Six services to bring Humanity-centered Design into practice.
For Challenge Funds & Impact Investors
Working as a challenge fund, innovation programme, or impact investor? We have a dedicated offering.
Design Research
The insights that change what you build.
Research conducted by practitioners who work in the same country or region as the communities they study. They speak the language, understand the context, and are able to engage communities more effectively throughout the research process. This proximity helps create richer insights, while rigorous field research ensures understanding is built rather than assumed. That changes what you find, and what you can do with it.
We combine empathy interviews, field observations, and stakeholder mapping with behavioural diagnosis and systems analysis. The output is not a stack of transcripts. It is a set of actionable opportunities, grounded in the real constraints and motivations of the people you are designing with.
HCDSocial & Behaviour ChangeSystems Thinking
- Personas and behavioural profiles
- Synthesised insight themes
- Actionable opportunity statements
- Systems and stakeholder maps
Plan International · West Africa
SRHR behavioural research in a context where outsider bias would have produced the wrong answers. Native researchers uncovering insights no visiting consultant could have reached.
Design Sprints & Prototyping
From challenge to field-tested concept in days.
We facilitate co-creation sessions that bring communities, partners, and key stakeholders into the same room. Ideas are made tangible quickly, taken back to real users, and improved before anyone invests in building them.
Working within the same countries and regions as the communities involved, our facilitators can engage participants more effectively and navigate local dynamics with greater nuance. This helps build stronger participation, shared ownership, and faster cycles of testing and iteration. Prototypes reach real users within days, not months.
HCDInnovation Management
- Co-created concepts
- Rapid prototypes (service, digital, or physical)
- User test feedback and iteration notes
- Refined concept with design rationale
CABI · Ghana
Government regulators, researchers, importers, and local end users in the same sprint, building shared ownership of the outcome.
Feasibility Studies & Piloting
Know what works before you scale it.
Market viability, technical feasibility, behavioural readiness, and financial sustainability: all assessed in the communities where a solution will live or fail. Not from a desk, and not from secondary data alone.
We combine field research with business model thinking and foresight analysis. What works today, and whether it holds up across political cycles, climate shifts, and the end of the current funding window. You receive evidence you can act on, and a recommendation you can defend to funders.
HCDInclusive Business ModellingFutures & Foresight
- Market and context analysis
- Behavioural readiness assessment
- Pilot design and field-tested results
- Evidence-based scale recommendation
SPRING Accelerator · South Asia
Design research alongside women-focused portfolio companies, giving investees a clearer picture of the women they were designing for and the barriers shaping their decisions.
Inclusive Business Modelling
Viable models built from the community out.
Business models for underserved markets must start from community reality: real willingness to pay, real distribution constraints, real social dynamics. Not from a spreadsheet, and not by adapting a model built for a different context.
We work on value proposition design, unit economics, revenue stream modelling, and investor-ready pitch support. All stress-tested against what communities will actually use and sustain long after a project ends and grant cycles close.
Inclusive Business ModellingSocial & Behaviour ChangeFutures & Foresight
- Value proposition canvas
- Unit economics and revenue model
- Investor-ready pitch materials
- Sustainability pathway
British International Investment · ROAM
Rider-centred research reframed fast charging as an income-protection tool, identifying scalable pathways for a mixed charging ecosystem with a viable business model behind it.
Training & Mentoring in HCD
Build the capacity to keep designing after we leave.
Blended learning, live facilitation, and follow-up coaching designed for the contexts where your teams actually work, not for a conference room in a capital city. We train NGO programme officers, frontline teams, and partner organisations to use humanity-centred design as an everyday practice.
Delivered through the Innovators Team platform or your own systems. The platform provides the social hub, e-learning modules, and peer community that keep teams connected and practising long after the formal programme ends.
HCDInnovation Management
- Customised training curriculum
- Live facilitated sessions
- Field toolkits and worksheets
- Follow-up coaching
Challenge Fund for Youth Employment
Building HCD capacity in a cohort of companies working on youth employment, equipping teams to keep improving after the programme ended.
Creative Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship programmes built for the markets they serve.
For organisations running youth employment, livelihoods, or women’s entrepreneurship programmes: we design and deliver the training that builds genuine business-building capacity. Our trainers are practitioners who work in the same markets as participants. Their contextual understanding runs deeper than a generic curriculum. They build in the same markets, speak the same languages, and carry relationships that give participants genuine access to real customers.
We use the Innovators Team platform to give cohorts a social hub, challenge tools, and peer learning infrastructure that continues after the programme closes. Participants build businesses and networks that outlast any project.
HCDSocial & Behaviour ChangeInclusive Business Modelling
Running this as part of a challenge programme or innovation fund? See our Technical Assistance offering.
- Entrepreneurship curriculum design
- Facilitated cohort sessions
- Innovators Team platform access
- Alumni network and peer community
CorpsAfrica Entrepreneurship Incubator
An independent co-creation platform, co-founded by Proportion Global and GAIN.
We use it as part of project delivery for challenges, training programmes, and ecosystem collaboration. It is not a bolt-on. It is the infrastructure that connects communities, practitioners, and knowledge across countries and funding cycles.
When a client needs it, Innovators Team becomes the shared workspace: for running challenges, delivering training, building alumni communities, and giving field teams access to resources and peer support wherever they are.
Social hub
Peer community across countries and sectors.
E-learning
Module-based skill building, available offline.
Challenge tools
Structured co-creation and innovation challenges.
Resource library
Field tools, frameworks, and practitioner guides.
AI buddy
Data synthesis and research support for teams.
Mobile app
Works online and offline, built for the last mile.
Trusted by
All six services run on
Humanity-centered Design.
Humanity-Centered Design, a concept developed by design pioneer Don Norman, expands Human-Centered Design beyond individual users to include the communities, systems, institutions, and ecosystems that shape people’s lives. We combine this foundation with systems thinking, social and behaviour change science, futures methods, business modelling, and locally led participation to create solutions that are more inclusive, sustainable, and locally owned.
Tell us which challenge
you are facing.
Book a 30-minute call with a senior design lead. We will listen, share honestly whether we can help, and follow up with a written proposal if you wish.
→ No cost.→ Direct with a senior design lead.→ Written follow-up within 48 hours.