Process

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We collaborate with: people with lived experience of the challenge, artists, academics, charities and creative technologists.

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Making the intangible – tangible, multisensory, interactive and physical to reconnect people together are key themes through all our work.

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We blend skills in design thinking, craft, physical and digital interactive technologies to create prototypes. These are then iterated, tested, trialled, and evaluated to become award winning products like Music Memory Box.

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The products we create are customisable to the individual and get better over time meaning a greater level of emotional attachment.

We want to create heirlooms.

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Key Principles

Human Centred Design

Throughout the process of designing involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.

We like to take it a step further and really think about the mental health and wellbeing of people, what are they feeling, what are they thinking at every step of the design process.

Emotionally Durable Design

The concept that products and tools get better over time, like a copper roof on a building, patinas are built up over time. New things aren’t always better.

How can the person add to the product itself, how can they input themselves, their own thoughts and likes into it? How can I create something that is so precious it becomes an heirloom – passed on.

We don’t want to design for landfill.

Ambition of a Fairer World

We are a social enterprise.

We believe in a world where multiple different perspectives and narratives are considered. Not just the loudest. Where overlooked issues are considered and solutions designed and offered to really bring about a change in someone’s life. Where money isn’t the main indicator of how well a society is, but peoples resilience and wellbeing are. 

Co-design/Co-creation

How we make our work, is as important as the output itself.

We consider and co-create with stakeholders, eventual owners, eventual customers, charity supporters. 

Everyone in room is equal – including designer, person with lived experience, researcher.

The skill is not to assume anything & no to generalise.  Our approach is all in, gather round, let’s chat, let’s figure this out together, let’s as designers listen twice as much as we talk.

Design for the Real World

Designing for societies needs not their desires.

“Much recent design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires, while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer. The economic, psychological, spiritual, technological, and intellectual needs of a human being are usually more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated ‘wants’ inculcated by fad and fashion.” – Victor Papanek.