Keeping diabetes in check isn’t easy. Between checking blood sugar multiple times a day, keeping a detailed activity record, and logging food intake, staying healthy can be daunting.

But a recent advance in smart diabetes management—Ascensia’s CONTOUR NEXT ONE blood glucose meter and the CONTOUR DIABETES app—can give patients more clarity and control.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE is the latest product to spring from a multi-year collaboration between IDEO and Ascensia Diabetes Care (formerly Bayer Diabetes Care). In 2009, Ascensia and IDEO developed the award-winning CONTOUR USB blood glucose meter—the first meter to plug directly into a computer, providing patients and their doctors with instant access to blood sugar data and personal trend reports.

Buoyed by the success of the first collaboration, Ascensia asked IDEO to help design a next-generation diabetes management system (and the company’s first internet-connected device).

To help reduce the stigma of checking blood sugar in public, IDEO designed the CONTOUR NEXT ONE to look and behave like today’s modern tech devices. The highly simplified, seamless system allows patients to upload blood glucose readings automatically to the app, which helps guide informed, real-time decisions. The meter’s red, green, or yellow smartLIGHT feature gives instant feedback about whether blood sugar levels are below, within, or above the target range.

Seeing contextual data, which includes physical activity logs and photos of meals, paired with recent and historic blood sugar levels, nudges patients toward healthier lifestyle choices and better control of their condition.

For doctors, the accuracy and quantity of the data combined with the app’s easy-to-read pattern views invites more comprehensive, actionable conversations with patients.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE hit shelves in Europe in 2016 and is now available in the U.S. Ascensia is poised to develop more products enabled by rich, personalized data to help people with diabetes live longer, healthier lives.

What if we could use the sky to provide alternative solutions to these problems, creating more space for living and transportation? What exciting future awaits us?

At JAXA’s Aeronautical Technology Directorate (ATD), researchers are conducting research and development on aviation science and technology for the future. They are working to affect positive impact through research like noise reduction of airframe and an integrated aircraft operation management system for disaster relief and crisis management.

Normally, JAXA begins their projects by examining the needs of the aircraft industry or comparing themselves against global technology standards. This approach often leads to ideas that are merely an extension of the current technology. JAXA needed a new approach in order to create radical ideas and real change.

The key question was: What solutions would emerge from prioritizing people’s needs over the most advanced technological possibility—taking a human-centered approach to tackling the most pressing societal challenges?

JAXA ATD voluntary partnered with IDEO to attempt to answer this question, identifying new research areas by envisioning people’s needs in the near future. Together, JAXA and IDEO developed four scenarios of future societies.

The scenarios do not necessarily focus on technologies. Rather, the focus is on telling stories that help readers put themselves in the shoes of the four personas. At the same time, the team worked with industrial designers to illustrate convincing demonstrations of the vehicles and machines of the future.

JAXA’s team embraces the belief that “technologies developed at JAXA should incorporate emotional aspects to blend seamlessly into people’s lives.” Driven by this philosophy, the visual design of the four scenarios used a friendly illustration style intended to be approachable and understandable for people of all ages.

In order to develop human-centered concepts from scratch, the IDEO and JAXA team first undertook research and inspiration-gathering. They skydived, observed cities from above, brainstormed with students from the department of architecture at Waseda University. They interviewed airline employees, a former Judo world champion, skyscraper lovers, a business producer who focuses on new working styles. Throughout the research phase, the team explored the possibilities of the sky as a “living space,” not just a place for transportation.

The team was surprised and excited when they learned from a former fighter pilot that old cockpit designs were inspired by the Japanese tea room, highlighting a historic precedent for taking inspiration from real life to inform new technology designs.

The team synthesized their research and developed several concepts, each informed by a different social issue or pressing concern. Each issue was brought to life through a fictional personal narrative.

How might we relieve city congestion and pollution using the sky, while still keeping it clean and blue? Floating public lights, a skyway that regulates air traffic, camouflaged planes that keep the sky blue—concepts introduced in this scenario were the closest to the technologies already being researched at JAXA ATD. They show us how the sky could become an infrastructure that supports our daily lives. Meet Ayame, a girl from Gunma prefecture, ready to begin her college life in Osaka.

How might we make travel feel easy for people of all ages, no matter how far they need to go? While the researchers at JAXA ATD are working to improve the mobility of aircraft, like reducing air friction or increasing the engine efficiency of aircraft, this scenario explored how people could travel door-to-door through the sky with or without aircraft. A day-in-the-life of Naoto, a 72-year-old man who commutes twice a month from Tottori to Tokyo for medical checkups.

