2023 –2024
Intro
Much of what we do at the d.school helps people shift their perspective, adjust a mindset, adapt to a new reality, or reframe a design opportunity. Right now, as human, technological, and natural systems evolve at an unsettlingly rapid pace, most of us feel an imperative to notice something new, reimagine a possibility, tweak a creative process, or sometimes just switch directions.
Creative Director Scott Doorley often likens the d.school community to a chorus: we sing in harmony, although— appropriately for a highly creative and diverse group of thinkers—never exactly in unison! Right now the musical notes of people adapting to change can be heard all over the d.school: from students new to the field of design, from professionals working in complex systems and educators preparing for the future. It’s an improvised, resourceful sound. And, if you listen, you can hear the reverberations in how we work together, in how we might improve upon the status quo, and how we can design sustainable systems.
We hear it in our students. This past fall, in just one week, I heard from several students grappling with how to adapt to this developing field. One student was trying to figure out how she might observe and experiment—
as a designer—within projects that are very long-term. At the time, she was working to address issues that arise when renewable energy projects, that take over a decade to unfold, stall right at the end because the local community has not been engaged along the way.
Another student who was just starting out in her design journey was exploring how to adjust her own creative process while working across multiple projects at once. She was shifting from the linear mode of thinking she used in her undergraduate days to a more open style of iteration and experimentation.
And one more student who was (in her free time) envisioning how to expand a graphic design project she completed last year into a broader effort to help build more community on campus.
Of course, it’s not just our students’ harmonies that we’re hearing. At our first ever Design Lit Fest this fall, we interacted with hundreds of Stanford alumni from more than four decades and heard about the challenges they are working on: in education, technology, policy, and more. Even more members of the design-curious public came to campus for an event we co-hosted with SF Design Week called “Bring Us Your Problems!”... and they brought great ideas and prototypes for feedback and coaching.
This year we worked with corporate board members looking for new ways to advocate for sustainability, and with philanthropists and social sector leaders aiming to infuse their organization’s response to AI with a human-centered lens. At SXSW (South by Southwest) EDU, we designed and led a three-day futures studio that introduced K–12 educators to futures thinking and design. One of our classes also partnered with Bay Area election officials to help them see new insights about the voting public that will influence how they design future communications.
Exuberant undergraduates and alumni at Design Formation, our new short course in which design majors reflect on their goals and explore possibilities for their futures.
I often think of the d.school as both a place for and a way of creating new possibilities. Sometimes this happens in our building when our students design with new technology and in changing cultural and social contexts. Sometimes it’s about extending our “campus” so that the d.school can show up in other places. And sometimes it’s just about helping someone find the method or mindset they need, when they need it, no matter where they are in the world.
This yearbook contains a few special highlights that showcase a fraction of the amazing work that d.school students, faculty, and partners completed this year. I hope you’ll feel excited about new possibilities as you explore these pages and hear the echoing notes of people inspired to respond to change, need, and opportunity with creativity and ingenuity.
—Sarah Stein Greenberg, Executive Director
Shaping Curriculum and Community in a Changing World
What do mixing surgery & music, finding design friends, getting curious on campus, a legendary professor and a Vandercook proofing press have in common? They are all part of the changes afoot in design at Stanford.
Capstone Project Spotlight
Laura Schütz
If you’ve ever played a game of Marco Polo, you might understand how surgeons can use sound to help find where to operate. Though surgeons (thankfully) don’t put their hands over their eyes, they’re in the dark as far as what exactly they’ll find under the skin. Sonification, the use of audio to convey information, is one of the ways they can “see” more clearly.
the d.school: helping breast cancer surgeons more accurately operate on tumors using sonification.
A surgeon sends a signal—“Marco!”— out into the tissues of their patient, where they’ve put a small responder in the general area that an incision needs to be made. The responder sends back its “Polo!”, increasing in frequency as the surgeon approaches the area. This still-developing field of using sound in surgery emerged in the late 2000s. And while the techniques were still imprecise, they attracted the attention of Laura Schütz. This was the seed that led Laura to combine her interest in medical applications of design with her love of computer music for her capstone project at
Now, Laura is a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Munich, where she continues to work on audio feedback for medical augmented reality. “The d.school, which is so playful and creative, made me feel that anything and everything is possible,” said Schütz. “It changed my way of approaching things . . . and opened up the world of design for me.”
Adventures in design
Stanford wasn’t Laura’s first experience with design. She was already pursuing a master’s in industrial design at the Technical University of Munich, which focused on product and object design. But after visiting a friend at Stanford who told her about the school’s design programs, she became interested in attending the d.school once she finished her degree.
