Working with the Department of Veterans Affair

In 2002, WCL Inc was awarded a year-long contract (with yearly, renewal options for four more years) with the Department of Veterans Affairs, enabling the VA to contract with us for specific projects at the VA's discretion. Since then, we have conducted about 30 projects with the DVA, bringing our ethnographic discovery and participatory co-design methods and approach to the VA on a wide variety of projects in medical centers across the country.

During our years as research scientists at the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), we worked with a wide range of clients, using early forms of the WCL approach. Here is a list of our major clients during this period:

• Sun Microsystems
• Hewlett Packard
• State Farm Insurance Companies
• Herman Miller
• Steelcase
• Xerox
• IBM

In recent years, we have worked extensively with the

• US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),
  mainly in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), which operates the vast network of hospitals and clinics throughout the nation.

We have conducted over 30 projects in 60 VA medical centers, clinics, and veteran benefits administrative offices in over 40 different towns and cities around the country. It was during our early years of work with the VA that we solidified our approach and process, and gave it its name, Water Cooler Logic. (What’s in a name?)

Today, our strategic goal is to bring the WCL spirit, methods and processes to a wider base in the US health care community, and in other types of organizations, including governmental and private sector companies.