Before Eat Real can advocate for better school meals,  it has to connect with school leaders—and donors. As the organization expanded its work beyond school certification, it needed an updated soup-to-nuts branding redesign that represents its purpose.

To get started on the five-week sprint, the IDEO team conducted a brand audit and interviews with Eat Real staff, board members, and donors. The team learned that Eat Real’s brand messaging and voice showed up inconsistently, and that board members wanted greater clarity around communication to prospective donors. Several people expressed a desire to change the original logo centered on a fork to a more culturally-inclusive symbol, and for the logo to be separated from the Eat Real Certified stamp, since the organization had evolved to do much more than just certification.

The IDEO team worked in close collaboration with Eat Real to deliver comprehensive brand guidelines, including Eat Real’s brand purpose and core values, positioning and personality, logo and wordmark, visual expression, verbal expression, and brand showcase. The brand’s new tagline, Nourish the Future, speaks directly to how real food access unleashes the possibility for a healthier society and a healthier planet. A new mark combines three elements that signify much more: a welcoming bowl (joy and ritual), the serving spoon (generosity and nourishment), and a sprouting leaf (a future where children and the planet flourish). The team also landed on an unapologetically vibrant color palette, to bring surprise and energy to the brand. From this foundation, Eat Real created a new website, completed a photo shoot with IDEO's art direction, and launched the brand with new messaging and collateral within a year. Now, Eat Real has the tools it needs to scale its operations and affect real change.

To scale its program and be at the center of sustainable food systems change, Eat Real needed branding and messaging to reach a new set of philanthropists.

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Almost 30 million US kids depend on public school lunches for more than 50% of their daily calories. These meals are frequently made up of ultra-processed, unsustainable foods that contribute to type 2 diabetes and obesity.  

2023 funding goals reached

with its new branding, beating its end-of-year fundraising goals, and putting the nonprofit on track to serve more schools in 2024

129M

meals served to 360,000 students every year at schools that have gone through the certification program

Most end-of-high-school experiences, like the Chinese gaokao exam, the global IB Extended Essay, or the US-based AP Capstone program, are focused on testing and academic, classroom-based activities. Yungu School, a private K–12 school in Hangzhou, China, founded in 2017 by Jack Ma of Alibaba and funded by Alibaba partners, wanted to take a different approach.  Yungu’s vision: combine the renowned Chinese National Curriculum with an international, competency-based learning mindset.

Designing a new capstone course that brought together the perspectives of Yungu School’s many stakeholders was a complex challenge. The solution? IDEO formed a “co-creation council” composed of eight Yungu School middle- and high-school educators who held different positions within the school, spanned tenures, and came from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds, including Chinese, European, and American. Bringing together educators from a range of backgrounds and points of view fostered alignment and sparked new ideas. In addition to the council, IDEO and Yungu educators gathered additional input from students and parents and crafted the objectives, design principles, and blueprint for the change-making 18-month capstone program.

The collaboration resulted in a tailored, insight-driven capstone course that progressively builds learners’ confidence and agency via five modules: “Get Inspired,” “Find Yourself,” “Dive Deep,” “Go Big,” and “Give Back.” The learning cycles, which range from one week to half a year in length, teach students how to move from ideas to impact in topic areas they are passionate about and which have a bearing on pressing issues like climate change, digital privacy, and reducing food waste, among other global challenges. The goal of this iterative approach is twofold. Equip students for “global citizenship” by identifying personal ways to make a positive impact. And foster “entrepreneurship” by learning to be critical, creative, and optimistic systems thinkers who embrace a growth mindset.  

To ensure a solid foundation for the new course, IDEO also created a week-long design-thinking training program for Yungu’s teachers. The professional development experience boosted their creative problem-solving and taught them how to move from being “expert instructors of curricula” to “encouraging guides” of capstone students who would need to demonstrate their proficiency through a final product, presentation, or performance rather than a final exam. The collaboration concluded with an immersive exhibition that allowed all stakeholders—educators, students, and parents—to experience the content modules and transformative course for themselves.   Since launching its capstone program in 2022, Yungu High School has added lectures from social entrepreneurs and workshops that teach communication skills to the innovative course, garnering awards from media outlets like Fast Company. Most importantly, the signature program has enabled The Yungu School to embody its noble and audacious mission—empowering students to become future innovators for social good.

Today’s high-school seniors learn how to memorize academic content and pass tests but aren’t prepared to make a real-world impact after graduation.

196 college offers

and $1.442 million in scholarships received by over 40 graduates from Yungu High School’s class of 2023

2023 Finalist

Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards, Learning category

Design thinking was embedded in the creation of Omada Health from the earliest phases, and Omada has taken that forward as a strategy for success.

Over the past decade, the digital health company has grown from a couple of early career IDEOers testing concepts at the very frontier of digital health, to a company with nearly 2000 employers on its customer roster and more than one million users of its healthcare products.

