillar Five — Obsession Creation Workboard® (Look)
Applying the seasonal personality discovery to a curated visual reference. This pillar guides you through the Obsession Creation Board® — a rich visual document that translates your colour and aesthetic preferences into a tangible, shareable reference.
Output: Obsession Creation Statement.
Pillar Six — Dream Product Workboard® (Style)
The style consolidation pillar. Building on all previous work, this pillar guides you through assembling your complete colour palette with confidence and creating the Dream Concept Product Board®.
Output: Dream Concept Product Statement and Your Home Design Personality summary.
Pillar Seven — Your Home Design Personality
The reflection and consolidation stage. Journey reflection, discoveries, progress review, and the completion of your full Home Design Personality Statement — the written summary of everything discovered across the preceding pillars.
Pillar Eight — Design Brief Questionnaire (Project 1)
The transition from self-discovery to project application. This pillar focuses your documented design personality on your specific upcoming home improvement project — gathering the practical details of the property, lifestyle, and project scope that will shape the brief.
Output: Design Brief Questionnaire Statement.
Pillar Nine — First Fearless Home Project Workboard®
Creating the project-specific workboard — the visual component of your project brief. Includes the second use of the Imagination Technique, this time focused specifically on the space you are renovating. Also covers budget, timeframe, and practical project parameters.
Pillar Ten — Your Ultimate Design Brief (First Project)
The final deliverable. This pillar brings everything together into the completed Ultimate Design Brief — the written document that translates all previous work into a set of clear, documented intentions ready to guide every decision in your project or hand to any design professional.
Output: Your completed Ultimate Design Brief.
The Three Bonus Modules
Every enrolment includes three bonus modules at no additional cost — total bonus value USD $997.
Bonus 1 — Conquering Contractor Chaos: Your Guide to Smooth-Sailing Renovations (NZD$499 value)
How to navigate the world of contractors and design professionals with confidence. Covers how to choose between DIY, outsourcing, or a combination — how to negotiate, communicate clearly, find and vet reliable professionals, and stay on budget throughout the project.
Bonus 2 — From Opposites to Oasis: The Secrets of Harmonious Home Design for Couples (NZD $201 value)
A dedicated guide to unlocking your partner’s design DNA and blending it with yours to create a home you both genuinely love. Specifically addresses the challenge of different design instincts in a shared home — turning potential conflict into collaborative discovery.
Bonus 3 — Unleash Your Inner Decor Style: Discover Your Dream Home (NZD $297 value)
An exploratory module that encourages adventurous design thinking — moving beyond safe choices toward bold, personal expression. Particularly useful for homemakers who discover through the course that they have been playing it too safe.
How the Course is Delivered
Online, self-paced, with live group support, lifetime access.
The course is delivered entirely online — accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from any device. Video lessons, interactive exercises, and downloadable workbooks form the core content. You work through the material at your own pace, in the comfort of your own home.
Live Q&A Sessions: Fortnightly live group coaching sessions with Kristina provide real-time support, feedback, and the opportunity to ask questions about your specific situation. Each session is also recorded so you can review it at any time. Standard enrolment includes 7 fortnightly sessions across the 14-week supported period.
Private Community: Access to a member-only private community group where past and current participants support each other — sharing insights, asking questions, and celebrating progress. The community aspect is consistently cited by graduates as one of the course’s most valuable elements.
Lifetime Access: All course materials are available with lifetime access — including any future updates. Once enrolled, the content is yours permanently.
How Long Does the Course Take?
The course is designed to be completed part-time in 8–14 weeks, dedicating approximately 2–4 hours per week. 80% of students complete within 10 weeks.
There is no fixed schedule — you work through the material at a pace that suits your life. The fortnightly live sessions provide structure and momentum without creating deadline pressure.
The supported period — during which live sessions are available and the community is most active — runs for 14 weeks from enrolment. After that, you retain lifetime access to all materials and the community.
