Creative project design for social good champions.
- AI & Automation
- Capacity Building
- Cybersecurity
- Data Architecture
- Grant & Programme Development
- Human-Centered Design
- Multi-Stakeholder Coordination
- Organisational Diagnostics
- Product Strategy
- Responsible Data Governance
- Strategic Advising
- User Research
- UX & Interaction Design
- Web & Platform Development
Draftlab is a design and technology studio that works with civil society organisations, humanitarians, open tech projects, and multi-stakeholder initiatives. We believe technology should be appropriate to its context: secure where it needs to be, sovereign where it matters, simple where complexity would be a burden.
How we work
Projects rarely move in a straight line, and neither do we. You might engage us at any phase, for any modality, or across several at once.
Across phases
- Understand
Discovery, research, diagnosis
- Define
Co-design, specification, alignment
- Deliver
Making, shipping, putting into practice
- Sustain
Stewardship, capacity, governance
Discovery, research, diagnosis
Co-design, specification, alignment
Making, shipping, putting into practice
Stewardship, capacity, governance
And across modalities
Targeted, time-bounded intervention. Fast, focused, expert-led.
Sustained, embedded partnership. Full creative and technical depth.
Work that belongs to more than one party — multi-stakeholder coalitions, open-source projects, shared infrastructure.
Featured projects
Harms screening for tech in development
A screening tool that lets program officers and civil society staff upload a project idea and get back a structured assessment of likely harms, with severity scores and tailored mitigations drawn from a curated indicator library.
Better tracking of migrant detention worldwide
Overhauling how the Global Detention Project collects, traces, and presents the world's largest dataset on migrant detention — a redesigned database management system for the team and a public data explorer for everyone else.
Responsive privacy for safer digital presence
Open-source framework that lets civil-society organisations shift their website between full transparency and emergency protection mode in minutes, using a single environment variable and a set of pre-configured privacy levels.
Shared cloud for journalists and civil society
Strategy, business modelling, and partner audits for cloud services and infrastructure built by and for journalists and human rights organisations.
Latest updates
- Harms screening for tech in developmentGlobal Partners DigitalForHarms screening for tech in developmentWith Global Partners Digital
techharmscheck.org is live. Program officers and civil-society staff can upload a project plan and get back a structured PDF assessment of likely human-rights harms, severity scores, and tailored mitigations, sourced from a curated indicator library covering 54 human rights.
- Responsive privacy for safer digital presenceForResponsive privacy for safer digital presence
responsiveprivacy.org is live. The framework, the decision guide, and the first round of platform plugins are available for everyone; we are looking forward to hearing from people using it.
- Harms screening for tech in developmentGlobal Partners DigitalForHarms screening for tech in developmentWith Global Partners Digital
Translating between the tech harms framework and the tech build: defining the data model, UX for non-expert users, and drafting a business and sustainability strategy.
- Better tracking of migrant detention worldwideGlobal Detention ProjectForBetter tracking of migrant detention worldwideWith Global Detention Project
Draftlab, Dot Studio, and the Global Detention Project team met in Berlin for a design workshop. We worked through the DBMS data model and interaction patterns for the data explorer.
Clients and partners
Pro bono UX Support
Applications are open.
Through the Open Technology Fund's User Experience & Discovery Lab, Draftlab provides research, design, and post-release support to internet freedom projects. Free to the right teams; we read every application.
Free pro bono UX work for internet freedom projects. Open on a rolling basis.