Clarity in complexity
Three Tree Labs serves governments and other organizations navigating complexity. We provide service design, user experience research, and evidence-informed strategy — helping you build and refine your services to meet your users' needs, and your own.
Based in Vancouver, B.C., and led by Dr. Silas Hooper, who has researched and designed services and UX interactions for governments, organizations, and private companies since 2006.
Trusted By
What we do
Good decisions need good evidence. From new digital services to executive-level strategy, Three Tree Labs research is rigorous. We provide analysis you can defend and recommendations your teams can put into action.
Research
Generative and evaluative research that stands up to scrutiny.
- Qualitative and quantitative methods
- Interviews
- Surveys
- Workshops
- Usability testing
- Field research
- Literature reviews
Service design
Making services better.
- Journey mapping
- Service blueprinting
- Information architecture
- Future-state design
We connect your service with what users need and expect, including the processes, systems, and teams behind the scenes.
Strategy
Turning research into direction.
- Synthesis and prioritization of opportunities
- Strategic roadmapping workshops with executives
- Continuous-improvement frameworks with meaningful KPIs
- Evidence-informed business strategy that survives contact with reality
In all our research, we use trauma-informed practices. We build trust with participants who are seldom heard. We have experience reaching legal aid clients, patients, members of Indigenous communities, and children.
Organizations we’ve worked with
Three Tree Labs
- B.C. Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions
- B.C. Ministry of Citizens' Services
With OXD
- Legal Aid BC
- Parks Canada
- Government of Yukon, Dept. of Justice
- B.C. Ministry of Education
- B.C. Ministry of the Attorney General
With Spatial Research & Design
- B.C. Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions
- Lululemon
With other agencies (Metalab, Domain 7)
- Pacific Blue Cross
- Count Me In
- Xapo
- Avnet
Dr. Silas Hooper
Silas Hooper has been researching and designing digital services since 2005. He holds an EngD in computer science (2010) and has published peer-reviewed work on human-computer interaction, research methods, and online communities.
Before founding Three Tree Labs, Silas led research and design work across government, health tech, and enterprise. His work included EU-scale innovation programs - a €13M future-internet project, where he led a €500K work package across 18 organizations - and randomized controlled trials of digital health interventions.Silas is an active contributor to Vancouver’s design community. He co-founded Service Design BC, is a regular speaker on accessibility, and he mentors practitioners and students from primary school to PhD. His practice is grounded in a simple conviction: technology should improve lives. Gathering evidence and acting on it honestly is how we can ensure it does.
Silas is an active contributor to Vancouver's design community. He co-founded Service Design BC, is a regular speaker on accessibility, and mentors practitioners and students from primary school to PhD. His practice is grounded in a simple conviction: technology should improve lives. Gathering evidence and acting on it honestly is how we can ensure it does.
Selected publications
- The Link and the Journey: Hypertext at Civic Scale
- A Villain’s Guide to Social Media and Web Science
- The French Kitchen: Task-Based Learning in an Instrumented Kitchen
- Building a Social Machine: Co-designing a TimeBank for Inclusive Research
- Analysis, Redesign and Evaluation with Teasing Apart, Piecing Together
Full list
“For a project as ambitious as the Planner there are so many moving parts: government requirements, a variety of industry stakeholders, ever-shifting public-sector programs, and of course, millions of BC residents. Silas is pivotal in bridging different conversations and keeping track of what's outstanding. He has made valuable contributions to the methodical approach we collectively developed to identify issues, decide what to do next, and tune out the things that can't benefit the users.”
