Artificial intelligence
Changes how knowledge is created, whose expertise counts, and what becomes possible to investigate.
Independent research + design studioSeattle / Everywhere
Methods for an
unbounded world.
Helium helps organizations understand complicated conditions, imagine credible alternatives, and build practical experiments.
Explore↓00
Our thesis
Most design methods were built for bounded problems.
We develop methods for the problems that refuse to stay bounded.
Globalized complexity
Connects decisions across institutions, communities, technologies, and borders.
Recurring wicked problems
Return in new forms because no single actor, discipline, or intervention can resolve them alone.
2×2
The original studio model
Client first.
Then the right form.
Helium began with a simple atomic idea: element one is the person or organization bringing the question; element two is the studio assembled around it. Four lenses keep the response grounded.
Aesthetics
What form should the work take?
Aesthetic · UX strategyFunctionality
What job must it carry?
Butr · Product designInnovation
What must exist that does not yet?
Product Lab · ExperimentsSustainability
What can move from prototype into the world?
Scout + SaaSy · Ventures01–05
The practice
Five elements.
One adaptive practice.
Every engagement combines the elements differently. We begin with the question, then assemble the method and team it requires.
Inquiry
Research programs for questions that are emerging, entangled, or not yet well understood.
Mapping
Making systems, incentives, relationships, and unintended consequences visible.
Futures
Exploring credible possibilities before committing to a single version of what comes next.
Experiments
Building small, observable interventions that create evidence inside uncertainty.
Methods
Equipping teams with new ways to investigate, decide, make, and learn.
06
Selected work
Evidence from
inside complexity.
Helium brings together client programs and self-initiated ventures across financial intelligence, civic technology, product systems, software, publishing, and research education.
Studio program / 202632working experiments at 40
A public production system moving every idea through RIPEN prototyping, TAStE implementation, and a small working release.
Enter Product Lab ↗Pb
PitchBook
Leveraged Commentary + Data Integration
Integrating qualitative analyst commentary with structured financial data to make complex market intelligence easier to interpret and act on.
View case study↗
Sg
Socrata
Connected Government Cloud
A connected platform for public-sector teams: turning a fragmented family of data products into a more coherent government operating system.
View case study↗
Studio experiment / Software
SaaSy
Software with something to say.
A suite of opinionated products built from questions the studio wanted to pursue itself. Ballot Buddy leads a family that includes Personata, Souz Chef, Scout, Good Goods, City Quest, Buttonbox, and The Pint Club.
Visit SaaSy ↗Fg
Tyler Technologies
Forge Design System
A shared language and production system designed to help a large software organization make more consistent, accessible product experiences.
View case study↗
Ux
Socrata + Tyler
Building a UX Program
Growing research and design from a project capability into a repeatable organizational practice with clearer standards, rituals, and influence.
View case study↗
Studio experiment / Publishing
Punctual Press
Highly specific books, published exactly when they should be.
A tiny press for personal field manuals, essays, and design writing. Each proposition becomes an active publishing task when 100 readers ask for it—from ramen tasting and emergency preparedness to dumpster diving and 100 Years of Art & Design.
Visit Punctual ↗Rw
ProQuest
RefWorks Product Re-launch
Reimagining a trusted research workflow through sustained field research with students, librarians, and scholars—and translating the evidence into a new product.
View case study↗
Rc
Learning tools
Research Companion
An online curriculum and toolset that makes the research process legible, teachable, and easier for students to practice deliberately.
View case study↗
Portfolio archaeology / 2005—26
The archive is part of the work.
Years of projects, course work, venture notes, and operating methods are being turned into evidence—not hidden as a list of unfinished ideas.
Client systems
PitchBook, Socrata, Tyler, ProQuest, and the organizational practices behind the interfaces.
Independent products
From Personata and Scout to publishing, civic technology, research tools, and small software experiments.
Design studies
A living reclamation of typography, visual communication, photography, interaction, and design history.
+
Collaboration model
A small core.
A deliberate network.
Helium is led by Mathias Burton and built around intentional collaboration. Each project assembles researchers, designers, technologists, writers, subject-matter experts, artists, and community partners around the problem—not the org chart.
SaaSy and Punctual make the other half of the studio visible: Helium does not only advise organizations. It creates its own products, publishing systems, and public experiments to test new methods in practice.
Elementindividual capability+Moleculepurpose-built team
05
Working principles
- 01
The problem is rarely contained by the brief.
- 02
People affected by a system are participants, not inputs.
- 03
AI should expand inquiry—not eliminate judgment.
- 04
Complexity is not an excuse for paralysis.
- 05
Good design makes collective action more imaginable.
B
Ideas in practice
Butr®
The systems behind
good product work.
Field-tested tools, open methods, and operating procedures for designers and product teams working with AI.
Read Butr ↗FIELD / 04
HE / SIGNALACTIVE
METHOD / ADAPT↗
01∞MAKE
VISIBLE
VISIBLE