This month Quire is excited to announce the launch of our brand new website! In honor of our 8th anniversary, we have refreshed and renewed our brand and given you a deeper look into what it is that we do. On our website, you can find out about who we are, what we do, and how we do it best. Our founder and CEO Autumn Sanders shares some insight to the process and decision making behind our new branding in our blog this month!

As AI has been evolving over the last few years its usage in the workplace has been increasing; from helping out with scheduling, to participating in brainstorming. We try to keep up with changes in the AI landscape and how it continues to impact the workplace. The field of research is no different.

Launching a program can be one of the greatest feelings in the world. We watch all of our hard work and late nights culminate into something that can benefit people and communities – at least, we hope it does.

We’ve heard so much about how important empathy is to interpersonal relationships and fostering connection with other people but what does it have to do with your business?

Quire would like to present its 2025 Honor Roll! We want to celebrate those who are spreading light in their communities and shout them out to you.

Nonprofits are often juggling many tasks at once: advancing their missions, helping their communities, recruiting volunteers, and many other needs. Nonprofits are essential pillars and dedicate much of their time and resources to helping others. In order to continue doing the work they set out to do, nonprofits must also spend time on capacity building.

Taking the scenic route in our lives is something few of us have the leisure to do. Most of us are in a hurry, enjoying the destination more than the journey itself. Many of us are drivers, leaders, of our organizations and companies and feel we don’t have the time to enjoy the view from the backseat. We’d rather take the wheel and hold on for dear life to make sure we get where we want to go on time.

Board meetings can be tools to push your organization forward, or they can be just another check on your to-do list. Board meetings should be opportunities to be collaborative creators and come together and address a particular problem or particular topic. The best meetings result from careful planning and thoughtful preparation on everyone’s part.

Whether it’s the start of your business year or the start or your Q3 fiscal year, a New Year is a great time to pause, reflect on, and recenter your customer.

Advice, insights, recommendations and all the other “shoulds” - however well meaning - can feel like being “shoulded” on to death.

I found an approach to coaching that overcomes that.

As organizations wrestle with massive data sets, massive countywide town hall meetings, and massive all-company employee satisfaction surveys, we can begin to think that the only good data is, well, massive. Going big can leave organizations missing the good stuff below the surface. Small studies can be a great way to access that.

We live in a data driven world. Our browser histories are online trails of interests. Streaming services know exactly what to offer us next. Social media has become the new consummate salesman. But does this mass of data really capture who we are?

When we explore and design personas in dynamic ways, they have the greatest potential to impact our organizations and the way we serve our customers. We can step into the stories and empathize with the characters that embody our customer research. Static personas that stay on the page and the shelf have limited value for your organization or your customer.

Customers are the center of our business. Building products and services catered to them is what we’re taught to do. But oftentimes we forget that customers are people first. Just looking at customers through the lens of our business means we can miss out on so many aspects of who our customers are. By looking at customers as people, with unique and nuanced parts of their lives, we can better cater to their needs as business owners.

As a human-centered design practice we are conscious of the interplay between people and technology. Design research requires our very human ability to empathize as we seek to understand people in cultural context. We primarily use AI as a supporter in our roles and offer two examples in this article.

Coaches help us uncover the tools we need to achieve our goals. As we get older, we have fewer opportunities to access built-in coaches. When we need an outside perspective and advice we have to put in the effort to find that person.