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.

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

20%

of the organization is now involved in design-thinking projects

1. Free Writing

Creativity manuals like the Artist's Way talk about the power of the "Morning Pages"—a ritual in which you start writing just after waking up, and bang out some prose before your conscious, self-critical self has fully come online. Conveniently, there's an app for that. Flowstate is a word processor with a twist: You set a timer, then write until it dings. If you hesitate for more than a couple of seconds, the app will delete everything that you've put down so far. Although it sounds like torture, the app can actually help you let go of editing and enter a state of uncritical flow.

2. Phone Denial

Before going to bed, move your phone charger to another room. Then, put a pencil and paper in its place on your nightstand. Now, when you wake up, instead of looking at Google News or Facebook, write down some thoughts that are related to how you're feeling, what is important for you, and how you're going to make a creative impact today. If that feels too involved right after waking up, draw a picture of something instead. Either way, don't let yourself get distracted by your phone until you've engaged your creativity.

3. Disposable Poetry

When Kurt Vonnegut was 84, he received a letter from a high school student, asking him to visit his school. The writer refused, claiming that he was now so old that he now "resembled an iguana." Instead of visiting, he sent a letter that contained a creative exercise. "Write a six-line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can." Then, Vonnegut said, the poem was to be torn up and discarded. "You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow." As a tribute to the great Mr. Vonnegut, try his ritual every morning.

4. Creative Collaging

Collect any old magazines or catalogues lying around your house. Leaf through them and cut out any interesting pictures or headlines. Assemble these into a collage. Take a photo of the collage and post it to Instagram, Facebook, or whatever social media site you use. Doesn't that feel better than posting a picture of yourself playing with your dog, or the avocado toast that you had for breakfast? Of course it does. You just stepped away from the ordinary world for a moment and created something original. For bonus points, download the Boomerang Gmail extension, and you can email your pictures to your future self—in a month or even a year. Think of it as a way to remind future you to stay creative.

5. Walking and Observing

Everyone from Beethoven to Steve Jobs relied on the inspirational powers of a walk. Neuroscience backs up their belief: A walk will remove you from the distractions of conversations and technology, freeing the mind to explore new associations between the ideas already in your head. Why not skip breakfast altogether and walk to work? Look around as you do so, and see if you notice anything unusual or surprising in the environment. Take a gander at other people too. Try to put yourself in their shoes, and imagine what they're thinking or feeling. Remind yourself that everybody sees the world differently, and that this kaleidoscope of human perceptions and viewpoints is a wonderful thing. Remember that inspiration is all around you—you just have to stop occasionally to breathe it in.

Illustrations by Megan Crabtree.

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Benjamin Franklin used to spend his mornings naked. Sigmund Freud would trim his beard. Marcel Proust smoked opium. There are many ways to start the day in a creative frame of mind. If you want an alternative to being nude, beardy, or high, here are some of our favorites.

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This post is a source of parody and is for entertainment, education and commentary purposes only.

You may have heard: Designers like fonts. They dream in Helvetica. Letterforms may play as central a role in a designer's life as their favorite bands. Knowing this, our Tokyo studio threw an event called "PLAY - Creativity at The Intersection of Design + Music." We needed posters to promote it, and asked ourselves: How might we bring music and design together? The exercise quickly devolved into a competition for who could come up with the worst font-band pun. There's a slim overlap in the venn diagram of people who appreciate both Frank Zappa and Zapf Dingbats, but that is exactly who we were aiming for. Got your own #ideobandfont? Do share.

What was the spark?

I’m the type of person who always has a plan B. For my entire working life, I’ve had a side hustle. It made perfect sense to me, then, that in 2006, while I was working as the Chicago editor of Flavorpill, I’d accept the challenge to be a local producer for Mortified, a grassroots comedy show started by Dave Nadelberg in Los Angeles five years earlier. Even though, at that time, I was more comfortable behind a laptop than on stage, the show’s premise — everyday people reading their childhood diaries in front of a live audience — had everything I liked in comedy and storytelling: It was awkward, cathartic, redemptive, and totally relatable to anyone who was once a kid. It turned regular people into comedy stars. I jumped at the chance.

Most memorable Mortified moment? (Say that five times fast...)

For this year's Valentine Schmalentine show, we surprised one of our favorite performers, Kerstyne Kromer, by inviting her childhood celebrity crush Eden Riegel to Skype in and read the part Kerstyne had created for her in one of her childhood soap operas. In the early 2000s, Eden played Bianca Montgomery, the first openly lesbian character on All My Children. Watching Bianca's struggles on daytime TV helped Kerstyne eventually come out to her family and friends. Kerstyne almost passed out from happiness.

For a decade, my friends and I have been "sharing the shame" in Chicago.

