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RECENT WORK

Amplifi – Disaster Navigator 2.0
A more human-centered and trauma-informed way to navigate disaster recovery
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San Rafael – Together Academy 2025
A training program that puts human-centered design in action
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Ridiculously Hopeful Futures for a Human-Centered Government
Participatory Experiential Futures (PXF) to elevate participant voice in public benefits
View Case Study (Participatory Experiential Futures (PXF) to elevate participant voice in public benefits)Read Case Study: Participatory Experiential Futures (PXF) to elevate participant voice in public benefits
BayREN – Equity Assessment of an Energy Efficiency Program
Helping to make an energy efficiency program more equitable
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Calbright College – Quality Jobs Framework
A customized framework to define ‘good jobs’ according to Calbright students
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What We Do

We unearth insights and co-create solutions to public challenges through strategic planning, community engagement and human-centered design.

Listen

For every challenge, we come in with an open mindset and an inquisitive spirit. We help surface insights by engaging individual people where they are, in the way that is most accessible to them.

Learn

We dive deep to understand people’s pain points, needs, hopes, and fears. We examine how people relate to each other, and make visible the multiple, intersecting, and layered systems and perspectives that affect decision-making.

Make

We know what works in the real world, understand the unique challenges of the public sector, and want to see our partners continue to succeed. That’s why we work with our partners to turn learning into tools that build their capacity to take on future challenges.

Explore our services

Insights & Learning

Ideas, tools, and resources from our community of CivicMakers

Blog Post
Santa Cruz County’s Workforce Ecosystem Showcases its Big Ideas
“Speak up, fix sh*t, and make work suck less.” This was one of the mic-drop moments from a team composed…
By CivicMakers
6 Min Read
Read Santa Cruz County’s Workforce Ecosystem Showcases its Big Ideas
Blog Post
The CivicMakers Menu of Services
The CivicMakers Team is hitting a celebratory milestone in November, 2025 - 10 years of bringing human-centered design to public…
By CivicMakers
4 Min Read
Read The CivicMakers Menu of Services
Blog Post
Ridiculously Hopeful Futures Meets Meeting of the Minds
At California Workforce Association’s (CWA) Meeting of the Minds conference in Monterey (September 2025), we invited participants to time travel…
By CivicMakers
5 Min Read
Read Ridiculously Hopeful Futures Meets Meeting of the Minds
Blog Post
Co-Designing Technology for Human-Centered Public Services
Background In the Spring of 2025, our Ridiculously Hopeful Futures (RHF) project invited community members and public benefits administrators across…
By CivicMakers
6 Min Read
Read Co-Designing Technology for Human-Centered Public Services

See all insights and learning

ABOUT US

A team of pragmatic optimists

CivicMakers is a strategic consultancy and community of practitioners that believe in the power of inclusive, collaborative design. We envision a world where every person has the tools, skills, and capacities to advance collaborative decision-making, and every community has what they need to co-create solutions.

LEARN ABOUT US