About us.
Cicely is a UK-based accessibility and participation startup for the built environment.
We help organisations collect continuous feedback from the people who use their buildings, spaces and services every day. Visitors, residents, students, staff and members of the public can quickly share how a place feels, including accessibility, comfort, lighting, noise, temperature and other aspects of their experience.
Cicely turns this continuous feedback into clear, structured evidence that helps organisations identify barriers, improve accessibility, make better decisions and create more inclusive places.
Places get decided without the people in them.
Consultation tends to happen once, at the start, and then nothing for years. Buildings outlive the moment they were briefed for, and the people inside them are left to absorb decisions made without them.
We started Cicely so participation could be ongoing, structured and taken seriously, woven into how places evolve rather than tacked on at the end.
The people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.
Three cards, one idea: lived experience is the strongest evidence a place can have. Give the deck a shuffle.
People already know what's working and what needs to change. Cicely turns that into evidence organisations can act on.
People already know what's working in a place and what needs to change. Cicely turns their experiences into evidence organisations can plan, prioritise and improve with.
Now showing: Lived experience becomes evidence. People already know what's working in a place and what needs to change. Cicely turns their experiences into evidence organisations can plan, prioritise and improve with.
Where the name comes from.
Sweet Cicely is a companion plant. In old gardens you'd tuck it in beside something else, not because it stole the spotlight, but because everything around it grew a little kinder when it was there.
That's the company we want to be. Quiet, useful, hard to notice on its own, and the reason the things you care about end up healthier, warmer and more resilient than they would have been alone.
Four principles.
The beliefs underneath everything we build. Tap a card to read more.
How we work.
Four steps, repeated, in conversation with the people who use a place.
01
Listen, continuously.
Feedback comes in by phone, web or in person, in whatever language and format works. No waiting for the next engagement cycle.
02
Structure the signal.
Open responses are tagged and made comparable, so patterns surface without flattening the individual voices behind them.
03
Translate for institutions.
Findings land as briefings, dashboards and reports the people setting budgets and policies already know how to read.
04
Close the loop.
Contributors hear back. They see what changed because of what they said, which is how trust gets built over time.
The team.
A small, multidisciplinary group working across disability, housing and the built environment. Tap a card to see what to ask each of us about.
Khadijah
Co-founder & CEO
khadijah@withcicely.comAsk Khadijah about: Why we started Cicely, Working with local authorities, Long-form participation.Hillary
Research Lead
hillary@withcicely.comAsk Hillary about: Mixed-methods fieldwork, Disability-led research, Turning quotes into evidence.Nuzzat
Co-founder & Strategic Partnerships
nuzzat@withcicely.comAsk Nuzzat about: Lived experience of accessibility, Plain-language reports, Partnering with institutions.Phu-Pha
Founding Engineer
phu-pha@withcicely.comAsk Phu-Pha about: Privacy-first data pipelines, Tagging open-ended responses, Dashboards institutions actually open.Polina
CTO
polina@withcicely.comAsk Polina about: Building the feedback platform, Accessible front-ends, Making data legible.
In good company.
We're backed and challenged by people who take participation as seriously as we do.
Bethnal Green Ventures
Europe's leading tech-for-good accelerator, backing Cicely through their programme.
University College London
Cicely was cultivated at UCL, where we've won student competitions, run our accessibility pilots, and are domiciled today.
Build places that work for everyone.
Continuous evidence so spaces become more accessible, more inclusive and more responsive to the people who rely on them every day.
About us
Cicely is a UK-based accessibility and participation startup for the built environment.
We help organisations collect continuous feedback from the people who use their buildings, spaces and services every day. Visitors, residents, students, staff and members of the public can quickly share how a place feels, including accessibility, comfort, lighting, noise, temperature and other aspects of their experience.
Cicely turns this continuous feedback into clear, structured evidence that helps organisations identify barriers, improve accessibility, make better decisions and create more inclusive places.
Decisions about places are too often made without the people in them.
Accessibility barriers stay hidden. Communities feel unheard. Most public spaces get consulted on once, then left for years.
We started Cicely because participation should be continuous, meaningful, and built into how places evolve , not a one-off exercise that gets filed away.
The people closest to the problem are closest to the solution.
Three cards, one idea: lived experience is the strongest evidence a place can have. Give the deck a shuffle.
People already know what's working and what needs to change. Cicely turns that into evidence organisations can act on.
People already know what's working in a place and what needs to change. Cicely turns their experiences into evidence organisations can plan, prioritise and improve with.
Now showing: Lived experience becomes evidence. People already know what's working in a place and what needs to change. Cicely turns their experiences into evidence organisations can plan, prioritise and improve with.
Where the name comes from.
Sweet Cicely is a woodland herb that gardeners call a companion plant. It grows alongside others and quietly makes the soil, the shade and the things around it a little better.
We loved that idea. The places we care about are never built by one person alone. They're shaped by the people who live in them, work in them, and pass through them every day.
That's the kind of company we want to be. Standing beside the people and institutions doing this work, and helping what's already there grow into something kinder.
Four principles, every project.
Tap any card to read more.
We design methods that capture the texture of everyday use: where you pause, where you turn back, what you avoid. Then we structure it so institutions can act on it without flattening the people behind it.
A consultation in March tells you about March. We build systems that gather feedback continuously, so decisions reflect how a place is actually used today, not how it was used at launch.
Screen reader support, plain language, multiple input modes, low-bandwidth flows. Accessibility isn't a feature we add at the end , it's the brief.
We translate lived experience into the formats institutions already work with (reports, dashboards, and briefings), so the people setting budgets and policies can act on it without needing a translator.
A method, not a black box.
01
Listen, continuously.
Lightweight ways for people to share what they notice , by phone, web, in person. No need to wait for the next consultation cycle.
02
Structure the signal.
Open-ended observations become tagged, comparable evidence , patterns separated from one-offs, with the human voice kept intact.
03
Translate for institutions.
Findings in formats your stakeholders already use , briefings, dashboards, audits , without flattening what people actually said.
04
Close the loop.
Contributors see what changed because of their feedback. That's what makes participation worth doing twice.
The team.
A small, multidisciplinary team of researchers, designers and engineers, working across disability, housing and the built environment. Flip a card to see what each person is good to ask about.
Khadijah
Co-founder & CEO
khadijah@withcicely.comAsk Khadijah about: Why we started Cicely, Working with local authorities, Long-form participation.Hillary
Research Lead
hillary@withcicely.comAsk Hillary about: Mixed-methods fieldwork, Disability-led research, Turning quotes into evidence.Nuzzat
Co-founder & Strategic Partnerships
nuzzat@withcicely.comAsk Nuzzat about: Lived experience of accessibility, Plain-language reports, Partnering with institutions.Phu-Pha
Founding Engineer
phu-pha@withcicely.comAsk Phu-Pha about: Privacy-first data pipelines, Tagging open-ended responses, Dashboards institutions actually open.Polina
CTO
polina@withcicely.comAsk Polina about: Building the feedback platform, Accessible front-ends, Making data legible.
In good company.
Europe's leading early-stage tech-for-good investor, backing Cicely through their accelerator programme.
Cicely was cultivated at UCL, where we've won student competitions, run our accessibility pilots, and are domiciled today.
Build places that work for everyone.
We build technology that continuously captures lived experience and turns it into structured evidence organisations can act on. The result is clearer insight into how places are actually used, and better decisions that make spaces more accessible, more inclusive, and more responsive to the people who rely on them every day.