Where Light Gathers Studio
Service Design & Visual Sensemaking
Service design and visual sensemaking for mission-driven teams. We help nonprofits and game & design studios see how their work actually works.
Where light gathers, clarity follows.
We help mission-driven teams see how their work actually works — so services, workflows, and journeys stop breaking quietly and what's working stays visible.
The Problem
Most teams aren't short on effort — they're short on a shared, visible picture of how their work actually works.Nonprofits stretch staff across too many touchpoints to track. Game and design studios grow pipelines and systems faster than anyone can map them. In both cases, nobody notices the breakdown until a donor, user, or player feels it.
How we work: The AIMS framework
A simple, repeatable way to run any initiative — the throughline of every engagement.
A — Aspiration. What we hope to achieve — the outcome we provide for the customer.
I — Initiative. The body of work built and supported to achieve the Aspiration.
M — Measures. The signals we track — kept separate from the Aspiration, so they never become the goal.
S — Sensemaking. What we learn from the work, success or failure, and what's next.
In practice, this looks like: ecosystem mapping to see how departments and systems connect, service blueprints that show front-stage and back-stage work side by side, and facilitated sessions where the people doing the work help design the fix. The result: silos come down, rework drops, and strategy actually reaches the people executing it — strategic clarity your team can act on, not just admire.
Who we work with
Organizations where the mission matters, and the internal picture tends to get fuzzy fast.Nonprofits — Mid-size organizations ($2M–$20M budget) with real pain: stretched staff, no in-house design capacity, and the ability to move fast once they decide to.Game & Design Studios — Indie to mid-size studios, founder- or producer-led, where decisions get made in a conversation or two.Enterprise — Pursued opportunistically, when the mission fits or the budget justifies a slower sales cycle.
How we work together
A ladder built to make the first yes easy, and the next step obvious.
Audit
AIMS Sensemaking Audit
$7,000 · 2–3 weeks
Interviews with the people who live the process — one per distinct role, so every stage of the journey has a voice. Plus a review of existing docs and tools. Delivers a current-state service blueprint, presented live, with prioritized recommendations.
Core
Full AIMS Engagement
$30,000 (confirmed within 5 business days of your Audit) · 6–10 weeks
The complete program: defines the Aspiration, builds the Initiative, stands up Measures, facilitates Sensemaking. Runs roughly Day 1 to Day 60. Depending on your team's bandwidth, this can end with an internal handoff — training your staff to run AIMS on their own — or continue into an ongoing partnership. Audit and Core are one engagement agreement — Core's price is finalized once we know what the Audit found, not before.
Retainer
Ongoing Sensemaking
$2,500 / month
Periodic check-ins on measures and a recurring sensemaking loop as things evolve.
Other
Do you need something not listed here?
Reach out for a call, and we can discuss your situation and our fit.
Final pricing depends on company size, number of departments involved, and the systems being evaluated. Where Light Gathers Studio also reserves a limited number of pro-bono and reduced-fee engagements each year for mission-driven organizations with real budget constraints — reach out to ask.
What this looks like in practice
Nonprofit Example — Illustrative example. Not an actual case study.Before: No one owns the donor journey after the gift is made. The story lives in email threads, a spreadsheet three people maintain slightly differently, and whatever the last program coordinator remembered to mention on their way out. Programs, Comms, and Development each think someone else is following up.After (AIMS Sensemaking Audit): A single visual map of the post-donation journey, showing exactly where the handoff between departments breaks down and who's accountable for each step.- Aspiration: Donors renew after year one instead of lapsing.
- Initiative: Map and redesign the post-donation journey across programs and comms.
- Sensemaking: Find where the story breaks down between departments, fix the handoff.
Real nonprofit case studies coming soon — reach out to be the first.
About Chad Moore
Chad spent 25 years building pictures: running production pipelines, shipping 40+ games and dozens of websites and apps, coaching Fortune 100 teams, and building the maps that make it all stick.
Let's make your work visible.
Find some time on our calendars...