Design thinking—a way of solving challenges that’s been core to the design process for many years and has influenced everything from Fortune 500 companies to top business schools to social innovation—underpins our work. The result is a participatory and human-centered process that brings student and stakeholder experiences to life in a wholly new way. Our approach encompasses the following capabilities:
What We Do
Elevate and Strengthen Student Voice and Engagement
Elevate Student Voice
We champion and design opportunities for students to be heard by learning from them, authentically sharing their lived experiences, offering and debating challenges and opportunities with key stakeholders, and co-creating solutions that will work for all.
Tell Powerful Stories
Tell Powerful Stories
Not the ‘sit around the campfire’ type stories, but the kind that pulls massive amounts of meaningful data and information together in a narrative and visualization that incites action, changes mindsets, and moves us forward.
Design Innovative Solutions
Design Innovative Solutions
Whether you are in need of a new program, practice, or strategic plan, we take the burden of aligning stakeholders, organizing sessions, synthesizing inputs and packaging results off your shoulders so you can focus on your day job.
Evaluate System-Level Structures
Evaluate System-Level Structures
We love digging deeper, because we believe no matter how good ideas are, if you don’t address the foundational issues that have built up over time, you cannot create meaningful, sustainable change.
Facilitate Hard Conversations
Facilitate Hard Conversations
We are not afraid of diving into the uncomfortable and thoughtfully create ‘brave spaces’ for dialogue so that all who come to the table in search of truth and progress will be empowered to create change.
How We Do It
Understanding the Lived Student Experience
Human-Centered Research
Deeply understand the lived experience and how people relate to and perceive the world around them, uncovering patterns in motivations, behaviors, and habits and producing actionable insights and opportunity spaces.
Exploring the System and How it Operates
Ecosystem Thinking
Looking at the student experience within the context of the wider system—identifying friction points, barriers and opportunities for improvement to ensure feasibility, adoption and sustainability of new programs, practices, or policies.
Co-Creating Solutions Spaces
Participatory Design and Prototyping
Involving students and stakeholders in the design and co-creation of ideas—either in a feedback role during formative or evaluative stages or as actual designers—establishes a stronger sense of accountability and purpose in execution.
Packaging the Story
Equity-Framed Storytelling
Integrating evidence-based best practices and lessons-learned from diversity, equity, and inclusion communication practitioners, allowing us to frame all our client and partner work in an authentic way that inspires thought and drives meaningful change.
