Building design capability for the public good
Five ways we work: on projects with organisations, through design cohorts and university fellowships, by training public and non-profit teams, and by convening the field.
They feed each other. Project work supplies the briefs cohorts learn on; cohorts and training supply the people who carry the practice into institutions; events keep the field connected.
Service design and research on live problems
We work with non-profits, government departments and social enterprises on the services people actually depend on — from diagnosis through to prototypes their teams can run with. Engagements are scoped so a partner always ends with artefacts they own and a decision they can defend.
Diagnostic sprint
Rapid framing and light fieldwork when the brief is still a hunch.
Full engagement
Research, service design, a measured pilot and hand-over, embedded with your team.
Advisory
Standing design counsel for teams running their own work.
Learn the craft on a problem that matters
Design cohorts bring together designers, researchers, technologists and domain experts to work social impact problems in teams, mentored by practitioners. Fellowships run in collaboration with universities, pairing students and early-career designers with partner organisations on live public-interest briefs.
Both are free to take part in. The briefs come from the same partners our project work serves, so the output is real and the learning is not simulated.
Building the field, not just the projects
Workshops, roundtables and meet-ups where practitioners, students and public institutions meet each other — and UX Pakistan, our flagship conference, once a year. This work outlasts any single engagement.
UX Pakistan
The country's gathering for people who design digital and public services — talks, workshops and the conversations that start the next project.
uxpakistan.com →Workshops
Practical sessions on research in low-resource settings, service blueprinting and facilitation, open to practitioners and students.
Roundtables
Closed sessions with public institutions on what it takes to build and keep design capability inside government.
Events are where volunteers, cohort alumni and partner staff stay in contact between projects. Most of our volunteer network joined through one.
See the calendarLeave the capability, not the consultant
Training for public sector and non-profit teams in research, service design and facilitation, so design capability stays inside the institution long after a project ends. We coach teams through their first project rather than handing over a curriculum and leaving.
Talk to us about trainingResearch practice. Interviewing, observation and consent in the field, with sampling that reaches the users a system already fails.
Service design. Journey mapping and blueprinting front stage and back stage, including the forms, letters and staff tooling.
Facilitation. Running framing and co-design sessions with mixed rooms of citizens, frontline staff and decision-makers.
Testing and measurement. Low-cost prototyping and the operational measures that let a team defend a decision to scale or stop.
Design ops. Repositories, playbooks and ways of working that survive staff turnover.
A field grows when its best work is seen
Good design is already happening across Pakistan — in studios, in departments, in classrooms, often without anyone outside the room hearing about it. We put that work in front of people, and we name the designers behind it.
Showcasing the work
Projects worth knowing about, written up so others can learn from the decisions and not just admire the outcome.
Naming the designers
Recognition for the people who did the work — including researchers, writers and frontline staff who rarely get credited.
A stage at UX Pakistan
The conference is where this work is celebrated in public, in front of the field it belongs to.
Know work that deserves to be seen, or a designer who deserves the credit? Tell us — it does not have to be ours.
Tell us about good workWhere we focus
Our mark carries almost every Sustainable Development Goal, because the problems arrive tangled. These are the clusters we take briefs in.
Health & clean water
Primary care journeys, maternal health outreach, water access at the union-council level.
Learning & schools
Enrolment and retention journeys, teacher tools, learning materials that survive real classrooms.
Gender & inclusion
Safety, mobility and access to services for women, people with disabilities and informal workers.
Cities & climate
Flood preparedness, heat resilience, waste and transport services in dense neighbourhoods.
Land, water & food
Fisheries and farming livelihoods, food systems, and the ecosystems they depend on.
Public institutions
Digital services, grievance redress, and the design capability inside public bodies.
Give a few hours a month
Designers, researchers, writers, developers and facilitators support projects, review work and mentor cohort teams. Tell us what you can offer and we’ll match you to a live need.
Join the networkFund a pilot
We are a not-for-profit initiative. Donations and grants pay for field research, cohort stipends and the tools partners keep after we leave.
Donate
Not sure which of these you need?
Describe the problem and we’ll tell you honestly whether it calls for a project, training for your own team, or nothing from us at all.