“This program seemed so special— that there was so much I could learn and explore. I realized this was an adventure I really wanted to go on and grow from,” said Laura. She was interested especially in the biodesign approach at Stanford, which she heard about during her first master’s degree.
“I went into neurosurgery and realized you can apply design in a way that’s so much more meaningful and impactful than designing a new lamp or chair,” said Laura. “Surgical applications and focusing on making that better will have an impact on probably thousands of people.”
Laura was also interested in the d.school philosophy, which she credits with helping her come up with more creative approaches. “Design has all these other aspects and capabilities that come with it. The d.school encourages interdisciplinary work. Being a designer isn’t just about being a good artist or engineer, but about combining many different
things, including social skills, fostering creativity, and other things that aren’t so obvious.”
She chose to foster creativity in another realm too—computer music, through Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). “I like music. I used to play instruments and sing. And I was fascinated by the fact that computationally, you can make music. It was such a good, creative environment where people did cool and sophisticated technical things. And I think that really helped make my capstone that unlikely mixture of music and biodesign.”
Shock and sounds
For her capstone, Laura worked with a breast surgical oncologist at Stanford named Jacqueline Tsai. She came to speak to Laura’s class and pointed out that the sound feedback in standard practice is still difficult to locate and can often be unreliable or minimally informative.
Laura was shocked that there was so much guesswork involved. “Just having the sound doesn’t help them know exactly where to cut or which part to take. So they may take a little more tissue out to be sure. That was the most shocking part to me—that this is the normal way to do it.”
Though preventative guesswork happens in other kinds of surgeries, in retrospect, Laura connected her interest to women’s healthcare.
“Research in that field is underfunded and underexplored,” she said. “As a woman, I could really relate to it. When I thought about it, would I want this kind of treatment for myself or for my mom, my grandma, my sister, anybody else? No. I’d want there to be a better technique.”
Along with other students, Laura helped to organize meetings across campus to discuss women’s health— connecting people from biomedical, design, business, and many other backgrounds, which she feels likely informed her work as well.
What impact are our students making?
Her capstone used parameter mapping sonification, a 3D mapping technique that connects spatial coordinates with sound. Rather than just volume, it relates spatial information to various sound properties like pitch or frequency, conveying more precise and sophisticated information to the surgeon than a single property alone.
Instruments of anatomy
Now, Laura works with 3D geometries and structures for one of the most complex organs—the brain. Her work is in physical modeling synthesis, which can let you simulate the sound of any 3D object in virtual space.
“This program allows someone to go from any medical diagnostic image to make these 3D shapes, which will resonate. Then, when you operate on the brain and touch these, it’ll result in rich sounds that tell you about the geometry and physical properties of the tissue,” said Schütz.
Her work is currently limited to the virtual environment, but she hopes to test her techniques out in a real setting with surgical tools in the future. “My goal is to provide this kind of sound feedback to any surgery and any surgeon in real time to make their work more precise. Millions of patients could benefit from that.”
Though the software was originally developed for modeling instruments, Schütz and her team made “instruments of anatomy” by modeling anatomical structures in the program—a process she says she wouldn’t have come up with if she hadn’t started from her capstone’s idea.
And Laura continues to carry forward another d.school philosophy—one of joy. “Even though we do these technical things, there’s room for joy in what we design. And it can be super impactful and precise and whatnot, but if it can also bring joy to somebody who creates it and uses it, that’s fulfilling as well.”—Eli Ramos
A New Community of Designers
A lot has changed since the d.school first started offering classes in design thinking (including the shape of the d.school!). Design thinking has spread throughout the world, and we launched our BA and MA programs in design. As a result, we’re redefining and refining our approach to design. As part of this work, a question surfaced: How do we invite people in?
One answer to this question is the new Design 1 class, an invitation to any student curious about design. This class allows students to flex their creative muscles to see if design is the path they want to take. It opens them up to the skills, methods, and mindsets of human-centered design while they dive into real world challenges. The class also brings in professionals so that students see examples of advanced designers’ work and journeys.
While Design 1 provides an essential intro to the possibilities of design, this class isn’t just about how we invite students into the world of design work, it’s also about how we invite students into the design community. Louie Montoya, lead developer of the class, shared this reflection:
"There’s been quite a lot of demand and interest in design, and we’re trying to provide a learning experience that is hands-on, collaborative, and a little joyful and unexpected. We are introducing students to some key methods and tools that they can use in the program and beyond, but we’re also looking to build a strong network of designers.
