American businesses are on notice: To be competitive in today’s market, you must diversify your workforce.

One way to widen the talent pool is to pay closer attention to people who have acquired their skills through alternative routes. Millions of Americans learn on the job, in community colleges, at boot camps, or through life experience. According to Opportunity@Work, more than 70 million Americans are overlooked because of degree requirements. Despite their abilities, these “STARs” (those who are skilled through alternative routes) find themselves stuck in jobs for which they’re overqualified and underpaid.

Opportunity@Work, an innovative social enterprise, reached out to IDEO to help collaborate with companies, talent developers, and STARs seeking career growth. To make this overlooked talent pool more visible, we created a campaign and video to rally companies. We also designed a data dashboard to help regional employer networks identify qualified talent and potential partnerships with skill-building programs. And to provide STARs with direct support, we scaffolded the job-seeking experience, focusing on key moments like the interview process.

It’s time for businesses searching for talent to open their eyes, look to the STARs, and see what they’re missing.

83% of HR professionals said they had difficulty finding suitable candidates in the past 12 months.

62% of Black people, 55% of Hispanic people, and 50% of non-Hispanic white people have become skilled through alternative routes, such as community college, workforce training, boot camps, certification programs, military service, or job experience.

Over the past 40 years, inflation-adjusted wages have increased 8% for college graduates with a bachelor’s degree while decreasing by 15% for people with only a high school degree.

Thousands

of state jobs in Maryland no longer require a four-year college degree

skills-based

The White House is adjusting educational requirements for I.T. professionals in favor of a skills-based approach

For many organizations, frontline workers like grocery store clerks, nurses, hospitality workers, and transit employees are an essential part of doing business.

So much so that they continued to show up at the office throughout the COVID-19 pandemic even as everyone else went remote. As the point of contact with customers and key systems, these workers often know exactly when, where, and why things don’t work, and they come up with powerful hacks and workarounds to make things better. Yet these insights and innovations rarely make it to the corporate office. And that’s a problem: large organizations often hire design and innovation consulting firms while not taking advantage of a latent source of deep, in-house expertise. It’s equally discouraging to workers who would gladly share their ideas if they were only asked. No surprise, then, that frontline workers are quitting their jobs in droves.

What could companies learn by listening?

IDEO partnered with the Ford Foundation to create the Worker Voice Design Lab, where leaders from a port authority, an airline, and a health care provider worked alongside frontline workers. That led to the planting of a seed of innovation in each organization, with interventions designed with and by workers implemented operationally at the core of the business. In one case, a group of workers zeroed in on specific problems with such clarity that they were quickly able to develop a digital prototype for testing. No one was less surprised than the workers themselves, who simply said: Well, nobody ever asked us before. Sometimes the most innovative idea a leader can have is to listen, learn, and act on their employee’s smart ideas.

A large portion of the job churn since March 2020 has been concentrated in frontline services such as accommodation, food services, and retail.

Lack of career growth is the number one reason people leave their jobs according to more than 18,000 frontline workers across 150 companies.

2 pilot initiatives

being led by frontline workers in 2022

The climate era demands new offers and new ways of working.

Would you like to be able to plug your jigsaw into your truck? How about taking a fully reclined snooze after a long day of fishing? Questions like these led to quick prototypes that ended up in Ford’s new, electrified F-150 truck, which has more outlets than the average apartment and can power your entire home. This was no small update. The way Ford reimagined the truck experience from powertrain to power nap is emblematic of how much customer-centricity is now embedded in Ford’s culture.

For well over a decade, we’ve partnered with Ford in the U.S., the EU, and China to help the organization bring to life a shared vision of the future of mobility. Together we scaled new capabilities throughout the company by running proof-of-concept “beacon” projects and, to embed this new customer-centric mindset, built a human-centered-design hub called D-Ford. This organization within the organization has become a magnet for talent and is spread across six global locations: London, Shanghai, Melbourne, São Paulo, Palo Alto, and Detroit. Ford’s commitment to serving the needs of people and the planet is what propelled the rethink of the F-150, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for over 40 years. It was a high-stakes move, and one that represents a major turning point for the automaker: For the first time, its primary profit source would be electric. The new Lightning is still built Ford tough, but also built for the future.‍

Passenger vehicles produced 41% of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2020.