What keeps you going?

We just celebrated Mortified Chicago’s 10th anniversary, which is astounding to me. I never thought we’d be around this long, or that I’d still be co-producing six Mortified shows a year at big venues like Lincoln Hall and The Promontory while working at IDEO. (Or that Mortified, which is now 15, would expand into books, a podcast, a TV series, a film, etc.) What energizes and inspires me is meeting new people and helping them unearth long-lost stories from their childhood. It’s an incredible privilege to have total strangers open up to you and tell you amazing and sometimes painful stories from their past. The night of the show, I love to sit in the A/V booth, hear the waves of laughter, and watch as the audience falls in love with our performers. It’s immensely gratifying to know I had a hand in making that moment possible.

What lessons from your after-hours project do you bring into your day job?

Three things immediately come to mind: I’m a better listener, I’m more empathic, and I’m a stronger storyteller. Human-centered design is all about having empathy for the end user in order to design a more desirable product, service, or fill in the blank. I also draw on many of the same techniques I use on our performers to help our designers prep for big client meetings and public speaking opportunities. Although, in the case of IDEOers, I hope nothing about their experience will be mortifying.

Annette Ferrara has been publicly embarrassing people for a decade. As a producer of Mortified, a live comedy show, she spends nights and weekends coaching people on how to get up on stage and read from their deeply personal, purple-prosed, and yes, mortifying childhood diaries. We asked her about the side project, and how it has influenced her work.

For a decade and a half, the group has built a global reputation for pulling stunts like the Grand Central Terminal freeze. If design is about the capture and channeling of attention, Improv Everywhere has a lesson for us in how to achieve that. We spoke to founder Charlie Todd to get some backstory on his benevolent guerrilla art troupe.

How did Improv Everywhere start?

Charlie Todd: I totally blundered into it. I was 22-years-old, and moved to New York to be an actor in improv comedy. I said to some friends, let’s go play a prank in a bar tonight. We did it for five years, and then when YouTube was created, I already had a library of content. A thing we did in Grand Central Station got 10 million views in the first week alone. I’ve spent the last eight years following that viral breakout.

What’s the audience meant to take away from such stunts?

When a load of people turn up at Coney Island in eveningwear and jump in the ocean, and people ask why, the answer is that there is no why. We’re all conditioned to assess for some extrinsic motivation, like the thing was for charity or a comment on global warming. It’s okay to just do a thing because it’s silly.

So, it’s simple whimsy with no purpose?

Well, I’d like to think that having that experience maybe alters people’s perception in some small way. We’re encouraging people to express themselves in a public space, in an unauthorized manner. In this post-9/11 security world we live in, we’re trying to make people realize that they don’t have to ask permission to express themselves creatively.

Is it also important to be connecting people?

I grew up in South Carolina, in a small city. I was used to people making eye contact and smiling. Moving to New York, everyone is busy and has a smartphone. It was like the only time you made eye contact was if something bad was going on: a train being delayed, or a crazy person shouting. People would unify around shiftiness. So we thought: can we create something that is positive in nature, something so unusual and joyful that you have a positive connection with someone?

Do you always get a positive reaction?

During one of the No-Pants pranks we had some police trouble. An officer stumbled across the event, and didn’t like it. Our people stayed in character and said they had forgotten their pants. The officer took the train out of service. But everything was eventually dismissed. It turns out that there’s no law against being in your underwear. When we did the event the next year, the police were there, to help escort us and make sure people had a good time.

What do you do when you’re not freaking people out on the streets of New York?

I get hired by brands to create surprise moments or spectacles, or brainstorm ideas for a brand campaign. I get to direct and produce TV. Last year I was the show-runner for a show on MTV. I’ve also been at the Upright Citizens Brigade for 15 years, as a performer and teacher.

Tell us about the teaching. Can you teach someone to be funny?

All you can teach is for people to learn how to be themselves—to be honest, and react in a truthful way. Everyone’s unique personality and viewpoint is funny. It’s counter-intuitive: when trying to be funny, people often try to be something that they’re not, by imitating stuff they’ve seen on television and so on. Instead of trying to be something you’re not, you need to be more authentically connected to what you are. That applies to creativity too: instead of reaching outside and trying too hard, focus in on what truly inspires you.

Photos courtesy of Improv Everywhere.

In the dead of winter, 2001, a woman riding the New York subway looked up from her book and saw a passenger wearing no pants. She was puzzled, but ignored him. At the next stop, another pantsless passenger joined him. And then more. By this time, she had put her book away. A hidden camera captured her reaction as it evolved from confusion to delight. She traded looks of amazement with the other passengers—a group called Improv Everywhere was responsible for breaking their routine.

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.