Collective Campus vs Conduct and Relab

Buyers searching for "Conduct and Relab" are usually trying to answer one question: who should help our people learn to solve problems differently, and what should that help look like? Conduct and Relab are two Melbourne-based design and digital studios that also teach. Collective Campus is a capability building company for teams. They overlap on design thinking and design sprints, and they diverge sharply on almost everything else.

This guide compares them fairly. Every statement about Conduct and Relab is drawn from their own public pages and attributed to them. Where their sites do not say something, this article says so rather than guessing. Where Conduct or Relab is the better fit, it says that too.

Short answer

Conduct and Relab are Melbourne design and digital studios that, per their own sites, teach design thinking and sprint methods alongside client project work. Collective Campus is a capability building company for teams, covering AI adoption and governance, design thinking, customer experience, lean startup, agile, productivity, psychological safety, critical thinking and high-performance teams. Choose a studio when you want design delivery plus learning. Choose Collective Campus when team capability and behaviour change is the product.

At a glance comparison table

Who Conduct and Relab is

Conduct and Relab are two separate Australian companies, and treating them as one vendor would be a mistake. Buyers often shortlist them side by side because both are Melbourne studios that teach design methods. Everything below comes from their own public pages.

Conduct

According to its own site, Conduct is an independent Australian company founded in 2008, headquartered in East Melbourne. Its homepage positions it around creating "products and services people depend on," and its service menu spans design and research (UX and UI design, service design, customer experience, user testing and research, prototyping and testing, accessibility and usability testing) and build (AI development, software development, web and mobile application development, Webflow, Salesforce app development, systems integration, IoT integrations, DevOps and hosting, and support and maintenance).

Its design thinking and innovation workshops page says Conduct runs design thinking and corporate innovation workshops for Australian organisations in Melbourne and Sydney. It says that since 2008 it has trained teams at Medibank, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Royal Children's Hospital and Cleanaway. The page describes the sessions as hands-on, built around real problems and led by senior facilitators.

On content, the site says its two day innovation programme covers practical application of design thinking techniques, and lists skills including repeatable human-focussed frameworks, user research techniques, identifying hidden customer insights, collaborative ideation and prioritisation, rapid prototyping and usability testing, and visual systems for mapping customer journeys. It describes its coaching style as "lean, intense, and pragmatic." It also offers one-on-one and group coaching, and says it often consults after projects are delivered to build clients' confidence applying design thinking to future initiatives.

Its FAQ says courses suit product and service teams, strategy and innovation teams, and organisations introducing design thinking as a shared way of working. It also says the same practitioners who run training also deliver UX, service design and research work. Other strategy and teams services listed include workshop facilitation, squad as a service, business case development, innovation consulting and coaching, and product roadmapping. The site also lists a Journal with articles such as UX vs UI design, minimum viable products for established organisations, and a WCAG 2.2 compliance guide.

Relab

Per Relab's own pages, Relab Studios is a Melbourne-based, award-winning digital design consultancy (their words) with a focus on data-led UX and UI design, particularly ecommerce and transactional experiences. Its approach page says it blends design thinking, design sprints and agile, and it describes upskilling teams as part of its work.

Relab's design sprint facilitator training workshop page describes a Design Sprint workshop that produces a user-validated prototype. Its Product Strategy Accelerator page describes a programme led by founder Alvin Hermanto, who its site describes as a digital transformation advisor and a mentor at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the City of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria. The site lists offices in the Melbourne CBD and Cremorne, and says clients are Australia wide.

Beyond that, details such as programme formats, group arrangements, follow-up support and published resources are not stated on their public site, so this article does not characterise them.

What the two have in common

Both are studios first. Their public positioning centres on designing and building digital products and experiences, with training as a complementary line. Both emphasise hands-on, applied learning on real problems. Both are Melbourne-rooted with national or multi-city reach. That shared shape matters for the comparison, because it defines what each is optimised to do.

