Giving food assistance is about more than handing over a box of groceries. It’s about allowing people to make their own choices.

But the pandemic only narrowed people’s choices. Undeterred, Northern Illinois Food Bank (NIFB) put people’s needs above everything else, leading to innovations that could improve food banks everywhere. IDEO recruited neighbors to co-design a new digital tool intended to improve people’s access to food. Local residents provided more than insights—they steered design decisions and helped transform the relationship between NIFB and the community.

Northern Illinois Food Bank’s My Pantry Express app allows people to browse and order groceries online and to choose a pickup time and location that works for their schedule. We designed the app to provide useful information on dietary preferences and to be inclusive of cultural differences. The result allows choice and flexibility, helps prevent food waste, and preserves the dignity of shoppers throughout the process by making My Pantry Express feel like any other grocery site.

Ultimately, Northern Illinois Food Bank and IDEO’s strategy for success relied on new metrics. In addition to measuring effectiveness in pounds of food distributed, we found new ways to measure shoppers’ satisfaction—a solution that works better for all parties involved because it was designed by all parties involved.

An estimated 1 in 8 Americans experience food insecurity.

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The food insecurity rate is 2-3x higher for persons of color than for white households.

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60% of food insecure households do not use food pantries.

1.9M

meals distributed through My Pantry Express in 2021

50%

increase in distribution from prior year

To create Bendable, IDEO worked alongside the people closest to the problem, so every important decision grew out of their experience.

IDEO and the Drucker Institute aligned with the library system and city leaders in South Bend, Indiana, on a single objective: build a learning platform that offered education opportunities to people affected by the decline of manufacturing in the region. But even the earliest phases of research revealed that there’s no common profile that matched the diversity of learners. There are innumerable reasons why people seek to learn and as many barriers holding them back.

Knowing this, South Bend residents were the acknowledged authority for this work, and a design consultancy all their own. This radically simplified crucial decisions. Negative associations around traditional education led people to seek knowledge from those they already trusted. And they often lacked awareness about or the ability to access the many free resources already available.

The residents of South Bend helped the entire consortium see that the city wasn’t under-resourced but under-connected. That insight, and the power the community and the library system held to rectify it, made Bendable into the people-driven, connection-based learning platform it is today.

By 2025, as many as 85 million jobs will be displaced by automation, yet 97 million new ones could emerge.

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More than a third of adults pursuing postsecondary education before the COVID-19 pandemic were forced to abandon those plans.

25

programs and other resources offerings are now available to residents of South bend

4

states have begun to integrate Bendable into library systems

Protecting the right to vote means ensuring that all citizens can cast their ballots privately, independently, and easily.

With that principle in mind, Los Angeles County sought out a design strategy firm to create a next-generation, customizable system that would meet the needs of its large and diverse voter population while satisfying myriad voting regulations. The result: an accessible, self-enclosed ballot-marking device with a touchscreen that allows any voter to easily navigate, mark, verify, and submit a paper ballot. We also worked to improve the entire voting experience, including vote-by-mail ballots, interactive sample ballots, and the tally process.

As with any inclusive design, details matter. Voters with vision impairment or reading disabilities can opt for audio and tactile experiences with the push of a few simple buttons. And for voters who prefer to read the ballot in their native language—Spanish, Chinese, Korean, or any one of the 11 others supported by the county—the device lets them select their preference.

After extensive research and testing with constituents, we designed a solution that makes voting easier for anyone. And knowing that the only constant is change, we made the system flexible enough to adapt to emerging needs and technologies, protecting voters’ rights now and in the future. Read the full case study here.

26% of American adults have some type of disability. In the 2020 election, 18% of disabled voters nationally reported difficulty voting, about twice as many as non-disabled voters.

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In 2020, national voter turnout among disabled people was 7% lower than among non-disabled people in the same age group.

"Intuitive & secure"

was the sentiment most Los Angeles County voters expressed about the new voting system after the 2020 primary election

Conservation International is made up of conservation experts. To bolster its work, we bring a focus on scale, speed, and the human element to every project.

How does that look in the field? To restore the forest of Fiji, Conservation International paid a cash incentive to the community to buy, plant, and care for new trees and foliage. But once those cash incentives stopped flowing, the work ground to a halt. Taking a human-centered-design approach, one employee uncovered an insight: Fijians are more motivated to help in exchange for longer-term, noncash incentives like building infrastructure in villages. Small projects such as footpaths, repairs to communal trucks, beehives, or sports programs for youth continually reminded the community that the environment is a provider for their families, imparting a feeling of shared ownership in its conservation.

