Clarity in complexity
Three Tree Labs serves governments and other organizations navigating complexity. We provide service design, user experience research, and evidence-informed strategy. We help you build and refine your services to meet your users' needs, and your own.
We are based in Vancouver, B.C., and led by Dr. Silas Hooper. Silas has been researching and designing services and UX interactions for governments, organizations, and private companies since 2006.
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.
A small firm with depth
Three Tree Labs is small on purpose. Most engagements involve Silas working directly with your team. Where a project needs more, we bring in senior independent practitioners with their own public sector track records.
Research and service design
- Silas Hooper has two decades of research and design experience. He has worked with federal, provincial, and territorial governments in Canada, legal and health service providers, and private sector clients. He has spent four years (2022-2026) working in B.C.'s home energy ecosystem spanning assessment, rebates, and retrofit.
UI and visual design
- Sharon Hsiao of North Star Digital Design is a senior UI designer and consultant with over 15 years of experience. Sharon designs accessible, citizen-facing digital services for government, civic and mission-driven organizations across Canada.
Content design and strategy
- Sarah Bolduc of Remedia Business Solutions is a senior content strategist and plain language specialist with two decades of experience helping organizations make complex information clearer, more usable and centred on what people actually need.
Accessibility and development
- Nate King and Rowan King are partners with all•Access, specializing in digital accessibility. Nate is a designer and developer with over 30 years of experience. Rowan is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies. Together, they provide accessible website design and development, audits and reporting, VPATs, training and remediation, accessible graphic design, and media review and editing.
Beyond our core team, we draw on a wider network for specialist needs such as participant recruitment and Indigenous community engagement.
Launching a new service: the BC Home Energy Planner
The BC Home Energy Planner is a new, free to use, public service helping B.C. residents understand and plan for home energy improvements. Silas was responsible for strategic planning, generative and evaluative research, UX/UI/content/visual design direction and continuous improvement planning. He led the research and UX design components of bringing Planner to the public. Nate provided accessibility auditing and support to the development team.
In this work, Silas and Nate integrated into a broad team of government staff and a diverse group of contractors. They worked with internal program staff, other CleanBC teams, technical vendors, and customer support teams. Silas was also responsible for regular reporting and connection with a project advisory board.
Dr. Silas Hooper
Silas Hooper has researched and designed digital services since 2006. He holds a doctorate in computer science (EngD, 2010) and has published peer-reviewed research on human-computer interaction, research methods, and online communities.
Before founding Three Tree Labs, Silas led research and design in projects in the public and private sector. In Europe, he led a €500,000 part of a €13 million research project on the future of the Internet, coordinating work across 18 organizations. With OXD, he worked with Legal Aid BC, Parks Canada, the Government of Yukon's Department of Justice, and two B.C. ministries: Education and the Attorney General.
Silas is active in Vancouver's design community. He co-founded Service Design BC (LinkedIn Group), is a regular speaker on accessibility, and mentors everyone from primary school students to PhD candidates. His work rests on one belief: technology should improve lives. The way to make sure it does is to gather evidence and act on it honestly.
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 BC Home Energy Planner there are so many moving parts: government requirements, industry stakeholders, ever-shifting public-sector programs, and of course, millions of B.C. 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 developed to identify issues, decide what to do next, and tune out the things that can't benefit the users.”
Get in touch
Whether you're scoping a project, drafting a procurement justification, or just want a second opinion on a research plan, we're here. Email Silas directly or use the form.