One in every 20 passenger vehicles sold in the United States is a Ford F-150.

Before going electric, the Ford F-150 emitted about 100 tons of CO₂ over a 200,000-mile lifespan.

200,000

pre-orders of the electric F-150 truck, named one of Time's Best Inventions of 2021

Most Innovative Design Company of 2022

according to Fast Company

America’s leading retailers share a common goal—doing less harm to the planet.

The systemic challenges standing in the way require a bold new approach, and no single company can solve them alone. So Closed Loop Partners convened a group consisting of founding partners CVS Health, Target, and Walmart, along with 12 other leading retailers. As the innovation partner, IDEO helped launch a global search for breakthrough sustainable ideas that yielded more than 450 submissions from startups and entrepreneurs to reinvent the single-use plastic retail bag, with nine finalists entering a six-month accelerator.

New alternatives ranged from biodegradable solutions to systems that kept reusable bags in rotation. IDEO teams not only facilitated collaboration between startups and sustainability leads from partner retailers, but also provided a boost of additional expertise from industrial, data, and business designers. In a matter of months, teams were able to launch prototypes in select CVS Health, Target, and Walmart stores in California and New Jersey.

Everyone involved in the consortium knew that replacing single-use plastic retail bags is a problem that won’t be solved quickly or easily. But the Beyond the Bag challenge helped them learn that designing for the policy and infrastructure of tomorrow requires tangible steps, taken together, today.

A hundred billion plastic bags are used in the US every year, and less than 10% of them are recycled.

Every year, plastic retail bags are among the top ten items found on beaches and waterways worldwide.

9

stores tested solutions across Northern California

Millions of dollars

raised by two startups

2

startups acknowledged by Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards

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Tobin Terry: Hi, this is Professor Terry from Lakeland. I’m just checking in to see if I can help you with anything. I hope you are well!

Erica: I’ve been fine staying safe & healthy. After this semester I was supposed to apply for the RNs program since I’m finishing up stats. Can’t reach out to counseling. So maybe you can tell me how to go about that.

Tobin: Counseling is still available! You can call 440-525-7200 or email counseling@lakelandcc.edu. They’ve been working remotely either by video chat or phone call. I can hel set you up! Sorry it’s taken me awhile to get back to you, my kids are pretty much sick of each other and fight like stray cats

Erica: Please schedule me a video chat or meeting with a counselor this coming Monday or any day next week please & thank you! 😊😊

Tobin: You got it! I’ll have the details in your email!

“My approach is to just be myself—typos and all—but I'm ready with the info when the student needs it,” says Professor Terry. “Mostly, it feels like the students are just glad to hear from someone. The way I see it, if we're helping at least one student get through this crisis, it's all worth it.”

This level of student support might seem unusual, but at Lakeland Community College, it underpins everything the leadership, staff, and faculty do. For the past four years, president Morris Beverage and his team have been working with IDEO to become radically student-centered. So far, this has resulted in a more timely financial aid process, dedicated maker space, collaborative community of teachers from across the district, and improved first-year experience courses. Their aspiration is to drive resilience both within the organization and local educational system.

Many organizations are currently navigating unprecedented levels of complexity, and can’t help but feel paralyzed or wish that things will return to normal in a few months. It’s natural, when circumstances are uncertain, to delay action or downplay the implications. But what if, instead of waiting or planning for the return of “business as usual,” we used this time to redesign our systems for the better? Rather than constantly making small tweaks, we rebuild comprehensively.

Lakeland Community College is leaning into this moment, not only meeting students’ needs in a proactive way, but also discovering opportunities to redesign their student experience altogether. The following design-led strategies from Lakeland Community College lend inspiration to leaders in a moment when we sorely need it.