Stories like this, repeated around the globe, are how we hope to help Conservation International find sustainable outcomes. Our work together, including a six-month fellowship to help emerging leaders develop new capabilities, and a series of strategic, future-focused events for executives, has brought more tangibility and deeper collaboration to the organization.

Together we hope to create businesses, food solutions, and energy alternatives that conserve nature, and improve human health—because humans are a part of nature, too.

The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that we have ten years to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions or humanity will suffer devastating consequences.

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We need to conserve one third of the global ocean using area-based measures and ensure at least 75% of seafood is harvested using socially responsible, environmentally sustainable methods by 2030.

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75% of the world’s poor rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, which in turn depends on nature for pollination, irrigation, and soil replenishment.

20

leaders integrated human-centered design into annual goals, project pipelines, and fundraising efforts

20%

of the organization is now involved in design-thinking projects

I took this picture last summer while I was back home in Istanbul. Summer in Istanbul is very, very hot. Sometimes the mercury in the city gets up to 113F. It’s pretty unbearable.

On toasty afternoon, I took this picture of a bunch of people capitalizing on the shade in a park to avoid the sun. At that time of day and year, the shadows defined the usable space within the park.

From a design researcher’s perspective, this picture says so much about how the sun and shade affect how we interact with cities and spaces. Sometimes design is all about constraints.

It’s a great reminder of all the factors to consider when we design for urban environments. Or a great reminder that nature is a designer, too.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions thoughtless acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire the invention of new products, services, and experiences.

In 2015, I spent a month in an Airbnb that doubled as an art studio. Upstairs, there was an airy drawing room where my host taught scientific watercolor classes. In the garage, a multimedia artist named Diego had built his own 3D printer and spent his time creating furiously—everything from ink paintings to cardboard sculptures to warped digital imagery. I started spending my afternoons in the garage, watching him work and quietly editing travel photos, hoping to soak up some of the creative juices.

One day, after over-contemplating whether the photo of three chairs I had just edited was art, I worked up the courage to ask, “What do you do with all of the stuff you make? When does it become art? What does it even mean to be an artist?”

First, he laughed.

Then, Diego opened up his laptop and plugged in his external hard drive. A few clicks later and we were deep inside his folders, files, and spreadsheets. "This," he said, "is what I do with all of the stuff I make." He showed me how he edited and selected images in Photoshop, created cohesive photo series, added titles and captions, wrote artist statements, meticulously noted the date/medium/size of each piece and how they should be displayed, exported PDFs, and organized the files by theme. He showed me his spreadsheet of deadlines and requirements and contact information for calls for entries, residencies, conferences, and shows.

I felt like I had just pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. The image I had in my head of the artist as natural born creator was just the front end, hiding the logistics of what it takes to really make it work as an artist. Creativity as an effortless, inherited talent was a myth.

I found comfort and familiarity in Diego’s near-obsessive organization and realized that my love of structure and systems isn’t actually at odds with artistry. In fact, formal processes can unlock new ways of thinking and doing. Structure can reduce the mental and digital clutter that often blocks people from actually making things. If categorizing and list-making and data visualization gives me creative confidence, then so be it. Knowing I have an entry point into the world of creativity has made it much easier to dive in.

Today, as a business development associate at IDEO, I sit at the intersection of creativity and strategy, art and operations, design and business. Though I am in near-constant awe of the making and creating that seems to flow from the fingertips of my deeply talented colleagues, I know that design doesn’t just happen. Behind the curtain of creativity, there are layers and layers of order, process, painstaking detail, and hard work. These days, I find just as much beauty (and madness) in the back end.

Diego de los Campos is a multimedia artist from Uruguay who currently resides in Florianópolis, Brazil. His work can be found at diegodeloscampos.wordpress.com

I’ve never considered myself an artist. My handwriting is too neat, I enjoy coloring between the lines, and I don’t always get poetry. I imagine artists as forces of raw, unbridled creativity—messy, like mad scientists, but with more color, magic flowing out of their fingertips like a scene from Fantasia. I, on the other hand, live and die by my Google Calendar.

Name: Evin Dempsey
Location: Tokyo
Role at IDEO: Communications Design Lead
Joined IDEO: Freelanced from 2010 to 2012 in IDEO Shanghai; joined IDEO Tokyo in 2013
Social Media: I abstain. Better for the heart and soul :)
Titillating Fact: At the age of 10, I had about 46 hamsters in my garage in cages that I made myself from scrap pieces of timber. I used to breed them and sell them back to the petshop for a quid each.