How might we leverage the sky as a resource for reusable energy and economic growth? One of the criteria of JAXA’s R&D activities is to improve the environment. While JAXA has been focusing on “protecting” the environment, this scenario focused on “creating” new environments. A day-in-the-life of Toshi, who runs a “sky-to-table” farming business.

How might we help people live with peace of mind, even during a disaster? JAXA’s disaster relief technologies have been extremely valuable in countries like Japan, which frequently suffers from natural disasters. In this scenario, we approached the problem from victims’ point of view while exploiting the potential of a network of aircrafts and other flying objects. Here's the story of Yuri, a victim of an earthquake in Tokyo who reunites with her family after evacuating to the sky.

The purpose of the project website is not to present answers, but to introduce new directions towards an exciting future. By presenting JAXA ATD’s vision through these four scenarios, the team invited people from all industries and of all ages to participate in co-creating the future.

Just like movies, cartoons, and novels from childhood stimulate the imagination, this project aims to spark new conversation and vision for a radically different, positive future.

By illustrating and communicating a more human-centered future to a wider audience, Japan’s top aeronautical technology development agency may already be changing the future of the sky for the better.

The speed and scale of change in our world are unprecedented. As more people relocate to cities, our lives are impacted by urbanization problems such as pollution, congestion, depopulation of rural areas, resource, and energy deficiencies.

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For factory operators, a smart valve is a game-changer. It gathers data on how smoothly the system is running and feeds it to an app, making it easier to troubleshoot from anywhere. And when things get overheated, it can automatically shut down the machinery, avoiding a meltdown.

Georg Fischer (GF), the Swiss-based, B2B industrial manufacturer collaborated with IDEO to design that valve, along with a system that adds value for generations of engineers to come.

And there were some surprises along the way. When the team set out to interview customers, they learned a lot about their real needs. “We showed a customer a sacrificial concept of a smart valve and asked, what do you think about this?” says Laura Barrabia, GF’s Head of Corporate Design Thinking. “The customer answered, we don’t want your valve to be smart, we want to be smart. If GF is providing a smart valve, where is my value?”

For GF Piping Systems, these insights helped shape initial prototypes and guided the direction of the design to something that would tie parts together into smart systems and more efficient industrial facilities—a competitive advantage.

Yves Serra, GF’s CEO, recognized early on that his company needed to strengthen its customer-centricity and digital capacity, so he approached IDEO to begin shifting GF’s culture from engineering-led and procedural to customer-focused, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and flexible. That kicked off a decade-long relationship that would help GF take a design-based approach.

Learn what it means to move from being technology-driven to being truly customer-centric.

To help GF identify clients’ pain points and address them with new digital offers, IDEO proposed three “lighthouse” projects, one for each of GF’s divisions: Piping Systems, Casting Solutions, and Machining Solutions. Lighthouse projects (also called “Beacons”) are proofs of concept that light the way for an organization and help it shift its way of working.

For example, GF Machining Solutions built a prototype for an application that uses real-time data to help customers identify and fix problems in the machines, laying the foundation for truly predictive maintenance. Making data streams more transparent for customers also simplified life for the GF service engineers, who keep the machines running.

Learn how Georg Fischer is moving from hardware offerings to digital solutions.

For GF Piping Systems, the design team developed the GF Digital Line, a set of products, apps, dashboards, and other services that help customers plan, install, and maintain water and chemical piping systems. GF teams went back to customers to test several prototypes and gather feedback on the Digital Line and make sure it addressed current and future needs. They also built internal capabilities to support product development, laying the groundwork for future innovation.

Lastly, IDEO helped GF Casting Solutions escape the “commodity trap” of competing with foreign automotive suppliers. To better understand the pressures car manufacturers face, the design team explored the development cycles of two car manufacturers. They learned how challenging it is to implement solutions to reduce vehicle weight—essential for cutting fuel consumption. As an expert in aluminum die casting, GF was well positioned to help manufacturers meet that challenge, not just with quality parts, but also with digital engineering to deliver cutting-edge lightweight casting solutions, which are harder to replicate.

By the end of these lighthouse projects, GF had rolled out a global design thinking training program that had touched more than 1000 employees. After the training, employees throughout the organization adopted a new way of working and became passionate ambassadors. The enthusiasm spread from the R&D department to HR to finance and many other departments.

Today, GF has permanent design thinking and digital teams to continue this work. All three divisions aim to launch the first releases of their lighthouse projects by early 2019. And with every project, GF’s business—and solutions—get smarter about how to meet the needs of a fast changing world.

