For the socially-conscious, investing can be a tricky proposition. The same people who wish to vote with their wallets may find that their options for investment funds and 401K plans are rife with companies that violate causes they believe in. So far, there have been few options in the marketplace that give consumers the opportunity to put their money in financial products that not only cut out environmental and social offenders, but actually contribute to the well-being of the environment and society.

Dave Fanger, a financial professional, was determined to design a solution. He approached IDEO to help create a startup venture for socially-conscious investors. Pacific Life, a Fortune 500 financial services company and Fanger’s employer at the time, offered the resources to develop and launch the idea. The online impact investment platform gave consumers the opportunity to invest in high-growth industries that are addressing global, environmental, and social challenges. Swell rigorously screened companies for both impact and performance, so consumers could be confident that their investments were in line with their values.

A holistic approach

Embedded as core team members, IDEO designers worked alongside Swell’s founder to shape the company. In just one year, they went from an initial concept and prototype to an SEC-registered investment adviser with a fully developed business model, a digital platform with initial investors, and well-defined branding that set the look and feel of the values-driven company. The IDEO team helped to hire the initial team of employees, working to ensure that the fintech startup would have the creative talent it needed to operate post-launch, as well as a defined culture that would help it grow.

A new investment platform

From the outset, it was important for the team to build an innovative, digitally-fluent, and customer-centered platform to make it easy for investors to back causes they care about. Working in close collaboration with software development partner Carbon Five, Swell and IDEO committed to act nimbly, take risks, move fast, and ditch decks for prototypes. Understanding the motivations of the investor—their values and what drives their investment decisions—was key, so the team leveraged IDEO’s network to form a consumer council, which helped to quickly iterate and refine prototypes throughout the duration of the product development process. Having that core group involved every step of the way made it easy for the team to keep consumers at the center of the design and validate key decisions quickly.

Swell offered consumers portfolios of companies that work to solve some of today's biggest challenges. The six impact portfolios offered were: green tech, renewable energy, zero waste, clean water, healthy living, and disease eradication.

As of June 2019, Swell had attracted over 15,000 investors⁠—more than half under the age of 34⁠—and $35 million AUM. Nearly 40 percent of investors were making investments on a recurring basis.

Learning to code isn’t just about knowing symbols and syntax—it can help unlock kids’ imagination by inspiring them to build new things and interact with everyday objects through discovery and play.

With that in mind, Google Creative Lab came to IDEO to help with user experience and product design on their new coding tool for children. The result of the collaboration, Project Bloks, is a simple and interactive experience that teaches kids how to code using physical blocks. This establishes a new paradigm for learning computer science: it takes a language typically only understood through screens and keyboards, and makes it tangible.

Project Bloks was also designed as an open hardware platform, enabling developers and educators to build tangible programming applications that are innovative, educational and fun.

Kid-centered design

From the very beginning, how kids physically play and learn were at the center of the project. Designers quickly iterated using sketches, foam core, paper, Play-Doh, and 3D-printed models to see how slight changes informed children’s experiences. Understanding what deepened kids’ engagement, increased their curiosity and changed their behaviors drove the language, taxonomy, architecture, and physical form of Bloks.

Because play and physical building is an important way in which many kids develop skills, designers began with a set of blocks and sought to help them discover coding through tangible objects. Each block was given a specific function and shape, guiding kids to arrange, combine, and rearrange the blocks to create commands and control things like robots or speakers in the real world. Children could also create block patterns together by physically building on each other’s ideas.

An inside look at the design process. Video by Google.

Designing for early learners also forced the team to rethink how a new language could be taught. An early version of the blocks was based on how programmers typically code, from top to bottom. However, the team quickly realized that the orientation had to be driven by the child’s natural instincts. Given young children are just learning to read from left to right, designers observed that the switch in directions was too confusing and changed the arrangement of Bloks commands to go left-right in addition to top-bottom.

