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

This toolkit guides you through design thinking so you can start coming up with solutions to everyday challenges within the library. Design thinking, or human-centered design, is all about starting with people—the users that visit your library.

IDEO has been using similar methods to envision new products, services, spaces, and experiences that bring them to life. IDEO created this toolkit specifically for the library setting and is looking forward to seeing how you might create impact by seeing your work through a fresh perspective: the design thinking lens!

Learn more here.

Design Thinking for Libraries is an approach to improving libraries through creative problem-solving.

Apparently I’m not the only one. Aya Jaffar’s exploration, “Introvert at IDEO”, reveals that I am healthier and far less freakish than I ever could have dreamed. As an intern, Aya took on the task of asking her fellow IDEOers how they embrace their introversion in such an extroverted environment.

IDEO is filthy rich with fascinating people. Every week we have stimulating lunch-hour talks and raucous happy hours. Our office is the ultimate embodiment of an extroverted workspace. We think out loud! We brainstorm together! We eat in teams! We have walk and talks, just like in The West Wing!

That’s all well and good for about half the population. But the best work cultures make space for those of us who seek occasional refuge from the chatter.

Here are a few comforting things I learned from Aya’s “Introvert” piece:

There's a spectrum
Carl Jung was a pretty smart fellow. He suggested that everyone falls somewhere on the Introvert <---> Ambivert <---> Extrovert scale, so none of us are purely one thing or another. Big Bird? Michelle Obama? Your bus driver? Probably all extroverts with introverted traits. Just like me.

Introverts recharge with solo time
Introverts aren’t shy! They’re exhausted and they need to step away from others to think things out or recharge. That’s also why they have monstrously large noise-cancelling headphones on. Always.

They've got skillzzzzz
While extroverts’ positive qualities are easy to identify and praise, we should be quick to notice the greatness and strengths of introverts too. They are world-class listeners, thoughtful synthesizers, and often gifted at lifting others up. They also thrive when working independently so they can get just about anything done if you leave them alone for a bit.

Introverts need thoughtful workspaces
While our colorful, collaborative work style might suggest otherwise, our office actually considers introverts more than we know. We have phone booths built for one, the hushed Lighthouse workroom, enclosed project spaces, and breakout couches that allow anyone to focus in a way that works best for them. Plus, IDEO expects us to manage our own space and schedule, allowing us the freedom to work from home on occasion without ever being judged.

So bring on that big dinner! And some wine! And a cheese platter!

You’ll find me in the bathtub, gearing up for tomorrow.

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Hi. My name is Tal. I have to go home and hide in a bathtub. That’s not exactly a socially acceptable thing to say at a client dinner, but as an introvert in extrovert’s clothing, the thought has scurried through my head many times.

OpenIDEO is an open innovation platform where people from all corners of the world collaboratively tackle some of the toughest global issues through launching Challenges, programs, and other tailored experiences.

A Challenge is a three-to-five month collaborative process that focuses attention on the topic and creates a space for community members to contribute and build off each other. This approach is modeled on IDEO's design thinking methodology.

You can learn more about it here.

Active Challenges

Beyond the Bag Challenge

The Beyond the Bag Challenge, launched in partnership with Closed Loop Partners and leading retailers, seeks to identify, test, and implement innovative new design solutions that serve the function of today’s single-use plastic retail bag. Winning Ideas are eligible to receive a portion of $1 million in funding, participate in a Circular Accelerator program to receive further assistance in scaling, and access testing and potential piloting opportunities. Find out how you can be involved in the Beyond the Bag Challenge and sign up to receive email updates‍

‘Agents of Change' Atopic Dermatitis Challenge: Navigating Uncertainty

The ‘Agents of Change' Atopic Dermatitis Challenge: Navigating Uncertainty aims to find creative ways to help people with atopic dermatitis navigate through the ambiguity surrounding the condition with confidence while building awareness and empathy among those around them. Sign up to receive email updates and join the Challenge starting on September 14 to help change the way people think and feel about atopic dermatitis.‍

The Food System Vision Prize

The $2M Food System Vision Prize is an invitation for organizations, institutions, companies, governments, universities, and other entities across the globe to develop a concrete and actionable Vision of the food system that they aspire to see in the year 2050. Together, we’re seeking answers to the question How might we envision regenerative and nourishing food futures for 2050? $2M will be distributed to the Top Visionaries, who will be eligible to receive a prize of $200,000 each.