IHG’s ambition is to grow in service of its guests around the world. IHG’s Atlanta-based team had identified a major opportunity for hotels in the midscale space—a market segment known for its inconsistency.

Alongside colleagues at London-based forpeople, IDEO was invited to help IHG shepherd that business opportunity into a human one, by asking how IHG might reimagine the everyday travel experience for people relying on this category of hotel. What kind of offer might resonate equally with guests and with the owner/operators who’d need to buy into a new brand and bring it to life?

IDEO began by talking to travelers to better understand their lives, values, and needs—travelers who spend one or two nights on the road a few times every year; travelers who regularly take short trips to small cities or away from city centers; and travelers who live on the road, moving from hotel to hotel. These included court stenographers, medical technicians, consultants, conference-goers, and more.

Early research insights evolved into two distinct concepts for a new hotel brand, which were built out into two full-scale physical prototypes at IHG’s design center in Atlanta. Over three weeks, IDEO and its IHG partners led potential guests and hotel owners through each model, gathering their feedback on new formats for breakfast offerings, service details, booking experiences, and overall tone.

The investment in prototyping paid off with surprising and actionable insights. Despite wide variation in occupation and income, these guests are sophisticated and self-reliant; they know what’s out there, and they know what’s reasonable to expect. In fact, many describe a syndrome IDEO dubbed “anticipation anxiety:” the sense of dread that comes from not knowing whether a lower-priced hotel is going to be clean or safe, or provide a bed that enables restful sleep. Many have so little confidence in the cleanliness of hotels in this price range that they travel with their own packs of wet wipes.

IDEO, along with the IHG team, recognized these behaviors as an unanswered cry in the market. The purpose of the new brand crystallized around extinguishing that anxiety and rewarding guests with something much better. avid hotels exceeds its competition by doubling down on quality in just a few select areas: an extraordinary mattress; rigorously high standards of cleanliness; a focused, high-quality, grab-and-go breakfast and coffee experience; and an overall tone of warmth and straightforwardness.

These guests made clear that for trips like this, they aren’t interested in bells and whistles, or communication that isn’t frank or to the point. That led to an insight that upends an industry truism: for these guests—and there are many of them—choosing a hotel is rarely only about the price of the room. avid guests can often afford to stay in a more expensive place for a honeymoon or a vacation or a trip with friends; they’ll spend more when they need more. But for functional stays of one or two nights, it just feels wasteful. It goes against their values and their principles.

IHG and IDEO heard a clear call for a sense of focus and affordability—but never at the expense of quality. Guests should be able to access a simple booking process, rooms designed for sound sleep, and a quality breakfast, all at a fair price. And hotel owners ought to be able to deliver that experience with confidence and consistency, at costs that build a compelling case for their own business.

That’s what avid hotels is designed to deliver, every single time. Early traveler reviews have been exceedingly positive and have noted specifically the unique differentiating offers avid brings to the market.

Within a year of partnering with IDEO, IHG had issued 150 avid hotels licenses to franchisees in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and announced a development deal for 15 avid hotel locations in Germany over the next five years—a scale of success that came at unprecedented speed for the industry. The collaborative, inclusive design process is now serving as a model for how to develop robust, guest-centered hospitality brands that deliver where it matters for people.

But we recognize that convergence, too, is an opportunity for creativity. These moments can contain sensemaking—the finding of patterns or shifting of perspectives that brings your team to a new, shared understanding of what you have and what lies ahead. In making choices, you are collectively committing to a common vision of what the future could be. It can feel optimistic, unifying, and clarifying. And we know it can be extra challenging to converge when you’re not all in the same room.

I started writing this piece a few months ago, before COVID-19 forced a lot of folks to shift from working in offices to working at their kitchen tables. I’m of the mind that every meeting deserves a warm-up, and I believe it’s even more true today. If your team is working remotely, they’ll be (virtually) walking in from a greater diversity of physical and mental places (for example, perhaps they’ve only taken 72 steps today and their brains and bodies have turned to video-call-induced oatmeal), so creating the conditions for focused, convergent work is even more important.

Here are 4 warm-ups to help your team creatively and remotely converge:

1. Rank this

Instructions: Before your meeting, using a live collaboration tool, set up a spectrum (a simple horizontal line will do) in the virtual space. On the left, write “least”; on the right, write “most.” Pre-create 3-4 Post-its or colored squares per person. Place them off to the side.

To begin, have everyone type a noun in each of their stickies. Then have one person propose an adjective and add it to the top of the spectrum. (If your adjective is crunchy, your spectrum would be least crunchy on the left to most crunchy on the right.)

