A Learning-by-Design Initiative of HATLAB Studio
SEE-Me (Systems for Economic Empowerment through Market and Ecosystem Design) is a learning-by-design initiative created by HATLAB Studio to address a growing gap in how markets and ecosystems are conceived, designed, and governed in an increasingly digital and interconnected economy.
As economic activity becomes more data-driven and digitally mediated, participation in markets increasingly depends on visibility to systems of identity, data, and coordination. Yet large parts of the economy remain effectively invisible. Small traders, farmers, nano-stores, micro-firms, informal workers, and socially excluded populations often operate productively, but outside the boundaries of markets as they are currently designed.
These challenges are frequently framed as problems of technology adoption, compliance, or access to funding. In practice, they are symptoms of deeper structural issues. Many markets were not designed to accommodate fragmented participation, cross-sector collaboration, or last-mile economic realities. The result is rising coordination costs, misaligned incentives, and growing reliance on public or philanthropic intervention to substitute for market function.
SEE-ME starts from a different premise: economic empowerment, inclusion, and sustainability are not outcomes to be retrofitted onto markets, but properties that can be designed into systems from the outset.
The program treats market and ecosystem design as a core discipline, integrating systems thinking, incentive design, service systems, governance, and the role of data and identity as shared economic infrastructure.
SEE-ME is delivered in two integrated phases:
Participants do not study markets as static objects. They actively design new market architectures that align incentives across multiple stakeholders, surface invisible economic actors, and reduce the need for continuous external intervention.
The program is technology-agnostic by design. Rather than teaching tools or platforms, SEE-ME focuses on understanding how digital markets function and how existing technologies can be mapped, evaluated, and deployed in service of better market design.
SEE-ME is a platform for learning, collaboration, and applied design at the level where many contemporary economic challenges actually reside: the structure of markets and ecosystems themselves.
By bringing together academia, industry, and public institutions in a shared studio environment, SEE-ME builds durable capability to design markets in which economic empowerment, participation, and sustainability are outcomes of how systems work — by design, not by exception.
Farmers