When their family of six is sharing a single computer with spotty Internet access, is that student going to be able to finish an online assignment on time? Leaders at the College knew that their decisions could not be made in a vacuum when they began the transition to online learning. Student engagement is a strong predictor of student retention and success, just as customer and employee engagement drives retention in other industries. But to meaningfully engage with and support students, leaders first needed to understand how students were experiencing the crisis. In addition to meeting with employees who closely interact with students, the Lakeland team connected directly with students and looked to other industries to gain deeper understanding and empathy for varied individual experiences.

Years ago, Beverage stumbled across a study on the “Enlightened Witness” care provider approach developed by Kaiser Permanente of California. Rather than primarily asking patients about their current symptoms, “enlightened” providers also inquire about patients’ lives beyond their health condition, including their current situations, past experiences, and families. If a patient says that a parent struggled with alcoholism, for example, the provider seeks to understand how this affected the person later in life. Research revealed that this care model led to measurable positive outcomes, including a reduction in doctor office visits.

The approach inspired Beverage to send out an email and video message to all students, providing them with his personal email address and inviting them to reach out to him directly. Based on dozens of responses, the team prototyped a student support program modeled after the “Enlightened Witness” program over the course of just five days—an unprecedented pace for a sector notorious for regulation and bureaucracy.

We are building this as we go and there will be bumps, but good education can’t wait. _{MORRIS BEVERAGE, PRESIDENT OF LAKELAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE}

Beverage and a small crisis response team made up of employees across Lakeland began prototyping what they called the “Enlightened Navigator” Program. (The term “navigator” originated from an existing role some Lakeland employees hold, which is dedicated to helping students navigate the college’s resources.) This core group hypothesized that by letting students know that they are cared for, Lakeland employees could gain empathy for their challenges, eliminate barriers, and better design how they serve them.

Hoping to enlist volunteers from Lakeland faculty and staff, Beverage sent out an email message and video asking them to participate in the program. This led to over 130 Lakeland employees signing up to be navigators and providing consistent personal outreach to a group of students. The program was designed to enable continuous feedback between students, navigators, and the crisis response team, so they could quickly respond and adapt as the student’s situation changed from week to week.

When Tracy Shook, Director of Marketing & Communications, reached out to one of her students, she discovered that the student was homeless. Somehow, despite everything, the student is keeping up with her online course load. Shook checks in with her regularly to see how she can offer help amid the student’s shifting and unusual circumstances, whether searching for shelter, trying to feed her family, or finding reliable Internet access. Shook recognizes that education remains critical, even in the midst of a life-or-death global crisis. For many students, reaching their goals and creating a better future for themselves is also key to survival.

The program’s design offers navigators like Shook the chance to interact with students for the first time, further facilitating an institutional shift towards student-centeredness. To support navigators, the crisis response team designed a playbook with sample questions to ask students, tactical FAQs, and other information navigators might need. Equipped with this resource and leadership support, navigators feel more empowered and confident to take action and provide meaningful care to students.

For other navigators like Gloria Lane who manages the women’s center, the program is an opportunity to develop even more empathy and admiration for Lakeland students. Lane is currently supporting a student who works as an aide at the nearby Cleveland Clinic. Through the early hours of the morning, the student sits with elderly, confused, or suicidal COVID-19 patients. After these demanding, emotional shifts, the student, with encouragement from Lane, pushes herself to flip the switch and study for an upcoming math exam.

Another navigator recently spent an hour on the phone with a student who said he felt lost without in-person classes and had been avoiding a big project on the stock market. “He had lost confidence and nearly shut down,” says Cindy Simerly, a navigator and business management professor. “But after helping him navigate the computer software and giving him appropriate tips for how to approach the project, he is back on track and believes he can do it. He kept apologizing for the time it took, but also kept thanking me.”

Like many organizations, colleges tend to delegate this type of outreach to one dedicated team. The Enlightened Navigator Program brought together employees from across the college—leadership, faculty, deans, financial aid associates, marketing team members, women’s center staff, and others—to achieve the shared goal of supporting students. This design enabled the collaboration, mobilization, and distributed leadership needed to spark a student-centered mindset throughout the college.