As a group, as fast as you can, collectively sort all the noun stickies along the spectrum of that adjective. (For example, sort all nouns according to where they fall on the scale of least to most hairy, grumpy, or miraculous). Attempting to do it all at once should feel like joyful chaos.

Pick out a new adjective and re-sort, reminding folks that anyone can move any Post-it, not just their own. Go through a few rounds until laughs abound.

Why it works: Prioritizing is a critical and challenging part of convergence. And it is made even harder when the options you are deciding between feel like they exist on diametrically different axes. This warm-up will help you get comfortable in the ambiguity that is comparing apples and oranges (or perhaps even apples and orange shoes).

2. Goodbye, hello

Instructions: Ask everyone to come prepared to the meeting with a pen and something to write on.

Before you dive into the content of your meeting, have everyone reflect on something they let go of last year and capture a quick sketch of it. Then, separately, have them draw something that was able to fill that newly open space. Have everyone go around and share their drawings by holding them up to the camera.

Why it works: Saying no can feel like the hardest part of convergence, especially when people feel ownership over or connection to the ideas on the table. This reflection exercise will help folks remember there’s power and opportunity in choosing what not to do—because it allows us to focus more energy on the things we do choose to do.

3. Object convergence

Instructions: Ask everyone to come prepared to the meeting with a pen and something to write on.

Have everyone sketch a noun—things like a stapler, a mother-in-law, a glass of water—then go around and share. Pair people up and give them 30 seconds to brainstorm and find a new noun that connects what each individual drew (for example, stapler + glass of water = anchor). Have them do this using the chat function on your video call platform. Multiple conversations will be happening in the chat. But don’t worry, that adds a laughable challenge. Once each pair finds their linking noun, have one person sketch it, then go around and share.

Pairs pairs into quads and have them repeat the process, finding what connects those new things (anchor + lemon = scurvy). Repeat until the collective group has arrived at a single object that has united them entirely. (Hint: like in a game of telephone, this will likely look nothing like any idea anyone started with.)

Why this works: The way forward may not look like choosing person A’s idea or person B’s. It may require finding a third way that draws from the best of both. This warm-up will help you avoid the Frankenstein compromise, where, rather than making decisions, the team mashes all of the ideas together, and dilutes them all to uselessness in the process. In this exercise, teams practice the skill of looking beyond individual ideas to a higher connecting goal or purpose, and collectively aligning on this new vision.

Convergence can feel heavy. This will bring a bit of levity to the process, allowing your team to find the optimism and energy to build on one another’s ideas moving forward.

4. Shake it out

Instructions: Have everyone stand up and close their eyes. Then give these directions, while doing it with them: Reaching out all around you with your hands, shake them vigorously to manifest into the space the multitude of what if’s, what could be’s, and fears of the future. Now, use a pushing motion, clear a bubble of safe, fresh air around you. All together, let’s take a deep breath in and ground ourselves in this space.

Having everyone close their eyes creates an important sense of safety. No one can look like an idiot if they can’t be looked at. Worried that people have stopped wearing pants to video calls, and won’t want to stand up in front of their camera? Have everyone turn off video first, then give the instructions.

Why this works: Our physical state is intricately connected to our mental state. So often at work we ignore our physical bodies, thinking them a distraction, nuisance, or simply irrelevant. In the world of working remotely many of us spend our working hours glued to a screen, ceasing to exist in the three-dimensional plane. Getting your body in the right place (and remembering it exists at all) will help get your mind right too.

It is not infrequent that a team gets to a point of convergence and all feels like a swirling mess of hypotheticals. This warm-up will help create the mental clarity and space to step back and find the broader picture.

Go forth and prototype

Decision-making can be hard and stressful. You’ll probably have to kill some darlings. But you don’t want your team to walk away feeling unheard because the phrase most commonly used in your meeting was “we can’t.”

If instead you can galvanize them—catalyze their creative, collaborative brains in finding and forging the path forward—you will leave with teammates bought into a future they want to build together.

Take these warm-ups and hack them, make them your own, and iterate on them. How can you prime your collaborators to optimistically say “no” to make way for “yes,” find a third way forward, and see past the chaos to clarity?

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When I say “creative meeting,” what comes to mind? What’s the energy like? What are you and your colleagues doing? My bet is that you’re imagining a brainstorming session. Generating ideas. If you’re lucky, it’s joyful, full of potential, and exhilarating. What I’m guessing you’re not thinking of? Those moments where you have to make decisions. Prioritize, say no, and shut some doors. At IDEO, we call this part of the process convergence: the refining and focusing of options to move forward with a strategic set of choices.