Omada’s origin story began at IDEO in 2011, when its now CEO, Sean Duffy, an MD/MBA student at Harvard, joined IDEO as an intern, after a partner found his resume on the copy room floor. What was supposed to be a summer internship led to an exploration of the potential impact of digital tools on chronic health problems. IDEO partner Dennis Boyle gave Duffy and his co-founder and fellow IDEOer, Adrian James, the time and funding to do human factors research, meeting with people with prediabetes and metabolic disease in their homes to learn more about the care they were getting. What they heard was that no product or service was meeting the realities of their daily lives.

Five months after he landed his internship, and with the company’s blessing, Duffy and James spun Omada Health out of IDEO. Together, they raised a seed round, and continued to lean on design thinking methods, prototyping early versions of their product, then testing it with real patients. Duffy himself even served as the company’s first health coach. By sticking with the mindsets they had learned at IDEO, they avoided the pitfall of falling in love with the popular approaches to digital health of the era—like detailed food tracking or bluetooth enabled pill bottle tops. Instead, they stayed focused on creating what patients were asking for: a digital product that provided support, accountability, and evidence-based solutions. 

Today, Omada Health is a virtual-first, integrated care solution that provides patients with clinical care plans using digital tools and one-on-one, personalized coaching. It helps users manage chronic conditions including pre-diabetes, diabetes, hypertension, joint and muscle health, and behavioral health. More than a decade after its founding, it counts nearly 2000 employers as customers, has more than one million users of its products, and has published 24 peer-reviewed studies on its outcomes. Not to mention a $1.3 billion IPO in June of 2025. But it’s still going after its North Star: to bend the curve on preventable chronic diseases nationwide.

About 60% of adults in the US live with a chronic disease. According to the CDC, 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion annual healthcare expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.
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Diabetes is the country’s seventh leading cause of death—and the most expensive. Diabetes accounts for $1 out of every $4 in US healthcare costs. In addition to the cost of care, diabetes costs employers $90 billion annually in lost productivity.

Nearly 2,000

employers now partner with Omada

1 in 10

commercially-insured Americans have access to Omada through their health plan or employer coverage

$1.3 billion

valuation at Omada's IPO

Finding the right beauty product online isn’t easy, as shoppers are deluged with choices.

On top of information overload, our research unearthed varying emotional and functional needs when exploring beauty products. When looking for makeup, for example, shoppers are interested in self-expression and open to exploration. But when buying skincare products to fix an acne problem, say, people feel a bit more vulnerable. That insight led to rethinking the retail environment as a space that offers both free range exploration and trial spaces along with engagements that address the individualized needs of customers at different life stages.

Acknowledging that entering a new phase of life can make people feel insecure about their looks, we asked research participants, What does “beauty power” mean to you? Responses suggested a lack of trust in unbiased voices online about how to look and feel powerful. Digital shoppers are continuously bombarded by ads and influencers who are incentivized to push brands who hire them. Shoppers love Sephora for being a neutral space that showcases multiple brands, so we leaned into that strength, designing displays that offer product reviews and details that enable consumers to make informed decisions.

Those displays started as prototypes in a Sephora concept store that filled an entire floor of IDEO’s Shanghai office. In our bright, modern space, consumers of all demographics explored a self-led experience designed to delight. A “Play Table” allowed visitors to freely explore products, using digital platforms to access product details and reviews. Beauty consultants were close at hand to offer assistance. At another pitstop, the “Sephora Beauty School,” offered a spectrum of classes and community activities, providing hands-on guidance and enabling participants to test out beauty bloggers’ techniques. The “Care Table” addressed more personal skincare needs, providing a semi-private setting for individuals to remove makeup, try out products, and consult with experts. Here, digital tools helped consumers understand their skin type, facilitating personalized consultations akin to professional medical care. These innovative features aimed to create a unique, exploratory experience, blending digital convenience with concierge in-store service.

The feedback garnered from that prototype helped the team iterate quickly and gave Sephora the confidence to launch its first “Asia Store of the Future” in Singapore in 2022, followed by a second store in Shanghai in 2023. The Singapore store, situated in Raffles City, offered consumers a free-flowing, interactive beauty playground with a blend of digital and personal services, much like our early prototype.

The success of these two shops validated Sephora’s “Store of the Future” strategy. But experiences must evolve to stay fresh, so the team set up an “engagement indicator” tracking customers’ interaction with digital touchpoints to provide Sephora with valuable insights. Based on those insights, Sephora can continue to iterate its in-store experience and foster loyalty as its customers’ preferences shift.

As hoped, Sephora’s revitalized storefront blends digital and physical experiences in a way that gives every person who enters the store the feeling that they are stepping into their own “beauty power”.  By getting close to its customers, building early prototypes, and learning as it goes, Sephora has redefined the in-store experience, ensuring its relevance and appeal in a rapidly transforming retail landscape.

E-commerce has created tremendous challenges to companies whose core business revolves around retail stores.

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Online consumers struggle to make informed decisions with the deluge of choices online.

2

“Stores of the Future” launched

107%

traffic increase within four months of Shanghai store launch

A decade ago, Rodríguez-Pastor asked IDEO to help him realize a unifying, human-focused, mission: to leverage the power of its business to uplift Peru’s middle class.

Beginning with a single engagement in 2011, IDEO and Intercorp’s work together grew into an unusual entanglement of organizational cultures, brimming with stories of mutual influence.