Who Collective Campus is

Collective Campus is a capability building company for teams. Its positioning is "Building high-performance culture and teams for the AI world." It was founded in Melbourne by Steve Glaveski and Sean Qian, and has done innovation work since 2015 and AI work since 2022. Steve still leads flagship workshops.

The programme range reflects a single idea: capability is the product. Programmes span AI training and adoption, design thinking, customer experience, lean startup and product sprints, agile, productivity, psychological safety, critical thinking, AI governance and high-performance teams. The innovation capability work sits underneath much of it.

The workshops are known for energy and entertainment, which traces back to founder Steve Glaveski's background in stand-up comedy and bands, combined with practical tools that teams use the next morning. The aim is a room that stays engaged and a toolkit that survives contact with a Monday inbox.

Collective Campus is not a design studio, not a software build shop and not an AI-only vendor. It does not sell product design or development as a service line. More about the company and its people is on the about page, and published work is collected under case studies and guides.

Deep comparison across eight dimensions

1. Approach: studio that teaches versus company that builds capability

The clearest difference is where each organisation's centre of gravity sits.

Conduct's own site presents training as one part of a broader studio offer. The same practitioners, it says, run design thinking training and deliver UX, service design and research work. That is a genuine strength for certain buyers: your trainers are working designers, and they bring current project texture into the room. Its coaching offer also reflects this, with the site describing consultation after projects to help clients apply the practices to future initiatives.

Relab's pages describe a consultancy that blends design thinking, design sprints and agile in its delivery and that upskills teams as part of that. The Design Sprint workshop produces a user-validated prototype, which means the learning and the deliverable are bound together. The Product Strategy Accelerator is led by its founder.

Collective Campus inverts the model. Training and enablement is the core business, so programme design starts from what a team needs to be able to do afterwards, and the offer is shaped around adoption, behaviour and follow-through rather than around a delivery pipeline. There is no product-build backlog competing for facilitator time.

Neither model is inherently better. If you want a design partner that also teaches, a studio is a natural fit. If you want a partner whose whole job is making your people more capable, a capability building company is a natural fit. Many organisations genuinely need both, at different times.

2. Breadth: one method versus a connected set of capabilities

Conduct and Relab, per their sites, concentrate on design thinking, design sprints, UX, product strategy and related product-design skills. That focus has depth. It also means that if your leadership team's actual priorities include AI adoption, risk, team dynamics or decision quality, those topics are not part of what their public pages describe as training offers.

Conduct does list AI development as a build service, which is a software delivery capability rather than a team training programme. Whether it offers AI training is not stated on its public site.

Collective Campus covers a wider set of connected capabilities. A common real-world pattern is that an organisation starts with one need, for example AI adoption, and then discovers that adoption stalls on something else: a team that does not feel safe to experiment, a lack of critical thinking about model outputs, unclear governance, or no way of turning ideas into tested products. The breadth lets a programme address those adjacent blockers without bringing in a fourth vendor.

That said, breadth carries a trade-off. A specialist studio that does one thing every week of the year may bring sharper craft in that one thing. A buyer whose only need is a Design Sprint facilitated by a working product designer is probably better served by a studio.

3. Depth of behaviour change

Workshops are easy to enjoy and hard to translate into changed habits. The honest question for any provider is what happens in the weeks after the room empties.

Conduct's site speaks to this in two ways. It says it aims to help teams embed design thinking into day-to-day operations, and it says it coaches teams after projects so that they can run the next one themselves. Its coaching topics include embedding behavioural insights and design practices into how a team works. That is a credible orientation toward lasting change, grounded in the studio's project work.

Relab's public pages describe a Design Sprint workshop that yields a validated prototype and an accelerator programme led by its founder. How learning is sustained after those, whether through follow-up sessions, coaching or measurement, is not stated on their public site.