Many say the food system is broken. But the problems that people, the economy, and the environment suffer as a consequence of the system aren’t so much a sign that it’s broken as that it wasn’t designed to generate good outcomes for the world we live in today. We shouldn’t try to fix the existing system but rather design new structures that nourish us.

Design unites what is necessary and desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible, economically viable, and environmentally regenerative. We live in a world of intertwined, inequitable systems—food, education, health, and more—where the problems are dynamic, multifaceted, and inherently human.

By designing for adaptability, trust, dignity, and agency, we can build a more resilient food system.

Designing for Adaptability and Trust

Today’s system was designed for efficiency: We’ve built machines to harvest rows of a single crop, consolidated farms and processing facilities to achieve economies of scale, and established highly specialized supply chains.

COVID-19 has revealed that this efficient system is rigid—it can’t adapt to new conditions. People are trying to help: Grocers are buying produce from farmers and donating it to food banks, and restaurants are repackaging their bulk purchases into household meal kits. But it’s not sustainable to purchase extra food to donate or convert 50-pound bags of onions into smaller one-pound bags.

An adaptable system requires many changes, from digitization of operating systems, to more transparent data sharing, to improved distribution of food to where it’s most needed. Investment in processing and logistics infrastructure closer to farms is key, thus designing redundancy back into our highly consolidated system.

There’s also value in examining what makes the current system work and carrying these elements into a new structure. One positive enabler of today’s efficiencies is the network of trusting relationships that farmers have built over time.

Due to COVID-19 and other factors, it’s impossible to build new relationships in person. Farmers can’t travel to meet buyers. Instead, building on existing trust, farmers need innovative ways to establish new partnerships rapidly. Farm2People is helping farmers and fighting hunger by designing for adaptability and trust. The platform enables produce to be directed toward those who need it by connecting farmers to buyers and donation recipients.

• How might we design for trust in a contactless world?
• How might we look to circular economy models to rethink the supply chain?
• How might we apply technology to rapidly build relationships?

Designing for Dignity and Agency

The system’s resilience depends on the resiliency of those who power it. The essential workers who make the food system run are at the greatest risk of illness and the lowest paid. Many are people of color. Society’s racist systems—including the food system—have marginalized Black, Indigenous and people of color and left them more susceptible to the health and economic challenges of COVID-19.

The pandemic demonstrates how essential these individuals are and how tenuous their livelihoods are. Given the nature of their work, it’s impractical for farmers to maintain the social distance necessary to protect themselves, and for some employers, personal protective equipment is too expensive to provide.

Solutions have been swift and well-intentioned but short-term. Some restaurants created campaigns raising money to cover employee costs, and Portugal extended temporary residency to migrant farmers so they can access health care. Workers will need employment that can withstand advancing technologies, like automation, which will require training in a new set of skills. This is not just a food crisis but an education crisis. The interlinked nature of our systems means that solutions must have broad scopes and address multiple factors to be sustainable.

We have an opportunity to design for dignity and agency.

• How might leaders share the responsibility for worker livelihoods?
• How might we empower workers by having them design solutions for what they face?
• How might leaders help the industry become one of continuous learning to enable professional resilience?

No one knows what will happen. But as today’s system demonstrates, we know our actions will have impact for years to come. By designing for adaptability, trust, dignity, and agency, we can build a more resilient food system.

This essay first appeared in the Milken Institute’s Power of Ideas collection focused on building and rebuilding lives in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay series features insights from thought leaders across industries.

With hotels and schools closed, farmers are destroying millions of pounds of produce they can’t sell. Despite this waste, the number of people with food insecurity could rise from 130 million to nearly 300 million due to COVID-19. This estimate doesn’t address the millions whose means of making a living have evaporated. These challenges, while exacerbated by COVID-19, existed long before.

Tobin Terry: Hi, this is Professor Terry from Lakeland. I’m just checking in to see if I can help you with anything. I hope you are well!

Erica: I’ve been fine staying safe & healthy. After this semester I was supposed to apply for the RNs program since I’m finishing up stats. Can’t reach out to counseling. So maybe you can tell me how to go about that.

Tobin: Counseling is still available! You can call 440-525-7200 or email counseling@lakelandcc.edu. They’ve been working remotely either by video chat or phone call. I can hel set you up! Sorry it’s taken me awhile to get back to you, my kids are pretty much sick of each other and fight like stray cats

Erica: Please schedule me a video chat or meeting with a counselor this coming Monday or any day next week please & thank you! 😊😊

Tobin: You got it! I’ll have the details in your email!

