At CauseLabs our approach to designing for a global audience begins with listening. Language and culture shape how people interpret content on a page. We study regional behaviors, accessibility needs, and emotional cues before we sketch a layout. We build flexible content systems that support translation, right to left reading, local idioms, and imagery that […]
CauseLabs Resources
Lessons & insights from our journey for positive impact.
Instructional Guide: How to Build a Custom ChatGPT
There are many reasons organizations might want to build a custom ChatGPT. One reason we built our own GPT was to define personas and custom instructions once instead of copying them into every new chat window. We also discovered that regular chats would get too long and the model would start forgetting the rules. It […]
Guide for Innovation Week 2: Research + Empathy
Hey gang, welcome back. Hopefully by now you’re really powering with your team and starting to feel the momentum of the process. Last week kicked things off with brainstorming and early research. Now, we’ll focus on confirming the direction, trusting your hunches, experimenting beyond your team, and seeking deeper empathy in your process. So let’s get started!
Week 1: Problem Immersion + Drawing Board
This week we’ll dig into the first of two sessions that we call Drawing Boards. In large part they’re exactly what they sound like: a starting place to gather the team and set the focus, built initially around the Problem Statement draft, and a place to keep referring to as the process progresses.
The 4-Week Guide for Digital Innovation
We’re here to help real people like you more easily understand what it takes to build innovative digital tools by doing a few simple things like putting people first, allowing space for collaboration, staying close to those experiencing the problems, and exploring new ways to generate ideas.
Problem Statements in Digital Innovation: The Importance of Asking the Right Question
It all starts with a problem. We’ve found it’s amazingly helpful to have a single statement that represents the nature of the problem, who’s experiencing it, and why it’s so important to solve. We have a simple template you can use, inspired by the ongoing work we do with our friends at IDEO.org.
Two innovation hacks you can implement immediately
My friend’s forehead was creased, his consternation visible at the intersection of his caved-in eyebrows. “I have to get out of this building to innovate. I can’t do it here. The technology, the dress code, the culture. It can’t get us where we need to go, and even if it could, it wouldn’t do it fast enough.”
How a simple list of emergent themes can save you time and money in digital innovation work
Emergent Themes tries to draw signal from all the beautiful innovation noise, that flurry of empathetic activity that characterizes innovation. Most importantly, these plain-language terms help us have a conversation to answer a key question: “What piece of this problem should we focus on first as we start prototyping?