For more than 40 years, Sage has helped businesses of all sizes navigate complex business environments. While many of its larger customers have the means and the structure to support climate initiatives, many of its smaller customers do not.

Sage wanted to help its SMB customers get ahead of future climate regulations and meet consumer expectations. And building carbon-footprint evaluation and mitigation tools would also dovetail nicely with Sage’s own climate aspirations: cutting its own emissions in half by 2030. Together, Sage and IDEO investigated how the company could leverage the data in its platform to calculate its customers’ emissions, both direct and indirect, and how that information could spur action as they aim to hit net zero.

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To get started, the design team went deep with customers running all kinds of businesses—from a taxi company to a champagne bar to a falconry center. Business owners shared that their focus often has to be on the day-to-day, a series of small decisions that, when added together, lead to business success. For many, tackling a problem as complex as climate change felt overwhelming. IDEO and Sage synthesized those insights and began working across verticals and products, bringing together experts from marketing, technology, sustainability, and operations to build out new concepts. With the help of two carbon accountants, the team worked to figure out how existing data could inform customers about both their direct and indirect emissions, which can be harder to track. Given how tight SMBs’ margins are, they focused on how that knowledge could fuel emissions-cutting changes that also save money, giving businesses extra incentive to take action. Together, the team created a roadmap of customer outcomes and experience guidelines to help shape future products.

Sage has taken that work forward, launching Sage Earth, a platform that aims to help businesses measure, manage, and mitigate emissions—even across supply chains. With carbon accounting now built directly into all Sage Accounting and Sage for Accountants products in the UK, Sage has made climate action practical and accessible for millions of SMBs. By automating emissions measurement and reporting, Sage Earth removes barriers of cost and complexity, empowering business owners and their accountants to stay competitive in supply chains where up to 95 percent of emissions occur. 

From co-developing the UK Voluntary SME Carbon Reporting Standard to launching a Carbon Accounting API, which gives banks, fintechs, and other platforms access to Sage’s Carbon Engine, Sage is embedding sustainability into the systems people already trust—helping hundreds of thousands (and rapidly increasing) small businesses turn climate ambition into everyday action.

Small- and medium-sized businesses—companies with fewer than 500 employees—make up about 90% of the world’s businesses, according to U.N.-backed SME Climate Hub.

Two thirds of small businesses don’t know how they’re going to reach net zero, and lack the resources to do so, according to a recent survey by SME Climate Hub. Still, the majority reported they want to act on climate, recognizing it can help them become a more resilient business.

Large companies may be the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses, but an estimated 80% of those emissions come from supply chains—often made up of smaller enterprises.

Scaling rapidly

in the three years since the launch of Sage Earth, which is now being used by hundreds of thousands of businesses

World's 1st

open-source hybrid emissions factors dataset, Carbon Commons, led by Sage, helps SMBs calculate carbon footprints using existing data

Menopause is much more than a biological transition—it is a profound shift that often arrives just when people experiencing it start to feel invisible. Because it has long been shrouded in darkness as an unmentionable female affliction, those going through menopause often feel unprepared and alone.

Recognizing that its customer demographic makes QVC uniquely positioned to surface conversations and provide support to those dealing with menopause, the video commerce retailer partnered with IDEO to figure out how it could not only meet customer needs, but also flip the conversation on midlife. To learn more, a team of female design researchers held in-depth interviews with folks experiencing it firsthand. The people they spoke to had limited information about what was going on with their bodies, and in some cases, it took years before they understood that symptoms they were experiencing were related to menopause. Respondents also reported that midlife brought a change in social status and the feeling of being boxed in by stereotypes.

QVC and IDEO worked together to design an integrated suite of offerings that could give customers a safe space to discover and share more about menopause. That included an on-air programming series called “Menopause Your Way,” where QVC could support those going through menopause in the privacy of their own homes, a digital landing page with useful solutions, and social media campaigns to help women share and learn more about each others’ experiences. Because people experience menopause and choose to manage it in many different ways, the team wanted to create an integrated ecosystem of content that women could access according to their unique journeys. The new offering helped QVC  reach its core audience with solutions and relevant products, and created a space where menopause is out in the open and part of an ongoing conversation. And in the process, QVC evolved to become a more customer-centric company, putting its audience and their needs at the heart of its offerings.

9/10 of British menopausal women say society and brands overlook them.

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1 in 2 women in the UK admitted they didn’t know what was happening to them during perimenopause.