Collective Campus treats behaviour change as the point rather than a by-product. Programmes are designed around practical tools teams can use the following morning, application to real work, and follow-through that is scoped to the organisation. The company's work on psychological safety and high-performance teams targets the team conditions that determine whether new behaviours stick: whether people will voice a doubt, test an idea publicly or challenge a senior colleague. For a deeper look at those conditions, see what makes a high-performing team in the AI world.

A fair caution applies to every provider, including Collective Campus. Behaviour change depends heavily on the client: sponsor attention, manager reinforcement and protected time. No programme substitutes for those.

4. Leadership involvement

Who stands in front of your people shapes how seriously they take the content.

Conduct's site says sessions are run by senior designers and senior facilitators. Relab's Strategy Accelerator, per its site, is led by its founder, Alvin Hermanto, who its site describes as a digital transformation advisor and mentor at several Melbourne institutions. Both signals suggest senior practitioners rather than junior delivery staff, which is a good sign when it holds in practice.

At Collective Campus, co-founder Steve Glaveski still leads flagship workshops, and founder Steve Glaveski's background in stand-up comedy and music informs a facilitation style that holds a room. The company also builds programmes specifically for leadership teams, such as the leadership team AI immersion, because leaders who have not personally experienced the tools tend to set unrealistic expectations or block adoption without meaning to. If you are planning an executive session, how to run an AI workshop for your leadership team and design thinking training for executives cover the planning considerations.

On any scoping call, ask who exactly will facilitate your sessions, not just who founded the company. Senior names on a website and senior people in your room are not always the same thing, for any provider.

5. AI and risk

This is the dimension where the three differ most.

Conduct lists AI development among its build services, which suggests it builds AI-enabled products for clients. Its public pages do not describe AI training for teams, AI governance programmes or responsible-use frameworks. Relab's pages, as researched, do not mention AI either. Neither is a criticism: both present as design and digital studios, and AI capability building is simply not what their public sites position them to do.

For many Australian organisations, though, AI is no longer a side topic. Staff are already using generative tools, sometimes without approval, and boards and regulators are asking questions about data handling, accuracy, bias and accountability. Collective Campus has done AI work since 2022 and runs dedicated programmes across adoption and governance, including a 90-day AI adoption sprint, an AI champions programme, AI governance, AI design sprints and online AI training. The AI programs overview shows how these fit together.

Sector context matters here. Regulated and public-sector buyers should look at the tailored material for government, financial services and legal organisations, since the risk questions differ. For selection guidance independent of any one vendor, how to choose an AI training provider in Australia and best AI training for teams in Australia set out criteria worth applying to every shortlisted provider.

If AI adoption or governance is on your agenda, this dimension alone may decide the comparison. If it is not, it may be irrelevant to you, and the design-method dimensions above deserve more weight.

6. Measurement

Nobody should buy training without asking how success will be judged.

Neither Conduct's nor Relab's public pages, as researched, describe a measurement framework for training outcomes. Conduct's site talks about building confidence and embedding practices, and Relab's Design Sprint yields a validated prototype, which is a tangible output. But how learning impact is measured over time is not stated on their public sites.

Collective Campus does not publish numeric outcome claims in this article and will not invent any. What it does is scope measurement with each client at the start: what behaviours should be visible, what business outcome the sponsor cares about, and what evidence will be collected. That conversation happens on the scoping call rather than being a fixed template, because a leadership AI immersion and a frontline customer experience programme call for different evidence.

A practical tip for any provider: agree two or three observable indicators before the first session. For example, number of teams actively using a new method on live work, quality of decisions made in a defined forum, or time from idea to tested prototype. Vague goals such as "more innovative culture" cannot be measured and tend to be forgotten.

7. Facilitation style

Style matters more than buyers expect, because a flat room learns less.

Conduct describes its coaching style as "lean, intense, and pragmatic," and its sessions as hands-on and built around your own challenges rather than generic case studies. For people who like to work, build and test, that sounds like a good match.

Relab's Design Sprint format is, by its nature, structured and time-boxed around producing a testable prototype.