For homemakers who want to move more quickly, the course can be completed full-time in 2–3 weeks — though the pillar structure is designed to benefit from reflection time between stages, and many of the most valuable insights come from sitting with the material rather than rushing through it.
What You Produce — The Two Key Deliverables
Every student who completes the course produces two foundational documents. These are not course outputs in the academic sense — they are practical tools you own and use for every home improvement project for the rest of your life.
The Fearless Home Project Workboard®
A curated visual reference board that captures the feeling, colour direction, texture, pattern, light, and scale of what you are trying to create. Not a mood board of things to buy — a story of how you want to feel at home, told in images. At its most developed it contains three layers of intention and can serve as the visual centrepiece of a project kick-off meeting with any design or build team.
The Ultimate Design Brief
The written companion to the workboard. A complete, documented picture of your design personality applied to a specific project — covering how you want each space to feel, how you and your household actually use it, your colour relationships, sensory preferences, non-negotiables, and practical project parameters. The document that holds the entire project on course from the first professional meeting to the final reveal.
Both documents are reusable. When your next project begins, you return to your design personality foundation and create new project-specific workboard and brief on top of it. The self-discovery work is done once. Every project that follows benefits from it.
Pricing and Guarantee
One-time payment
NZD $497 — includes lifetime access, all course materials, bonus modules, live sessions, and community access.
Payment plan
3 x NZD $197 — same inclusions, spread across three monthly payments.
The 365-Day Money-Back Guarantee
If you complete the course and feel it has not delivered value — after giving it a genuine attempt within 365 days of purchase — you receive a full refund. No 60-day industry-standard window. A full year.
This guarantee reflects Kristina’s confidence in the methodology and her commitment to the course earning what it costs. It also means the financial risk of enrolling is genuinely low — the only thing required on your side is a genuine attempt at the process.
Who the Course is For
The course is for any homemaker — owner or renter — who is preparing for a home improvement project of any size and wants to arrive at that project with a documented design personality and a written brief.
It is particularly well suited to:
- Homemakers who have a strong intuitive sense of what they want but struggle to articulate it.
- Couples with different design instincts who need a shared foundation before the project begins.
- Homemakers who have been disappointed by previous projects and want to understand why.
- Anyone planning to work with a designer, architect, or renovation company who wants to arrive at the first meeting with a brief that is genuinely theirs.
It is not suited to homemakers who already know their design personality clearly and can articulate it confidently, those looking for interior design training or decorating technique instruction, or those whose project is too imminent to allow 8–14 weeks of preparation time.
A more detailed self-assessment is available on the “Who CDC is For” page linked below.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Course
When does access begin?
Immediately upon enrolment — 24/7 access to all materials from the moment you sign up.
How many live sessions are included?
Standard enrolment includes 7 fortnightly live Q&A sessions across the 14-week supported period. Each session is recorded.
Can I do the course if I’m a renter?
Yes. The design personality discovery process is equally valuable for renters — it gives you the knowledge to make the most of what you can change, shop with clarity, and carry your design compass into every space you live in.
Can couples do the course together?
Yes — and the course specifically addresses the couples scenario in Pillar Four (the Seasonal Personality Quiz identifies overlap between two personalities) and in Bonus Module 2 (From Opposites to Oasis).
Will you design my project?
No — and this is intentional. CDC’s role is preparation, not execution. Kristina honours the referral relationships with design professionals who send clients to the course, and she does not design projects for course participants directly. The course prepares you to work with any professional of your choosing.
What if I change my mind after enrolling?
The 365-day money-back guarantee means you have a full year to give the course a genuine attempt. If it doesn’t deliver value, you receive a full refund.
Ready to Enrol?
These pages provide useful context before you enrol:
“Your home design DNA is the invisible code that guides your design choices. Understanding it is the key to creating a space that not only looks beautiful but truly resonates with your soul.”
— Kristina Cope, Founder, Creating Design Clarity