From improving human experiences (individual perspective), to developing viable business strategies (organisation perspective) and assessing policies (society perspective), we help you drive positive societal change.
Human-centred research is a creative approach to problem solving that puts people at the heart of the process. We involve stakeholders at every step of the process. Together we discover, implement and evaluate innovation, answering the following questions:
Stakeholder needs: Using tools like Stakeholder maps, Empathy maps, Experience maps, User journeys or Service blueprints and methods like Interviews, Surveys, Focus groups, Contextual inquiries and more, we empathise with our stakeholders, collect their pain points and unmet needs and map their current (AS-IS) context.
Co-creation: We apply participatory methods like co-creation workshops and Living-Labs to test with our stakeholders how to turn their pains into gains and their needs into development opportunities. We also map together their future (TO-BE) state, aligning what’s desirable from a human point of view with what’s economically viable and technologically feasible.
Prototyping: We focus on our stakeholders’ desired future to turn the identified opportunities into prototypes. Following a thorough User Experience (UX) design process we design how future needs of our users can be met when interacting with these prototypes in particular scenarios. This includes the User Interface (UI) design of the prototypes, making sure the design is future proof and inclusive.
Validation / Piloting / Demonstration: In order to validate the designed solutions, we observe how our target audience uses our prototypes selecting the most appropriate evaluation method: User testing and think-aloud sessions, heuristics evaluations (expert reviews) of a product against established usability principles, surveys and questionnaires for user feedback on satisfaction and System Usability Scale (SUS).
Our go-to-market strategy services are tightly focused on evaluating market dynamics and developing executable commercial strategies to ensure a business’s viability and success. Collectively, this group of services focuses on the Commercial and Strategic aspects of a business, beyond designing a basic “exploitation pathway”, specifically answering in a quantitative form:
Supply & Demand Analysis: Fundamental market sizing and understanding. It assesses the current state of the market, identifying gaps, opportunities, and competitive intensity.
Business Model Canvas (BMC): A standardized strategic management template used to develop new or document existing business models. It maps out the key components, including value propositions, customer segments, channels, revenue streams, and cost structure.
New Business Models Development: The process of inventing or adapting a company’s fundamental logic for creating, delivering, and capturing value. This leverages the insights from the BMC.
Pricing Analysis: Determining the optimal price point for a product or service. This involves assessing consumer willingness to pay, competitor pricing, and internal costs to maximize profit and market penetration.
Our Policy evaluation and analysis services complete our partners work when developing new policies as a consortium. With our policy services we help partners, policymakers and society get answers to the following questions:
Policy analysis: This is the overarching function—the systematic study of policy problems, landscape scanning for potential solutions, and quantification of their impacts to provide evidence-based advice to decision-makers.
Policy monitoring and evaluation: We design evaluation frameworks or individual Performance Indicators to measure and track the efficiency, effectiveness, and progress of policies or programs to assess feasibility and impact before and after they are implemented.
Impact Assessment (IA): This involves evaluating the likely effects (positive and negative) of a proposed policy option before it’s adopted. It’s a set of proactive tools such as:
Cost effectiveness and Financial Resilience assessment: An assessment of the capacity of individuals, households, and communities to withstand, adapt to, and recover from economic shocks (e.g., job loss, health crises) without compromising established welfare.
Sectoral Cost-Burden & Resource Allocation in the sectors of Healthcare, Construction and Transport: A method to assess how the accelerating expenditure of a particular sector creates pressures on resource allocation, sustainability and equitable access.
Here’s an example
Founder of Future Needs, Anna, is a Research & Innovation Consultant with 18 years of experience in proposal writing and project management. She has worked as a project Coordinator and Work Package leader in 30+ EU projects and has authored 50+ successful proposals. Her research background is in economics, business development and policy-making.
