Frameworks
How NIA thinks.
NIA’s systems design practice is guided by proprietary frameworks that help institutions understand complexity, redesign systems, and expand community influence.
These frameworks are the intellectual foundation of everything we design, test, and build.
■ FEATURED FRAMEWORK
The NIA Institutional Intelligence Framework
Lived experience is institutional intelligence.
This framework treats lived experience as structured diagnostic insight — the most accurate map of how systems actually function, where barriers exist, and what must change to improve outcomes.
The Institutional Intelligence Framework underpins all of NIA’s systems design work. It is how we surface the knowledge that policy documents miss, translate it into design intelligence, and use it to help institutions redesign pathways, processes, and policies for better outcomes.
This framework is applied directly through the NIA Studio’s five-stage design process, beginning with system mapping and moving through co-design, redesign, and evidence-based iteration.
■ FEATURED FRAMEWORK
The NIA Inclusion-to-Influence Framework
Creating pathways from participation to ownership, leadership, and influence.
This framework is NIA’s model for systems change. It recognizes that lasting progress is not created through one-time interventions — it is created when individuals and communities are supported through a progression that moves them from exclusion to participation, from participation to ownership, and from ownership to influence.
The four stages — Inclusion, Participation, Ownership, Influence — guide how NIA designs initiatives, evaluates progress, and determines whether systems are producing genuine change or surface-level activity.
Every NIA initiative is designed to strengthen one or more stages of this progression while generating evidence that can inform institutional practice, public policy, and systems transformation.
■ IN DEVELOPMENT
Frameworks in development.
NIA’s framework library continues to grow as our design practice generates new institutional learning. The following frameworks are in active development: