While comprehensive, people-centered, and complexity-aware program design, implementation support, and evaluation is our jam, we recognize that sometimes it’s the small things that make a big difference. There are many small ways we can support the good work you do, from project startup to learning and sharing.
On this page are a few idea starters and examples, we welcome your ideas on how you might use our skills in …
- design research and participatory workshops
- meaning-making and design for use
- pattern finding, and narrative crafting.
We can’t wait to hear what you’ve got in mind.
Getting to GOOD WORK
Spending time to assess and shape the project before contracting means you can spend limited resources in the highest impact way, and gain greater clarity on what success looks like.
Examples:
Learning materials assessment
Learning materials: a curriculum, training, SBC guidance or materials, job aids
We can look at a single issue across multiple materials (e.g., a matrix of IEC materials for a topic), OR a page-by-page assessment of a single source or material.
We look at the materials to identify:
- Small and immediate tweaks for user engagement and uptake
- Longer-term structural shifts for user engagement and uptake
- Issues of bias, equity, and inclusion such as gender and disability
- Specific principles, approaches, or topics
Project and creative briefs
- Getting ready for design or illustration.
- Developing a project brief, scope of work, or creative brief for securing design or illustration.
- Going a step further, doing visual research and curating a collection of visual resources in preparation for graphic design or illustration.
Understanding good work
Perspectives brief
Navigating diverse perspectives. We interview 5 key informants, and provide a brief synthesis from an external, eagle-eye view.
Rapid insights
Rapid insights from available literature or a document round-up and review. You give us a question or topic to explore or a bibliography or folder of documents. We provide a quick review of the literature, organizing ideas into themes and clipping specific insights with attribution.
Interdisciplinary briefs
Finding out what is “same same but different” around an issue, framework, approach or idea. We’re great at helping people broaden their understanding of an issue, framework or approach by looking across disciplines and asking questions like, “What is my problem called in other fields? How have other disciplines approached this?” We will curate an online library/kiosk/board for interacting with these ideas.
Examples:
Examples:
Doing good work
Job Aids
Do you have Standard Operating Procedures? Program manual? Job guidelines? Do they, by any chance, run more than 10 pages or even 100? Allow us to pull out discrete information and format with slim text into useable and reference-able job aids for specific staff and volunteers.
Teaching Tool
Is there an exercise you regularly use while teaching? A curriculum with graphics that aren’t easy to share? A classroom set-up that could be supported? We love creating small learning tools to help with the easy uptake of ideas and to smooth that in-person or virtual group facilitation process.
Communication piece
Do you have a few pages or a poster that you would like to be easier to read? Quicker to digest? More accessible to your audience? Allow us to update your text-heavy page(s) to be easier to read through text slimming and graphic design.
Looking into good work
Interactive (and fun!) data collection
Engaging survey design. We love making surveys fun! We craft questions carefully to ensure we are asking only what needs answering, in a way that captures participants’ attention and invites them to engage.
Interactive tools for interviews. Are you planning a group discussion or interviews to gain insights on perspectives, behaviors, barriers, or motivations? Does your group interview need more pep? We will design game- or story-based interactive tools and the guidance for your team to use them.
Workshops for making sense
Data generation or validation workshop. Are you looking to generate or validate data with groups of diverse stakeholders? We can collaborate to design a participatory workshop that explores your data set or early analysis with the stakeholders whose voices matter. This can be remote (online) or a guide for in-person facilitation.
Applying complexity-aware MEL. Ready to put complexity-aware MEL into practice? We can design and host conversations with your team around readiness, application, working through challenges, setting up systems, and sense-making. We offer coaching packages to support your team in integrating complexity-aware MEL.
Examples:
Using good work
Learning products
Share and disseminate findings with a sleek learning product. You have a lengthy final report, but even the executive summary is text heavy and long. We can create a short, sleek looking learning brief with beautiful data graphics and imagery based on a longer report for an external audience and wider sharing. Pair this with designing a workshop or recorded presentation and think about how much more impact your findings could have!
Findings Presentations
Report or findings turned into a workshop or interactive presentation. Use us to design a workshop or interactive presentation of your work. A participatory workshop to share findings can inspire others, build donor and organizational buy-in, and deepen use.
Case Studies
Develop a brief case study on a project, program, or approach. Weaving available information together with targeted interviews, we will make the process, findings, or impact, of a particular case visible and usable.
Reports
Editing and designing reports for greater usability. Using our expertise in editing for readability, we will shape writing to facilitate use, uptake, and broader sharing. Taking it a step further, the elegant design encourages readers to continue even past an executive summary.