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Nearly 40% of menopausal women are being prescribed antidepressants to help manage their symptoms, despite 4 out of 5 describing the treatment as “inappropriate.”

Season 2

a series focused on menopause is now in its second season

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Healthcare is a complex web of institutions, interaction, relationships, and services. In England, the National Health Service consists of thousands of separate organizations spread across the country. This fragmented structure means that rolling out digital tools and using them to their full potential can be difficult.

NHSX approached IDEO and Public Digital, IDEO’s sister company, for help designing user-centered resources that would empower Children and Young People’s Mental Health (CYPMH) practitioners to use digital tools more effectively, shifting service design from a reactive to a proactive process, and allowing each regional organization to create the best digital services for their children and young people.

The team took a human-centered approach, tapping into the perspectives, challenges and needs of NHS practitioners and leaders across the system over months of research. They then designed a set of accessible, straightforward online resources, courses, and templates that would enable a practitioner to start their own local service transformations. These included everything from practical advice on improving users’ experiences of CYPMH, to teaching methods for service design, to content focused on achieving digital transformation at scale.

The resources were easy to implement and replicate, allowing mental health practitioners across the country to seamlessly integrate physical and digital, create firebreaks in the system, and better bridge the gap between seeking care and receiving it. They were designed to evolve over time, and the work is replicable across the NHS, with the potential to touch millions of lives.

By empowering practitioners to utilize these digital tools to ease the burden of care, NHSX plans to create a positive ripple effect across the entire NHS, its partner organizations, and the country at large.

In a study undertaken in July 2020, the first summer of the COVID pandemic, the NHS found that clinically significant mental health conditions amongst children had risen by 50% compared to three years earlier.

More options, more access

digital resources are helping children and young people access more options for their mental health care

It’s not easy to shift the paradigm for an entire industry. But when a company comes along that promises to reinvent air travel, it opens up a blue sky of opportunities. That’s the flight path for Boom Supersonic, which is thinking big about how passengers arrive at their destination not only faster, but also with a greater sense of wellbeing.

To really comprehend the experience of flying in the unique contoured profile of this ultrafast jet, and to help Boom make key decisions about the design of the plane, the IDEO team believed that you had to go beyond algorithms and schematics—you needed to actually board it.

Using a “build-first” approach, the team quickly constructed a full-scale mockup of the fuselage from plywood and foam core. That became a prototyping platform to test multiple seating configurations, galley and lavatory size and placement, luggage storage solutions, and other concepts that would differentiate and add value to the passenger experience. For the first time, the Boom team was able to set foot in its own aircraft and truly understand the experience from the perspective of its clientele. The exercise allowed the Boom team to confidently make decisions by comparing multiple cabin configurations and options in full-scale.

Throughout the project, Boom and IDEO invited future travelers aboard to interact with the prototype and offer feedback. That input culminated in a more refined model, with augmented windows, moonroof, in-flight entertainment screens, and sound design—all further augmented by a Virtual Reality component to allow our future travelers to fully immerse in this new experience.

Together, Boom and IDEO brought a sneak peak to the Farnborough International Airshow, a biannual exhibition for the aerospace, aviation, and defense industries. The event was an opportunity to give the industry and potential customers a preview of Boom’s innovative new jet. In collaboration with the client, an exhibition architect, and a digital production agency, the team created an immersive environment designed to make the Overture experience feel tangible, eliciting the wonder of this revolutionary plane.

Boom’s presence at Farnborough not only underscored the Overture’s progress but provided an inspiring glimpse into the future of air travel. During the air show the company announced the production Overture design, a market-expanding alliance with Northrop Grumman, and agreements with tier one suppliers Collins Aerospace, Safran, and Eaton. Not long after, Boom received its largest order to date, this one from American Airlines. 

The prospect of getting to London in time for dinner just got a little closer.

Boom plans for Overture to get from New York to Frankfurt in just over four hours instead of the eight hours spent on a commercial jet today.

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The Overture supersonic jet has a cruising speed of Mach 1.7, about twice as fast as today’s commercial planes. Overture is built to fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

20 Overture deposits

made by American Airlines, joining current customers United Airlines and Japan Airlines

What do we stand for in this moment when education is being disrupted, inequities are being exacerbated, and we feel more isolated than ever before?

Knowing we couldn’t answer those questions alone, we hosted listening circles earlier this year to learn how educators were navigating their personal and professional lives as the pandemic surged.

