Artz Group Inc. was a service strategy and design consulting agency founded by Matt in 2009. The firm brought together designers, technologists, and strategists to deliver user-centered business design solutions for local, national, and international brands.
The firm’s approach was grounded in applied anthropology. Rather than relying on traditional surveys or focus groups, Artz Group used ethnographic research to surface the unmet needs and latent desires of end users — observing how people actually interacted with services rather than simply asking them. Those insights fed into a process-oriented service strategy phase, aligning client offerings with customer needs, and then into iterative design work where new service concepts were tested with target populations and refined through additional fieldwork.
Matt served as founder and design strategy consultant throughout the firm’s operation, drawing on methods he would continue to develop across his later work in design anthropology and UX research. In 2010, Artz Group divested its portfolio to Software Engineering Associates, at which point Matt joined that firm to continue his work in design strategy and consulting.