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Design
Strategy

New Skill City

Client
Bendable
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The people of South Bend, Indiana, have the power to design a lifelong learning platform for themselves.

To succeed in today’s knowledge economy means you can never stop learning. But educational opportunities for adults have become difficult to access in the United States, just when they’re needed most. Employers are demanding fresh skills faster than Americans can acquire them, and that’s leaving many behind. To counter this trend, IDEO helped the city of South Bend and the Drucker Institute launch Bendable, a community-powered platform that connects people with opportunities to learn with and from each other. Free to all, Bendable is sponsored and run by the city’s library system.

Progress

25 PROGRAMS

AND OTHER RESOURCES OFFERINGS ARE NOW AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS OF SOUTH BEND

4 STATES

HAVE BEGUN TO INTEGRATE BENDABLE INTO LIBRARY SYSTEMS
The CHallenge

The Impact

The Outcome

Three south bend residents using the Bendable mobile app

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

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

Homepage of the Bendable website

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

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

Screenshots of the Bendable mobile app

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

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

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

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

Homepage of the Bendable website

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

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

Poster in an office describing the Bendable program
“We need to come up with solutions that work for us, sourced by people who live here. But having the creativity and design of people who have taken on ideas from all over the world and are among the best in their fields is a real win for South Bend.”
Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg

U.S. Secretary of Transportation and former Mayor of South Bend, IN

Lifelong Learning
Portrait of a man with a big white moustache sitting in a library
Women looking at a mobile phone

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

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

Homepage of the Bendable website

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

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

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Thank you

Bendable is a collaboration between the Drucker Institute, the City of South Bend, and IDEO. Partners included Carbon Five, Credly, and FSG, with additional funding from Google.org and Walmart.org.

IDEO owes special thanks to the more than 200 residents of South Bend who joined our year-long community design endeavour.

Photos: Kay Westheus and Jen Halls

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LET’S TRANSFORM THE FUTURE LET’S INNOVATE THE FUTURE LET’S BUILD THE FUTURE LET’S DESIGN THE FUTURE

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Whatever challenge your organization might face, you don’t have to solve it alone. Let’s talk about the future you’re here to make—and then let’s make it.