Those sessions surfaced questions like these:

• What can we do to increase students' and families' joy right now?
• Can we build safer and more inclusive spaces for school communities?
• How do we make sure we prioritize—not just accommodate—the needs of marginalized students?
• How might we be healers of a broken system?

These gnarly, complex issues can’t be addressed by any single person or organization, and making progress requires more than repurposed solutions delivered by outsiders. As we’ve learned through our work with teachers and principals, navigating these types of challenges depends on school communities being supported to co-design the future for themselves. As one teacher in Fremont, California told us: “Teaching and innovating have to go hand in hand right now.”

With that in mind, we developed a method for educators to take a co-design approach to driving better outcomes for their schools and the students and families they serve. The Co-Designing Schools Toolkit is a collection of 40 activities, frameworks, and research-based practices designed by The Teachers Guild and School Retool programs, supported by and in collaboration with Riverdale Country School, the Deeper Learning network, Liberatory Design, the Stanford d.school, and the input of educators, local collaborators, and coaches.

At its core, the toolkit is about designing for equity. It complements an approach we developed nearly 10 years ago, the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit, encouraging educators to focus on equity issues in their schools as part of diverse design teams. The toolkit focuses on the needs and lives of students furthest from opportunity, helps teams explore their members’ personal identities, and guides educators in articulating equity goals for their schools. Taken together, these components aren’t just boxes to tick off, but a set of principles that guide the entire change process.

Designing with students, not for them

Myron Long, Principal of The Social Justice School in northeast Washington, DC, says the co-design process has pushed him to fundamentally rethink the role of his students. “We ask for their feedback,” Myron says, “but we actually have to listen to them and then act on it.” For example, rather than assuming his students are always eager to take on justice issues, he asks them, and recalls a student replying, “Can’t we just play dodgeball, too?” Myron urges his colleagues to regularly invite students to be co-designers, and to build in “time to pause, listen to, and design with our students, not just for them.”

Meet parents where they are

Another example of co-design comes from across the country in South County San Diego, where a team of Special Education leaders hosted co-design workshops. Inviting families in was crucial to the team’s efforts to bridge gaps in understanding between parents and the countless people who provide support for students with special needs.

But to ensure that caretakers of children with special needs would be able to show up as collaborators, they knew they’d have to offer some basic support, like hiring professional translators and lining up child care. “The parents felt so respected, valued, and part of the process,” said Olivia Rivera, a team member. Knowing their children would be taken care of during the workshops gave parents the time and space they needed to “share from their hearts.”

Meet 4 educators who are co-designing solutions for their school communities.

We know that no single strategy or process can solve all the complicated issues facing schools. But with roots in design, equity, and community, the Co-Designing Schools Toolkit can support schools and families as they navigate complexity and look ahead to building a collaborative environment in which all students thrive.

Learn more about co-designing a more equitable future for your community at www.codesigningschools.com.

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Along with educators and families around the country, those of us at IDEO who work in education have been asking ourselves, “Where do we go from here?”

Creating a new business is a little bit like being a sea turtle mom—you want to know your environment and create many versions of your offer to increase your odds of success.

When it comes to making sure those sea turtle babies—I mean, uh, your business ideas—thrive, there are two methods that can help: Design thinking is the approach for discovering which of your eggs has the best chances of survival. Once that baby sea turtle has made it successfully into the ocean, the Lean Startup methodology can improve its chances of successfully reaching adulthood.

During a recent project, a client asked me about the difference between the two methods. While these techniques have been around for years now, it’s a question I hear a lot—many folks in the world of business think they should know the difference, but in all honesty, I don’t blame them for being confused. The methods are distinct, but they can (and should) be used in tandem. Businesses could benefit from them both.

Back to the client question—what’s the difference? I started by explaining the difference between the two methods more broadly, laying out what you see in the chart below.

Both approaches are about building new concepts and products, learning as much as possible from users, and from what’s happening in the market. And both methodologies employ an iterative approach that consistently seeks feedback and understanding from customers in the market.

Knowing the difference is one thing—knowing when to use one or the other is just as important.

Design thinking helps teams come up with many new ideas for new offers they then test before settling on the one that is most desirable, feasible, and viable. When applying design thinking, once we’ve uncovered user needs, we create a slew of options that might solve those needs. Each one is intentionally distinct from the others so we can learn what works best. In visualizing design thinking for our curious client, I sketched something like this:

On the other hand, the Lean Startup method helps teams drive toward a better version of an existing or new concept. It’s great if you have a product in-market that you want to tweak so it performs better. That end product may vary significantly from the original, but with the Lean Startup approach, you will be able to trace a path from Version A to Version Z. If I were to sketch it, it looks something like this:

Now that we have the two distinct methods visualized, we can look at applying them. A hypothetical challenge: Let’s imagine we’ve been asked to create a new concept to upend the fact girls are called on less, given less teacher attention, and given fewer opportunities to speak in mixed-gender science classrooms.