We’ve seen how this collaborative approach can benefit other organizations: At Ford, for example, teams from human resources, legal, and manufacturing are currently working together and focusing on people as they prioritize worker protection and safety when reopening their factories.

Every student should have a somebody, especially in the current state of the world. _{CHRISTINA CORSI, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES AND CAMPUS ENGAGEMENT}

So far, Lakeland has actively engaged and supported over 600 students. But their work doesn’t stop at graduation. “The core group realized that we should continue this [program] into the fall,” says Christina Corsi, Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives and Campus Engagement. Navigators are focused on supporting their students through the summer and into the fall, doing everything they can to help students make it to day one of fall semester classes. The program has been so successful that Lakeland is planning to integrate aspects of it into the new student orientation. For example, employees will now proactively reach out to new students with personalized messages of support as a part of orientation.

Lakeland’s four-year journey to becoming more student-centered has made them better able to listen, experiment, and quickly adapt to whatever comes their way. This is the type of flexibility and resiliency required to not only respond to a pandemic, but to inspire the redesign of a dated system that’s currently creating barriers for enrollment and degree completion.

“Through this program, we designed and lived in the kind of organization that we want to forever be: collaborative, empathetic, and experimental—all the things that student-centered higher education institutions should be,” says Leah Hartmann, Executive Assistant to the President and Special Projects Lead. “We saw a glimmer of what’s possible and now know it can be done.”

Illustration by Kim Salt

Texting a student who is not in his class just to ask how they’re doing was a first for Professor Tobin Terry. The English professor at Lakeland Community College is part of the Enlightened Navigator Program, a new effort to support students during the coronavirus crisis.

From New York to Nairobi, educators, parents, and students have been finding ways to keep on learning. Many of the creative workarounds that have emerged in response to the pandemic are more than Band-Aid solutions; they are postcards from the future. Hidden within these adaptations are clues to how education might evolve.

The pandemic has both surfaced new needs and exposed the brokenness of our existing system. As designers who bend towards optimism, we view these needs as opportunities to build back better. We aren’t blindly optimistic, of course. Systems that work well for some and not for others didn’t get that way by accident—they were designed that way and could be reinforced if we aren’t purposeful.

We also know that there are many people out there who are already thinking about possible solutions, so we put out an ask to those doing the work to reform education: How might we adapt to remote learning while also using this moment to radically reimagine what we need our education systems to be?

In just three weeks, we received nearly 450 responses. We heard from parents and students, but also architects and entrepreneurs, whose insights you’ll read in the quotes below. A panel of high school students reviewed promising submissions, and top ideas will receive support from HundrED, Sesame Workshop, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, TED-Ed, and IDEO to bring them to life. But in the meantime, we were too inspired not to share some of the early ideas with you.

1. Equity will no longer be an afterthought

“When learning from home, not all students have equal time or space to focus on their classwork.” —Kristen Myers, Communication Designer, Chicago, IL

The pandemic has amplified existing equity gaps and brought new ones into stark relief. Simply put: when students are less visible, it’s easier for them to simply disappear. And if a student’s house doesn’t have reliable internet, it doesn’t matter how much they show up ready to learn—the barrier to success is structural. Instead of trying to rectify inequities after they emerge, schools must proactively make decisions that serve students proportional to their needs.

We were particularly inspired by some ingenuity from countries where access to technology is less reliable. The country of Panama, for example, crowdsourced lessons from its best public school teachers and broadcast those classes on national TV. For the last five minutes of each lesson, a special ed instructor explains adaptive techniques for families whose kids have special needs.

By sharing lessons on television, over 6 million students across Panama had access to the country’s best teachers. Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean leveraging the latest technology. Panama’s approach meets students’ needs at scale. In the future, being radically inclusive will be the norm, not the exception.