“My approach is to just be myself—typos and all—but I'm ready with the info when the student needs it,” says Professor Terry. “Mostly, it feels like the students are just glad to hear from someone. The way I see it, if we're helping at least one student get through this crisis, it's all worth it.”

This level of student support might seem unusual, but at Lakeland Community College, it underpins everything the leadership, staff, and faculty do. For the past four years, president Morris Beverage and his team have been working with IDEO to become radically student-centered. So far, this has resulted in a more timely financial aid process, dedicated maker space, collaborative community of teachers from across the district, and improved first-year experience courses. Their aspiration is to drive resilience both within the organization and local educational system.

Many organizations are currently navigating unprecedented levels of complexity, and can’t help but feel paralyzed or wish that things will return to normal in a few months. It’s natural, when circumstances are uncertain, to delay action or downplay the implications. But what if, instead of waiting or planning for the return of “business as usual,” we used this time to redesign our systems for the better? Rather than constantly making small tweaks, we rebuild comprehensively.

Lakeland Community College is leaning into this moment, not only meeting students’ needs in a proactive way, but also discovering opportunities to redesign their student experience altogether. The following design-led strategies from Lakeland Community College lend inspiration to leaders in a moment when we sorely need it.

When their family of six is sharing a single computer with spotty Internet access, is that student going to be able to finish an online assignment on time? Leaders at the College knew that their decisions could not be made in a vacuum when they began the transition to online learning. Student engagement is a strong predictor of student retention and success, just as customer and employee engagement drives retention in other industries. But to meaningfully engage with and support students, leaders first needed to understand how students were experiencing the crisis. In addition to meeting with employees who closely interact with students, the Lakeland team connected directly with students and looked to other industries to gain deeper understanding and empathy for varied individual experiences.

Years ago, Beverage stumbled across a study on the “Enlightened Witness” care provider approach developed by Kaiser Permanente of California. Rather than primarily asking patients about their current symptoms, “enlightened” providers also inquire about patients’ lives beyond their health condition, including their current situations, past experiences, and families. If a patient says that a parent struggled with alcoholism, for example, the provider seeks to understand how this affected the person later in life. Research revealed that this care model led to measurable positive outcomes, including a reduction in doctor office visits.

The approach inspired Beverage to send out an email and video message to all students, providing them with his personal email address and inviting them to reach out to him directly. Based on dozens of responses, the team prototyped a student support program modeled after the “Enlightened Witness” program over the course of just five days—an unprecedented pace for a sector notorious for regulation and bureaucracy.

We are building this as we go and there will be bumps, but good education can’t wait. _{MORRIS BEVERAGE, PRESIDENT OF LAKELAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE}

Beverage and a small crisis response team made up of employees across Lakeland began prototyping what they called the “Enlightened Navigator” Program. (The term “navigator” originated from an existing role some Lakeland employees hold, which is dedicated to helping students navigate the college’s resources.) This core group hypothesized that by letting students know that they are cared for, Lakeland employees could gain empathy for their challenges, eliminate barriers, and better design how they serve them.

Hoping to enlist volunteers from Lakeland faculty and staff, Beverage sent out an email message and video asking them to participate in the program. This led to over 130 Lakeland employees signing up to be navigators and providing consistent personal outreach to a group of students. The program was designed to enable continuous feedback between students, navigators, and the crisis response team, so they could quickly respond and adapt as the student’s situation changed from week to week.

When Tracy Shook, Director of Marketing & Communications, reached out to one of her students, she discovered that the student was homeless. Somehow, despite everything, the student is keeping up with her online course load. Shook checks in with her regularly to see how she can offer help amid the student’s shifting and unusual circumstances, whether searching for shelter, trying to feed her family, or finding reliable Internet access. Shook recognizes that education remains critical, even in the midst of a life-or-death global crisis. For many students, reaching their goals and creating a better future for themselves is also key to survival.

The program’s design offers navigators like Shook the chance to interact with students for the first time, further facilitating an institutional shift towards student-centeredness. To support navigators, the crisis response team designed a playbook with sample questions to ask students, tactical FAQs, and other information navigators might need. Equipped with this resource and leadership support, navigators feel more empowered and confident to take action and provide meaningful care to students.

