Æther & Stone

Our Mission

Mission Statement

We help the organizations people depend on serve the whole person.

The craft behind the world's biggest brands rarely reaches the causes that need it most. We bring it to the nonprofits, advocates, public institutions, and mission-driven companies doing the hardest work, so the people they serve get tools as good as anyone else's.

Approach

We design for the moment after.

We work alongside advocates to find where their support falls away and build human-centered experiences that carry their mission the rest of the way, so the people they serve never face hardship alone.

These moments are everywhere

A failure that’s annoying on an ordinary day can cost someone everything when they’re already struggling.

The same failure, during hardship
A website logs you out mid-form Starting over on an application as the deadline closes in
A chatbot closes your ticket A denied insurance claim with no one to appeal to
A letter full of jargon arrives An eviction hearing you can’t prepare for
A portal makes you reset your password Locked out of reviewing test results after surgery

So dignity-grade UX is our goal

We partner with advocates to design human-first experiences that extend their impact and aim to improve well being for the people they serve.

Extending advocate impact

Psychological needs across hardship, handoff and headway Three lines show how well a person’s psychological needs are met: feeling connected, feeling capable and feeling in control. While an advocate guides them during hardship, all three rise. At the handoff, all three dip at once: that is the moment after. Without designed support, all three stay low. With it, they dip less and recover through headway.
  • Feeling connectedBelonging and trust
  • Feeling capableConfidence to act
  • Feeling in controlClarity and agency

Principles

What we believe.

Belief 01

Design is how the mission gets done, not decoration.

If a person can't act on it, it didn't work. No matter how thorough, no matter how beautiful.

Belief 02

We are not our users. And neither are you.

Knowing your issue cold isn't the same as knowing what someone needs when they're the one living it. So we start by listening, to them, not to our assumptions about them.

Belief 03

Clarity is respect, not dumbing down.

Making something usable honors the person on the other end. It never strips the substance. It's how the substance finally reaches them.

Belief 04

Built for the next decade, not the next funding cycle.

We build tools that hold up and keep working long after the grant that funded them is spent.

Let's talk about your work.

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