2. The “classroom” will be everywhere

“Arts centres, museums, libraries, forest schools, universities, they could be used to accommodate small cluster groups (same children and teacher at all times) to help spread the school population across venues in communities.” —Nia Richards, Learning Experience Designer, Wales, UK

With no vaccine yet in sight, returning to a physical campus in the fall is a daunting challenge. But hidden within the challenge to adapt to this new normal hides a larger truth: Schools’ biggest constraints are their own walls.

What if we saw this not as a space constraint but a space opportunity? When you expand the boundaries of the classroom, there’s almost limitless untapped potential. In response to our ask, we received dozens of innovative uses of physical space. From garden classrooms where students can learn from their natural environment to virtual classrooms that connect students from around the world, expanding our perspective on where learning can happen broadens how and what we teach. And when students learn in the context of the real world, they’ll be better equipped to solve real-world problems.

3. Students will manage their own schedules

“The schedule ... It's archaic. It's inflexible. It no longer works in today's society.” —Kevin Varano, High School History Teacher, Lancaster, PA

For the past few months, we’ve all been living in a time warp. Days pass in blinks. Weeks last for months. The markers of time seem arbitrary. But the same was true for students before the pandemic—the school day, school year, and division of subjects are all constructs. The fact that the school day ends at 3pm and has a three-month summer holiday may work for families who can afford childcare and camp, but not for families who can’t. The rigidity of school schedules is a structural barrier to equity.

Then there’s the schedule of the school day. Josh Stern, a rising senior in high school from New York, believes a lot of his work was limited by the demands of the standard school day. During quarantine, he’s been able to do his work when he’s feeling most energized and take mid-day meetings with professionals in fields that he’s interested in pursuing.

During this crisis, students like Josh have been managing their own time while balancing school with hobbies, work, and family care. It will be hard to pull that flexibility back. It’s time for schools to adopt flexible schedules that better meet the needs of students.

4. Schools will support families rather than just the other way around

“Parents (such as myself) became involuntary Teaching Assistants overnight when schools closed. We had no preparation, no experience and, frankly, no clue as it came to teaching.” — Erik Mooij, Parent, Utrecht, Netherlands

If we have learned anything from the past few months, it’s just how hard teaching can be. Families are developing an intimate understanding of all that goes into helping their children learn—and schools are developing an intimate understanding of how ill-equipped they are to help families serve their children. In the future, schools will rethink how they can better support families.

Take Kidappolis, a bilingual learning app that helps families stay engaged in their children’s education through SMS-based updates. When parents are empowered to help their children, not only will families become more invested in their children’s success, but learning outcomes will improve too.

5. There will be new measures of success

“Using standardized tests to evaluate schools exacerbates inequity & distorts educational purpose.” — Hi Howard, Nonprofit Executive Director, Denver, CO

For years, test results have been the metric that matters for teachers, students, and schools. But during the pandemic, the outsized importance of grades, tests, and attendance has paled in the presence of greater needs—like whether a student has a computer to use or enough to eat. We’ve seen how, for students, school and life are not separate entities. It's hard to focus on finishing an assignment when you have to watch over your baby sister. That will hold true on the other side of this global pandemic.

For far too long, we’ve relied on proxies for what students know—courses completed, grade level, and test scores—rather than giving students an opportunity to show what they know. Moving forward, we’re encouraged by competency-based approaches to assessment that reward a broad definition of growth.

We’ve been blown away by the innovation borne out of the constraints of the pandemic. Schools around the world have tapped their communities to buy and distribute hundreds of thousands of laptops to students in need. Remote learning plans that could have taken districts years have been implemented in weeks. Teachers have found ways to bring creativity, joy, and levity to this heavy moment.

Though everyone is rapidly adapting, systemic change is far from guaranteed. Ensuring that student- and family-centered solutions stick will require following the lead of those doing the work. Educators, families, and students have ideas for how to reimagine the future of learning. Let’s use this time to listen to their voices.

Learn more about OpenIDEO’s Reimagine Learning Challenge here. You can also sign up for Challenge updates here.