Since then, IDEO’s work with Intercorp has touched more than two dozen different companies across the group as the business grew from $2.9 billion in revenue in 2011 to $8.5 billion in 2021. Intercorp now employs more than 80,000 people and its revenue represents more than 3.5 percent of Peru’s gross domestic product.

Yet the greatest change has been in the minds of Intercorp’s leaders. In looking back on 10 years of collaboration, a key theme emerges: Working with IDEO on dozens of projects has taught Intercorp’s teams new capabilities, and that has snowballed into a new way of thinking for this broad-reaching company.

The following oral history recounts how the organization has transformed over the last decade through a series of leaps: imagining a more human-centered future, using digital experiments to gain confidence, and changing mindsets across the company to ensure resilience over the next decade.

I. Building belief: I can see what we need to do

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor was born in Peru, and educated in the United States after his father became a political exile in 1969. The family returned in the 1990s, and Rodríguez-Pastor’s father began building a banking business, which became known as Interbank. When he died suddenly in 1995, Rodríguez-Pastor himself became the bank’s chairman, a position he used as a beachhead for growth in Peru’s liberalizing economy. With the founding of Intercorp in 1997, Rodríguez-Pastor charted an audacious path beyond banking, with its unifying force being the well-being and prosperity of Peruvians. It was a far-reaching ambition that bridged people and profit—but to pull it off, he needed help.

Rodríguez-Pastor asked IDEO for help with two distinct projects: a new school system that would be affordable for the emerging middle class; and a new customer experience for Interbank, Intercorp’s flagship bank.

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor: “We had a big goal—to make Peru the best place to raise a family in Latin America—which was both a moral obligation and an opportunity. We saw that if you make the pie bigger, then we’re going to help a lot of people, and our businesses are also going to do better. Our education system was struggling and we wanted to help change it."

Sandy Speicher, CEO of IDEO: “It was really a brave moment, both for Carlos and for us. Carlos knew how important it was to create opportunities for people by securing their educational foundation. But Peru, at the time, was one of the lowest ranked countries on an international survey of education systems."

The new school system, known as Innova Schools, was a success on its own terms: In 2020 it enrolled 42,000 students across 68 locations in 3 countries (Peru, Mexico, and Colombia); boosted 4th grade students’ math and reading test scores 2x compared to local public schools; and saw 99 percent of graduates go on to higher education or actively prepare for college. For Intercorp and IDEO, this formative project suggested broader possibilities—for organizational change across Intercorp, which could in turn inspire societal change across Peru.

Interbank presented a different type of challenge. Peru’s history of political instability had left a consumer banking environment controlled by security concerns. IDEO and Intercorp prototyped an experimental space called Interbank Explora, which brought the staff out from behind bulletproof glass and into the middle of the banking hall, making for a more welcoming experience.

Luis Cilimingras, Partner at IDEO: “We realized the intimidating environment wasn't welcoming for customers, and also meant that branch employees and managers were out of touch with the customer's day to day experience. We asked, ‘How could you redesign the banking experience so people would feel good about going inside?’”

Luis Felipe Castellanos, CEO of Interbank: “Before, everything was done on the basis of surveys or a focus group, at the most. IDEO gave us a different way to understand our clients, and get involved in their day-to-day lives. We almost lived with them."

Luis Cilimingras: “With the new branch experience in place, Interbank’s employees told us ‘Now some of my customers kiss me goodbye!’”

In Interbank Explora’s first sixty days, sales increased by 30 percent, customer satisfaction improved, and profitability grew by 32 percent. Building on that success, the changes were rolled out across the bank’s 2,200 branches.

Luis Cilimingras: “The investment and the participation of the leaders in the process made them realize: ’we need to be working in this way.’ They were just immediately converted.”

II. Launching an innovation engine: We can do this

Intercorp and IDEO began considering ways to extend their collaboration across the group—meaning to more of Intercorp’s diverse holdings—by building an internal innovation lab in Lima.

Luis Cilimingras: “Carlos [Rodríguez-Pastor] was like, ‘Okay, first time, with Innova: Lucky! Second time, with Interbank: It seems I have a partner!’ Intercorp saw us as somebody who can help them imagine the future, who is going to help drive change.”

In 2012, Hernan Carranza, then a young executive at Casa Andina, Intercorp’s hotel company, spent a summer working in IDEO’s Munich studio. Afterwards, he pitched Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor on the idea of an in-house digital innovation shop. That idea evolved into building a human-centered design team that could work across Intercorp’s companies. Rodríguez-Pastor seized on the idea, and made Carranza Intercorp’s first Chief Innovation Officer.

Hernan Carranza, Chief Innovation Officer of Intercorp: “That's when we said, ‘Hey, why don't we have a design team—a mini-IDEO—in Lima?’ That would put it much closer not only to the Peruvian family, which is who we design for, but also to the executives of the Intercorp group, who are the people with whom we co-create the solutions for the families.”

