Open the files
Starts with research into what people actually need. Ends in a system built to meet it.
A volunteer program that puts observers in Detroit courtrooms, which are open to the public but almost never watched.
Research with volunteers shaped the training and the system they record in, which feeds a reporting tool that turns a year of hearings into findings the organization can put in front of the public.
The counting arm of 50501, supplying protest attendance numbers to the Harvard Crowd Counting Consortium and filtering that dataset back out for the public.
Harvard’s dataset covers every event in the country, so the work ran in both directions: volunteer training that produces counts reliable enough to go in, and the brand and reporting process that pull pro-democracy events back out for the public.
A community-led initiative working to make clean energy accessible and locally controlled in Boston’s Chinatown.
Fieldwork inside the neighborhood, from resident interviews to zoning records, shaped a multilingual resource hub where people can break down an energy bill or spot a scam, built to read as part of Chinatown rather than as an institution arriving in it.
A Pantene hair care line developed by Black scientists and formulated for Black hair.
Research found that the audience wanted representation and a formula they could trust, so the repositioning led with the Black scientists behind it and carried through every digital touchpoint, doubling conversion over three months.