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In two months, the world of education has shifted faster than it has in the past 200 years. Seemingly overnight, nine out of every ten students in the world were sent home. Elementary school students missed their friends. High school seniors missed prom. College students missed graduation. Teachers lost their classrooms. Parents lost their childcare. One thing not missing, however, was innovation.

This is just one of the many strange and vivid dreams I’ve had since sheltering-in-place in California's Bay Area. I’ve dreamt about accidentally taking a Zoom call while still laying in bed in my pajamas; about fighting off an army of unexpected visitors to my house with a broomstick; and seeking refuge in a leaky submarine to escape an oil spill.

Turns out I’m not the only one having weird and unsettling COVID-19 dreams. Sisters Erin and Grace Gravley decided to track our collective dreams on their website i dream of covid in hopes of finding patterns. I spoke with Grace, who pairs quirky illustrations with each dream posted on the site, about quarantine dream patterns and her predictions for the post-COVID world.

In one sentence, who are you?

A California-born aspiring botanist and unofficial video game expert.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am a plant scientist by training and trade, and I would venture to say that anyone with a deep love of botany must also be, on some level, an artist. I first got seriously into drawing and digital illustration as a means of drawing botanical illustrations. These were mostly either to help me remember interesting details about a plant species, but also a bit of a labor of love. Pretty soon I found myself drawing anything from cartoon Valentine’s Day cards to my favorite video game characters. Lots of what I have learned has been through my own trial and error, watching YouTube videos about how the heck Procreate works, and looking at other artists’ works and seeing how they do what they do.

How did the i dream of covid project come about?

This project comes from the mind of my sister Erin. After reading Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, a book that chronicled the dreams of people living under Hitler’s regime, she was fascinated by the idea that a shared societal experience could be reflected in the individual unconscious. She decided to create a website cataloging these dreams and asked me to create a logo for her. I volunteered to illustrate the dreams and from then on it has been a collaboration. I have been drawing like a madwoman every day since!

What patterns are you seeing so far?

Many! Some of the most interesting ones that I have noticed are recurring themes about hygiene and windows. The hygiene ones make some sense, as we have been washing our hands more than ever before, and there is some sense of unwashed things being potentially dangerous. They manifest in interesting ways, though, like feeling disturbed by people eating with their hands or having stress-dreams about obsessively scrubbing surfaces to no avail of cleanliness.

The ones with windows really fascinate me. I wonder if they are associated with feeling trapped. Sometimes they show up as beacons of hope, or the place the dreamer is watching the dream play out from. For people who are stuck indoors, especially in cities, a window may be the only “outside” access they have, and maybe that inspires hope. Often these windows appear as sources of evil in these dreams, like the virus is going to come in through the window, or someone is peering outside of the window looking at something scary or horrific.

Could you describe your personal favorite dream from the project?

There are so many great dreams, but my personal favorite is called “In here it is also sad.” This dream was submitted in Portuguese by a dreamer in Brazil and was translated by my polyglot cousin, Philip Georgis. In the dream, the dreamer is dying of illness and is struggling to breathe. They are sitting on a balcony and thinking about everything they’ve experienced in life, and their final sentiment is, “All I could think was that nothing was missing.”

There’s so much fear about how we can ensure our own safety that many of our dreams become about the changes in day-to-day life, or fears that are manifested into objects like shadows or windows. It is interesting and profound to consider feeling at peace with contracting COVID and how that would change our lives and relationships. In the end, it’s a dream about love, community, and loss. I think that resonates with our experiences right now; it cuts to the core of our fears and does so beautifully.

Have you had any weird COVID dreams of your own? What have they been about?

Yes, definitely! I did not start having strange dreams until well into shelter-in-place, but now I am having them pretty frequently. Most of mine are about feeling scared that my mom will find out that I am not following the necessary COVID safety measures. For example, I had one last week where I was going on a date to a baseball game at Oracle Park. We were sitting in the bleachers and I realized that I wasn’t having a very good time. I kept feeling uncomfortable and distracted and was a bit puzzled as to what was bothering me so much. All of a sudden I realized that we were in packed bleachers and doing exactly the opposite of social distancing. I turned to my date and said, “Oh no. If my mom finds out that I am not wearing a mask and am in this big crowd, she’s going to kill me!”