The final outcome of Project Bloks was an interactive coding kit comprised of three key parts - pucks, baseboards and a brainboard. The puck is a critical component that controls a command, whether it’s an on/off switch or the ability to move in a particular direction. It’s the piece that enables children to move from words to the world of graphics and play. The puck is easy to produce and can take an unlimited range of forms and functions, enabling the Bloks system to scale.

The baseboard reads the puck’s instruction and is activated when a puck is placed on top. The brainboard provides the power and connectivity. When hooked up to a baseboard or a chain of baseboards, the brainboard sends the instructions—turn left, jump, get louder—to a connected object, like a rocket or a speaker.

The boards can be rearranged, sequenced, and packaged however kids like, opening up a vast realm of possibilities. Children can code anything from a toy robot drawing a shape on a piece of paper, to a sensor turning on a fan when the temperature gets too high.

Enabling innovation for education

Beyond a tangible coding kit, what makes Bloks unique is that it’s an open platform. Educators, developers, and designers can build on it to accelerate new ways of teaching and exploring tangible programming. The platform can fit into various curriculums around the world. The pucks can take on different shapes and graphics. The material used can be fabricated by 3D printing.

The Bloks platform is a new vernacular that allows kids to interact with the language of code in a way that’s less prescriptive and more open-form, like a sandbox. And the more kids play with Bloks, the more opportunities they discover for what they can create with a little bit of code.

For students who are the first in their families to pursue higher education, navigating college can often feel like navigating a foreign country. Challenges like not having enough money or poor access to support services can make graduating an insurmountable hurdle. In fact, only 55% of these students in the United States end up completing their degrees.

To help change this statistic, IDEO partnered with Beyond 12, an organization that provides personalized, virtual coaching to first-generation college students to help them learn how to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and much more. The challenge was to scale Beyond 12’s successful coaching model using technology in order to benefit as many students as possible.

In 2014, IDEO designed the MyCoach app, with the goal of helping students take ownership of their education and feel in control of their future. After the early version of the app was named as a finalist in the prestigious Robin Hood Foundation College Success Prize, Beyond 12 piloted the product with 3,500 college students across the US. Following the pilot, Beyond 12 and IDEO went back to work, using the resulting insights and data to design the next evolution of MyCoach.

First and foremost, IDEO sought to develop a more flexible model for Beyond 12 to enable scalability of the offering. As some students need more support than others, a blended business model was envisioned to recognize the spectrum of students’ needs. Engaging in-app content forms a supportive layer that helps students get organized, stay on track, and learn the skills they need to stay in college, while students who need more hands-on assistance can connect directly with coaches. An invisible data layer works behind the scenes to assess student risk and dynamically tailor student support throughout the school year.

Once the app’s model was solidified, creating a user experience that compels students to use it became essential to its efficacy. Growing up with technology has reshaped how many students engage with the world, and tools like Snapchat have set a new dynamic for participation. Youth today are the masters of their own digital worlds, fluidly jumping between conversations, engaging with stimulating content and contributing their own perspectives. As a result, MyCoach needed to speak students’ language and to create content that was authentically youthful and effective in order to be effective. By drawing inspiration from popular social sites, digital experiences and games, the team designed a user experience that keeps pace with a digitally native state of mind.

IDEO Designer, Isabela Sá explains the approach that led to MyCoach’s design and content strategy, “We created an app that makes no distinction between content and utility. We borrowed the content-first approach of social apps like Snapchat and Instagram and used it to teach students the skills and strategies they need to graduate. With that, the digital experience became more human. The intricate system that we had designed to power the whole thing was hidden below the surface. For students, the app was just the means to learn how to help themselves and get in touch with a coach when they needed one.”

Development is underway for the next version of MyCoach, which will allow Beyond 12 to scale its offering to reach exponentially more students in need.

Coca-Cola is one of the world's most iconic brands. More than 5,000 people work at its global headquarters in Atlanta.

Back in 2010, Coca-Cola found itself at a major crossroads. As the company grew, it became clear that in order to stay competitive, any kind of campus renovation would have to take into account a vision of the future of how people work at Coca-Cola. Before the company hired architects, they came to IDEO to help design this important part of their 2020 vision strategy; ultimately the redesign would change the way the company works, plays, and profits.

