Giving food assistance is about more than handing over a box of groceries. It’s about allowing people to make their own choices.

But the pandemic only narrowed people’s choices. Undeterred, Northern Illinois Food Bank (NIFB) put people’s needs above everything else, leading to innovations that could improve food banks everywhere. IDEO recruited neighbors to co-design a new digital tool intended to improve people’s access to food. Local residents provided more than insights—they steered design decisions and helped transform the relationship between NIFB and the community.

Northern Illinois Food Bank’s My Pantry Express app allows people to browse and order groceries online and to choose a pickup time and location that works for their schedule. We designed the app to provide useful information on dietary preferences and to be inclusive of cultural differences. The result allows choice and flexibility, helps prevent food waste, and preserves the dignity of shoppers throughout the process by making My Pantry Express feel like any other grocery site.

Ultimately, Northern Illinois Food Bank and IDEO’s strategy for success relied on new metrics. In addition to measuring effectiveness in pounds of food distributed, we found new ways to measure shoppers’ satisfaction—a solution that works better for all parties involved because it was designed by all parties involved.

An estimated 1 in 8 Americans experience food insecurity.

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The food insecurity rate is 2-3x higher for persons of color than for white households.

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60% of food insecure households do not use food pantries.

1.9M

meals distributed through My Pantry Express in 2021

50%

increase in distribution from prior year

To create Bendable, IDEO worked alongside the people closest to the problem, so every important decision grew out of their experience.

IDEO and the Drucker Institute aligned with the library system and city leaders in South Bend, Indiana, on a single objective: build a learning platform that offered education opportunities to people affected by the decline of manufacturing in the region. But even the earliest phases of research revealed that there’s no common profile that matched the diversity of learners. There are innumerable reasons why people seek to learn and as many barriers holding them back.

Knowing this, South Bend residents were the acknowledged authority for this work, and a design consultancy all their own. This radically simplified crucial decisions. Negative associations around traditional education led people to seek knowledge from those they already trusted. And they often lacked awareness about or the ability to access the many free resources already available.

The residents of South Bend helped the entire consortium see that the city wasn’t under-resourced but under-connected. That insight, and the power the community and the library system held to rectify it, made Bendable into the people-driven, connection-based learning platform it is today.

By 2025, as many as 85 million jobs will be displaced by automation, yet 97 million new ones could emerge.

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More than a third of adults pursuing postsecondary education before the COVID-19 pandemic were forced to abandon those plans.

25

programs and other resources offerings are now available to residents of South bend

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states have begun to integrate Bendable into library systems

Protecting the right to vote means ensuring that all citizens can cast their ballots privately, independently, and easily.

With that principle in mind, Los Angeles County sought out a design strategy firm to create a next-generation, customizable system that would meet the needs of its large and diverse voter population while satisfying myriad voting regulations. The result: an accessible, self-enclosed ballot-marking device with a touchscreen that allows any voter to easily navigate, mark, verify, and submit a paper ballot. We also worked to improve the entire voting experience, including vote-by-mail ballots, interactive sample ballots, and the tally process.

As with any inclusive design, details matter. Voters with vision impairment or reading disabilities can opt for audio and tactile experiences with the push of a few simple buttons. And for voters who prefer to read the ballot in their native language—Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or any one of the 11 others supported by the county—the device lets them select their preference.

After extensive research and testing with constituents, we designed a solution that makes voting easier for anyone. And knowing that the only constant is change, we made the system flexible enough to adapt to emerging needs and technologies, protecting voters’ rights now and in the future. Read the full case study here.

26% of American adults have some type of disability. In the 2020 election, 18% of disabled voters nationally reported difficulty voting, about twice as many as non-disabled voters.

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In 2020, national voter turnout among disabled people was 7% lower than among non-disabled people in the same age group.

"Intuitive & secure"

was the sentiment most Los Angeles County voters expressed about the new voting system after the 2020 primary election

Conservation International is made up of conservation experts. To bolster its work, we bring a focus on scale, speed, and the human element to every project.

How does that look in the field? To restore the forest of Fiji, Conservation International paid a cash incentive to the community to buy, plant, and care for new trees and foliage. But once those cash incentives stopped flowing, the work ground to a halt. Taking a human-centered-design approach, one employee uncovered an insight: Fijians are more motivated to help in exchange for longer-term, noncash incentives like building infrastructure in villages. Small projects such as footpaths, repairs to communal trucks, beehives, or sports programs for youth continually reminded the community that the environment is a provider for their families, imparting a feeling of shared ownership in its conservation.

Stories like this, repeated around the globe, are how we hope to help Conservation International find sustainable outcomes. Our work together, including a six-month fellowship to help emerging leaders develop new capabilities, and a series of strategic, future-focused events for executives, has brought more tangibility and deeper collaboration to the organization.

Together we hope to create businesses, food solutions, and energy alternatives that conserve nature, and improve human health—because humans are a part of nature, too.

