Understanding the challenge
Urban planners, NGOs, and local authorities increasingly face pressure to demonstrate measurable progress against environmental and policy targets, particularly around sustainability, biodiversity, public health, and Net Zero commitments.
However, many organisations lacked the tools, data infrastructure, or internal capacity needed to effectively assess and communicate impact. Existing systems were often fragmented, overly technical, or difficult to apply to real-world planning decisions.
The goal of the Design Foundations programmes was to identify whether accessible, people-centred digital tools could help organisations better understand urban environments, assess interventions, and make more evidence-based decisions.
Research and discovery
Both programmes were built around extensive user research, stakeholder engagement, and iterative product discovery.
We began by mapping target users across urban planning, transport planning, NGOs, academia, and local government, conducting surveys and stakeholder interviews with participants from the UK, Europe, Latin America, and South Africa.
The research revealed several consistent themes:
- Organisations recognised the importance of sustainability targets but struggled to track progress effectively
- Many users did not know where to begin with impact measurement
- There was strong demand for simpler reporting, mapping, and visualisation tools
- Stakeholders needed outputs they could share with funders, policymakers, and the public
Rather than jumping straight into delivery, we used these insights to continuously refine the scope, prioritise user needs, and identify where digital tools could provide the most practical value.
From broad ambition to focused product thinking
One of the most valuable outcomes of the project was narrowing an initially broad and highly ambitious concept into a clearer, more achievable direction.
Early exploration considered a wide range of UN Sustainable Development Goals and potential urban planning use cases. Through workshops, usability testing, and iterative prototyping, we identified that focusing specifically on SDG indicator 11.7 created a far clearer and more useful product direction.
This allowed us to simplify workflows, sharpen the target audience, and create more focused user journeys around understanding urban conditions, prioritising interventions, testing potential changes, and generating impact reports.
We translated these journeys into interactive wireframes and prototypes using Figma, conducting multiple rounds of usability testing with environmental NGOs, planners, and local authorities worldwide.
Designing around real user needs
The second programme built directly on the learnings from the first.
Rather than pursuing highly speculative concepts, we focused more tightly on the practical challenges users repeatedly described: limited time, limited resources, inconsistent reporting, and difficulty evidencing the value of sustainability interventions.
Research revealed that many stakeholders were less interested in identifying intervention opportunities and more concerned with measuring, communicating, and justifying impact after projects had been delivered.
This shifted the product direction towards impact assessment and reporting.
Working collaboratively with Tranquil City, we explored ways of presenting environmental and social value data in clearer, more compelling formats that could support funding applications, stakeholder communication, and policy compliance.
Technical exploration and prototyping
The project combined service design, product thinking, geospatial research, and technical prototyping.
Alongside wireframing and usability testing, we explored modern approaches to interactive data visualisation and dashboard creation, including the feasibility of using Observable Framework and Observable Plot to support dynamic reporting interfaces.
A key focus throughout was balancing analytical depth with usability. The tools needed to communicate complex environmental and policy data in ways that felt understandable and actionable for non-technical stakeholders.
This iterative, evidence-led approach allowed the project to evolve rapidly while remaining grounded in genuine user needs.
Outcome and impact
The Design Foundations programmes successfully identified a clear market need for more accessible urban impact assessment and reporting tools.
More importantly, the work established a validated direction for future product development grounded in real stakeholder insight rather than assumptions.
The project demonstrated the value of combining rigorous user research, iterative prototyping, and collaborative discovery to tackle highly complex environmental and policy challenges.
It also reinforced how thoughtful digital tools can help organisations make better decisions about sustainability, urban planning, and long-term public wellbeing.