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

4

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

Many people share these same questions but are afraid to ask. They don’t want to be rude or make a misstep—which can generate more missteps and even cause harm simply due to being uninformed.

Solving this issue is exactly what IDEOer Stuart Getty set out to do with their new book, How to They/Them. Stuart, who uses they/them pronouns, wanted to create a guide that answered a lot of the questions they commonly get asked, and find a way to educate people in a friendly way. Far from being a niche topic, gender is an important part of the human experience and its landscape is ever-expanding as we learn new ways to describe our most innate identities. It’s important to realize that everyone has a gender identity—not just those whose identity diverges from traditional norms. In Stuart’s brilliant words, “Gender is for everyone and we all get to decide who we want to be in this world.”

We sat down (virtually) with Stuart and Brooke Thyng, a former IDEOer who helped bring Stuart’s story to life through illustration, to talk about the book—the role of humor in the story, the pair’s collaboration process, and why the timing of the book was so important. Read on for a peek behind their creative process.

This book approaches talking about gender from both an educational perspective, as well as through humor. Why was that balance so important?

Stuart Getty: There's a hidden audience with this book and for me, it's my mom who's in her 70s and lives in Kentucky. I think that jokes are what get her to be like, “Oh, okay! I'll keep reading.”

Stuart Getty: I think that people get really uptight when these kinds of subjects around gender are being talked about. People are worried they’re going to mess up and use the wrong words like “transgendering,” for example. What I'm saying is, I like to add a little levity, because it makes people relax into the learning process. It’s about access to the information.

Brooke Thyng: I wanted to follow Stu’s lead and make sure that everything that I created was in service of their message. So as much as I wanted to make myself laugh, as a cis-person, it was important for me to come to this project very humbly and with the utmost respect.

The whole time, we’d ask, “Is this pushing people, but in a way that's authentic and respectful, and not just doing it to be a jerk?” There's a time and place for joking around. And I think it was clear that Stuart’s message wasn't a joke, but that it needed to come across with some levity, or just some openness.

I was really conscious of finding that nice balance of, yeah, it’s not a joke and we're fighting for rights and we're fighting for exposure and visibility, but at the same time, when we take ourselves so seriously I think we block out people from coming into the message. And so I really wanted to use humor as access, and use the visuals as access.

How does this book connect to what’s going on in our society right now?

Stuart Getty: If you look at the stats for Gen Z, 35 percent of them know someone who uses they/them pronouns, and something like 20 percent of them also identify as gender neutral, even if they don't use they/them. People are stepping into these places of breaking binaries, and I think the binaries of sexuality have been crumbling over the last couple years. People are now asking, “Why do we have to be only gay or straight?”

What I also love about this book is it means cis-people get to look at their gender and the way that they've been told to be a man, a woman, an American, a human, whatever—and decide what they actually believe and what they actually want to be. And I think that is the thesis statement of the whole book. “They” is for me, and I want to explain it to you, but also, gender freedom should be for all of us.

Tell us more about what your collaborative process was like.

Stuart Getty: I came to Brooke with pages that looked like this, and then we would sit down and go page by page. I do think that I had a really good idea of the story, but it was on a level seven or eight when I turned it to Brooke, and then she kicked it up to the, “It's a 10, everyone!” She just made it such a better story.

Brooke Thyng: Stuart came with all of these pages printed out, and I would meet up with them at IDEO. We’d sit in the communal area and we'd go through the pages, and they'd be like, “Oh, I was thinking about this here. And this is sort of what I meant here.” I would just take notes and try to take it in.

I'm always so taken aback when Stuart asks me to be a part of things like this. I really felt like I was helping make the vision come to life, like I was Stuart's visual hands for this project. I just wanted to amplify the text that was written. As I read through their draft, it was an immediate, “Oh, this is what it's making me think of.” Either I am slightly out there and can just see weird images come to life, or Stuart is really good at crafting their words. I think maybe it's both.

Want to read How to They/Them and learn more about gender identity? Get your hands on a copy here, or wherever books are sold!

Animations by Louisa Liu and Devin Peek

Ever wondered what “nonbinary” and “gender nonconforming” really mean? Or if it's grammatically correct to use “they” as a singular pronoun? You’re far from alone.

