Finding our purpose

Ok, so the last couple of years has been a bit tough.  However, one of the massive benefits to come out of this pandemic has been the chance to slow down a bit, sit back and ponder on life.

Loads of people seem doing the same. 

Whether it’s 

• the great resignation as people look for something better to do
• the movement towards greener sustainable living - long may it continue.
• the pushback against social media and always on culture
• the questionable questioning of experts and science 

We definitely have some opinions on those as individuals even if we’re not too keen on the last one!  However, what do we, as the Boffin Lab want to change or do differently.

We’ve been pretty lucky that work hasn’t dried up and we’ve still been able to build great things.  Working on the eye test apps to try to help people keep an eye (see what I did there) on their vision health in lockdown has been wonderful.  The recent work we’ve done with OLIO to try to bring their data to life and spot local areas of depravation has likewise been great.

• Are these the projects we want to work on going forward?
• What do we really care about?

We’ve been trying to find out.

Working it Out

We’ve been talking to loads of people, friends, family, customers, colleagues, and trying to work out where we go when all this over.

As a company we can have a bit of influence.  We build apps and tools that people use to help them do stuff.  Can we choose to build only those tools that we think will have a positive impact?  Can we try to help our customers make the right decisions and help them (and us) to make a change?

Can we?

• Consider all stakeholders if we build a system, not just the profit takers?
• Choose positive projects and features over negative?
• Be more sustainable?  Use less energy and resources?
• Optimise what we build to make it light-weight and low-energy?
• Run our company in a better way?

Maybe we’re turning into a couple of old hippies, but we think we can.

Going forward, we’ve therefore decided to only work on projects that have a positive effect on the world. We have got some criteria to start us off, and some ways to try to influence people to do the right thing.

We’re going to be.

• Purpose-full
• Climate Activists
• Unapologetically humane
• Sustainable to our core
• Data do-gooders

Read more here on our mission.

We’re going to focus on building business tools for mitigating climate change, being sustainable, social responsibility and the circular economy.  Most of the work we’ve done over the last three years has fitted these criteria anyway.

From the recent work for OLIO to the children’s eye tests for Kay Pictures we’ve tried to pick projects that do some good.  Take for example the work we do with Holm on the Wear Happyness system. The goal of the system is helping people choose great clothes that suit them therefore creating less waste by lowering returns and slowing down fast fashion.

Lofty goals, can they get there?  Maybe with some luck but the timing is right.

Can we help you?

If you’ve got a project that is going to be a positive force, then we’ll try to help. It's 2022 soon so let's get going and see what we can achieve by 2030.

Massive Thanks to:

• Sarah and Jemma at We are Element for helping us work things out.
• Advice from Sarah at Clay Consulting
• Discussions with Louise from Indigo Tree on responsible technology
• All the advice from everybody else we asked.