Collective Campus is known for energy and entertainment. Founder Steve Glaveski comes from stand-up comedy and bands, and that shows in rooms that tend to be lively, funny and participatory, paired with practical tools used the next morning. This matters most with sceptical or fatigued audiences: people who have sat through too many slide-heavy training days. It matters least if your team already loves intense workshop formats and wants pure method.

Ask to see how a session actually runs, not a slide outline. Ask what a participant does in the first twenty minutes and who talks more, the facilitator or the room.

8. Fit for Australian organisations

All three operate in Australia, but with different footprints.

Conduct, per its site, runs workshops in Melbourne and Sydney from an East Melbourne headquarters, with a client mix across government, health, energy and infrastructure, education, sport and social impact. Its named training clients include Medibank, DHHS, the Department of Education, the Royal Children's Hospital and Cleanaway. Relab has offices in the Melbourne CBD and Cremorne and says clients are Australia wide.

Collective Campus was founded in Melbourne and works across Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra. City-specific pages exist for high-performance teams in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and for design thinking in Sydney and Melbourne. Large Australian organisations also benefit from guidance on structuring internal innovation efforts, covered in how to run an intrapreneurship programme in a large Australian organisation.

If your teams are split across Brisbane, Canberra and other cities, confirm early how delivery will work for each location. If your need is concentrated in Melbourne or Sydney, all three are viable on geography alone.

Who each suits

Choose Conduct if...

• You want a design and build partner that also teaches, and value trainers who are working designers and developers on live client projects.
• Your priority is design thinking, UX, service design or research capability, and you want it taught hands-on against your own challenges.
• You expect to need digital product delivery as well as training, such as UX and UI design, software development or accessibility work, from one studio.
• You are a government, health, education, energy, infrastructure or social impact organisation and want a provider whose public track record is in those sectors.
• You want coaching after a project so your team can run the next one themselves.
• Your site research of their named clients (Medibank, DHHS, Department of Education, the Royal Children's Hospital, Cleanaway) resonates with your own context.

Choose Relab if...

• You are focused on data-led UX and UI, ecommerce or transactional digital experiences, and want a design consultancy rather than a general training company.
• You want to upskill a team to facilitate Design Sprints and leave with a user-validated prototype.
• You want a founder-led strategy programme for product strategy, such as the Product Strategy Accelerator described on their site.
• You prefer a smaller, Melbourne-based consultancy with Melbourne CBD and Cremorne offices.

Choose Collective Campus if...

• Team capability and behaviour change is what you are buying, not a design or software delivery service.
• AI adoption, AI governance or responsible use is on your agenda, alone or alongside innovation work.
• You want one partner across several connected capabilities: AI, design thinking, customer experience, lean startup, agile, productivity, psychological safety, critical thinking and high-performance teams.
• You want leadership teams to experience the tools and methods first-hand, in a room with energy and humour, with a facilitator who has led flagship workshops since the early innovation days.
• You are in a regulated or public sector context and want sector-aware AI training for government, financial services or legal teams.
• You want programmes tailored after a scoping conversation rather than fitted to a fixed syllabus, with national coverage including Brisbane and Canberra.

A frank note: some organisations are best served by a studio now and a capability building company later, or both together. A studio can design the product, and a capability building company can make sure the wider team knows how to work with it, govern it and keep improving it.

Alternatives to Conduct and Relab in Australia

If you are building a shortlist, it helps to know the types of provider in the Australian market, without assuming any one is right for you.

• Digital design and UX studios that teach. Conduct and Relab are examples from their own positioning. Strengths include current project craft and delivery. Watch for training being secondary to delivery.
• Capability building companies. Collective Campus is one. Strengths include breadth across connected capabilities, AI and governance coverage, and a training-first model. Watch for fit with any specialist design craft you need.
• University and executive education programmes. Often strong on frameworks and credentials, usually delivered to mixed cohorts rather than intact teams. Check how applied the learning is to your real work.
• Big consulting firms with innovation arms. Strong for large transformation programmes with heavy change management. Check how much is training versus advisory, and how senior the delivery team is.
• Independent facilitators and coaches. Flexible and often excellent, but check capacity, depth across topics and continuity if the individual is unavailable.
• Software and AI vendor training. Useful for tool-specific skills. Usually narrower than capability building and rarely addresses behaviour, culture or governance.

