The Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship  at Emily Carr University of Art + Design invites applications from Canadian companies pursuing design-driven development, including early-stage ventures and established SMEs, to participate in the Fall 2025 cohort of Design for Startups. This 12-week hybrid program runs from September 18 – December 11, 2025, and is funded by the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP).

Since 2013, Design for Startups has supported over 125 companies in strengthening their products, platforms, and services through design. Participating partner companies are matched with Emily Carr emerging designers (senior undergraduate or graduate students) who collaborate on clearly defined design challenges that align with business and user needs.

We invite interested and eligible companies to complete this application form by 5 PM on June 6, 2025.

Program Details

• Cohort: 10 companies will be accepted into the Fall 2025 Cohort, which will run September 18 – December 11, 2025.
• Cost: $2,520 (including GST), with NRC-IRAP covering the remaining balance of the total project cost.
• Eligibility: Companies must be incorporated in Canada and work with an IRAP Industrial Technology Advisor. The program is hybrid and open to companies across Canada; participation is not limited by region. Final eligibility is determined by NRC-IRAP and may include additional criteria beyond those listed here.
  

Why Work With a Designer?

Design is a practical method for navigating uncertainty and shaping strategy. It helps teams define the right problems to solve, understand user needs, and create functional and meaningful solutions. Good design drives growth: companies that excel at it see 32% higher revenue, according to McKinsey. Whether building something new or rethinking an existing product, design can make your business more adaptive and responsive.

Design for Startups brings this capability directly into companies through structured collaboration with an embedded designer. Grounded in human-centred design, our designers work on your design challenge 12 hours per week to help you prototype ideas, test assumptions, and strengthen how your product or service aligns with actual customer needs — a crucial step in achieving product–market fit.

This is a hands-on opportunity to explore and apply design methods in real-time—without requiring internal design hires or deep prior experience with design practices.

Who are our Designers?

Each participating company is matched with an emerging designer, a competitively selected senior student in the third or fourth year of undergraduate study or the first or second year of graduate study in design at Emily Carr. Designers are grounded in the disciplines of interaction design and communication design, with additional training and practice in service design methods. They are selected for their ability to work independently and collaboratively on real-world challenges.

These designers work collaboratively, engage stakeholders, and approach challenges with a strong foundation in human-centred design. They bring initiative, technical capability, and a mindset grounded in iteration, critique, and thoughtful experimentation.

Areas of expertise include:

• Interface design and usability
• User testing
• Visual identity development
• Data visualization
• User research and profiling
• Ideation and concept selection
• Prototyping and testing

These designers bring not only deep design training, but the ability to translate user needs into business value. The results of their work are tangible, tested, and applicable.

How This Program Helps Your Company

Participating companies gain hands-on support from an emerging designer focused on a defined design challenge. While the shape of the work varies depending on your needs, all engagements are grounded in methods that help companies better connect with users, improve functionality, and make smarter, more strategic decisions.

Through the program, companies may:

• Improve usability and customer engagement through interface and experience design
• Prototype and test new digital products
• Conduct targeted user research to identify unmet needs, validate assumptions, and refine product–market fit
• Design and validate MVPs, new features, or platform workflows
• Communicate complex information through visual design and data storytelling
• Refresh brand touchpoints to better align with user expectations
• Translate early problem–solution insights into tested, user-informed product strategies.

These outcomes depend on a well-scoped, collaborative design challenge.

What Makes a Good Design Problem?

Many of the most effective design challenges in this program are situated in the product–market fit phase, where a company has identified a promising opportunity and now needs to test how their product or service resonates with real users in a defined market.

In these cases, success depends on how clearly the design problem is framed. A good design problem is one that:

• Aligns with your business goals
• It is well-scoped, allowing for tangible deliverables within 12 weeks
• Has room for creative, design-driven solutions that can result in increased efficiency, improved user engagement, and more innovative products or services

A good design problem starts with a clearly defined objective—such as improving user retention or streamlining an onboarding flow—rather than a pre-determined solution. Companies should be prepared to clearly describe this objective in their application, leaving room for our designers to explore and test approaches that align with both user needs and business goals.

How the Program Works

• Companies identify a design problem they would like solved
• Emily Carr matches each company with one emerging designer who has skills in that area
• Designers work 12 hours per week for 12 weeks in collaboration with your team while receiving structured mentorship through weekly internal design lab sessions, where they engage in critique and peer exchange with other designers and Emily Carr faculty

This is not an internship program. Designers lead a defined design engagement developed in partnership with your team and supported by our faculty rather than taking on day-to-day operational tasks.

How to Collaborate with Your Designer

• Invite the designer to weekly team meetings and other relevant internal conversations
• Provide timely feedback and access; best results happen when you engage your designer in your company team as much as possible
• Create space for iteration and testing within the agreed project scope
• Participate in the project kickoff and final cohort showcase.

How to Apply

To participate, please complete this application form by 5 PM on June 6, 2025. Interviews with shortlisted companies will begin on July 7, 2025.

Please direct any questions about the program to Cemre Demiralp and Jennifer Martin at shumka@ecuad.ca

Please direct any IRAP-related eligibility questions to the IRAP ITA Representatives, Dusanka Firaunovic at Dusanka.Firaunovic@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca and Anja Haman Anja.Haman@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca  

Project Spotlight: Paperplane Therapeutics 

 

In the Spring 2025 cohort, Paperplane Therapeutics collaborated with an emerging designer to improve the interface of a tablet-based control system used by dentists operating a VR platform for reducing patient stress. The designer worked on refining the interaction flow and simplifying usability across different clinical contexts.

 

 

“We were very satisfied with the Design for Startups program at Emily Carr. The collaboration brought real value to our product and the designer we worked with delivered thoughtful, high-quality work. We’d absolutely recommend the program to any startup with design needs.”

 

–  Paperplane Therapeutics, D4S Spring 2025

This program is generously supported by the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) from Fall 2024 through Spring 2026.