Luis Cilimingras: “We were bringing a new set of techniques and approaches to solving problems and they were bringing operational expertise and local talent who understood the context in which we were working. But these were far from what I had imagined as the 'ideal conditions' to set up an innovation team. It was jarring to realize how much I had to learn to be effective. With a product mindset, you have this vision of what the end result will be like. I had to scrap that and embrace what I didn’t know as the key ingredient for success.”

Hernan Carranza: “If Intercorp and IDEO had a child, that would be La Victoria Lab. But even a love child isn’t easy! We found a way to have our own voice that is authentic to us. But what we conserve are the foundations of IDEO’s approach: being highly experimental, being truly curious, being intuitive. All those mindsets that we learned from IDEO are the cornerstone of what we do.”

Watch "It's Up to Us", a short film about IDEO's 10-year partnership with Intercorp and how it transformed the organization.

La Victoria Lab (LVL) opened in 2014 in a converted house a few blocks away from Intercorp’s headquarters. Their first project was a deep ethnography of the Peruvian middle class, presented in a way that would engage executives across Intercorp.

Maria Paula Loayza, Portfolio Lead at La Victoria Lab: “We turned our own office into a small exhibition, so people could walk around and experience the research, as if they are dropping into someone’s house.”

Luis Cilimingras: “We invited leaders from across Intercorp, and we shared these stories with them. And that built La Victoria Lab’s brand within Intercorp—you can come to us when you have a human problem. Don't come to us with an efficiency problem. Come to us when you have something that has a deeply human need.”

In its first two years, La Victoria Lab grew to over 20 designers and launched multiple initiatives across Intercorp with a single objective: to build belief and confidence in their ability to design impactful services and experiences for Peruvian families. Given the vast scale of the conglomerate, this early work was just a start, but it was consequential in its ability to inspire Intercorp’s leaders.

III. Unleashing a digital transformation

With La Victoria Lab on its feet, its designers homed in on a “theory of change,” a method by which their small team could create work that inspired innovation across Intercorp. For years, Rodríguez-Pastor had been pushing for a company-wide digital transformation, but there was little progress. The businesses had a vestigial brick-and-mortar mentality and didn't see digital as something that would take hold in Peru for another decade. LVL saw this as their challenge: to become a hotbed of digital experimentation, executed in a way that built confidence and capability across Intercorp. Conceived to be highly visible, this category of projects became known internally as “beacons”, digital products whose design and launch would convey to the organization what it needed to change in order to scale digital ways of working.

Maria Paula Loayza: “The beacons were conceived to shine back to the organization everything that needed to change.”

Hernan Carranza: “We were not thinking of ourselves as the scalers of innovation. We were more like igniters. We were always like, ‘how do we inspire the leadership?’"

Maria Santolaria, Program Director at IDEO: “Our thesis was that by injecting something—a team that worked differently, or a digital product that was built and launched in a different way—the organization could mimic that behavior and change organically.”

The most popular of the early beacons were for Inkafarma, Intercorp’s consumer pharmacy chain, and Interseguro, their insurance company. Inkafarma’s project became a model across Intercorp for a digital-first strategy. By making it seamless and convenient for Peruvian customers to get medications delivered to their door, Inkafarma’s mobile platform predicated many of the features that would become essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. The app now drives up to 20 percent of Inkafarma’s business in urban areas.

Hernan Carranza: “In creating Inkafarma’s delivery app, which considered the needs and pain points of the consumer first and foremost, the team started designing and implementing on the fly, with the goal of putting functional products in the hands of users—in order to capture real reactions.”

Maria Paula Loayza: “At first, everybody at Intercorp was kind of looking at us weirdly, because what we were putting in the hands of consumers was crude. But we were able to apply our learnings as we went, and show how these small projects could be like proof points—prototypes that build confidence and begin the complex process of transforming organizations.”

Patricia Conterno, VP of Digital and Analytics at Interseguro: “Interseguro was not then a company centered on the user. When we developed a new product, we just did what we thought was right and hoped people liked it. Our beacon with LVL helped change that. Now we're constantly experimenting, testing with users, and trying to solve any friction they might have. To do so, we’ve now put 15-20 percent of employees in digital transformation roles. Once we launch a product, it is never finished.”

IV. Changing mindsets: This is us now

As La Victoria Lab’s reputation grew within Intercorp, IDEO’s role shifted. Intercorp had the ability to tackle core business opportunities in-house, so IDEO turned to guiding critical, strategic programs (like climate change and DEI initiatives); industry deep dives in sectors like health care; and continued support for leaders as they embraced new mindsets and ways of working.

Hernan Carranza: “A specific behavior we developed with IDEO is what we internally call ’tunking,’ which is when someone leading a creative project looks to others for honest feedback. I remember Luis Felipe Castellanos, the CEO of Interbank, once called me and said, ’Hey, can you send me six, seven more tunkeros to look at and tune my five-year vision?’ I thought that was fabulous. It's a sign that this leader is becoming a more vulnerable person, a more open leader who wants to listen to other perspectives.”

Luis Felipe Castellanos: “Leadership is not about having all the answers, it's about having the right questions. Working with IDEO has made me a much more human leader, focused on understanding the human being behind all of our solutions and all of our offerings.”

