Prosocial Design Inc.
A design lab for healthier social spaces

Technology can bring out the best in us.

We believe social media is still a first draft. At Prosocial Design Inc., we explore what comes next — the technologies, policies, and design decisions that shape how we gather online, and whether those spaces help us thrive.

Mission
“Humans are innately social. We believe the best days of social media are ahead of us.” What technologies power that future? What policies protect users? What design decisions lead us there? We think we can get there sooner.

Independent, research-first · Vancouver, Canada · Est. 2026

Three starting principles

Not a product roadmap. The commitments we carry into every experiment.

01

Design for dignity

Privacy by default. Consentful presence. Tools that don't monetize outrage. We start with the assumption that people are trying to connect, not perform — and build systems that protect that impulse.

02

Design for repair

Healthy communities need ways to mend, not just moderate. We study norms, restorative practices, and governance at human scale — where conflict can be resolved and trust rebuilt.

03

Design for place

Scale erodes context. We prefer bounded, legible spaces with clear jurisdiction — where members know who sets the rules and why. Think neighborhoods, not highways. Places, not feeds.

Our work

We build lightweight research vehicles, publish what we learn, and open-source what’s useful. One exploration at a time.

Current exploration

VanChat

Small, ephemeral spaces for friends. A research vehicle for momentary conversation — built to test how timing, size, and lightness affect trust and talk.

2026–
Prototype in the wild Privacy-first architecture Canadian infrastructure
Next study

Governance patterns for groups under 150. What roles, rituals, and tools help small communities self-regulate?

Future inquiry

Designing memory without surveillance. How might communities remember together without permanent records?

Founders

A practice built on two decades of building social systems — at planetary scale, and at human scale.

A

Andy Moore

Founder & CTO

Andy has built social infrastructure used by millions — from early community platforms to large-scale messaging and trust systems. He cares deeply about privacy, resilience, and building technology that disappears into the background of good conversation.

LinkedIn
R

Robin Stethem

CEO

Robin founded the Museum of Other Realities, the pioneering immersive arts space in VR, and has spent a decade designing for presence, play, and shared culture online. He brings a curator’s sensibility to social software: how spaces feel, not just how they function.

LinkedIn

We work together because we’ve seen both sides: platforms that scale too fast and lose their humanity, and beautiful experiments that never reach people. Large-scale community systems meets immersive, intentional spaces. That intersection is where prosocial design lives.

Principles in practice

A living lab notebook. We work in public, in questions.

  1. 01

    What if ephemerality was the default, not a mode?

  2. 02

    Can small-group jurisdiction reduce the need for centralized moderation?

  3. 03

    How might we design for repair instead of removal?

  4. 04

    What social contracts become legible when a space has clear edges?

  5. 05

    Does designing for downtime increase trust over time?

  6. 06

    What policies protect intimate conversation without creating surveillance?

  7. 07

    How do we measure health in a community that isn’t optimizing for time spent?

We publish notes irregularly. No newsletter, no tracking pixels, no growth hacks.