1. Inside

Inside is a puzzle platform game from Playdead, a small, independent game studio in Denmark. It’s an absolute masterpiece of storytelling, art direction, animation, sound design, and even camera work. Each frame of this game is meticulously designed, from the bubbles in the water to the flicker of the torch. It’s the culmination of a very talented team of designers, programmers, and storytellers. The plot follows a young boy as he attempts to escape from a forest. Along the way, he encounters various puzzles and obstacles that help to reveal more details about his predicament. It's quite possibly the best game I've ever played.

2. Nozawa Onsen

Though it’s not very well known outside of Japan, Nozawa Onsen is a mecca for Japanese snowboarders. Located in the northeast of Nagano prefecture in western Japan, it is home to waist-deep powder as well as several onsens, or natural hot springs. It’s a winter sports enthusiast’s dream come true. The hot springs scattered all over town are also free for anyone to enjoy. I try to go at least twice a season. If you like powder, or japow as we foreigners like to call it, then you'll love Nozawa.

3. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett

A man moves to a country he knows absolutely nothing about, learns a language, changes his outlook on life, and loses his faith. Having spent my life split between eight different countries, and having a special affection for nearly all of them, this tale rings true to me. It’s an amazing account of one man's evolution as he makes his home in the Amazon rainforest. The story is universal, but the book is of special interest to people who are intrigued by linguistics and language. I couldn't put it down.‍

Header image by Mark Solarski.

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In this series, we ask IDEO designers to share the stuff they're digging right now—tools, books, music, sites, people, places—so you, too, can drink from the fount of inspiration bubbling up here. This week's guest star: Evin Dempsey.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am a human being who creates art, films, and cultural movements that inspire curiosity and connection.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I do a lot of things, all of which are self-taught. First, I was an art director at Venables Bell and Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Then I became an interactive artist making large-scale community driven projects, like Selfless Portraits, Last Photo, and Snail Mail My Email, and I published a book. And more recently, I’ve become a film director.

A lot of my work explores human connection and connecting with strangers, which comes from getting bullied as a kid and becoming fascinated with how people interact and treat each other. My biggest piece of advice in learning a creative skill is to stay curious, keep experimenting, and try reaching out to those who inspire you. That’s basically what I’ve done over and over again to get to where I am today.

Snail Mail My Email is a community art project where volunteers transform strangers’ emails into handwritten letters, free of charge.

What are your three favorite possessions?

1. My stuffed animal Snuffleupagus, which I’ve had since I was born.
2. Handwritten letters from over the years.
3. My data.

I had a house fire five years ago and lost nearly everything. It showed me that most possessions are replaceable. It’s my creative ideas and material that are most prized.

What does a typical work session look like for you?

I don’t really have a typical work session; my days are split between working in the studio, traveling to give a talk, going out to make a film, or working on-site with a client. I really like this balance of working with a team and working in solitude. I need this constant mix of circumstances to keep me both energized and recharged.

Signs of the Times explores the personal, human stories behind protest signs, without ever showing the sign holders’ faces.

How do you get over creative block?

I can’t really work if I’m in a messy or loud environment. So my studio needs to be immaculately tidy and quiet. That’s the first thing.

Secondly, I’m very sensitive, and so often a creative block means an unresolved emotional conflict. Taking the time to journal, find closure in a relationship, or talk to my therapist are all good things.

Finally, I get over creative blocks by making new work (that may not be great) and not judging myself for it. Creative block happens when my standards get so high that I become fearful of not meeting some expectation and get paralyzed. The important thing I have to keep reminding myself is to have fun and to not take everything so seriously, because nothing really matters and we’re all going to die!

The ‘Last Photo’ Project is an ongoing video series where Ivan asks strangers in different cities to share the last photo on their phones.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Optimistic version: We’ll live in a post-digital age where we've gone back to appreciate the simpler things like nature and meditation. Our lives will still be digitally integrated, but it'll be much more seamless and we’ll place greater value on taking breaks from tech.

Dystopic version: Life will be lived within a virtual reality headset and/or brands will be more invasive than they are now. On cars. On skin. In our homes. We will make money by consuming ads.

Who are you (creative) crushing on lately?

My dancer/choreographer friend Jacob Jonas who is killing it right now.

Moonlight director Barry Jenkins.

Valerie Luu and Andria Lo’s photography project Chinatown Pretty.

American Honey director Andrea Arnold.

Ivan Cash got his first job in advertising by getting arrested—for selling t-shirts advocating for the firing of Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas. No joke. After a stint in that world working for Venables Bell & Partners and Wieden+Kennedy, he set out on his own to explore a different kind of client—everyday people. His projects, whether about protest signs or the last photo someone took on their phone, are a deep dive into how the images we create help tell our stories. In this first installment of Creative Crushes, I caught up with him over coffee to find out what he's been up to.

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.