Research & Development

Let's make things better

With so much power at our fingertips, let's focus on what matters

What We Do

A lab for transformative ideas

Visioning Lab partners with organisations to co-design and deliver ambitious R&D — combining systems thinking, rigorous language/standards work, and prototyping.

Co-development & Convening

Partnering with organisations to co-design and deliver ambitious R&D across sectors.

Ontologies & Standards

Rigorous language and knowledge systems work that brings clarity to complex domains.

Evidence to Decisions

Turning evidence into confidence — building tools and frameworks that support better decisions.

Making

Recent Work

View all →

systemsActive · 2026–

Systems Development Framework

A structured approach for defining, organising and acting on complex problems.

AIActive · 2024–

Ontology Maker

Creating shared understanding for complex systems.

ontologyActive · 2024–

Water Infrastructure Ontology

Developing a decision-centred data framework for water and wastewater systems.

immersiveActive · 2023–

Giant Insect World

An immersive experience exploring the hidden world of insects at monumental scale.

VRCompleted · 2017–2023

Collaboratarium

A themed virtual collaboration space for workshops and meetings.

ARActive · 2016–

PopupView

AR platform for phones and tablets enabling cultural partners to commission animated works.

Latest Thinking

Can the British law sector lead on AI?

Law is text-heavy but lacks shared standards, and Gen AI is already leaking unreliable content into legal work. What if British lawyers led on AI design, through case-lifecycle data, law ontologies, and Knowledge Assurance Protocols, rather than following the tech sector?

24 June 2026·8 min read

Thinking

Selected Essays

View all →

24 June 2026·3 min read

Why complex programmes fail before they begin

The biggest challenges in AI, infrastructure and digital transformation are rarely technical. Programmes stall because people work from different understandings of the system they are trying to change. Shared understanding should be treated as critical infrastructure, not an informal by-product of meetings.

18 June 2026·7 min read

Introducing Knowledge Assurance Protocols

How can AIs be better instructed to receive and produce reliable content? Knowledge Assurance Protocols are a set of rules — not a platform, not an ontology, not a dataset — for governing how AI uses knowledge.

8 April 2026·3 min read

Making sense of the decision maker's instinct

Most organisations don't have a data problem. They have a decision problem. What changes when we treat decision making as a system in its own right.

Visioning Press

The Faith Conundrum

How the human search for meaning becomes an opportunity for control

Dr Jessica Symons explores faith as one of humanity’s most enduring technologies: a way of organising knowledge, values, relationships and collective life.

About the book

About

Visioning Lab is a hybrid research and innovation lab. We co-develop R&D projects with partners — from ontology and standards work through to decision-centred infrastructure analytics and public-facing immersive experiences.

Learn more about us

Get in Touch

Let's work together

We are always open to meaningful collaboration. Whether you have a research question, a project brief, or an idea worth exploring.

Research partnership Commission Speaking Press

Or email directly: hello@visioninglab.com