What are your 3 favorite quarantine possessions?

I’m considered essential personnel, so I’m still going in to work every day and am not truly quarantined, so I think my quarantine experience has been different from most folks. But here are mine:

• The Philodendron hederaceum vine that hangs in the window. Watching it grow gives me hope
• The prism that shoots rainbows all over my bedroom every day starting at 3 pm
• My crochet needles and yarn; they ease the tension

How do you see the world post-COVID-19?

This one is tough for me. I talk about it a lot with my friends and family, and I have mixed feelings about it. I worry a lot about the folks who have been and will become disenfranchised because of the pandemic, and about our ability as a country to take care of those people in an equitable and just way.

On the flip side, I have hope for us as a world to be more conscious of those we unfortunately often forget. One of the beautiful things about this situation is that we are paying more attention to the other people in our communities. We worry about those who are elderly, houseless, immunocompromised, and undocumented in a way that we haven’t before. I hope in post-COVID life we continue to do this: to protect those people who need to be protected the most, to care about one another whether we know them or not.

What’s your number one bucket list item once shelter-in-place is lifted?

Camping! I love the outdoors and cannot wait to be able to spend time in nature again.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Cait Gale of Death or Glory Tattoo in Davis, California. She does classic style tattoos and artwork; she gave me a bison tattoo a few months back that I am very much in love with. I have also been reading a lot of short stories lately, and have been particularly drawn to Edwidge Danticat’s writing. Krik? Krak! is one of the best books I have ever read.

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While in my backyard cleaning, I notice a set of cellar doors propped open slightly by a hose. In my two years of living in this house, I’ve never noticed these doors before. The hose props them open just enough to reveal a world beyond the doors. I almost don’t dare look, but my curiosity gets the best of me. I open the doors and walk down a steep staircase to find an entire apartment, fully furnished, with no signs of occupancy. There’s an art studio, a living area with many, many (too many) couches, a kitchenette, and an office area. It’s small but quaint, and I figure that the previous owner of the house must have abandoned it. Whatever the case, my main excitement is hatching a plan to remodel the space so I could have an office away from my actual house.

The internet has no owner’s manual. For someone new to it, technology can be exciting...but also intimidating. As COVID-19 accelerates the shift to digital across nearly every industry and facet of life, building digital confidence in new internet users is more important than ever. It’s important to the small merchant in Chennai who is now sending photos of their inventory to customers; the mother receiving remittance payments from her son in Jakarta; and the daily wage earner in Dhaka looking for work—all doing so on their phone for the first time.

In collaboration with Google’s Next Billion Users team and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we set out to help product teams build more inclusive digital services. Together, we created digitalconfidence.design, a suite of design tools to help teams build digital services that work for everyone. Regardless of where they live, what language they speak, or which device they use.

Whether you’re a designer, developer, researcher, or product manager, here are five tools to use when designing or building for the next wave of internet users.

Build empathy with user context cards

The next wave of internet users has unique needs and context—and they may be very different from the users your product team has designed for in the past. For instance, that shopping cart icon you click on to finish a purchase may not ring a bell for someone living in a rural area without a supermarket.

Consider what we learned from Huria, a woman in Kupang, Indonesia, who has always paid the local shopkeeper in cash. When explaining why she didn’t use a digital payment app, she told us, “If I click the wrong button, my money might go somewhere else." For someone used to in-person transactions, the lack of physical artifacts (like receipts and ATM cards) can contribute to a sense that their money isn’t secure, or raise doubts about whether their transactions are successful.

Understanding the needs of users is the first step in designing a product that works for them. How digitally fluent are your target users? What are their typical behaviors? Our user context cards can help your team articulate who you’re designing for by understanding their unique context.

Download the cards here

Align on your challenge with sprint focus cards

Whether you're running a sprint or defining your roadmap, the first step is aligning on the challenge you’ll focus on. Like the unique needs and context, new internet users also face unique challenges when they interact with digital tools for the first time.

