Hi, we’re Manhattan Hydraulics, but friends call us Hydro. We’re a down-to-earth digital product studio and emerging technologies R&D group.

Manhattan Hydraulics is a new breed of design studio — we’re not a traditional agency, and we don’t act like one. All contributors are equal, supported and cared for, and empowered with the autonomy they need to do their best creative work.

Manhattan Hydraulics began as a three-person crew at Sanctuary Computer in December 2020. Today, our little shop has grown to a team of six skilled individuals, each with a unique perspective and background. At heart, we're just a hard-working group of collaborators who get excited about solving problems with, and for, good people.

Hydro is part of garden3d — a collective of studios and technology companies — working alongside the lovely human beings at Sanctuary Computer, XXIX, and Index. Together, we’re reimagining how creative studios operate and building a space rooted in growth, trust, and care for each other.

We care deeply about inventing technology for a diverse range of users, and to do that well, we need people who think through a wide lens of different experiences.

Based on opt-in, anonymous reporting data as of March 2022, garden3D (Hydro, Sanctuary, XXIX, and Index) currently consists of:

• 56.67% of individuals identifying as white, and 43.33% identifying with a BIPOC group.

• 70.0% of individuals identifying with at least one cultural background that is not US American.

• 50% men, 36.67% women, and 13.33% gender-fluid/gender-queer people.

• 13.33% of individuals identifying as neuro-divergent.

We update these statistics monthly, talk about them openly, and set goals that hold us accountable for improving them.

We collaborate with our friends at Sanctuary Computer and XXIX (joined under the name garden3d) to produce Index, a digital (and soon-to-be-physical) mixed-use community center.

Index was founded on the idea that communities are made when people share common space. Rather than a vague, top-down notion of a “creative network,” we’re interested in making space for people to organize and define community for themselves.

We contribute to the programming, product design, and promotion of the platform in a dozen different ways, with lots in the pipeline. Here's a cute screenshot of some folks participating in a recent workshop:

There are lots of interesting things in the mix, but notably, Tim writes a biweekly newsletter about the relationship between organization design and product management called The Overlap.