Imagery courtesy of Coca-Cola, Gensler, and IDEO

1. The Plant, 1400 W 46th St, 773-847-5523, plantchicago.com

It’s urban agriculture and food business incubation at its finest. This net-zero-energy Southwest side building defies all Midwestern norms with vertical farming, aquaponics, and small-batch kombucha brewing.

Weekends offer farmers markets featuring the building’s tenants (think: kombucha, cheese, pasties, and produce) as well as behind-the-scenes tours.

• Hood: Back of the Yards
• Will set you back: $10 for a tour
• Don't leave without: buying Pleasant House Bakery mushroom or chicken pasties and checking out the aquaponics setup

2. Baker Miller Bakery & Millhouse, 4610 N Western Ave, 773-654-3610, bakermillerchicago.com

An outstanding slice of pie is hard, though not impossible, to find. A self-taught miller who uses only the best organic grains he can source from his network of farmers and prefers building a local community to garnering national attention? Not so common. Owners Dave and Megan Miller (yep, it was meant to be) just might be at the forefront of a new food movement. And with a Beard nomination under their belt, we're not the only ones who think so.

• Hood: Lincoln Square
• Will set you back: $5 for a slice of pie or less than $10 for an entrée
• Don't leave without: trying at least two types of pie

3. Few Spirits, 918 W Chicago Ave, Evanston, 847-920-8628, fewspirits.com

Chances are Chicago isn’t the first city that comes to mind when you think "craft spirits," but it's actually a hotbed of Midwestern distilling. Located in a nearby suburb, Evanston’s Few Spirits makes and sells bourbon and rye whiskey, American and barrel gin, and, occasionally, the infamous wormwood-based liquor, Malört. Wind your way through a back alley to this modest spot on Saturdays for tours and tastings; just make sure to sign up in advance.

• Hood: Evanston
• Will set you back: $10 for a tour, more for a bottle
• Don’t leave without: spending some quality time in the tasting room

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We spend so much time scavenging other cities for inspiration, we sometimes forget that our own backyard is chock-full of places that reflect Chicago's true grit, gusto, and occasional grace. Follow our lead to experience some of the best spots in town.

In reality, I was nervous. The machine was sealed behind an air-tight door with thick safety glass and emergency warning lights. And some of Dr. Newberg’s preparatory questions had been a little unnerving:

“Have you ever had a pot explode while you’re cooking?” he’d asked. He was concerned I might have some residual fragments of metal in my eye. “In the magnetic field, it would tear through your eyeball.”

I lay back and stared at the ceiling. The fluorescent light panels had been fitted with transparencies showing a blue sky framed by cherry blossoms. I appreciated the attempt to cheer the patient up, but the image looked so radiantly perfect that it made me think about the afterlife.

There's nothing wrong with you, I told myself, this is just a psychology experiment.

I shivered. The machine’s giant doughnut was filled with liquid helium, supercooled to 450 degrees below zero. Dr. Newberg draped a white sheet over me, which added warmth, but made me look like a corpse. Then he retreated to the control room. I heard his voice in my headphones.
“Ready to go?”

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Read the rest of Neil's post on Medium.

I climbed onto the narrow bed that jutted out in front of the MRI machine. “How do you feel?” asked Dr. Andrew Newberg, the neuroscientist in charge of the experiment. “Great!” I said over-brightly, like I was about to receive a spa treatment rather than a brain scan.