A founding member of the alt-rock band Garbage, Steve Marker had generously agreed to an interview on one condition: that he could read an advance copy of my book, Two Beats Ahead, before we talked. This made me sweat, not because he was a rock star—my co-author and I had spoken to many of them while writing—but because he was the first rock star reading the book about the inventive mindsets of musicians. It was like waiting on Julia Child for feedback about the omelet you just served her.

“I’m enjoying your book so far,” Steve said. My shoulders relaxed.

I first heard Garbage on college radio in the mid 90s. The band had an unmistakable sound—a combination of shoegaze, hiphop, and electronic dance, with the pouty attitude of the Cure reinvented by a feminist fatale. It was an unexpected direction for the band given that Butch Vig, another founding member, had rocketed to fame as the producer of Nirvana’s major label debut, Nevermind. Grunge—as that Seattle sound was called—was nowhere to be found on Garbage’s debut. And it turns out, that was by design, or as Steve implied, maybe an un-design.

“You know, it was interesting reading about the intention that so many artists have had in making their music,” Steve told me. “It wasn’t like that for us. We didn't have a written-out plan or even something we really talked about that much. It was just a combination of everything that we loved.” He shared a story about Butch seeing My Bloody Valentine in New York and being blown away by their white noise and pop melodies. He mentioned Public Enemy and their gritty noise loop samples. He talked about 60s rock.

“Garbage could have turned into a totally pop thing. Or it could have turned into a noise experiment that would have been an interesting album to listen to once or twice. Luckily, we found a combination that worked for us. A lot of that had to do with Shirley [Manson], as she brought this whole other thing into the mix that we couldn't have planned. The combination of all our different influences is what the band became.”

Well, maybe there wasn’t a plan, but there was definitely a principle of designing the conditions for creativity and letting the outcome emerge from that. Steve and the band had figured out how to bring together all the things they loved, and at the same time, reject all the things that were popular in the mainstream. They chose a new path, which became their own path to mainstream success. Their debut sold 4 million copies in its first 12 months.

As I reflected upon how this happened, I was thinking about the numerous client teams that I’ve worked with under rapid deadlines and inflated expectations.“We want to be the next iPod of banking!” they say. The bygone days of Bell Labs open briefs feel like business mythology now. And yet, that was exactly the situation Garbage had. “We were lucky enough to have somebody say, ‘Okay, go make a record,’ mainly because Butch had a great reputation. We had the luxury to take as much time as we wanted to figure out what we were going to be.”

In Two Beats Ahead, Panos Panay and I interviewed Imogen Heap and Steve Vai about music and product breakthroughs they had in their own careers. We also spoke with folks at Amazon’s PillPack about launching their startup idea. What ties these stories together are mindsets of curiosity and learning. Experimentation wasn’t confined to any single part of a workflow or to particular roles. It was more like a cultural attribute, the water they swam in. For Garbage, that culture looked like persistent play. Steve illustrated this with a story about making Garbage's first record.

At the time, they were often just sampling other people’s songs to find elements they liked. During one session, he grabbed a handful of CDs looking for a beat and happened to play “Train in Vain” by the Clash. “Right there, we had a good four-bar loop to use as a click track...I put down a bass line and that was the foundation of the song right there.”

The next day, Butch came up with the lyrics:

you stupid girl
pretend you’re high
pretend you’re bored

“It can take minutes or months to make a song,” Steve continued, “and you’ve just got to stay open to letting it make its own path.”

I can imagine someone reading this and thinking to themselves, “So that’s it? The secret to innovation is to try a bunch of random stuff until it works?” But remember, this wasn’t just any band coming up with songs. This was Garbage. And this led Steve and I to an interesting discussion about team dynamics and experience.

“I guess we were lucky that we all worked with bands for 10-15 years before Garbage. We were in dozens of bands that hated each other. You learn by doing that.” He went on to talk about fluidity, respect, and vulnerability—the essential chemistry of the band.

It would be misleading to suggest that musicians somehow have a more natural ability to collaborate than others. It's not about an inherent gift. We all know the stories of a band breaking up over creative differences, sometimes with incredible public meltdowns. The reason musicians have so much to teach us is that the conditions in which they work are the ideal classroom for these mindsets.