The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that we have ten years to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions or humanity will suffer devastating consequences.

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We need to conserve one third of the global ocean using area-based measures and ensure at least 75% of seafood is harvested using socially responsible, environmentally sustainable methods by 2030.

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75% of the world’s poor rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, which in turn depends on nature for pollination, irrigation, and soil replenishment.

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leaders integrated human-centered design into annual goals, project pipelines, and fundraising efforts

20%

of the organization is now involved in design-thinking projects

Fast forward to fall of last year. Adobe announces an update to its Lightroom iOS app that allows users to capture RAW photos using their smartphone camera. Slowly, I began experimenting with on-the-go editing techniques similar to those I’ve developed over time using Lightroom on desktop. Could the iPhone, with its tiny image sensor, actually be the magic gadget I craved?

I’ve long wanted to do a project that celebrates the diverse architecture of my adoptive city, and my newly augmented smartphone camera provided just the opportunity. So, I set out to answer my own question with a specific aesthetic in mind and a simple design constraint in place: I would use my iPhone, alone, for both photos and edits.

I have now captured and shared more than 40 photos—one each day since April 1st—and will continue to do so until the series tops out at 100 images. The constraints I held myself to and the consistency of daily publishing have allowed me to quickly refine and iterate the technique—an accidental outcome as happy as it was unforeseen.

As designers, we often yearn for carte blanche freedom to explore and create as we see fit. What we forget is that our best solutions often come from imposing limits on that freedom, and seeing what comes of it.

How I did it: all photos in the series are captured using an iPhone 6S, and all edits were performed in roughly 60 seconds using some black and white alchemy in the Color tab of Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile app for iOS.

Want to see more of Burton’s work? Check out this, a NATO & G8 protest he attended in Chicago in May of 2012. And this, the stations of the Moscow Metro he captured during a visit in the fall of 2015.

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When I first moved to San Francisco, I spent every free moment exploring my new locale, camera in hand, with a backpack full of lenses and a tripod. With time, however, the weight of my DSLR and pack felt more like an albatross than an accessory, and I adopted the usual photographer’s lament, yearning for a magical gadget that could output images of a quality inversely proportional to its bulk.

These days, I frame my life less as a sensible narrative with a rise and fall, and more as a series of small, densely packed moments that leave sweet and sour aftertastes. These moments are the ones I choose to draw in my sketchbooks, usually several months after they’ve actually occurred. The unimportant things, I forget. What’s left for me to draw is what matters: moments of wisdom, aged by feelings that have grown more complex and multi-dimensional over time.

Here are a few moments that have stuck with me:

Blame it on the Boba

When I first moved to San Francisco, I started dating someone—less because it made sense to date him in particular, and more because I was enamored with the idea of christening my new city with a new relationship: new city, new boy, new me! Predictably, things didn’t work out, because that’s what happens when you rush into things for the wrong reasons.

Over a year after dumping me, however, he asked me out to boba. Somehow, we ended up seeing each other again. And again, predictably, things didn’t work out. Apparently, I saw things differently the second time around. I rarely drink alcohol, but that doesn’t stop me from attributing my poor life decisions to boys touting sweet beverages.

Most People are Terrible

I met one of my best friends, Cory, over two years ago. Since meeting him, I’ve probably drawn him about ten times. A savvy reporter with a sharp tongue but a heart of gold, Cory has provided me with many invaluable nuggets of wisdom. One of the most memorable nuggets was a sobering reminder that I tend to assume the best in people too quickly.

In some cases, this just means that someone who I thought had excellent taste in clothes, music, books, or food actually doesn’t. In more serious cases, this means that I have a difficult time distinguishing charm from crazy. In any case, and particularly the latter, I keep this axiom close to my heart.

Not Assholes, Just Shibas

In 8th grade, I met a girl named Mira who is now one of my oldest and closest friends. Mira is much more charismatic and social than I am. During our younger years, I always thought were two sides of one coin: she was the outgoing and social one; I was the quiet and taciturn one.

However, a few years ago, she told me that she’s actually a total introvert. I realized two things: First, that our introversion was probably what brought us together in the first place. Second, that I had completely misunderstood one of my best friends. But that’s water under the bridge at this point. Lately, we’ve started characterizing ourselves as shiba inus, who aren’t exactly the cuddliest of dogs. But they’re not jerks, they’re just independent. Just like me and Mira.

At the end of the day, I use these moments to remind myself that I can always adapt when life doesn’t work out exactly as I expect. And if all else fails, finding humor in turbulent moments is the quickest solution for a bad day.

I’m a huge nerd. I grew up watching a lot of fantastical and post-apocalyptic anime, and I’m a former literary history student with a fondness for medieval poetry. Having spent enough time with Chaucer, Boccaccio, Satoshi Kon, and Hideaki Anno—most of whom tend to leave their audiences hanging or uncomfortable—I learned to appreciate stories with ambiguous endings. I’ve carried this same sentiment into my sketchbooks.