Fernando Zavala, CEO of Intercorp: ”What IDEO and La Victoria Lab have done is to permanently push us to think differently, to open our minds, to confront our ideas and, based on that confrontation, to get the best out of it.”

Hernan Carranza: “IDEO infected us with this little bug of permanent curiosity. To be constantly learning all the time—but, even more importantly, constantly unlearning. For Intercorp’s leaders, La Victoria Lab has become a stone in the shoe, always looking to discomfort, to challenge, and to take solutions to the next level."

After a decade, IDEO and Intercorp have come to an unusual understanding of what they have most meaningfully created together: not projects and businesses, but people and culture. It has been a transformation not only of design and efficiency, but also of mindset and approach.

Hernan Carranza: “I think my main learning in this last decade is that the transformation of a conglomerate of 80,000 people starts with the transformation of oneself as a leader. If you are able to start transforming your mental model, that makes another leader, another leader, and leadership begins to cascade.”

Sandy Speicher: “They’ve built this massive organization of learning. They’ve taken this model that we designed with them, and built an organization that continuously learns, and continuously designs, and continuously evolves.”

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor: “Ten years into our relationship with IDEO, Intercorp is a totally different company. We are a much more customer-centric company. I think we have more empathy. We want to become the best place to raise a family in Latin America. I think that's achievable within the next 10 years. It's really up to us.”

Illustrations by Stephanie Sizemore

When the public sector falls short, should business step in? That question was top of mind for Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor, President of Intercorp, a Peruvian conglomerate with an expansive range of companies from banking to education to health care to retail.

This is what it’s like to drink liquids in space. Ugh, right?

In space, a pouched drink is a simple and functional solution that prevents liquid from spilling and floating around the station. However, drinking coffee isn’t just a means to hydrate—it’s an experience. And for some astronauts, that experience has been lacking.

In 2008, Don Pettit, a NASA astronaut on his second mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), casually prototyped a cup by folding an overhead transparency film he found aboard. Taking advantage of the behavior of liquid in zero gravity, he calculated the folding angle so that the coffee climbed up the transparency to the edge of the cup. The result was a teardrop-shaped Zero Gravity Cup that provided a familiar drinking experience, this time with a magnificent view of Earth.

Until now, space agencies have worked to maximize safety and minimize the cost of crewed missions. But as private companies begin to send civilians to space, they’ll need to provide a better experience for their customers and double down on adding curiosity and delight to our explorations into the unknown.

Designing a space travel experience

Imagine that you’ve just won a ticket for a three-day trip to the ISS. Once aboard, you feel thrilled to float around in zero gravity and gasp at the majestic view of Earth beneath you. But after a few days of bumping into walls and your fellow travellers, eating packaged meals, and using tube toilets, your precious out-of-this-world vacation starts to feel like an ordeal.

Inspired by Don’s playful curiosity, a team of colleagues at IDEO decided to tackle the zero gravity environment through some out-of-this-world design exercises to explore the untapped potential of the burgeoning space travel market. Here are some of the guiding principles we’ve come up with to create unforgettable experiences that elevate the everyday in space.

1. Lead the way through play

Zero gravity—technically microgravity— is a stressful and even harmful environment for earthlings. Simple movements require you to use your body in a completely different way. To enable a truly delightful visitor experience, visitors need to acclimate and relearn how to use their bodies. By helping people navigate this new environment through the lens of play, they can get creative about hacking their bodies to befriend zero gravity.

As children, we all learned through play. Creatively confident, we embodied a curious mindset that empowered us to explore and push the edges of what we were capable of. Remember when we played lava in our living rooms and decided that the floor would burn our feet? Imagine what the emotional foundation for space travel would look like if we returned to these playful mindsets.

2. Elevate the whole journey

The climactic moment of space travel might well be the very first moment you reach orbit. But that also implies that the excitement can diminish over the course of your stay.

As we grow older, we learn to optimize the path between places and forget to enjoy the journey itself. However, many other unforgettable moments await you on your journey around Earth. Moments such as watching the sunrise every 90 minutes, soaring over different continents at an incredible speed, or witnessing the Aurora Borealis from above. Let’s take a nod from game design and storytelling crafts, which skillfully utilize pacing to create a sense of adventure and build narratives that stick with visitors. Or from experience design, by proactively asking how visitors might be emotionally transformed by their journey. There are opportunities to build continuous excitement over the course of the journey, gracefully transitioning from each experience into the next, from launch to landing.

3. Default to designing inclusive experiences

The world’s first all-commercial astronaut mission to Earth’s orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon includes passenger Hayley Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor with a prosthesis in her leg. While traditional astronaut exams preclude her, private spaceflight allows more flexible requirements. Soon, people with different physical and mental abilities will visit space, and some conditions might even be advantageous, such as deafness, which typically makes people immune to motion sickness.

Even those considered able-bodied on Earth should expect to experience their abilities differently during space travel. We are not made for zero gravity environments. As Miriam Kramer aptly put it in her article for Axios, “Designing spacecraft for people with disabilities would make life easier for all astronauts, even those considered able-bodied.” Through designing from the lens of human experience, we have a chance to reset expectations and intentionally create moments where more of us feel welcome into the experience.

