We have a small ambi­tion: to make the world a bet­ter place. We think big and gen­er­ate new ideas to solve intractable problems.

What we do

We’re a small (but very good) design think­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and expe­ri­ence design con­sul­tancy based in Can­berra, Aus­tralia. We work with peo­ple around the world on solv­ing com­plex prob­lems, design­ing and build­ing great pol­icy, prod­ucts and ser­vices, and build­ing skills in think­ing differently.

We put peo­ple at the cen­ter of what we do and how we do it with big ambi­tions. Our peo­ple help the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors change, inno­vate and grow using design think­ing, prob­lem solv­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­egy and expe­ri­ence design to cre­ate new, sus­tain­able solu­tions to com­plex problems.

acid­labs also helps to run events like TEDx­Can­berra and Bar­Camp Can­berra, but is likely to take on all sorts of windmill-​​tilting so long as it inspires us with action, social inno­va­tion and bet­ter­ness of society.

Doing good

As part of being a part of the change we want to see in the world, acid­labs com­mits to sup­port­ing causes we believe are doing good things. To this end, we are a sig­na­tory to Busi­nesses for a Clean Econ­omy‘s posi­tion state­ment sup­port­ing a car­bon price and on tran­si­tion­ing to an econ­omy focussed on “clean energy, energy effi­ciency and low-​​carbon technology.”

Since 2009, we’ve also com­mit­ted some of our post-​​tax income to Kiva, to fund loans to busi­ness peo­ple in emerg­ing economies. Most of our loans go to women or women-​​led groups. You can see our loan port­fo­lio on Kiva’s site.

In addi­tion to Kiva, which we con­sider the heart of our con­tri­bu­tion work, we make occa­sional con­tri­bu­tions to projects on both Kick­starter and Poz­i­ble.