A good rule is to shortlist three providers, ideally of different types, and run the same scoping questions past each of them. Comparing a studio, a capability building company and a university programme on identical criteria tends to surface the real trade-offs quickly. For broader reading, see the Collective Campus guides.

Decision checklist

Use this before you sign with any provider, including Collective Campus.

• We have written down the capability we want people to have after the programme, in plain behavioural terms.
• We know whether we are buying training, design delivery, or both.
• We have named an executive sponsor who will attend or visibly support the work.
• We have confirmed who will actually facilitate our sessions, not only who founded the company.
• We have asked to see how a session runs in practice, not just a slide outline.
• We have confirmed the programme is tailored to our real problems rather than generic case studies.
• We know what follow-up support exists after the sessions end.
• We have agreed two or three observable indicators of success before starting.
• We have checked whether AI adoption or governance needs to be part of this.
• We have asked how the provider handles our data and confidential material during workshops.
• We have confirmed delivery arrangements for every Australian city our teams are in.
• We have asked for references from organisations similar in size and sector, and spoken to them.
• We have checked whether psychological safety and team conditions are addressed, not just methods.
• We have confirmed what we are expected to provide: time, space, data, participants.
• We have clarified how the provider adapts for sceptical or fatigued participants.
• We have compared at least three providers on the same questions.
• We have confirmed what happens if our priorities shift mid-programme.
• We have a plan for manager reinforcement in the weeks after the sessions.

Questions to ask any provider on a scoping call

How a scoping call with Collective Campus works

A scoping call is a conversation, not a sales pitch, and it is how every Collective Campus programme begins. Because programmes are tailored, nothing about format, scale or pacing is fixed in advance, and nothing is quoted before the call.

The conversation typically moves through four areas.

1. The problem behind the request. What prompted the enquiry: an AI directive from the board, a stalled transformation, a leadership team that wants to move faster, or a team that has lost its edge? The aim is to understand the underlying need rather than the first-stated solution.

2. The people. Who will be involved, what is their starting point, and how do they feel about the topic? Enthusiastic early adopters, anxious sceptics and senior leaders all need different handling, and the programme design reflects that.

3. The context. Sector, regulatory environment, existing tools and policies, and any previous attempts that did or did not work. For regulated and public-sector buyers, this is where risk and governance considerations come in.

4. The outcome. What should people be able to do afterwards, and what evidence would convince the sponsor it worked? That sets the observable indicators the programme is built around.

After the call, Collective Campus proposes a tailored programme and the commercial terms that go with it. If the best answer turns out to be another provider, for example a design studio for a pure product-build need, that is said plainly.

Useful preparation is simple: a one-paragraph description of the problem, a rough sense of who is involved, and any constraints. You do not need a polished brief. To get a feel for existing work before the call, see the case studies.

FAQ

What is the difference between Conduct, Relab and Collective Campus?

Conduct and Relab are Melbourne design and digital studios that, per their own sites, also teach design thinking and sprint methods. Collective Campus is a capability building company for teams, covering AI adoption and governance, design thinking, customer experience, agile, psychological safety, critical thinking and high-performance teams. The core difference is whether training sits alongside design delivery or is the main business.

Are Conduct and Relab the same company?

No. Based on their public sites, Conduct (conducthq.com) is an independent Australian company founded in 2008 with an East Melbourne headquarters, and Relab (relab.com.au) is a separate Melbourne-based consultancy with offices in the CBD and Cremorne. They are often grouped in searches because both offer design-led training, but they are distinct organisations.