Our increasing ability to travel in outer space is already changing people’s mindsets around stewardship of the Earth, and we need to design travel experiences to align with and spotlight this paradigm shift. While initial access to space may be limited to wealthy people, designing an enjoyable and impactful experience ensures long-term prosperity of the space tourism industry, and paves the way for more of us to bring world-changing learnings back to Earth.

In space, our earthly common sense no longer holds true. As the music band OK GO elegantly put it, “Gravity is just a habit.” Up there, we must fundamentally change our approach to design. Up there, the lack of gravity exposes the true human value of an experience and every experience is now ours to reimagine.

Before you start reading, make yourself a cup of coffee. Got it? Great. Now dump it in a plastic bag, and try to drink it with a straw.

But Damian Thompson, then a cashier, approached the man without thinking twice. Thirty years ago, Thompson was the first Black teller at the bank where he worked, and sensed that certain customers did not want to be served by him. That experience taught him the value of ensuring that everyone was included and given the same service.

Over time, by listening to that customer’s needs and gaining trust, Thompson managed to secure a major investment for the bank. This habit is something that he carries with him today as the Group Managing Director of Retail at UK-based Aldermore. He is always looking for ways to improve the bank's service.

Thompson’s practice of listening is an art, and one of the most undervalued skills in business. Soft skills may seem inessential when compared to tangible ones, like product development. But when organizations actively listen, they gain insights about customer needs that can make the difference between a resilient, future-fit organization and one that withers on the vine.

To heroize employees who listened well and went the extra mile with customers, Thompson launched an “Experts with Empathy” campaign at Aldermore, asking teammates to nominate each other to win prizes. He regularly picks up the phone to heap praise on high performing representatives. The bank has become known for lending to those with less than perfect credit, earning it high NPS scores and loyal customers. Understanding how stressful owing money can be and listening with compassion, Thompson argued, must always come before slapping someone with an overdue penalty.

Carlos Rodridguez Pastor, President of the Peruvian conglomerate Intercorp, admires Thompson’s style of leadership. Pastor has long encouraged all ranks of his organization, from top executives to front-line workers, to stay close to customers. He, too, models active listening tactics, like welcoming and serving customers, and walking the aisles of stores. So, when the time came to send Intercorp’s top brass on an annual inspiration trip—which, until COVID, took executives to faraway locales—Intercorp asked IDEO to create a remote experience on the theme of Escucha Activa, or Active Listening.

In May, 2021, 30 CEOs, 12 board members, and 130 other leaders signed onto Zoom for a four-day global “tour” to learn from some of the best listeners in business. Damian Thompson was our first speaker.

As the future of work becomes increasingly remote, putting employees at a greater distance from customers, active listening will become increasingly important. Here’s how to design your own remote learning experience on active listening:

1. Never waste a crisis

While COVID prevented us from climbing aboard tour buses and trying new foods in distant locations , the remote learning experience removed other constraints, allowing us to bring Active Listening luminaries from around the world to Peru. We tapped our networks to bring in guests from Nigeria, China, the UK, Brazil, and Denmark, as well as the US. C-suite speakers joined from Pillpack (Amazon), Lloyds and Aldermore banks, African fintech startup Piggyvest, and established retailers like IKEA and LEGO. Our IDEO team was distributed as well: based in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, and Munich. It was simultaneously the most ambitious and least expensive business trip the two companies had ever put together in their 10 years of collaboration.

2. Over-prepare

To make the experience of learning how to listen better feel like traveling to visit distant oracles, we prepared each leader for the main event with several pre-session interviews to fine-tune the stories and wisdom they imparted. The prep work paid off: zeroing in on a clear message for each session helped participants follow each step of the learning journey.

3. Design for immersion

No matter how good a listener you are, a two-and-a-half hour Zoom call can feel like an eternity. Knowing that, we tried to strike a balance between learning and entertainment—quick exercises that focused on employee listening and longer, immersive talks. We used travel metaphors to keep the pep in our step and kept the experience to two consecutive weeks, on Thursday and Friday mornings (Peru time). The time limit allowed executives to put aside their phones and truly take in the content, knowing they’d have the balance of the day to get work done.

4. LEGO the learning

Our sessions were set up to build on each other like LEGO sets. Each day kicked off with leaders sharing stories. They explained what it takes to “Commit to Active Listening,” like asking high performing employees about their listening methods and sharing with others at the company. Day 2 was about “Scaling Active Listening,” from individual initiatives to company-wide movements, like a weekly survey that gathers feedback about how close you feel to customers at any given time. Day 3 was spent on “Expanding your Toolkit for Active Listening,” by adding new tactics to the mix, like listening to customers on social media and responding quickly. The 4th day concluded with a lessons on how to “Use Listening to Drive Decisions,” or to act on what you hear in a continuous cycle of improving business offers, like allowing customers more flexible payment plans during financial distress.

5. Create a meal out of bite-size chunks

Sending participants into breakout rooms of 5-10 people allowed us to design activities that brought home the day’s lessons. One favorite was to write and collage a “Postcard From the Future” about a new product or service your business might launch based on an insight gleaned from active listening.

