The world’s most decentralised
innovation & design agency.
We help NGOs, social enterprises, and impact investors design solutions for low-income communities. Our 250+ Humanity-Centered Design practitioners work within the same countries and regions as the communities they serve.
We don’t fly in designers.
We already live there.
For 18 years we have built the most decentralised community of 250+ Humanity-Centered Design practitioners across 62 countries in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East. The people who design with your communities are from those communities.
Native practitioners with lived experience.
Design researchers who work within the same country or region as the communities they serve cut through language barriers, cultural nuance, and field logistics that outsiders miss. Empathy is not a workshop technique when it is your community.
Proximity means faster, cheaper feedback cycles.
Multiple rounds of user testing without multi-week logistics. Minimal travel, minimal CO₂, maximal iteration. Prototypes reach real users in days, not months.
Humanity-Centered Design. Beyond the individual user.
Humanity-Centered Design expands the focus beyond individual users to the communities, institutions, and ecosystems that shape people’s lives. We integrate systems thinking, behaviour change science, futures methods, and business modelling to design solutions that outlast the project.
One network. Four continents.
Sixty-two countries.
For every project we assemble a tailored team from our vetted network of locally based Humanity-Centered Design professionals. No two projects draw the same team, but every team shares access to our knowledge base and project experience from across the world.
Tailored teams.
Toughest challenges.
We serve NGOs, social enterprises, and governments to design solutions for low-income communities, with the local practitioners who live and work within those communities.
Design Research
Empathy interviews, field observations, and insights synthesis. Conducted by practitioners who work within the same country or region as the communities they study.
Design Sprints & Prototyping
Rapid co-creation with communities, stakeholders, and end users. Prototypes reach real people in days, not months.
Feasibility & Piloting
Market, technical, and behavioural validation before scale. Evidence you can act on, and a recommendation you can defend to funders.
Inclusive Business Modelling
Fundable ventures and investor-ready pitch support. Business models stress-tested against what communities will actually use and sustain long after a project ends.
Training & Mentoring in HCD
Building teams’ capacity to keep practising Humanity-Centered Design after we leave. Delivered through the Innovators Team platform or your own systems.
Creative Entrepreneurship
Training young people and women to start and grow customer-centred businesses. Delivered by practitioners who work in the same markets as participants.
You bring the capital.
We bring the communities.
Challenge funds and impact investors bring us in to support the companies and innovators they back. Design research, field testing, and HCD coaching that reduces adoption risk and builds capacity that outlasts the investment.
Supporting the innovators in your programme
We work alongside grantees and competition finalists to sharpen their user understanding, test assumptions in the field, and build HCD capacity that lasts beyond the programme.
Strengthening the companies you back
We help portfolio companies understand the people they are designing for, reduce adoption risk, and generate the user evidence that supports scale.
Where local insight meets
global development priorities.
We work across the sectors where social and environmental innovation is most urgently needed, helping partners move from field research to prototypes, business models, and scalable solutions.
Global Health & SRHR Innovation
We help health actors design, test, and scale services, tools, and care pathways that work for frontline providers, women, girls, and underserved communities.
Climate Resilience & Adaptation
We support communities, NGOs, and funders to co-create practical solutions for climate risk, disaster preparedness, agricultural resilience, and just transitions.
Food Security, Nutrition & Social Protection
We design inclusive services, behaviour-change tools, and co-innovation processes that strengthen nutrition, food access, and social protection systems.
Youth Employment & Inclusive Entrepreneurship
We help young people, social businesses, and entrepreneurship programmes move from ideas to tested models, viable ventures, and scalable impact.
Digital Innovation, AI & Public Services
We design and test digital tools, platforms, and AI-enabled services that are usable, inclusive, and grounded in real-world constraints.
Humanitarian Innovation & Crisis Resilience
We work in fragile and crisis-affected settings to prototype services, tools, and delivery models that improve safety, dignity, and access.
Have a challenge that
needs the field?
A 30-minute discovery call is the fastest way to find out whether we are the right team. No pitch, no pressure. We will listen, share honestly whether we can help, and follow up with a written proposal if there is a fit.