Great creative talent is in every company, but the structures and social norms of the organizations often dictate who is permitted to collaborate. I’ve been in situations where clients have asked me not to talk to their colleagues because they didn’t trust them. I’ve seen departments make competitors of one another because they were incentivized to do so. I’ve been in buildings that have rooms dedicated to innovation rather than cultures committed to it. To get the best teams, it's often left to the creativity of the project leader to work around these organizational constructs and find the ideal contributors, no matter where they are in the organization.

Garbage set themselves up without defined roles—except for Shirley, who always sings. Otherwise, roles and contributions are left up to the person with the best ideas. “Being in a band is the most fun thing I can imagine doing. It's a dream come true from when you were a kid. And I've done it as a job, as my livelihood for a long time. It's amazing,” Steve shared with a smile.

Those words, “I’ve done it as my job,” have stuck with me because they really are the premise of Two Beats Ahead. We often don’t see the musician’s life as a job. And yet the mindsets that Steve and Garbage bring to work are the mindsets that we are regularly striving for in the corporate world. We’ve categorized the rock star life as something else. But on my best days, I’m working just like those legendary musicians, pursuing curiosity, building on new ideas with my teammates, and trying to get the video lighting just right.

Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation, by IDEO partner R. Michael Hendrix and Berklee College of Music Senior Vice President for Global Strategy and Innovation, Panos A. Pany, will be available worldwide in April.

Preorder in the U.S. here and the UK here.

Steve was supposed to be in bright colored lights on stages across the U.S. along with Liz Phair and Alanis Morrisette. Instead, he was on a video call with me, trying to find a camera angle that didn't make him look like he was in witness protection.

Yun believes the purpose of food is more than sustenance. Every dish is a cultural story and an ode to generational resilience.

Yun is one of hundreds of women entrepreneurs San Francisco’s beloved food business incubator La Cocina ( "The Kitchen" in Spanish) has supported over the last decade. Graduates from La Cocina have scaled industry barriers to establish restaurants and factories around the Bay Area, served millions of nutritious, multicultural meals, and generated tens of millions of dollars in sales. Yun’s story is one of success for one woman, but also for her family, her culture, and for a business that supports community health.

Business and community health can form a virtuous flywheel. Businesses thrive when their employees lead happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Communities thrive when the businesses that serve them support their health holistically. However, despite considerable investments in the healthcare system, the cycle has sputtered and stalled: every year, $2.6 trillion of productivity is lost to chronic disease. Businesses could play a broader role in addressing these inefficiencies and inequities, but investments in health have largely been limited to the traditional healthcare system and ignored where people live, work, learn, and play—in the space we call The First Mile of Health. By “First Mile Health” we mean making a deliberate effort to design for the patterns of everyday life that keep people well—emotionally, physically, financially, and socially. First Mile Health means creating and investing in businesses that provide compounding health benefits like intergenerational housing, food cooperatives, insurance to combat loneliness, and digital technologies that enhance trust and social cohesion.

What do we mean by the first mile? First Mile Health looks at people living their full life—not just their diet, exercise, insurance—not just things in isolation.

Animation by Claudio Fresneda

Building blocks for First Mile Health exist at the interpersonal, community, and city level.

Interpersonal: Nurture lasting relationships

The first mile of health is built on a basic human need: to relate with each other. As a species, humans rely on each other to survive and thrive. In today’s world where so much of our lives are digitally-mediated, it’s critical that our digital relationships foster mutual care and support.

If social media is the modern public square, today’s digital technology remains far from the agora of Athens or Central Park, places where people from diverse backgrounds gather and build shared understanding. Most social tech is still new in the grand scheme of things, and there's ample opportunity to develop them in a health-centered way. If we are to avoid the “social recession”—a loneliness epidemic exacerbated by COVID—digital experiences must help people spend meaningful time together, moving away from doom-scrolling and toward lasting relationships.

One positive example of this appears in IDEO data science research supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which revealed that social media posts tagged as “inspiration” strongly correlate with posts about health. This signals that health can be a unifying topic that catalyzes positive conversation and builds social cohesion. Talking about health can lift people up, motivate them, and activate them toward taking care of their own well-being, sometimes just by giving the words to describe how they feel.