1. Ditch the Plan

Don't try to build a 20-year plan—or even a two-year plan. The world is changing too fast. Figure out what you’re interested in right now and what the most interesting opportunities are in front of you and pursue those. —Aaron Ferber, Mechanical Engineer & Portfolio Director, @ IDEO since 2007

2. Just Do It

Don’t be paralyzed by making the “right choice.” Just make some decisions. While you’re working on one thing, don’t stop looking for your next thing. Don’t wait for others to offer you opportunities. Create your own stepping stones. —Erin Henkel, Service Design Portfolio Director, @ IDEO since 2006

3. I.D. Your Obi-Wan

Find someone you admire and follow his or her advice. —Andrew Burroughs, Mechanical Engineer & Partner, @ IDEO since 1992

4. Make Like Magellan

Make time to travel. It might be a cliché, but getting out of your own culture makes you more mindful and observant. You question everything you once took for granted. When my own children are trying to figure out what direction to take their lives next, I tell them, "Take out your passports. It’s time to book a trip." —Tim Brown, CEO, @ IDEO since 1987 (before it was IDEO)

So, young designer, you have your degree and now you have our advice. Time to bravely leap into your career with both feet and an open mind. Or, in the words of the ever-wise Yoda: "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

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When you're fresh out of school, your career possibilities can seem endless. So endless, in fact, it can be hard to know where to start. We feel you. We’ve been there. To help you enter the brave new world of design feeling a bit more surefooted, we asked a few of our most senior creatives—even our CEO (!)—what piece of advice they’d share with their younger selves. With over 75 years of professional experience between them, we think they know a thing or two.

I went back and stared: Inside what had been a pothole the size of a dinner plate, someone had constructed a beautiful mosaic of an iris.

The symbolism hit me hard: Here was an example of how someone could take a bad thing and turn it into something of transcendent beauty. Instead of complaining about my bad day, I should be looking for an opportunity to make something great. Or as the slogan goes, “When things fall apart, make art.” Once I’d spotted this one transformed pothole, I noticed more of them around Chicago, and resolved to track down the mysterious mosaic artist who was seeding the city’s broken streets with beauty. I’d like to tell you that my quest was long and heroic, but, in reality, all I did was type “Chicago pothole art” into Google.

The name it threw back at me was Jim Bachor. I emailed him, and soon we were chatting.

How did you get into mosaics?

I went to Europe in the late '90s, and saw Paris, London, and Rome. That trip changed my life: It gave me a passion for ancient history. I started traveling in Greece and Turkey, checking out ancient sites, and saw that the art that survives is the sculpture and the mosaics. The mosaics got me going, particularly in Pompeii. I saw that glass and marble do not fade. That thought has driven my work ever since. I took a course in Ravenna, near Venice, and learned how to make mosaics in the ancient, tedious, and expensive way. Back in Chicago, I started making them on the side as a hobby, while working as a designer at an ad agency. Then, in August 2011, I was laid off and I decided to pursue art full-time.

What led you to potholes as sites for art?

The street outside my house was beat up. There was this one pothole that refused to stay fixed. I thought it might be funny to solve this problem. So I did it one night. I was very paranoid: I felt like I was too old to get arrested. And it wouldn’t be a good example for my kiddies. So I didn’t even claim ownership of it, at first. But then, a buddy of mine started spreading the word. And from there, it went viral.

Do you do it during daytime now?

Yes. I wear orange reflective gear. And have cones. I started off with my boys’ orange soccer cones. Now I have industrial, two-foot-tall cones. I look like a city worker who's spending way too much time on one pothole. I’m not trying to fool anyone: I’m just trying not to be hit.

What about passers-by?

I don’t really make eye contact with people and they mostly ignore me.

I look like a city worker who's spending way too much time on one pothole.

JIM BACHOR

What else have you done with the mosaic form?

I did a super realistic "Snack Chip" series. It’s kind of funny to see a snack chip rendered in an ancient medium. For the Cheetos one, I carbonized some Cheetos, and then mixed the black powder into the mortar. The artwork truly has essence of Cheeto in it.

See more of Jim Bachor’s mosaic art at bachor.com.

One afternoon, I got on my bike to leave our Chicago office after a really bad day. It was one of those times when it feels like everything you touch falls apart, and I was in a hurry to get home and lie down in the dark. I rode through the West Loop neighborhood and turned right to head north on Green Street. But then something passed by beneath my front wheel that caused me to stop and turn around.

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.