Almost a third of all search queries in India are voice searches. “Talking is easy,” a person outside of Jaipur told us, “but typing is hard.” Voice interactions can be error-prone, though, and for someone who’s still figuring out his or her smartphone, that can be alienating; users might even blame themselves.

Many new internet users are also used to learning new skills and troubleshooting problems alongside friends, family, and neighbors. In Bangalore, the Google team met a woman who had just gotten a smartphone. As they sat down to talk with her, they realized she left her phone by the door. They asked if she wanted to show it to them. “Why would I do that until my daughter’s home?” she asked.

As you get to know your users, your team may discover a handful of needs you could address. Choosing which challenge your team will focus on—like optimizing for voice or developing clear onboarding and assistance flows—will help deliver the best product for your end users. This set of sprint focus cards will help your team align on your design challenge by unpacking common obstacles new internet users face.

Download the cards here

Get inspired by other solutions

Creativity often starts with inspiration. How do other apps design for slow, intermittent, or unreliable network connections? How do communication apps account for multilingual users? How do payments apps make complex interactions less overwhelming?

We've curated a selection of inspirational thought-starters and apps to fuel your team's creative process. Browse provocations that’ll spark conversation among your team or check out other apps that are already addressing the real-world challenges of new internet users.

Explore the inspiration tool here

Use design principles cards to guide your decisions

Design principles are the North Star of your solution. They’re an actionable tool to guide your team’s design decision-making. Clear design principles keep the team focused on the needs of end users—like Poonam from outside of Delhi, who told us that digital accounts were confusing. “Why do I need Google to set up my phone?” she asked. Her Android runs on Google software, where having a Gmail account is a prerequisite. But without knowledge of the companies behind the tools, the relationship was hazy, and even a potential barrier to entry.

Our research uncovered the need to let users, like Poonam, “look before they leap.” Users with less digital confidence prefer to try out apps and features without risk before committing. Allowing them to preview experiences will help them discover new possibilities and overcome the fear of doing something “wrong.”

Aligning on design principles that center users with less digital confidence—like offering multiple modes of interaction, providing timely guidance, and celebrating wins early and often—can produce a more accessible and inclusive product. Use the design principles cards to find actionable strategies to guide your work and inform design decisions.

Download the cards here

Measure your effectiveness with the test framework

By now, you have a prototype. It’s time to answer a tough question: How can your team make sure the product you’re building makes a difference for your intended audience?

Answer: Ask your users! Understanding how real people respond to your product is the only way to ensure you’re effectively building digital confidence. A thorough test framework will help you define your testing goals, choose the right methodology, and align on success metrics.

Download the framework here

Building digital services that work for everyone is now more important than ever. We’re inspired by all of the stories we hear of product teams around the world using these tools to design for the next wave of internet users.

As of May 2020, we’ve validated the Digital Confidence Design Tools and methodology with twenty-two product teams, including Google Pay, Flipkart, Airtel, and Hindustan Unilever. Dozens of prototypes built during our tests are being piloted and measured with new internet users around the world—and our hope is that dozens more are built to connect users in emerging markets with everything the internet has to offer.

About Last Mile Money
The Digital Confidence Design Tools came out of Last Mile Money—a five-year innovation initiative between global design firm IDEO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to connect underserved communities to the digital economy.

About Google’s Next Billion Users team
The Next Billion Users (NBU) team is dedicated to ensuring that Google’s products are meeting the needs of the next billion people coming online. With these needs in mind, the team gathers users insights to build products that help new internet users make the most of the internet. Google's NBU team is also committed to contributing to the ecosystem to create a more inclusive internet where anyone can thrive.

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Today—whatever day you’re reading this—more than a million people will come online for the first time. Tomorrow and the day after, a million more will follow. A million people increasingly from emerging markets and rural areas, where connectivity is on the rise and data costs are coming down. A million people whose first exposure to the digital world is usually through their phone.

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.