Full-stack civic engagement.

We partner with organizations to create digital tools that strengthen communities and advance public good.

Use technology for public good

Based in Vacaville, California, Civic Studio specializes in website design, development, and digital strategy for organizations making a difference. We work with nonprofits, public agencies, and mission-driven businesses to create digital experiences that truly serve their communities.

From initial strategy through ongoing maintenance, we handle the full spectrum of digital needs—website development, content management systems, custom integrations, and technical consulting. Our approach balances user experience with organizational goals, ensuring technology supports rather than complicates your mission.

Collaborative by design

Great digital experiences emerge from understanding both technology and the people who use it. We work closely with your team to identify opportunities, solve problems, and build sustainable systems that grow with your organization.

Whether you need strategic guidance for a digital transformation, technical expertise for a specific project, or ongoing support for your web presence, we're here to help you navigate the intersection of technology and community impact.

Projects

Selected work with organizations making a positive impact.

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user-centered design

San Francisco Arts Commission

Street Artist Lottery App

Part of the Startup in Residence program, Civic Studio consulted with the San Francisco Arts Commission to develop an application with the Street Artists who participate in the program. The goal of the application was to increase transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency of the lottery selection process. When we started, each artist would arrive at 6am to register for the lottery, using paper slips dropped into a plastic bin. This process was burdensome, inefficient, and subject to complaints regarding unfair practices (latest entries might get drawn first... or vice-versa). Talking to the street artists about their ideas and their complaints about the existing drawing process, we quickly honed in on an opportunity to improve the registration process using a mobile responsive website. All but 3 artists had cell phones at the time, and the Commission provided iPads on site. The resulting process is civicfabric.com, where San Francisco Street Artists were able to register for any lottery occurring in a given fiscal quarter. Results are automatically drawn at a specified time and results are emailed and/or SMS'd to users. This process saved each street artists at least one hour per day in registration times and improved record-keeping and reporting capabilities for the Arts Commission.

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community

National Coalition for Deliberative Dialogue

NCDD

As a volunteer member of NCDD, I deployed an instance of an open source dialogue platform as part of a conversation that cited technology as a bottleneck to scaled collaborative dialogue. Ultimately, the platform didn't gain much traction. The lack of adoption reimpressed the fact that technology isn't a limiting factor to online collaboration. Coordination is. Existing networks have the advantage that coordination costs are already paid. When dialogue is distilled into an enjoyable game people can play together, we'll see new levels of dialogue, and hopefully higher resolution communication.

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Business Process Modeling

See how value flows

Embrace the socio-technical nature of organizational technology.
How people interact with software can be described using Business Process Models.
Orchestrate human and IT resources by modeling workflows and value streams.

Document
Create a Business Process Model of the current state of some part of your organization's operations. Consider a registration process, a sales lifecyle, a digital product change request lifecycle, or a purchasing process.
Analyze
Assess volume, business impact, lead times, queue times, failure paths, and throughput.
What business questions do you plan to ask of your data systems?
Model
Based on the initially documented current state model, redesign the process or service with desired changes.
Automate business processes
Once you've modeled some number of processes, there will likely be opportunities to use software to automate some portion of the intake, record-keeping, processing, and reporting.

Working on a civic innovation project?

Whether you're exploring an early idea or deep into planning and need the right technical partner to build and deliver — we can help