Design that belongs
to the community it serves.
A question we
could not let go.
In 2007, the R&D director of FrieslandCampina asked a question that stayed with us: how do you design products that actually work for people who cannot afford what the market normally offers?
The answer was not cheaper packaging or watered-down versions. It was to stop designing for people and start designing with them. Starting from their actual lives, needs, and context, and building outward from there.
That insight led us to Human-Centered Design, and later to Humanity-Centered Design: design pioneer Don Norman’s term for an approach that recognises that people live within larger social, institutional, and ecological systems. It also led us to a practical question: if meaningful participation matters, why are so many design processes still led from a distance? Proportion is our answer to that question.
Proportion Foundation was established in 2009. In 2014 it became Proportion Enterprise BV, trading as Proportion Global. The business model has evolved. The premise has not.
We don’t fly in designers.
We already live there.
We serve NGOs, social enterprises, and governments working on the hardest challenges in health, education, climate, and economic inclusion.
Our 250+ Humanity-Centered Design practitioners are based across 62 countries in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East. Working in the same countries and regions as the communities they support, they bring language skills, contextual understanding, local networks, and long-term presence that strengthen participation and locally owned innovation processes.
Traditional Human-Centered Design starts with people. Humanity-Centered Design expands the focus to include the systems, institutions, and ecosystems that shape people’s lives.
We integrate systems thinking to map root causes and wider forces. We use futures methods to design for the world as it will be, not as it is. We bring business modelling to make solutions viable, and behavioural insights to make them stick.
A solution that does not account for the system it sits in, or the business model that sustains it, rarely survives after a project ends. We design for the full picture.
250+ practitioners.
One network.
Five values.
None of them decorative.
Open-mindedness
Authenticity
Diversity
Humility
Courage
Founded by a practitioner,
built with practitioners.
Thomas Schuurmans started Proportion Foundation in 2009, two years after that FrieslandCampina conversation. He studied Applied Physics at Delft University, spent years working across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and built the network from the ground up. He leads Proportion today as Founder and Executive Director.
Proportion is run by a small core team and powered by a distributed network of 250+ vetted HCD professionals who work within the same country or region as the communities they support. The core team sets strategy and quality. The network leads research, facilitation, co-creation, and implementation alongside communities and local partners.
That is the model. The people closest to the problem must play a central role in understanding it, shaping solutions, and carrying change forward. Our role is to facilitate that process through locally led, humanity-centered design. Proportion excels at close proximity, and that is what puts us in the strongest position to facilitate humanity-centered design.
De-risking adoption for
the companies you back.
ROAM · East Africa, supported by British International Investments
The work Proportion does has always sat at the intersection of communities and investment. Design research that sharpens business models. Field testing that reduces adoption risk. User evidence that helps investors make better decisions. Working with impact investors as a technical assistance partner is the most natural expression of that.
Humanity-Centered Design also drives systemic innovation. When investees operate across the same ecosystem, the opportunity goes beyond improving individual solutions. Proportion shares insights across portfolios and organises design sprints that bring investors, portfolio companies, and community actors into the same room, tackling systemic challenges together. The Innovators Team platform, co-founded by Proportion and GAIN, is the infrastructure that makes this possible at scale.
Our latest collaboration of this kind is with British International Investments, supporting ROAM across East Africa.