Potential Focus Areas

• Homelessness and Transient Housing

• Healthcare Access and Affordability

• Nutrition and Personal Wellness

• Education and Job Placement

• Poverty

• Sustainability and Environmental Impact

Our Approach

• Rapid Prototyping
  We believe in making ideas tangible. Through constant prototyping, our students learn how to manage complex social and cultural issues.

• Abductive Reasoning
  Our program encourages "best guess" leaps and abductive logic, allowing students to make sense of incomplete data and drive innovative solutions.

• Empathy
  We teach our students to not just understand but to feel what it's like to be another individual, fostering designs that cater to both utility and emotion.

Our Impact

We aim to bridge the gap between design thinking and humanitarian causes. Our students learn to apply their creative skills to tackle "wicked" problems usually addressed through policy and politics.

Our Goal

Our long-term goal is to drive a positive relationship between design thinking and the public sector's large-scale problems, including poverty, hunger, education, and more.

Our Journey

• 2009: Founded in Austin, Texas. We were one of a handful of organizations offering a graduate program focused on Interaction Design & Design Thinking. 

• 2009 - 2019:  Operated a one-year, full-time graduate program in Interaction Design & Social Entrepreneurship, helping ~100 alumni launch design careers with an eye toward impact. Graduates of this program saw their happiness and salary increase substantially. 

• 2014 - 2019: The number of other design degrees, certificates, and bootcamps skyrocket. We began to think about, “What’s next for AC4D? 

• 2020: Launched Remote Studio to address emergent needs within design education focused on cultivating wisdom while increasing equity.