Intrigued? Read about the many ways to be involved in the Food System Vision Prize and sign up to receive email updates.

1. "85 percent of cancer can be cured in the next five years."
—Dr. Sanjay Patil

The health care industry missed the PC and internet revolution, but they won't miss the big data and analytics revolution, said Dr. Sanjay Patil, chief medical informaticist at MDLIVE, and John Sculley, a board member. According to the American Medical Association, 75 percent of in-person visits could be handled virtually. But they cautioned that it took 10 years for people to get comfortable with online banking and ATMs. Still, Patil and Sculley believe genomics and precision medicine will trigger massive shifts sooner than we might think, and had some very hopeful predictions. —Betsy Fields Smith, senior design and research lead

2. Robots would be smarter if we didn't interrupt them.

If we want robots to learn from us, we have to design them with the human capability of expressing their intent and emotion said Panellists Leila Takayama, senior UX researcher, Google[x]; product designer Nuri Kim, Fellow Robots CIO Thavidu Ranatunga, and Stanford Center for Design Research executive director Wendy Ju spoke about

For example, a robot often learns that a door is a door by staring at it for hours on end. If a person walks in front of a robot while it is learning, this can compromise the training session and hours of work. We need to design careful and intuitive indicators as to what state robots are in. If, for example, a robot was learning by staring at a door while scratching its chin or tapping its forehead, it would serve as a reminder to not interrupt their lesson.

This relates to work we are doing with autonomous vehicles. We will need to develop a new vocabulary of mobility through which vehicles and people can communicate. What sort of cues, both subtle and bold, have we come to expect drivers that help you anticipate their behavior? How might we thoughtfully design some of these cues into autonomous vehicles to make the future safer and more intuitive to move through? —Danny Stillion, partner/executive design director

3. The Jetson’s-style kitchen of the future is here.

The "kitchen of the future" technology exists and there are businesses being built upon it right now. We heard why in a panel called "From Palate to Plate: Defining a Taste Platform." It was framed as a panel about food data, but spoke more to how we interact with food today and might do so in the future, including replacement cycles for appliances, the lack of a portable “taste profile”, and so forth. We're thinking about these things at IDEO, too. Check out the Concept Kitchen 2025, work we collaborated on with IKEA.

While we've realized much of the Sputnik-era vision of the kitchen of the future, there's a fourth circle—system interconnectivity—that we need to start to consider. —Justin Massa, director of business strategy

4. Data will reform our criminal justice system.

What does the rise of information design for a complex social problem such as criminal justice reform look like? There is a growing movement to use open, public data for political advocacy and reform. And yet, even with a wealth of data, we’re unable to design for more accurate, immediate, and actionable ways of using it.

This panel, made up of experts and innovators using data for policy reform and program development said the most vulnerable in the system—offenders and their families—could benefit from the use of more transparent and actionable data, such as preventing false confessions in interrogation or exonerating prisoners from false convictions with DNA testing. They also spoke about the power of predictive policing in cities, and protecting those who are re-entering civilian life with data privacy so that they can secure a job or a loan. —Yennie Lee, impact manager, IDEO.org

5. Virtual Reality may change your beliefs.

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of hype around VR at SXSW. But outside of finding a second home outside gaming, the use cases I'm most excited about are empathy building, and overcoming trauma. VR can deliver sophisticated, deep storytelling that stays with you. It puts you very close to being in someone else's shoes.

Planned Parenthood is doing just that, showcasing its seven-minute film "Across The Line", which follows one woman's journey from her car to the abortion clinic as she confronts a sea of pro-life protesters. Some footage is live action, some animated, but the audio is a live recording from outside a clinic in Illinois. It’s upsetting. And it may just change someone's mind on this issue. —Karoline K, communications designer

Huge thanks to Karoline K for the illustrations in this story.

President Obama, the hyperloop, Wired's Kevin Kelly, Microsoft's HoloLens, Twitter's Biz Stone and, wait for it... Pee Wee Herman! Among the thousands of conversations at SXSW, it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise, so we asked IDEO's SXSW speakers to share their greatest hits. What they came back with—robots, genomics, VR, criminal justice, privacy—proves that design is going places it's never gone before.

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.