6. Make the stage bigger

Here’s one thing you could never do in person: travel from China to Nigeria to Peru within minutes. It was morning in Lima, evening in Lagos, and 11 p.m. in Shanghai, but we were all listening and learning from each other as if we were sitting side by side.

When we stood up this learning experience, Peru was in the midst of a political crisis and had suffered the largest dip in GDP in the world the previous year. It was a very tense moment that had stretched out for months. After the tour wrapped, feedback from participants suggested that it had an enormous positive emotional impact, giving leaders the injection of inspiration and optimism they needed to overcome burnout and mental distress. It came just in time.

Beyond the morale boost, we learned a lot about how to listen better ourselves. One of the best bits of wisdom came from a lovable bear who has never worked a day in his life. “If the person you’re talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient,” said Winnie the Pooh. “It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

If the person you’re talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

- Winnie the Pooh

To make sure we’re listening for how we can make our work better, we must continuously remove fluff—not only to close the gap between companies and customers, but also to allow for the free flow of listening-based insights inside organizations.

Why? Because insights are only powerful if put to use. When employees feel empowered to act on what they hear, marshalling resources and prototyping new ways to deliver great service, you can be sure no one will be left alone in the lobby.

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The bank reps had seen the man lingering in the lobby more than a few times. No one ever thought to ask if he needed help. He looked a bit rough, honestly. The seams of his jacket hung low. His hair was an angry cloud.

For more than two years, with the help of a group of designers from IDEO, we and our colleagues from the Drucker Institute had been planning and developing Bendable, a lifelong learning system that would allow the 100,000 residents of South Bend, Indiana—regardless of their age or background—to acquire new knowledge and skills through online courses as well as in-person classes. The goal was to foster a significant increase in better jobs, civic participation, and overall well-being for the community.

In June 2020, we finally unveiled the system. And month by month, backed by an aggressive marketing campaign, we watched the tally of unique local visitors to the Bendable digital platform steadily climb: from 2,161 to 5,160 to 8,040. Our plan to tackle the first order of business—bringing eyeballs to Bendable—was working. By mid-November, we’d crossed the 10,000 mark.

But as we headed into 2021, we began to notice a different trend taking hold: Growth was slowing.

This wasn’t totally surprising. We’d launched Bendable in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, rendering a nonstarter our elaborate plans to supplement the online learning with a slew of face-to-face events. But Covid-19 couldn’t explain everything. In this way, we found ourselves in the same situation that many organizations do when they bring a new digital product into the world: a meteoric start that quickly fades. To try to reverse the slide, we needed to look in the mirror. And that meant getting more serious about how we’d leverage the metrics we were collecting.

Over the past nine months, we have implemented what we call a 4-D approach to continuous improvement: data → decision-making → design → deployment. Now, our team from the Drucker Institute and the St. Joseph County Public Library—our key partner in South Bend and the home of Bendable in the community—gets together every four weeks or so to dig into the metrics, discuss what they mean, figure out what we should do about it, and assign a champion to be accountable and follow through.

To be sure, the numbers alone can’t give us a fully rounded picture; we always temper the quantitative data with what we are observing and hearing from Bendable stakeholders on the ground across the city. But the stats have become the place to start, giving our team a common way to frame whatever situation we are sizing up. We have used the data to shape our strategy for attracting new users, as well as for making Bendable stickier for those who've checked out the platform—goals that every digital product team can relate to.

Tracking the right data

Before we could take full advantage of the data, we had to make sure we were scrutinizing the right stuff.

Our first instinct—and likely the one many teams lean into—was to pull in all of the data that we could from Google Analytics and our own platform. What we ended up with was a mountain of metrics, but not a lot of meaning.

It didn’t take long before we realized that a better place to start was to sharpen our objectives for the program and then find the specific metrics that would shed light on whether we were getting there. We eventually landed on four overarching goals for Bendable in South Bend: to activate learning, drive a depth of learning, cultivate in people a habit of learning, and ensure that Bendable is inclusive of the whole community.

Today, we track statistics across 13 different areas (through Google, along with a few add-ons put together by our own software developer and key performance indicators passed on by our content providers). Each is organized under one of our four main goals.

These include things like the number of South Bend residents coming to Bendable both for the first time (activating learning) and returning (cultivating the habit of learning). We pay close attention to how much progress they are making through content providers’ courses, as well as through Bendable Career Collections—employer-backed learning pathways intended to prepare people for some of the most in-demand jobs in South Bend.

We also analyze the range of resources that people are clicking on. One of our theories is that if people are able to rely on Bendable to unearth all sorts of content, it will help instill in them the habit of learning. And so we assess how many South Bend residents want new work skills and how many are looking to enhance other aspects of their lives (by finding a class on, say, personal finance) or fulfilling a passion (like music or art).

We also pull information from our account sign-ups and parse which zip codes Bendable learners are from, which helps us make sure we’re reaching traditionally underserved areas.

Turning insight into action

From the data, we’ve learned that marketing matters—a lot. When the library lets up on its social media posts about Bendable, traffic to the platform falls, sometimes precipitously. When it leans into social media, traffic swells.