For other navigators like Gloria Lane who manages the women’s center, the program is an opportunity to develop even more empathy and admiration for Lakeland students. Lane is currently supporting a student who works as an aide at the nearby Cleveland Clinic. Through the early hours of the morning, the student sits with elderly, confused, or suicidal COVID-19 patients. After these demanding, emotional shifts, the student, with encouragement from Lane, pushes herself to flip the switch and study for an upcoming math exam.

Another navigator recently spent an hour on the phone with a student who said he felt lost without in-person classes and had been avoiding a big project on the stock market. “He had lost confidence and nearly shut down,” says Cindy Simerly, a navigator and business management professor. “But after helping him navigate the computer software and giving him appropriate tips for how to approach the project, he is back on track and believes he can do it. He kept apologizing for the time it took, but also kept thanking me.”

Like many organizations, colleges tend to delegate this type of outreach to one dedicated team. The Enlightened Navigator Program brought together employees from across the college—leadership, faculty, deans, financial aid associates, marketing team members, women’s center staff, and others—to achieve the shared goal of supporting students. This design enabled the collaboration, mobilization, and distributed leadership needed to spark a student-centered mindset throughout the college.

We’ve seen how this collaborative approach can benefit other organizations: At Ford, for example, teams from human resources, legal, and manufacturing are currently working together and focusing on people as they prioritize worker protection and safety when reopening their factories.

Every student should have a somebody, especially in the current state of the world. _{CHRISTINA CORSI, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES AND CAMPUS ENGAGEMENT}

So far, Lakeland has actively engaged and supported over 600 students. But their work doesn’t stop at graduation. “The core group realized that we should continue this [program] into the fall,” says Christina Corsi, Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives and Campus Engagement. Navigators are focused on supporting their students through the summer and into the fall, doing everything they can to help students make it to day one of fall semester classes. The program has been so successful that Lakeland is planning to integrate aspects of it into the new student orientation. For example, employees will now proactively reach out to new students with personalized messages of support as a part of orientation.

Lakeland’s four-year journey to becoming more student-centered has made them better able to listen, experiment, and quickly adapt to whatever comes their way. This is the type of flexibility and resiliency required to not only respond to a pandemic, but to inspire the redesign of a dated system that’s currently creating barriers for enrollment and degree completion.

“Through this program, we designed and lived in the kind of organization that we want to forever be: collaborative, empathetic, and experimental—all the things that student-centered higher education institutions should be,” says Leah Hartmann, Executive Assistant to the President and Special Projects Lead. “We saw a glimmer of what’s possible and now know it can be done.”

Illustration by Kim Salt

Texting a student who is not in his class just to ask how they’re doing was a first for Professor Tobin Terry. The English professor at Lakeland Community College is part of the Enlightened Navigator Program, a new effort to support students during the coronavirus crisis.

From New York to Nairobi, educators, parents, and students have been finding ways to keep on learning. Many of the creative workarounds that have emerged in response to the pandemic are more than Band-Aid solutions; they are postcards from the future. Hidden within these adaptations are clues to how education might evolve.

The pandemic has both surfaced new needs and exposed the brokenness of our existing system. As designers who bend towards optimism, we view these needs as opportunities to build back better. We aren’t blindly optimistic, of course. Systems that work well for some and not for others didn’t get that way by accident—they were designed that way and could be reinforced if we aren’t purposeful.

We also know that there are many people out there who are already thinking about possible solutions, so we put out an ask to those doing the work to reform education: How might we adapt to remote learning while also using this moment to radically reimagine what we need our education systems to be?

In just three weeks, we received nearly 450 responses. We heard from parents and students, but also architects and entrepreneurs, whose insights you’ll read in the quotes below. A panel of high school students reviewed promising submissions, and top ideas will receive support from HundrED, Sesame Workshop, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, TED-Ed, and IDEO to bring them to life. But in the meantime, we were too inspired not to share some of the early ideas with you.

1. Equity will no longer be an afterthought

“When learning from home, not all students have equal time or space to focus on their classwork.” —Kristen Myers, Communication Designer, Chicago, IL

The pandemic has amplified existing equity gaps and brought new ones into stark relief. Simply put: when students are less visible, it’s easier for them to simply disappear. And if a student’s house doesn’t have reliable internet, it doesn’t matter how much they show up ready to learn—the barrier to success is structural. Instead of trying to rectify inequities after they emerge, schools must proactively make decisions that serve students proportional to their needs.

We were particularly inspired by some ingenuity from countries where access to technology is less reliable. The country of Panama, for example, crowdsourced lessons from its best public school teachers and broadcast those classes on national TV. For the last five minutes of each lesson, a special ed instructor explains adaptive techniques for families whose kids have special needs.

