Working Well

We’re told that working with Greater Good Studio is a great experience, because our human-centered approach extends to clients too.

What Clients Say

overheat shot of a large round table, white tablecloth, covered with white sheets of paper and colorful post-it notes, also markers and colored dot stickers. four people sit around the table, one medium-skinned man with a dark red ski cap is writing, the others are dark-skinned and either gesturing with their hands or looking at their phone.

The Greater Good Studio team helped me better understand how human centered design works in solving community problems. I also learned new methods of listening, the power of prototyping and most importantly – to trust the process!

Fran Rodriguez
Senior Program Officer, Lancaster County Community Foundation
four people working together; one light-skinned woman is standing and writing with a marker on an easel, smiling, wearing a tan and gray flowy dress. the other 3 are seated at a table that's also covered with papers, folders, cups and post-it notes. a dark-skinned woman is gesturing and appears to be speaking to a medium-skinned woman; a dark-skinned man looks at the speaker with a smile. they are in a room with a wooden floor and a window behind them shows sunny trees.

Over 12 months, we were able to navigate the delicate matters of implicit bias that have been silent but present in our programs for years.

Nat Ortiz
Senior Designer, Royal Society for the Arts
a light-skinned woman with a gray t-shirt and wavy brown medium-length hair holds a tablet up to a pale yellow wall, with a half-sheet of paper held on top of it. the wall holds about 8 other half-sheets of white paper, all with various hand-drawn sketches of buttons and charts, drawn with black Sharpie marker.

Our work with Greater Good taught us how to translate the voices of our end users into an elegantly designed and highly functional digital health tool.

Wendy Leonard
Executive Director, TIP Global Health

Who We Work With

We’re inspired by our clients every day.

See Full Client List

Client Contributions to the Work

We literally couldn’t do our work without you! The expertise and relationships that clients and partners bring to the table are essential to the success of our projects.

  • Clients help to recruit our project participants.

    You may use your network to connect our team with potential research participants, community partners and stakeholders. Often, client relationships provide an initial foundation of trust that we can build upon.

  • Clients accompany our team on research sessions.

    You may observe, or actively participate, in learning directly from the people most affected by the problems you seek to address. We find that when clients join for research, the project becomes personal.

  • Clients provide their insight during the synthesis process.

    You may join our team for one or more working sessions to interpret data, identify patterns or draft design opportunties. Client input helps counteract any biases or assumptions that our team may have made.

  • Clients convene relevant parties to move the project forward.

    You may gather folks together in order to align them around the project goals. Clients’ ability to convene and host is often key to the success of community-based design projects.

  • Clients provide detailed feedback and content expertise.

    You may give feedback on design strategies or deliverables as the project progresses. As projects move into Prototyping and Piloting, clients typically provide content for design solutions.

Certifications

Certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) with the Illinois Department of Transportation

Certified Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) with the City of Chicago

Client FAQs

What kinds of organizations do you partner with?

In general, Greater Good Studio works with nonprofits, foundations, government agencies and social enterprises. More specifically, we seek out clients whose mission will advance a more equitable society, who have the capacity to execute programmatic or organizational change, and who are eager to learn more about human-centered design, their own organization and the people they serve.

How long is a project, and how much does it cost?

It depends on your goals, of course! A typical GGS project is 3-6 months, though smaller projects can happen in a month and larger projects may take a year. After learning about your challenges and opportunities, we put together an initial proposal based on the simple formula of Number of Hours multiplied by Hourly Rate. However, this is always flexible and we are happy to adjust until the scope and budget feel reasonable for all parties.

Can you help us find the funding to work with you?

We can certainly try! We know most organizations don’t have innovation budgets, and most funders don’t give grants for human-centered design. That’s why we’re happy to support your efforts to find funding. We’ve done this in many ways, including co-writing grant proposals, creating pitch presentations and joining for meetings with funders. If you have a project in mind, but aren’t sure if you have the funding to work with us, let’s chat about possible ways forward. Contact us.

Are you a nonprofit?

Actually, no. We are a social enterprise, which is a for-profit, mission-based business. This decision is partly to reduce complexity in our operations, and partly to demonstrate to the design industry that it’s possible to do amazing, meaningful work at your day job, instead of saving your social impact efforts for pro-bono and after-hours work.

Connect with a Co-Founder

George and Sara regularly serve as sounding boards for social sector leaders.

Schedule a Chat