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

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.

As COVID-19 spreads across the world, Amabie has gone viral, with interpretations shared by cartoonists, students, illustrators, craftsmen, even chefs.

Deeply inspired by this act of creative resilience, optimism, and solidarity, we asked IDEO designers across the globe to share their interpretations of the protective creature. If you feel the same, join us in creating your own interpretation of Amabie—and tag @IDEO on Instagram or Twitter.

Felicia Chiao is a San Francisco-based industrial designer by day and illustrator by night.

"My Amabie was drawn traditionally on brown toned paper and colored with Copic Sketch Markers. It was such a strange creature to draw, I just tried not to think too hard about it and have some fun."

Gemma Lord (London, UK) is a designer and occasional color-inner. She really wants a dog.

"I wanted to capture a darker side of Amabie—a Borgesian-like creature, who for centuries lurked in the lesser-known crevices of folklore, and who has suddenly been recast into the uncomfortably bright light of our imaginations in the hope of warding off COVID-19."

Lauren Ito (San Francisco, CA) is a design researcher and community organizer. She can almost always be found by the sea.

"I was inspired by Amabie creating ripples of growth and resilience. As a plant enthusiast and forager, I made an altar collage of natural materials—including many plants propagating in my home as I shelter in place. I hope my amabie interpretation prompts a pause of reflection to honor our collective strength in the face of adversity."

May Kodama (San Francisco, CA) is a graphic designer who likes to doodle a lot.

"This is the self-care Amabie! I wanted to depict an Amabie who was taking good care of herself while sheltering in place, and hopefully encourage others to do the same. Drawn on Procreate and animated in Photoshop."

Tracee Worley (Oakland, CA) is a systems designer at IDEO San Francisco. She finds much design inspiration in ritual, spirituality, and mysticism.

"My Amabie appeared to me in a meditation and told me to visualize her in psychedelic splendor, emerging from a vat of molten gold floating upon the sea. She also told me to set this collage on my bedside table for five days and five nights, so that’s what I’m going to do!"

Luca Ponticelli (London, UK) is a commucation designer and serial doodler. On an average day, you'll find him dissecting the latest political news while sipping on a dark espresso.

"Mythology says she’s the entity announcing epidemics, so I wanted to compare the intensity of the crisis to the power of a sea storm, which she impersonates. The toilet rolls and the face masks, hiding her beak, are pinning this image down to our present day, making it undeniably 2020."

Meagan Durlak (Brooklyn, NY) is a designer director who believes that making is not just about thinking, but about exploring.

"With a symmetrical body, a neutral yet whimsical expression, and textural strokes throughout her bulbous hair, I hoped to capture the essence of the Amabie as a welcoming and warm creature who symbolizes the hope we all need during these uncertain times. She is an imaginary being whose spirit allows us to pin our future dreams and desires onto her elusive existence."

Michelle Lee (San Francisco, CA) leads IDEO’s Design for Play team and is proud mom to 2 budding artists—Neve, who has a full-time gig as a 3rd grader/soccer star, and Ren, who makes his living as a 1st grader/skateboarder.

Michelle’s Amabie (left) embraces her superhero powers, screeching away the coronavirus through acrylic paint and ink atop a collage of today’s newspaper headlines. Neve’s (top right) is a cerebral Amabie, choosing love over sickness, and is conceived through colored pencil and black ink. Ren (bottom right) opts for Amabie’s hairier cousin, bringing him to life with markers on construction paper.

Koko Takatori (Tokyo, Japan) is a design researcher at IDEO Tokyo. She is also a certified scientific illustrator and a cat lover.

"The Amabie illustration from the Edo period depicts it having three fin-like legs. “Three-legged” seems to be a common motif for divine creatures in Japan (like Yatagarasu), so I wanted to emphasize the legs and express its divinity through pen and ink strokes. I also wondered and researched how Amabie could’ve walked with its fin-like legs, resulting in legs that resemble those of pinnipeds. The four Kanji characters mean “warding off disease” and the little red seal says Amabie."

Tiffany Chen and Allison Press (San Francisco, CA and Pittsboro, NC respectively)

Tiffany loves to draw. Allison loves to collage. They combined their favorite artistic flavors into a yummy swirl. Allison collaged a flowery nest, then Tiffany drew an Amabie newly hatched into the scene.

Allison Press (Pittsboro, NC) is a former theater kid pursuing design-powered public service.

"I was inspired by Kirie, the Japanese art of papercutting. I love paper cut art because of its mystery. It creates a scene using only light and shadow. A viewer’s imagination fills in the rest. It felt like a ripe medium to depict a mythical, centuries-old creature like Amabie."

AJ Mapes (Oakland, CA) is a designer in IDEO's learning studio.

"I'm interested in exploring contrasts, so for my interpretation I wanted to see what Amabie might look like if drawn with clean geometry and organic textures."

Mark Dingo Francisco (Tokyo, Japan) is a visual communication designer at IDEO Tokyo. With a background in illustration, graphic design, branding and identity, Dingo aims to provide clear, effective, and emotive storytelling.

"My interpretation of Amabie aims to convey the surrealness of the COVID-19 situation along with the phenomenon of drawing Amabie’s portrait as a ripple effect, while maintaining an aquatic vibe to harken back to its yokai roots."

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In the fight against COVID-19, a sea spirit monster called Amabie (Ah-mah-bee-yay) has emerged from 19th-century Japanese folklore as a symbol of hope, a public health mascot, and an internet meme. According to legend, Amabie appeared to a government official in 1846, predicting six years of good harvests followed by a wave of diseases. In order to stave off disease, Amabie left instructions that people should draw its image and share it far and wide. The creature's common features include a beak, long hair, and fin-like legs. The rest is up to the artist.

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.