As design thinkers, our first step would be to talk to girls, boys, and their science teachers. We would talk to psychologists and sociologists. We would explore the mixed-gender education experience in other cultures. After our research, we’d distill our findings into opportunities for improving the classroom experience. For example: How might we immediately reward girls for participating in class? How might we enable teachers to see the disparity?

Based on those prompts, we would brainstorm a slew of ideas. For example: What if classrooms had a voice monitor that recorded the amount of time that boys spoke versus girls spoke? What if there was an online instructor’s portal with exercises for how to draw out girls in every classroom session? What if there was an app that quizzed students who are girls daily to increase their familiarity and confidence with science material?

We would then take this array of ideas and create prototypes—rough, inexpensive, tangible expressions of the new concepts—and test them. Based on feedback, the next round of prototypes might look something like this:

Maybe the voice monitor didn’t affect teacher behavior, but it did sufficiently frustrate the girls in the classroom—so much so that the next prototype was a wall-mounted display to show a live tally of student input. Because of the diversity of ideas and prototypes that come from a design thinking approach, there’s no clear throughline from Version A to Version Z.

Based on knowing that we are now going to build a voice-activated wall display, we would also use design thinking to build and test the accompanying business model and the product’s visual language. We would think about, build, and test options for how the display will get in front of buyers (the distribution channel), who pays for them and how much (the revenue and pricing model), and which entities might help to expedite our success (partnerships). As we explore the most viable business model, we’re still refining the concept.

Once those designs have been sufficiently evolved, we can plan for a limited launch to test the assumptions behind the products. With a refined concept and business model in hand, we can begin in-market testing.

This is when you want to lay 100 eggs, because only a very few will meet the bars for user desirability, the company’s ability to implement it, and the crucial feature of being financially lucrative for the business. In general, using a design thinking approach for a limited launch of a new concept will reduce risk, while using the Lean Startup methodology during in-market refinement will improve the chances of success.

Sometimes, when a team launches a new product but skips the user-centered design process, they find it may be necessary to pivot. That’s a good time for a team to turn to design thinking to explore why the concept isn’t working, and to find new ways to make it meet user needs.

A sea turtle lays more than 100 eggs each nesting season, but only a handful will successfully hatch and survive the journey into the ocean.

I first saw Sharon during a workshop she delivered for Black Minds Matter. Sharon discussed the creative process as essential to mental health and considered the white dominance of the mainstream art world, all while making an original, delicate art piece with a scalpel and fine magazine paper. (I know—“multi-talented” doesn’t even cover it, right?)

In a session she later ran for IDEO, she created such a warm space while inviting us into the intimacy of her signature collaging process. She inspired us to see what it is when someone dictates the rules of their own art, career journey, how they define and are defined.

The pieces evolving from her “Seeing Ourselves” collection explore identity, representation, portraiture—when the ‘we’ and the ‘our’ are represented in art, education, media. Who is omitted from that narrative and how can art reclaim it?

Sharon is currently exhibiting at the Black Art Matters exhibition. She took a few minutes out of her day to answer some questions I had for her.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am an artist, currently creating work using handmade collage, and an educator who is passionate about changing predominant narratives of underrepresented, marginalized people.

What does a typical work session look like?

I work from a new home studio which I set up a couple of days before lockdown in March 2020. I recently resigned from my part-time job of 4.5 years in a London museum to work as a full-time artist. I am working on several different projects and I find joy in the varied nature of my work.

My work varies greatly from one day to the next: I am currently working on a project with a national museum; I have been commissioned to create a few bespoke collages; I curate creative programs for organizations; and I deliver workshops and create hand-assembled collages. Creating the collages helps me to relax, and in parallel, explore identity and representation of Black womxn.

Does sharing your process while creating such personal work ever feel too intrusive or voyeuristic?

I absolutely love sharing the process of creating my very personal art. My background includes the delivery of teaching sessions in political literacy, also known as citizenship education. I have also taught art workshops and have delivered self-esteem, getting back into work and personal development workshops to women who have lost confidence after a period of unemployment. I have worked with people of all ages from children to the elderly. Sharing my process is a further extension of this highly invigorating work.

