Strategic Design For Living Systems
Cense Strategic Design Group (Cense Ltd.) partners with health-seeking leaders to create sustainable change through strategic design and systems thinking. We are both a consultancy and a studio—we advise, co-create, educate, and evaluate with and for health-serving organizations navigating complexity.
We create impact by design—connecting strategy, service design, and evaluation to help you achieve your goals in uncertain environments.
What We Do
Our design-driven approach integrates three essential pillars:
Strategic Planning – We develop robust plans that respect complexity, using foresight and systems thinking to help you lead into the future with actionable strategies built for uncertainty and resource constraints.
Service Design – We transform how organizations deliver care by grounding interventions in behavioural psychology and systems thinking, creating lasting change in how teams work and organizations perform.
Developmental Evaluation – Our Credentialed Evaluation services generate real-time insights that help you course-correct quickly, building learning systems that demonstrate impact while enabling adaptation.
Our work sits at the intersection of service design, organizational psychology, and complexity science—ensuring sustainable change that serves both your people and your systems.
How We Work
We specialize in complex, dynamic environments where multiple priorities, people, and possibilities intersect. Through strategic advising, facilitation, capacity-building, research, and evaluation, we guide you through the complete cycle:
Strategy Clarification → Actionable Planning → Service Design → Implementation Support → Learning & Adaptation → Measurable Impact
We assemble custom expert teams tailored to each client’s unique challenges, recognizing that living systems require configured expertise, not cookie-cutter solutions.
Want to learn more? Listen to this Deep Dive podcast episodeprofiling our approach and work.
Our History & Experience
Cense was founded in 2005 as CENSE Research + Design and incorporated in 2015 as Cense Ltd. Under the leadership of our Principal and President, Cameron Norman, we bring over 25 years of experience in healthcare, public health, health services, social innovation, and professional evaluation.
Dr. Norman remains actively engaged in scholarship to advance the scientific and practice work at the intersection of design, health, and innovation, publishing regularly in leading academic journals. Our thought leadership extends through Censemaking and other educational platforms, making strategic design tools accessible to leaders working in health and human systems.
Cense is based in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto, Canada (Treaty 13, see Land Acknowledgement below).
Our Values
Everything we do is guided by these core commitments:
Curiosity – We ask questions, explore possibilities, and embrace continuous learning in service of better outcomes.
Health of People and Planet – We’re committed to wellbeing that extends beyond individuals to communities, ecosystems, and future generations.
Creativity – We bring fresh, designful thinking to both our approaches and the solutions we co-create with clients.
Kindness – We engage with empathy, respect, and humanity—recognizing that sustainable change requires care for the people leading it.
Care – We’re deeply invested in the success and wellbeing of our clients, partners, communities, and the health systems they serve.
Learn and Listen: Our Company Profile
History
Cense was founded in 2005 as CENSE Research + Design and incorporated in 2015 as Cense Ltd. We began by providing expert consultation on social innovation, evaluation, and strategic design under the leadership of our Principal and President, Cameron Norman, who, with a team of associates, built custom teams required to address our clients’ complex situations. Dr. Norman continues to be involved in scholarship to advance the scientific, technical, and practical work related to design, health, and innovation, regularly and consistently publishing research in leading academic journals as part of our commitment to knowledge development in these sectors.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that our work takes place on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities. Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Williams Treaties. We recognize the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples on this land, and we are committed to respectful relationships, learning, and working toward reconciliation across Turtle Island.
