Conscious Creation

Optimistic design and technical excellence

We see a beautiful future ahead – a place where insights, imagination, design, and technology conspire to deliver valuable and inclusive experiences for your customers, community, and society. That’s where we’re going.

Come with us.

Why Substantial

We believe in the unmatched potential of design and technology to transform our world

  • Design Research + Strategy

  • UX / Product Design

  • Full Stack Development

Why Us

Our Work

Advancing the human experience in a digital world

Bezos landscape
See project

Vroom

An integrated approach to supporting early learning

Social Impact iOS App Android App
Gates Foundation landscape
See project

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Design Research & Strategy

Using equity centered design to improve Algebra 1 for students of color

Edtech Design Research & Strategy
Usc shoah foundation
See project

USC Shoah Foundation

Modernizing experiential learning with a place-based mobile app

Edtech iOS App Android App
Jane landscape
See project

Jane: Responsive Website

Simplifying the complicated world of legal cannabis for customers

B2B Responsive Website
All Work
Design Conversations

Optimistic Design

Optimistic Design is a practical, positive look at the future of design, ethical innovation, and technology. Tune in each month with Wilma Lam, Substantial’s Strategy Director, as she is joined by creatives, makers, and thinkers to talk about what it means to design with hope for our ever changing world.

See All Episodes
Recent Episodes

E.01

Todd Diemer

User Research Lead

Khan Academy

Todd Diemer is the User Research Lead at Khan Academy, the non-profit educational organization created in 2006 to provide free, world-class education for students nationally and internationally.

E.07

Jennifer McFadden

Associate Director of Entrepreneurship & Lecturer in the Practice of Management
Yale Som

Over the last nine years, Jennifer has played an integral part in developing and fostering entrepreneurial culture both at Yale and in the broader industry.

E.06

Mary Quandt

Director, Experience Strategy
Johnson & Johnson

Mary is a leader of design strategy at Johnson & Johnson, focusing on health and wellbeing, end-to-end experience design, and bringing behavioral science into the design process.