Hello! We’re Studio Alto    

The team behind Change One Thing.

We’re a team of designers, thinkers and doers who focus on the education and knowledge sector. 

Armed with tools like design thinking and HCD we help our clients develop strategic communications to better connect educational products, services and experiences to their specific audience. Here’s some of our best work.

To do our best work we first need to ask loads of questions. Projects often begin with a very simple question. “WHY are you doing this?” Most struggle to answer this question with clarity. However, we’ve found the individuals who can are often driven by something special. They want change. It’s these conversations that have inspired us want to know more and has catapulted the Change One Thing project into existence.

Change One Thing is a ‘what-if?’ idea we’ve brought to life. 

As designers, strategists and communicators, it’s not our place—or our ambition—to redesign education. But we started wondering:

What if we could create a place for the voices and ideas of change-makers to be heard, for conversations to take place and be shared, to learn, to inspire and create opportunities for collaboration and innovation?

What value could we bring and what could we learn along the way?

What part could we play in advancing the conversation? How can we connect people with knowledge?

We’ve used our knowledge, networks, skills and experience to build a platform to facilitate the conversation around redesigning education for the benefit of everyone—ourselves included.

Right now it’s a research project. An opportunity for us to learn and share. We’re at the collecting phase, gathering knowledge and inspiration, and sharing it with anyone that cares enough to listen.

By talking to, and observing the challenges and opportunities through the lenses of our experts we gain a much deeper understanding of the sector and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

When you can do anything, often nothing gets done. We tend to procrastinate over minor, unimportant details. We are overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and we don’t know where to start.

Conversely, working to limitations creates focus and forces prioritisation. Constraints can breed creativity.

It’s a common design technique to impose boundaries to reframe or view a problem from a different perspective. Not to restrict responses, but to force ourselves to think more creatively. When the barrier is higher, you have to work harder and smarter to get over it.

So, to elicit the most creative but focussed responses, we’re asking for just one thing that will have the most impact on changing education. Like pushing a single domino that sets off a chain reaction, or removing that one jenga brick that brings down a tower, we’re looking for ideas that have the potential for a much larger knock-on effect.

By changing this one thing, what would the flow on effects be? What would changing this thing make it possible to do? Why does it matter to you?

It’s a deceptively simple question. It forces focus, clarity and a personal response. It could be small or large, possible or impossible. There’s no right or wrong, just different ways of exploring the problem and testing solutions in order to spark conversations and new ideas.

We’re not. It’s completely self funded. 

We’re open to partnerships. If we could both benefit from knowing each other – then let’s get to know each other. Make contact.

We’re hoping that by collecting and sharing these different perspectives we’re creating the conditions for collaboration and cross pollination of ideas—an essential ingredient of innovation.

At the very least Change One Thing could be a regular reminder in your inbox that people are doing more than just wringing their hands about the future of education, but actually making change.

Our hope is that it will keep you engaged and informed. That it will spark ideas and connect people. That you will be inspired to make something happen—something that just might change one thing, and has the potential to change everything.

Right now we don’t know, we’ve just started. 

And that’s the exciting part. In the spirit of starting-by-starting, we’ve designed, prototyped and launched an idea. We’re currently building the runway while we’re taking off, and we’ll be testing and refining along the way.

What comes after next? Perhaps we’ll take this on the road and organise a conference? Maybe we’ll host a series of workshops using design thinking to facilitate change? 

If you’ve got any ideas or want to be a part of whatever this is – we encourage you to connect.

Tell us what you really think. See that orange tab to the right side there labeled feedback, click it.

If you DON’T like Change One Thing – then tell us why. 
If you DO like Change One Thing – then tell us why. 

Or go one better – share it with someone like you who may also like it. The simple act of sharing an episode on your social feed fans our fire and keeps spurring this thing on.

We need your support.

Team ALTO.