This is a crucial lesson: You have to sell a social innovation not unlike the way you would sell toothpaste; just because something meets a genuine need doesn’t mean that interest in it will magically materialize. It takes a real push.

As we delved into the data with the library, we discovered that to have the greatest impact, Bendable must be timely, which caused us to adjust our plans. One way we do this is by highlighting various Community Collections—personal learning playlists put together by local residents on a wide variety of topics. For instance, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, the library promoted a Community Collection titled “Discerning fact from misinformation online.” More than 100 residents clicked on it that week, nearly nine times more than the next-most-opened Collection. As the weather started to warm this spring in South Bend, the library put the spotlight on a Community Collection called “Getting started as a gardener,” and it became the most popular.

Thanks in part to this insight, we have started to see our unique visitor growth pick back up, rising from its nadir of 481 in March.

“It’s the combination of pushing trusted learning content along with its relevance to our community's day-to-day life that brings more value to our patrons and translates to more engagement," says Norah Alwalan, who oversees the library’s Bendable outreach.

Turning visitors into regular users

The data also turned our attention to another challenge: getting people to sign up for a Bendable account. To date, about 1,500 have done so—just 10 percent of the nearly 15,300 unique local visitors who have now come to the platform.

Account sign-ups are tricky terrain for many digital products. You want to give a certain amount of freedom so that users can get a taste without potentially alienating them by coming on too strong and asking for their personal information. But you need that information to follow up with them and maximize their experience.

In the case of Bendable, this tension is especially pronounced. We want people to have friction-free access to much of the content on the platform so they can jump right in and begin learning. And yet if they don’t sign up for an account, we can’t communicate with them through email or text, making it difficult for us to support their efforts. What’s more, without an account, Bendable users can’t obtain course seats that have been pre-paid with philanthropic dollars, including a lot of the meatiest content that can help them advance in their careers.

So, how can we inspire more people to sign up for a Bendable account?

Thus far, we’ve tried several tactics, including an email blast to library patrons, urging them to make an account. In March, we added a welcome video to the top of the Bendable homepage, helping onboard new users to the platform and encouraging them to create an account from the get-go.

The pace of account sign-ups has shot up since April. But we know that we need to do much more.

Getting out into the community

As South Bend residents have gotten vaccinated and things have started to open back up, we have been working with librarians to get those walking into the 10 branches around the city excited about Bendable. We ask these people about their learning dreams, and then put their aspirations up on the branch wall, along with each person’s photo. (At the LaSalle Branch recently, we heard from men and women who were eager to re-learn math, become proficient in Photoshop, start a business, see their houseplants flourish, and more.) We then ask them to sign up for a Bendable account and give them guidance on how they can use the system.

Of course, we know that the toughest thing for many of these learners and any others who use Bendable will be persistence.

It’s not that Bendable users aren’t committed to learning. According to several of our content providers, including GCFGlobal and LRNG, those coming from Bendable.com consistently spend about twice as much time on their sites as do those who find their way there through a general search engine.

But it’s a different story for the courses that require hours of dedication to get all the way through, including those offered by Penn Foster, edX, and others that can lead to industry-recognized credentials or college credit. Of the 340 or so of these classes that have been started, fewer than 20 percent have been completed.

If the data has proven one thing above all, it’s that learning is hard.

On some level, we knew this going in. Adult learners face myriad barriers, including juggling work and family responsibilities; anxiety about being back in “school,” even if they are now in an alternative learning environment; and struggling with childcare and transportation.

But seeing the numbers has reinforced the fact that to drive a depth of learning—one of our four strategic goals—we need to get beyond the digital platform and equip the community to support Bendable learners. It’s a good reminder that the most important thing that a piece of technology can do is connect people in a meaningful way.

And so, we are now collaborating with stakeholders across South Bend—employers such as Beacon Health, the big hospital system in town; nonprofit organizations like Goodwill; government agencies, including a summer youth jobs program run by the city parks department; educational institutions, including the public schools; and others.

With our help, these partners are weaving Bendable into their everyday activities, seeking to further their own missions by assigning specific courses on the platform to their employees, clients, students, and so forth. To help these cohorts of learners get through the material successfully, we are now running a bunch of experiments that have been designed with input from a social science researcher. Among them: sending out text messages to nudge learning along; making available online coaching; using local university students as in-person coaches; and sharing data so that organizational leaders have visibility into learner progress.

In the end, building a better Bendable—as with any initiative trying to have a deep social impact—will be neither fast nor easy. We anticipate that it will take five years or more before we have a good sense of whether we’re getting anywhere toward our paramount goal: making South Bend more resilient by building a true community of lifelong learning.

Meanwhile, we will also be expanding Bendable through a partnership with the Maine State Library. Although Bendable will be hyper-localized for the people of Maine, with content and features that meet their particular wants and needs, our long-term aim remains the same: boosting the resilience of residents throughout the state.

Which is why we will, once again, rigorously track the most pertinent data. “The idea of resilience can be nebulous,” says Lex Dennis, the Drucker Institute’s director of lifelong learning. “That’s why focusing on the metrics as we go along is so critical.”

From the outset we monitored the numbers—and, at least at first, it was hard not to feel kind of giddy.

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.