Does Collective Campus do design thinking training?

Yes. Design thinking is one of several programme areas, alongside customer experience, lean startup and product sprints, and agile. Collective Campus has done innovation work since 2015, and city-specific pages exist for design thinking in Sydney and Melbourne. It is a capability building programme for teams, not a design studio that delivers products.

Does Conduct or Relab offer AI training?

Conduct's site lists AI development as a build service, but AI training for teams is not stated on its public site. Relab's public pages do not mention AI training either. If AI adoption or governance training is a priority, confirm directly with any provider what they offer, and compare against specialists such as Collective Campus.

When is a design studio a better choice than Collective Campus?

When you need design or software delivered, not just capability built. If you want a UX redesign, a prototype built by working designers, accessibility work or a software build, a studio like Conduct or Relab is the more natural fit. Collective Campus focuses on building team capability rather than delivering products.

Does Collective Campus publish its prices?

No. Programmes are tailored after a scoping call, so format, scale and commercial terms depend on your organisation's needs. This is deliberate: a leadership AI immersion and a company-wide adoption effort are very different undertakings, and a fixed price list would misrepresent both. Book a scoping call to discuss your situation.

Where does Collective Campus deliver in Australia?

Collective Campus works across Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, and offers online options for distributed teams. Founded in Melbourne, it has city pages for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in areas such as high-performance teams. Delivery arrangements for your locations are confirmed during the scoping call.

Who leads Collective Campus workshops?

Co-founder Steve Glaveski still leads flagship workshops, supported by the Collective Campus team. The company was founded in Melbourne by Steve Glaveski and Sean Qian. The workshops are known for energy and entertainment, reflecting founder Steve Glaveski's background in stand-up comedy and bands, combined with practical tools teams can use the next morning.

How many providers should we shortlist?

Three is a sensible number. Ideally include different provider types, such as a studio, a capability building company and an executive education option, then ask each the same scoping questions. Comparing like for like quickly exposes differences in tailoring, follow-through, senior involvement and AI coverage that marketing pages rarely reveal.

How do we measure whether training worked?

Agree two or three observable indicators before the first session, such as teams using a method on live work, decision quality in a defined forum, or time from idea to tested prototype. Avoid vague goals like "more innovative culture." Collective Campus scopes measurement with each client on the scoping call, as the right evidence differs by programme.

Can we use a studio and Collective Campus together?

Yes, and some organisations do. A studio can design and build a product or service, while a capability building company helps the wider team adopt new ways of working, use AI responsibly and sustain the change. The key is to be clear about who owns which outcome, and to avoid duplicating or contradicting each other's methods.

Is a scoping call with Collective Campus a sales pitch?

It is a conversation to understand your problem, people, context and desired outcome. Nothing is priced on the call, and the proposal that follows is tailored to what emerges. If another provider would serve you better, for example a studio for a pure design-and-build need, that gets said plainly rather than forced into a programme.

A closing note on choosing well

Conduct and Relab are credible options for organisations that want design craft and design-led learning from working studios, and their own public pages make a reasonable case for that. Collective Campus is built for a different primary job: making teams more capable across AI, innovation, culture and performance, with workshops that people enjoy and use the next morning.

The right choice depends less on brand than on what you are really buying. If it is a designed product or experience, start with a studio. If it is a team that thinks, works and adopts AI differently, start with a capability building company. If it is both, be explicit about who owns what.

When you are ready to test the fit, book a scoping call with Collective Campus. Bring a rough description of the problem, a sense of who is involved and any constraints. The programme is tailored after that conversation, and if another provider is the better answer, you will hear it plainly.

Sources

• https://www.conducthq.com (Conduct homepage)
• https://www.conducthq.com (Conduct design thinking and innovation workshops page)
• https://relab.com.au/our-approach
• https://relab.com.au/design-sprint-facilitator-training-workshop
• https://relab.com.au/product-strategy-accelerator