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Collabo XD · Gain Better Insights

The risk isn’t building it. It’s building it on a guess.

Every program and system rests on assumptions about the people it is for. We help you check them first — so you can commit to what comes next with confidence.

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Better insights. Better systems. Better outcomes.

From guessing to knowing.From knowing to doing.

We Listen

You know your work better than anyone. What is harder to see from the inside is the distance between how something is meant to work and how people actually experience it. That gap is where budgets and goodwill quietly go. We close that gap by treating research as a humanitarian act. We don’t take information from people. We make their lives better at the same time.

Five ways to find out what is actually happening — so what you build next rests on evidence rather than assumption.

Schematics are illustrative — they show the form the work takes, not client deliverables.

Qualitative Research

Research about your people.

When you’d want this

You are about to redesign a program, write a grant, or make a call about people you have not actually talked to yet.

We sit down with the people you serve — clients, patients, residents, staff — and listen past the version of the story people give a stranger with a clipboard. What comes back is themes, patterns, and their own words, organized so you can act on it.

What this includes

  • In-depth interviews
  • On-site shadowing
  • Observation and field research

What you get

Real stories from real people, synthesized into something you can actually decide with, not a transcript pile.

UX Research

Research about your product in use.

When you’d want this

You have built something and it is not landing the way you expected, or you are about to build something and want to know where it will break before you spend the budget.

Qualitative Research tells you who your people are. This tells you what happens when they actually use the thing you built for them — the app, the intake form, the sign-up flow — and where it quietly breaks down.

What this includes

  • Usability testing
  • Journey and service mapping
  • Heuristic review
  • Analytics and behavior review

What you get

A clear list of where people get stuck, confused, or drop off, based on watching them use it rather than guessing from a dashboard.

Program Evaluation

Honest evidence for what is actually working.

When you’d want this

A funder wants outcomes data, a board is asking hard questions, or your own gut says something is off and you want evidence to confirm it, or change your mind.

We measure what a program is actually doing — not just whether it ran, but whether it worked, for whom, and why. That is a different question than the one most evaluations answer, and it is the one that helps you decide what to do next.

What this includes

  • Outcome and indicator frameworks
  • Mixed-method data collection
  • Participant and staff interviews
  • Funder-ready reporting

What you get

A clear-eyed read on outcomes, grounded in evidence, that holds up whether you are reporting to a funder or deciding internally whether to keep something going.

Design Thinking Training

Training your team to solve problems with your people.

When you’d want this

You want this way of working to live inside your organization permanently, not just show up when we are in the room.

We teach your team to run the process we run — how to ask better questions, gather real insight, and design with the people you serve instead of guessing on their behalf.

What this includes

  • Design thinking workshops
  • Facilitation training
  • Team coaching through a live project
  • Toolkits and templates your team keeps

What you get

The capacity to do this work yourselves, so it does not leave when we do.

AI Consulting

Where AI fits, before you build anything.

When you’d want this

You are being told you should be using AI, and you want to know what is real, where to start, and what is worth the money.

We study how your organization actually works — interviews, workflow mapping, evidence your team can see — and then tell you where AI genuinely fits, what is worth building, and what to do first. It is a research engagement, which is why it sits on this side of the work rather than the building side.

What this includes

  • AI Opportunity Snapshot
  • AI Opportunity Sprint
  • AI Strategy

What you get

A clear-eyed read on where AI would actually help, grounded in how your team works today rather than in what the technology can do.

See how we work with AI

Research that changed what happened next.

  • 500+ projects
  • 100,000+ people engaged
  • Teaching this at IU’s Luddy School
Four people in discussion around a table during a working session.

IU Health

Statewide patient journey mapping

Patient journey mapping across 15 hospitals and 150+ medical office buildings. More than 500 patient interviews, nurse and patient shadowing, and 90+ IU Health team members involved. The work led IU Health to launch system and regional patient improvement initiatives.

Read the IU Health story
Red Cross team members mapping a process with sticky notes on a long whiteboard wall.

American Red Cross, Indiana Region

Design thinking training

CXD trained the Volunteer Services team in design thinking, using their own recruitment and onboarding process as the practice project. The team found a pain point the organization didn’t know existed, and fixed it. The region reported a 40% increase in volunteers onboarded.

Read the Red Cross story
Three Food Comida Rawl 317 materials: a "Make your voice heard!" poster, the Food Passport booklet cover, and a Healthy Food Inventory Assessment form.

Food Comida Rawl 317

Indianapolis food access research

Research partner to a City of Indianapolis-led initiative in 2020. The research surveyed 800 households across Indianapolis, and CXD’s team surveyed more than 800 food retail stores on site for a market basket analysis. The name joins the word for food in Spanish (comida) and Hakha Chin (rawl) with Indianapolis’s 317 area code.

Visit the project site

No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation about what you are trying to understand.

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