OUR APPROACH
Community leads, paradigms shift, and outcomes outlast us.
We work at every level a problem touches, bridging research, design, and policy across communities, subject matter experts, and the institutions whose decisions shape what's possible.
SERVICES
RESEARCH + SYNTHESIS
We investigate root causes of social challenges
By drawing on community knowledge, expert interviews, secondary research, and analogous practice. Synthesis tells us where to start, what the evidence supports, and what the problem actually is.
PROTOTYPE + DEVELOPMENT
We move quickly from concept to working prototype
Using rapid testing, AI tools, and the broader toolkit of contemporary design practice. While tools speed up the process, judgment stays with the community and the people doing the work.
CO-CREATION + FACILITATION
Our engagement model is place-based
And runs through a network of local design partners. Community-defined indicators of success anchor what we build in what the community holds as meaningful.
STRATEGY + SUSTAINABILITY
We translate findings into forms stakeholders need
To act on, whether that’s a policy, a roadmap, a brief for partners. The work is built to last past us, with methods shared, capacity built into participating institutions, and frameworks that continue to evolve.
OUR PROCESS
Designing in service of social equity.
Every engagement is different, but the way we work is the same. We align with partners on what's at stake, engage the people most affected, share what we learn, and stay to support the work taking root. The four stages are how we make sure design produces real shifts, not just deliverables.
ENGAGE WITH US
Two ways to work with us.
1.
You can commission us.
FUNDERS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS
We provide product design, design education, and design strategy to organizations working toward social change. What we earn funds our self-initiated work with communities.
2.
We can build the brief together.
COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Some of our strongest work starts with no client and no budget, just a community that has named a problem worth solving. We partner to define the project, build the brief, and raise the grants, donations, and sponsorship to make it real. The community leads from the start. We bring the resources and the initiative to get it funded and built.
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NEW RESOURCE
Design with Us
Design is more than a process. It's human work, shaped by the people involved, the challenges they take on, and the emotions that surface along the way. It asks us to sit with ambiguity, question our assumptions, and examine our roles in the systems we participate in, and that kind of work calls for emotional awareness alongside everything else.
Design With Us is the open resource where we've gathered all of it, for clients, partners, and community members designing alongside us.