Health is also strongly correlated with personal identity, especially among younger people still in the process of learning and affirming who they are. When the pandemic hit, the social innovation organization Hopelab had been working on a tool called Nod, an intervention for loneliness among young people. At first, they determined that getting young people off their devices was the top intervention for tackling loneliness—but when COVID happened, they took a step back and asked, “What are the underlying principles of social connection?” and, “How can we build a tech-mediated intervention that will catalyze meaningful social connection digitally?” Nod shifted from a tech-centered framing—get kids off devices—to identity-centered framing based on principles such as positive psychology and mindful self-compassion to equip young people with the skills to nurture meaningful connections both online and offline.

How might digital products and services better support positive self-awareness and well-being?

How might we create digital experiences that feel like being in proximity with those we love? And importantly, how might we foster connections among those we don’t already know?

How might we design policies and regulations to ensure that digital experiences create reciprocal value for people and businesses?

Communities: Support local economic resilience

An inclusive local economy supports health: grocery stores that stock fresh produce, shared bikes and scooters to help people get around the neighborhood, small businesses and local services that connect and convene community members, and more.

Co-investments build strong, resilient local communities. Organizations that share economic power with communities at the local level are, in turn, more resilient themselves. Through co-investment, organizations and communities form a virtuous cycle. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis businesses that diversified their community of co-investors were not only able to weather shocks, they were better set up to support the health and economy of the communities in which they operate in the long-run.

Businesses new and old are now taking part in a cooperative renaissance. Project Equity, a member of the Ashoka network of changemakers, is helping businesses transition to employee-ownership. Start.coop, a national accelerator for cooperative entrepreneurs, is advancing new business solutions addressing all of the social determinants of health. From creating affordable housing to increasing access to nutritious food, cooperatives have equity built into their DNA. These are examples of businesses that engage their community members beyond pure consumerism to become active decision-makers and co-designers of their local economies.

This cooperative renaissance is part of a bigger conversation to imagine a political economy that’s not centered on short-term value extraction but rather community health and wealth. From Platform Cooperative to Zebras Unite to RadicalxChange, the movement to build a new economy grounded in steward-ownership and long-term purpose is gaining momentum around the world.

How might we supercharge local entrepreneurship, starting with women and minority-owned businesses?

How might large businesses build local enterprises and steward-ownership models into their ecosystem in ways that create value for all?

How might innovations in the distributed web and decentralized governance enable alternative ownership and exit models?

Cities: Build multi-city coalitions

American cities are places of extremes: the most diverse places in the country and also the most unequal—a deadly intersection as shown by the disproportionate impact of COVID. Over the past few years, an experiment has been in the works in Stockton, California, the most diverse city in the country. For two years, Stockton’s former mayor, Michael Tubbs, gave $500 per month to 125 randomly selected residents living with low income. As the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) website describes it, “the cash was completely unconditional, with no strings attached and no work requirements.” Two years later, the data collected on the project has been released, and among other striking findings, one stands out: recipients of the funds were “healthier, showing less depression and anxiety, and enhanced well-being.” COVID demonstrated the compounding effects of an economic crisis on top of a public health crisis. In showing a way forward that solves for both, Stockton’s success story has catalyzed a coalition of mayors to launch guaranteed income pilots in 29 cities across the country. When decisions center on the diverse voices of those who live closest to the problem, cities can rise the tide and lift the health and wealth of all of their people.

Cities are effective units of change, where people could work on challenges that are big enough to matter and small enough to make things happen. When diverse partnerships of organizations rally around a shared purpose, cities become containers for collective imagination. One example of this shows up in Cities Changing Diabetes, a 36-city network advised by Gehl that conducts research, crafts strategy, and collaborates across cultures and geographies. The coalition creates neighborhood-level strategies for health that are unique to local conditions but offer lessons that can be applied across the network.