Imagine, for example, using parts from an eel to shock the human heart with current when it’s having a heart attack? In an exhibit called Domestic Futures at Nationalmuseum of design, Stockholm Haines showed exactly such a “product”. Goodbye defibrillating paddles, hello electric eel!

More recently, IDEO’s London studio collaborated with Haines for New Old, an exhibit at the Design Museum London. The result was “Spirit,” an AI assistant for the elderly. After working alongside Haines, we found ourselves intrigued, so we caught up with her to ask a few questions about what it means to be a budding biodesigner.

When did you first think about getting into design, and why?

When I was younger, I had many misconceptions about design that I think are still problematic today. You rarely get to see the messy, exhausting, and all-consuming guts of design work, but I think it is an incredibly engaging discipline. I got my masters in the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art, and am now undertaking PhD research at Transtechnology Research at Plymouth University.

Who are the designers, artists, writers, and thinkers that have influenced your work?

Noam Toran, my tutor on my MA course, offered many fascinating and unnerving threads of research, along with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, who promoted alternative ways of thinking. I also like Floris Kaayk (a bit of enjoyable grossness there!), who always seems to have something fascinating in progress; my close friend designer Soomi Park, who is highlighting sensitivity to emotion in artificially intelligent objects; and recently, I saw a great talk by Hyphen-labs, which probes some really important questions about design.

Tell us what you produced for the “New Old” Design Museum exhibit

For “Spirit,” I made some sculptures of potential body modifications—visualizing how a fictional company might improve sociability in the elderly. The IDEO team, including Ed White, Daniel Tauber, and Javier Soto Morras, had researched alterations that could be made to the body to send biological notifications. The work made me aware of the pressures and expectations on the elderly.

Tell us about three of your favorite projects

In 2013, I produced “Transfigurations”, which depicted babies with structural modifications. The work encouraged people to consider whether surgical procedures might offer solutions to future social and environmental problems. I think the cuteness of these sculptures made the work both disturbing and delightful. Another project, involved dissecting sculptures of anatomical parts, suggesting potential future procedures such as the removal of a cyst from a bionic eye implant. The tactile element helped this work to become a lightning rod for discussion regarding scientific research. Currently, I am developing “if you prick us do we not bleed?” about how we interact with humanoid robots by including bodily fluids. I was, of course, inspired by the famous Shylock monologue in the Merchant of Venice. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” .It's still a very powerful message about the mistreatment of those perceived as different.

What does it mean to use the body as a design medium?

All of my work is, of course, speculative. I don’t spend much time actually moving human material around, although I did once spend a very interesting day at a cadaver research laboratory! Instead I research the tools and materials that may have an impact on the body, or how we perceive the body. There are already disciplines that have to view the body as editable, and moving this way of thinking from a surgical or dental domain to a design or engineering one is where there is space for interesting interventions. There seems to be lots of interest in nanotechnology, and like many biotechnologies, this means there will be interactions with designs we can not see, but can perhaps feel, and maybe also artificial intelligence that may make design decisions for us.

Want to see more of Haines’ work? Find her current exhibits and talks here.

Agi Haines’ artwork isn’t easy on the eyes. But to her, it looks just like home. As the daughter of two South East London artists who met while working at Madame Tussauds wax museum, her childhood home was populated with wax heads, antique surgical tools, and sculpture scaffolds. Viewing the human body as raw material for design interventions wasn’t the stuff of some sci-fi future—it started as a family affair (her sister, Beatrice Haines caught the bug, too) and Haines has been working and speaking about it ever since.

A few days ago, in the middle of an impromptu content brainstorm, I noticed that my colleague had her hair tie cleverly wrapped around her belt to keep the excess tail neatly in place.

Hair ties are something many of us wear on our wrists all the time. They’re inexpensive and, while essential for those of us with long hair, they're often under valued and under utilized. My colleague's back-up belt loop is by far the smartest and most delightful use of a hair tie I’ve ever seen.

I’m particularly inspired by this because I like to repurpose unloved objects in ways that exercise creativity and expand appreciation for junk. Recently, I took an old wine-stained summer dress and coiled it around my neck as a scarf. It now lives in the scarf section of my wardrobe.

Now, I'm thinking about ways I can repurpose all the brightly colored hair ties that I don’t like to wear against my black hair. Besides belt loop reinforcement, they might just be a new way to introduce a pop of color into an outfit.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions thoughtless acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.

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In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.

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The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.

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This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that does not neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann and Becca Carroll discuss why money is emotional before it is mathematical, and what a human-centered approach to building a generative AI financial product looks like in practice.

Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes genuinely curious leadership from performative curiosity, how power dynamics shape curiosity, and why practicing curiosity can restore energy rather than drain it.

Mina Seetharaman talks with David Epstein, author of Inside the Box and Range, about why total freedom often produces average work, how leaders can design useful limits on purpose, and what organizations such as General Magic and Pixar reveal about the relationship between boundaries and creativity.