We leverage our unique approach to help Fortune 100s, growing businesses and nonprofits alike understand and leverage the power of human-centered design to get unstuck, stay innovative and consistently develop engaging solutions that people want.
what we do
Let’s get you
unstuck.
Maybe you’re an established corporation trying to get your teams to think more innovatively and launch successful products faster. Perhaps you’re a bootstrapping start-up looking to better connect with your customers and grow your brand, or a nonprofit striving to maximize your impact. Or maybe you’re just stuck and don’t know what to do next. No matter your challenge, our strategic human-centered approach can provide mindset and process that complements your strengths, helps you stay focused, and enables you to work efficiently and effectively so you can make what people want.
Let’s understand what people need
No matter the challenge, be it defining a product, service, experience, process or brand—and no matter your people, be they consumers, customers, employees, partners, clients users or stakeholders—we start by understanding the needs of the people you’re trying to reach, so we can then figure out ways to meet those needs.
Let’s figure out what we can do about it
Once you know what people need, we help you develop solutions that balance those needs with what you can actually do, both technically and financially. We then work with you through an iterative process that enables you to efficiently explore options and confidently make decisions, keeping you in focused action. And we collaborate via a flexible engagement model that helps us maximize our value and impact while ensuring you truly own—and can act on—the outcomes of our collective work. Ultimately, we help you make what people want.
how we think
Let’s start with people to (profitably) make what people want.
Whether you’re trying to solve UX challenges or CX challenges, global strategy challenges or internal communication challenges, product development challenges or branding challenges, putting people first—all your people—helps you profitably make what people want.
Let’s use a people-driven approach
Starting with people usually means understanding the needs of your external people—your consumers, customers, users, clients and partners. But to develop the solutions those people want, you may also need to better meet the needs of your internal people—your employees, team members and stakeholders—who are going to help make the solutions real. We help you understand the needs of all your people and keep them at the forefront as you develop your solutions—illuminating the strategic way forward, focusing your efforts and de-risking your decision-making, so you can launch more successful offerings faster.
Let’s apply a balanced perspective
Understanding what people need is just the start, however. It’s equally crucial to ensure our ideas are technically feasible and will make financial sense—if we can’t actually make it or make it in a fiscally responsible manner, it doesn’t matter how much people will want our solution. By complementing and harmonizing your capabilities and financial targets with the functional and emotional needs of your people, we can develop sustainable solutions that deliver immediate and long-term success.
how we work
Let’s (efficiently) make the right ideas real.
To help you make what people want, we employ a structured, yet flexible process and optimize our ways of working to keep us all in focused action while building confidence in our decision-making and ensuring our final offerings deliver on user need.
Let’s explore with purpose
Applicable to any type of challenge, our process of iterative divergence and convergence helps us methodically understand people’s needs, then explore ways we can meet those needs before converging to decide on the final user-desired solution that makes technical, financial and strategic sense.
Let’s leverage what’s working
Based on your needs and desired outcomes, we tailor our engagements to most effectively complement your team’s knowledge and capabilities and provide the best outcomes. Sometimes that means a light touch approach to get teams off in the right direction; other times it’s a fully collaborative engagement where we work side-by-side with your team, complementing their deep expertise with our mindset, process and broad experience. Or it could mean a more traditional consulting relationship. In all cases, we strive to maximize what your team brings to the table to yield great results that you and the team can fully own and act on.
Mindsetting
We point you in the right direction.
We give you tools, techniques and our informed outside perspective to set you off in the right direction, then check in to keep you on course. Whether facilitating teams through accelerated workshops or providing an outside perspective and sounding board for experienced teams wrestling with particularly thorny challenges, we help you stay in focused action so you can get where you need to go without breaking the bank.
Modeling
We work the challenge with you.
We guide your team through an actual project, complementing your deep technical, business and institutional knowledge with our mindset, process and broad experience to develop outcomes the team can own while providing tools and approaches they can carry forward. This is our ideal working arrangement, as it fully maximizes what both sides bring to the table, resulting in the richest outcomes and greatest value to you.
Making
We work the challenge for you.
If you’re up against the wall and can’t spare the headcount, we can work the challenge like a typical consulting relationship. We’ll work on our own, connecting with you at as many touchpoints as possible to keep us on the right track and ensure you can still own the work when we’re done.
about our team
Let’s leverage our expertise to make you look good.
We’ve been fortunate to have a wide and varied experience that has touched almost every sector and spanned organizations of every size and geography. Being able to leverage these insights via our deliberately small size helps you look good to your boss, not only for developing awesome solutions that people love—and you can own—but also for driving sustainable business value without breaking the bank.
Let’s put our experience to work for you
We’ve helped a pharmacy startup understand more about what their users needed, and a complex multi-national optimize their global hiring process. We’ve helped an insurance company understand what it’s really like to use their products, several food companies create new products and brands, a research institution encourage entrepreneurship among its faculty and staff, and a nonprofit foundation rethink their model to maximize their impact. We’ve helped clients look internally to better meet the needs of their employees and externally to deliver for their customers and consumers. We’ve worked on complex, systemic problems and simple, straightforward problems. Odds are, we can help you with yours.
Let’s get to know each other
As a human-centered design team, we’re driven by the belief that with an open mind and collaborative spirit, anything is possible. We know outcomes are better when we partner with people whose expertise and experience complement our own, and that when teams help create the outcomes, it ensures a greater chance at success. That’s why we deliberately keep ourselves small—it forces both you and us to collaborate and leverage what we’re both great at. (We figure your success is our success, and if we can help you make a lasting positive impact, odds are you’ll call us back—if not for the work, at least for the witty banter).
connect with us
Let’s work together to make what people want.
Connect
Let’s get the conversation started and figure out how we can help you. An email and a couple of check boxes is all it takes.
Articles & Links
Our take on things and interesting nuggets we’ve discovered along the way that made us stop and think.
Toolkit
Explore our archive of free human-centered design thinking resources to get you thinking differently.