What is Design Thinking and UX?
Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to solving complex problems. It prioritizes the needs, experiences, and pain points of end users—such as citizens, public servants, vendors, or service recipients—throughout the design and delivery process. By deeply understanding the people they serve, teams can define the right problems to solve and co-create practical, innovative solutions that are both effective and inclusive.
User Experience (UX) focuses on how people interact with systems, services, or policies—ensuring those experiences are clear, accessible, and satisfying.
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Together, Design Thinking and UX ensure policies, programs, and procurement processes are not only effective, but intuitive, inclusive, and outcome-driven.
What We Offer
Design Thinking and Ux Design focussed facilitated processes.
User Research & Insight Generation
Stakeholder interviews, observations, and insight mapping to understand needs, barriers, and what matters most. We have extensive experience integrating this into Agile Procurement processes.
Personas & Journey Mapping
Visual tools to explore how different users interact with a program, process or system and where the experience breaks down. We have extensive experience integrating this into Solution Lab processes.
Custom labs, workshops, and design sprints
Help your team explore root causes, generate ideas collaboratively, and translate insights into actionable outputs like clear technical requirements, success criteria, and evaluation frameworks that measure what matters. We help you align user needs with strategic goals to set the foundation for effective policy, program, and procurement outcomes
Rapid Prototyping & Testing
We bring ideas to life quickly through low-fidelity prototypes (e.g. mock-ups, models, or process walkthroughs) that allow you to test assumptions early, gather real user feedback, and refine direction before making significant investments. This helps de-risk decisions and ensures your solution is on the right track.
Iteration & Implementation Support
Once the concept is validated, we help your team move from design to delivery using Scrum-based methods. Through short, focused sprints, we support product ownership, backlog development, and sprint planning—helping teams stay aligned with user needs, internal constraints, and evolving priorities. This iterative approach enables rapid learning, continuous improvement, and real-time adaptation as you bring your solution to life.
Our Clients
Whether you're starting fresh or reworking something that’s stuck, we design around your context, constraints, and goals. Our services are tailored to meet the needs of:
Governments
Departments seeking user-centered ways to design services, policies, programs and procurements for complex IT solutions.
Non-Profits
Non-profits and community organizations designing their service delivery model
Teams
Innovation and transformation teams working across silos or cross-functional groups tackling complex or ambiguous challenges
Case Study: Transforming Procurement Through Design Thinking
A federal department had issued two unsuccessful RFPs for a complex digital solution. Despite clear technical requirements, bids were either non-compliant or failed to meet user needs. Industry feedback pointed to unclear objectives, rigid specifications, and missed opportunities for innovation.
What We Did:
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Facilitated a discovery sprint with procurement, policy, operations, and IT teams to align on the real problem and desired outcomes
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Conducted user research and journey mapping to understand how internal users experience the process
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Engaged suppliers through early market sounding and co-design sessions to explore barriers to participation—particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
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Used iterative prototyping to rewrite the Statement of Work, shifting from rigid specifications to outcome-based language
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Supported the design and facilitation of a multi-stage agile procurement process, including an Invitation to Refine phase with vendor collaboration
Results:
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Aligned cross-functional team on a shared procurement strategy rooted in user and business needs
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Reduced ambiguity and increased clarity for industry on what was being bought—and why
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Encouraged innovation by creating space for vendors to propose solutions, not just respond to specs
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Enabled prototyping and testing in the target environment before full-scale deployment, ensuring solutions delivered on what was promised during the procurement process
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Successfully awarded the contract to a qualified vendor, with strong participation from both large and small firms
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Built internal capacity to replicate agile procurement approaches in future initiatives