By sharing lessons on television, over 6 million students across Panama had access to the country’s best teachers. Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean leveraging the latest technology. Panama’s approach meets students’ needs at scale. In the future, being radically inclusive will be the norm, not the exception.

2. The “classroom” will be everywhere

“Arts centres, museums, libraries, forest schools, universities, they could be used to accommodate small cluster groups (same children and teacher at all times) to help spread the school population across venues in communities.” —Nia Richards, Learning Experience Designer, Wales, UK

With no vaccine yet in sight, returning to a physical campus in the fall is a daunting challenge. But hidden within the challenge to adapt to this new normal hides a larger truth: Schools’ biggest constraints are their own walls.

What if we saw this not as a space constraint but a space opportunity? When you expand the boundaries of the classroom, there’s almost limitless untapped potential. In response to our ask, we received dozens of innovative uses of physical space. From garden classrooms where students can learn from their natural environment to virtual classrooms that connect students from around the world, expanding our perspective on where learning can happen broadens how and what we teach. And when students learn in the context of the real world, they’ll be better equipped to solve real-world problems.

3. Students will manage their own schedules

“The schedule ... It's archaic. It's inflexible. It no longer works in today's society.” —Kevin Varano, High School History Teacher, Lancaster, PA

For the past few months, we’ve all been living in a time warp. Days pass in blinks. Weeks last for months. The markers of time seem arbitrary. But the same was true for students before the pandemic—the school day, school year, and division of subjects are all constructs. The fact that the school day ends at 3pm and has a three-month summer holiday may work for families who can afford childcare and camp, but not for families who can’t. The rigidity of school schedules is a structural barrier to equity.

Then there’s the schedule of the school day. Josh Stern, a rising senior in high school from New York, believes a lot of his work was limited by the demands of the standard school day. During quarantine, he’s been able to do his work when he’s feeling most energized and take mid-day meetings with professionals in fields that he’s interested in pursuing.

During this crisis, students like Josh have been managing their own time while balancing school with hobbies, work, and family care. It will be hard to pull that flexibility back. It’s time for schools to adopt flexible schedules that better meet the needs of students.

4. Schools will support families rather than just the other way around

“Parents (such as myself) became involuntary Teaching Assistants overnight when schools closed. We had no preparation, no experience and, frankly, no clue as it came to teaching.” — Erik Mooij, Parent, Utrecht, Netherlands

If we have learned anything from the past few months, it’s just how hard teaching can be. Families are developing an intimate understanding of all that goes into helping their children learn—and schools are developing an intimate understanding of how ill-equipped they are to help families serve their children. In the future, schools will rethink how they can better support families.

Take Kidappolis, a bilingual learning app that helps families stay engaged in their children’s education through SMS-based updates. When parents are empowered to help their children, not only will families become more invested in their children’s success, but learning outcomes will improve too.

5. There will be new measures of success

“Using standardized tests to evaluate schools exacerbates inequity & distorts educational purpose.” — Hi Howard, Nonprofit Executive Director, Denver, CO

For years, test results have been the metric that matters for teachers, students, and schools. But during the pandemic, the outsized importance of grades, tests, and attendance has paled in the presence of greater needs—like whether a student has a computer to use or enough to eat. We’ve seen how, for students, school and life are not separate entities. It's hard to focus on finishing an assignment when you have to watch over your baby sister. That will hold true on the other side of this global pandemic.

For far too long, we’ve relied on proxies for what students know—courses completed, grade level, and test scores—rather than giving students an opportunity to show what they know. Moving forward, we’re encouraged by competency-based approaches to assessment that reward a broad definition of growth.

We’ve been blown away by the innovation borne out of the constraints of the pandemic. Schools around the world have tapped their communities to buy and distribute hundreds of thousands of laptops to students in need. Remote learning plans that could have taken districts years have been implemented in weeks. Teachers have found ways to bring creativity, joy, and levity to this heavy moment.

Though everyone is rapidly adapting, systemic change is far from guaranteed. Ensuring that student- and family-centered solutions stick will require following the lead of those doing the work. Educators, families, and students have ideas for how to reimagine the future of learning. Let’s use this time to listen to their voices.

Learn more about OpenIDEO’s Reimagine Learning Challenge here. You can also sign up for Challenge updates here.

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In two months, the world of education has shifted faster than it has in the past 200 years. Seemingly overnight, nine out of every ten students in the world were sent home. Elementary school students missed their friends. High school seniors missed prom. College students missed graduation. Teachers lost their classrooms. Parents lost their childcare. One thing not missing, however, was innovation.

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.

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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.

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