The 2020 census revealed the faces of a changing nation: a pronounced aging population and an increase in diversity among Millennials and Gen Z. Already home to eight out ten people over the age of 65, cities are the ground zero of these macro demographic shifts. Aging is a main risk factor of chronic diseases and COVID has made race-based health inequities abundantly clear. If business-as-usual persists, we will face a grave prognosis: an aging population burdened by chronic disease will be catastrophic for the American economy. The solution is as simple as it is inevitable: just as chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity are risk multipliers that devastate the economy, First Mile Health could be a resilience multiplier for both people’s health and the economy.

How might we create pathways for economic mobility for those who face the biggest barriers of systemic inequities?

How might we build trust between governments, businesses, and residents?

How might networks of cities unite across divisions and heal together?

Every business leader should see an opportunity in First Mile Health

First Mile Health is an “and” to all the work being done today. It’s shifting the mentality from fixing to designing. And we can only do that by seeing one another fully.

Depending on where you stand, you might see a different path toward First Mile Health. Healthier communities make better customers, making them and the businesses who serve them more resilient to unexpected threats such as pandemics; improved mental health and well-being generate higher levels of engagement; extended healthy lifetimes increase the talent and customer pools available to business; healthy family and work life encourages a sense of belonging, which in turn builds organizational knowledge; and lower health costs benefit all. All of these outcomes are examples of First Mile Health.

This week marks the grand opening of La Cocina Municipal Marketplace, the first women-led food hall in the country. This 7000 square foot development in the heart of the Tenderloin will give entrepreneurs who follow in Nite Yun’s footsteps an even bigger platform to innovate, while offering affordable, healthy food to longtime local residents. La Cocina Municipal Marketplace is an exemplar of First Mile Health: it serves as an inclusive gathering space for the community, a catalyst for business leadership from the ground up, and a demonstration project for health-centered economic development to inspire cities around the country.

Runners know that the first mile is always the hardest. When you start out, your body has to adjust to the new demands of physical activity. But as you run, your body adapts and the experience naturally starts to get easier. The same is true for First Mile Health: while the first mile might be the hardest, it will create many happier and healthier miles down the road. As Mark Twain said, “The trick to getting ahead is getting started.”

We wish to thank Steve Downs at Building H for his thought partnership and collaboration that helped shape First Mile Health.

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While having a bowl of soup on a trip to Cambodia, Nite Yun, who was trained as a nurse and is now the chef-owner of the award-winning restaurant Nyum Bai in Oakland, realized that eating could be a way of healing.

This is done by leveraging human-centered design as a tangible skill set for building useful products and services for diverse communities. Students are introduced to internships, professional roles, and entrepreneurial opportunities as trained professionals contributing to positive social change in the marketplace.

Color by Design (CxD) is RepresentEd’s newest fellowship program designed for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) in partnership with IDEO that is invested in transforming the boundaries of design. This program provides participants with the necessary professional development skills, mentorship, and on-the-job training to make impactful and empowering career decisions in design. Additionally, fellows will participate in seminars, workshops, and networking events that will expose them to professional designers from various fields who will share their knowledge, provide instruction on design components and support them in successfully completing CxD projects.

It is a 9-month program spanning September 2021 to June 2022.

The 9 months include a 3-month part-time professional training course (September - December 2021), followed by a 6-month paid full-time Fellowship with IDEO (January - June 2022). The Fellowship will have an opportunity to convert to a permanent full-time role after 6 months.

Update, May 6th 2022: We’d like to share our decision that we are postponing the next cohort of the Color by Design program in partnership with ReprentEd Leadership until 2023.

We are about to wrap up our pilot program and we want to take the time to debrief and learn from the experience of our current Fellows and take those inputs into the design of the next cohort. In particular, we want to consider if and how to scale the program to a broader set of design disciplines beyond design research and the impact this will have on the curriculum design, and how to best place Fellows in different communities within IDEO to ensure the most productive experience.

Based on this review, we intend to iterate on the next Color by Design program and launch it by the end of 2023. We will share more updates as we get closer to the recruitment season.

We hope that this has not caused any inconveniences and please know that we welcome your feedback and suggestions as we work to build the next version of the Fellowship.

If you have any questions, please contact cxdinfo@ideo.com.

RepresentEd Leadership builds pathways for college students of color who are harnessing their power as socially conscious leaders.

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.