How has your work and career evolved?

My career has evolved organically; there hasn’t been a linear route towards my current working life.

My work has been varied, but today, I can now see how so many of these seemingly disparate strands connect to inform my present practice. Early on after my first degree, I worked in recruitment sales and was a headhunter. The skills I gained there have made me feel less awkward when selling my work; I am not afraid to speak to new people.

Training teachers and people of all ages has given me the confidence and skills to deliver creative workshops both online and in person; it is something I absolutely love doing! I am passionate about connecting and communicating with others.

For much of my life I worked with marginalized groups in a variety of settings, ranging from boys in young offender institutions and the elderly living in sheltered housing to underrepresented museum audiences. This work all feeds into my current series entitled “Seeing Ourselves” which focuses on the underrepresentation of Black women. My projects all encourage others to “take up space” in environments where they may be unseen and to use our voices to create positive change and impact.

What does it mean to you to do what you love at this stage?

It feels so wonderful to be doing what I love at this stage! I have wanted to be an artist since I was a child. For many years it felt like I would not make it, but deep down, I did not give up hope.

Money wasn’t available for me to pursue my dreams in my teens, but as a mature student, I got a second degree in Fine Art. I took “the scenic route” and with hindsight I am glad I did. Things are happening exactly when they are supposed to.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

To contact a collector who has commissioned a bespoke, hand-cut collage.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Wow! This is a huge question, which immediately saddens me; in reality it’s unlikely I’ll still be around. It immediately makes me think about the world I would like my children to be living in. I would hope there would be less disparity of wealth and greater visibility and distribution of power across diverse groups.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

To return to Barbados for a holiday someday soon; it is my mother’s country of birth and I have not visited it for 11 years. Despite being born in London, Barbados also feels like "home."

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

I am creative crushin’ on Sheena Rose who is a phenomenal, multidisciplinary, Barbadian artist. Her work spans drawings, hand-drawn animations, performance art, paintings, and new media. I am particularly inspired by Sheena’s vast creative works with powerful overarching themes.

When I first came across Sheena’s work on Instagram, she was creating amazing pieces from her bedroom which inspired me to return to creating after a long time. Through seeing Sheena working in this way, I began to believe it was possible for me to do the same without the luxury of a studio at the time.

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Experiencing Sharon Walters’s work is like being given a comforting, personal gift.

How’d we end up on this culinary carousel, from learning about kelp’s role in addressing climate change to understanding the significance of seeing kernza, an unusual perennial grain, in the cereal aisle by 2040? We spend our days working in the food world, hearing about its challenges: Hunger is rampant, but so is food waste, and the food system is responsible for 25 percent of global carbon emissions. This leads many to believe that the system is broken. But it’s not broken—it was designed this way. And if it was designed this way, then it’s time for a redesign. That’s what IDEO’s new narrative podcast, Food by Design, is all about.

The experts featured are living proof that we can create a system that’s nourishing for people and the planet. Below are some of the new ideas, staggering statistics, and inspiring stories they generously shared with us. Let’s dig in.

A human-centered approach that prioritizes equity is required

The food system is inherently about food, but without humans, the system doesn’t work. Improving a system that’s been ravaged by multilayered crises—health, racial injustice, climate, and economic—depends on how we value those doing the actual labor in it. The role and importance of human-centeredness and equity (and the current lack of both) can’t be ignored.

We spoke with Saru Jayaraman, a professor at the University of California Berkeley who leads the Food Labor Research Center and founder of the non-profit One Fair Wage. In episode seven, she explains how the legacy of slavery still impacts how much money restaurant and food service workers make today—sometimes as low as two dollars and thirteen cents an hour—despite the cruel irony that the industry is the largest and fastest growing in the U.S.

Dr. Ricardo Salvador, Director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, adds to Saru’s perspective in a later episode: “We've been creating people that are affluent and at the same time we've been creating people that are poor,” he says. “All of that is a direct consequence of the way that the agricultural system in the United States was born. The system of slavery did not completely disappear. It has been transformed.”

We need both individual and structural change—it’s not an either/or situation

We’ve been told that individual action is enough, but we’ve also been told that it isn’t—we need bigger changes. Eating red meat is often the subject of this debate, as animal agriculture is the second-worst contributor to greenhouse gases after fossil fuels. But here’s the thing: we need both individual and structural change to design a better food system.

