Drivers of Change
New Futures Lab

When COVID-19 first hit, everything was thrown into chaos. The New Futures Lab team quickly got to work making sense of everything by conducting a research project to get our bearings. We focused on food, packaging, and sustainability, but many of our insights were relevant across industries.

Our learnings were applied in workshops, working sessions, and a series of assets we created to help Fabri-Kal leverage the research quickly to inform decision making

Download the Drivers card deck

Fiber Framing
Fabri-Kal

Fabri-Kal, a legacy packaging manufacturing company, needed a strategy for their work with compostable fibers. Many of the technical issues in designing and making products from fiber had been solved, but had not moved past engineering. They also wanted to use design thinking to increase their internal capabilities for innovation, with fiber being a key vertical ripe for differentiation.

Our external consulting team was brought in to design and facilitate an innovation workshop. We interviewed internal stakeholders, designed workshop activities and assets, and ultimately created a series of deliverables that set the stage for the creation of New Futures Lab.

Creative Spaces
Steelcase + Microsoft

The major furniture manufacturer, Steelcase, was struggling to make use of their vast research knowledge. They had tons of data and internal insights around the future of work, yet the product they ultimately sold to customers was essentially a parts list of furniture components.

When Steelcase partnered with Microsoft on the launch of furniture spaces designed around their collaborate Surface screens, our team was brought in to help with a new product offering to sell these spaces directly. During the course of our work, we uncovered numerous insights into the furniture world, ultimately leading to a piloted product with several nationwide Steelcase furniture dealers.

Full case study coming soon

Rethinking the Story
Rainbow Springs

Rainbow Springs is a nature park and animal conservancy in New Zealand that has been in operation since 1932. The park is a a prized destination, but struggled with declining visitor-ship and staying relevant. ThoughtFull was brought in to help transform it from a “once-in-a-generation visit to a once-a-year tradition”.

Myself and a design research colleague were brought in for the research and analysis portion of the project, spending a month in New Zealand to do so. We toured the park, audited the experience, and conducted research interviews. We analyzed observations, building an initial design strategy deliverable that set the foundation for years of subsequent work between ThoughtFull and Rainbow Springs.

Design Methods Playbook
ThoughtFull

Design process and methods are both fluid and specific. They get re-mixed and combined and evolved as they’re used, depending on the need. ThoughtFull, an agency with a strong focus on their human-centered methodology, wanted to put their own stamp on the hundreds of design methods floating around the web.

We set out to audit, describe, and visualize our own playbook with the process and methods most effective to ThoughtFull and their clients. They were not all proprietary, but every method was written or customized based on years of experience using them in the field. Using this content, we built the playbook, a methods card deck, and a workshop guide based on workshops we had designed and run.