While doing research for our second episode, we met Lisa and Loren Poncia of Stemple Creek Ranch, cattle ranchers who now consider themselves carbon farmers. Through practices like rotational grazing (which allows pastures to rest and regenerate), they actually sequester carbon into the soil, keeping it from being released into the atmosphere where it contributes to greenhouse gases that cause climate change. When we recorded the episode, Stemple Creek Ranch was sequestering enough carbon to offset 285 passenger vehicles per year, and that number is growing.

With additional incentives, like those baked into the Federal Farm Bill, even more ranchers like Lisa and Loren might adopt these practices. “I wish that the federal government would jump on board and subsidize carbon and carbon sequestration instead of corn and soy,” says Loren. “In a very short amount of time, we'd have a lot of carbon stored in our soil.” (That’s a good thing.) In our sixth episode, we talk about how producing red meat conventionally can create nearly 10x the emissions of vegetables. But if individuals buy regenerative red meat from carbon ranches like Stemple Creek Ranch, it could help shift the rest of the industry this way and lead to more structural policy changes, having a huge impact on the health of the entire system.

Another example of the need for both individual and structural efforts comes from Karen Leibowitz and her partner, who established a climate-minded restaurant in San Francisco. Every detail of the Perennial aimed to minimize carbon emissions, from using recycled appliances and napkins meant to be fed as compost to worms to hydroponically-grown vegetables.

But just one business can't change the system. Armed with this insight, Karen and her partner closed the Perennial to scale their ambition across many restaurants—creating a more effective way to fight climate change. Their nonprofit Zero Foodprint asks restaurants to add a one percent charge to their bills and use those funds to fight climate change.

Embrace mental “flips” and blank slates...or cardboard boxes

Again and again, the individuals we interviewed shared that in order to create a better food system for all people and the planet, we must build something entirely new—whether reimagining the restaurant business model, altering what we believe is edible, or redefining the meaning of sustainability.

We talked to chef and restaurateur Camilla Marcus in our seventh episode, who is rethinking the power dynamic that gave rise to the harassment and racial and gender inequities in the restaurant industry. Her restaurant west~bourne turned the “front-of-house, back-of-house” hierarchy—which Camilla describes as a caste system in disguise—on its head. During an intensive training program, every team member becomes fluent in all areas of the business, from dishwashing to wine tasting. “If you envision a world a different way, you have to start from the beginning and be willing to redesign how everything is done,” says Camilla. “You can't just hope for a different outcome and keep using the same process and system.”

Like Camilla, Mr. Lyan—a professional moniker for Ryan Chetiyawardana—is another food visionary. Mr. Lyan was crowned world’s best bartender in 2015, and his bar Dandelyan, now reopened as Lyaness, was named the world’s best bar in 2018. He’s known for experimenting with “closed loop cocktails”—any waste from the production of these drinks is used as ingredients for future drinks. For instance, he pressure-cooks leftover citrus and uses the resulting flavorful stock to create fruit jelly desserts. He doesn’t stop at fruit: Mr. Lyan even boils down cardboard delivery boxes with lemongrass, chamomile, sugar, and water, then strains it and turns it into a syrup. “People saw it as an affront,” he tells us. “So much of what we faced was this idea that the world that we were inhabiting—you know, luxury food and drink—was at odds with the idea of sustainability.” (Until, of course, a restaurant critic said that the drinks were the best he’d ever had in the city.)

Nearly a year before we found ourselves professing our love to baby kelps, we were carpooling home from IDEO’s San Francisco studio to our homes in Oakland. As our conversation quite naturally ping-ponged from an upcoming CSA delivery to methane-producing cow burps to Indigenous agriculture to aquafaba (a chickpea byproduct) to workers’ rights, a creative lightbulb went off. And the idea for Food by Design was born.

We wanted to connect the dots across all these topics and better understand the potential opportunities for design. So we set out to explore the question: How might we build a climate-positive food system that favors the many instead of the few? We hope the array of voices and stories shared on Food by Design not only demonstrate the breadth, interconnectedness, and gaps of the food system, but just how many people depend on it being sustainably and equitably redesigned, and can help us do this, together. Listen to some of their stories today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune into your podcasts.

On a chilly December morning, Bri Warner gave us a tour of her kelp facility in Saco, Maine. The room was filled with giant tanks of seawater containing thousands of baby kelps. “We change their tanks constantly,” said Bri. “We play them music. When nobody's looking, I'll lean over and be like, ‘Hi, babies.’” On another occasion, we spent an entire afternoon chatting up Larisa Jacobson of Soul Fire Farm, a BIPOC-centered community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system.

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.