"The best part of our first class was a student’s answer to the prompt: ‘What are you looking forward to most about this class?’, which was ‘Finding some design friends.’
"This is why we’re really trying to set up this cohort to be a community. We want them to feel like they’re part of the design family because previous students in the program have told me that the reason they are drawn to design is the connections you make with other people and communities. So I’m making sure we keep the class joyful and they get really interesting content—and also that they have lots of opportunities to really get to know one another and build those relationships."
Student Reflections
How do our students decide if design is right for them?
“As I took Design 1, the word design itself shifted from being a vague concept to an actualized, concrete process. I was completely unfamiliar with both Design Thinking (I hadn’t even heard of it before this class) and potential industry careers in design, but through defining and studying the field, this class shaped my perspective on what it means to be a designer. Within two months
of beginning Design 1, I declared the major, largely because of the d.school’s incredibly passionate and approachable instructors, its celebration of diverse perspectives, and its project-based curriculum, where I really enjoyed spending time honing skills for tangible design outputs!”—Trini Rogando
“Even as a student with prior design experience, Design 1 introduced me to new tools and frameworks that I eagerly applied to projects beyond the classroom, including during my summer internship as a product designer.”—Elsa Bosemark
“Design 1 changed my perspective on designing successful projects. When students shared the various ways they took their projects beyond the classroom, it significantly reduced the perceptual distance between me and a successful person. Success stories used to seem so far out there—as if big ventures were done by a mysterious ring of distant superheroes. But as stories bounced around the classroom, I realized ‘Oh, not only are we surrounded by these people, we are these people.’”
—Atman Jahagirdar
Practicing Collaboration
Q&A with Domain Co–Lead
Emily Callaghan
Our interdiscipinary degree programs involve experts throughout the Stanford campus. To help guide this work, we’re mapping new connections for faculty and students. We’re highlighting four domains in which design work is particularly important— The Planet, Biological Futures, Health, and Social Impact—and we team up with other schools at Stanford to help immerse students in the real-world applications of design.
You work with Kate Maher in Designing for the Planet and with Drew Endy on Designing for Biological Futures. As a designer, what is it like teaming up with experts in other fields?
As a domain co-lead, I see my most valuable role as a translator and connector. I’m always thinking about how design translates to other worlds, which is why I feel capable of working in these spaces—Earth sciences and synthetic biology—that are otherwise out of my experience depth. In my work with Kate and Drew, the more I understand their areas of study and research, the more I can demystify or peel away the jargon so that we can connect similarities across the practices of science and design.
How do you help students implement actual design work in their fields of interest? How do they understand how they can contribute to their fields of interest?
I focus on helping students discern the “big question they are asking” with their design work. As a design leader, I’ve always challenged my team to have a bigger question in mind, beyond their day-to-day contribution. The reality is that making a difference can get crowded by our daily efforts and emails, and we risk losing our spark. Holding those big questions, while we create, asks us to have a grander vision that keeps us curious and motivated to do great work and make a difference. The domain choice is a natural place for this big question to be explored and articulated. The actual design work connected to their big question can show up in the every day: their internships, capstone, and first jobs. As we consider the dots across these spaces, the students are able to sense patterns of interest—what gives them energy, what makes them feel proud—and that awareness drives momentum. The more they have a chance to experiment, the more rooted they become.
Radical Collaboration
How does working in the domains challenge and support students studying the field of design?
Two main things I’m excited about that the domains challenge students in: how to make their design toolkit transferable and how to sharpen their curiosity.
As students are developing their design toolkits, giving them space to try out their tools in an educational environment before they advance into higher education or a work environment is empowering. At the same time, by working in the domains, we’re able to work at a larger scale. This feels like an opportunity space because creating large-scale experiences isn’t always possible within the container of a classroom or a project, where we usually set up a lot of scaffolding for students. Working in the domains allows them to get messy and to explore in spaces that are less scaffolded and constrained so they can gain confidence.
How do our students get curious about where to apply design?
Scale also translates to curiosity. In the domains, we’re coaching our students in how to get curious at big levels about change and impact for design. It starts with a question: How might I think about design in this non-design context? This line of questioning is critical as they consider their career and everyday lives.
I’ve heard some students reflect on the fact that they’re not sure how to apply their design toolkits in some of these domain classes, which is fair. But we’re really just asking them to learn and soak things in, and then figure out where the connections are. It’s about helping students to sharpen their curiosity and wonder more deeply about how design might intersect.
How do you guide students in better understanding their capacity as a designer in a real-world context?
I like to start by learning what matters to them as individuals and understanding their journeys and stories. The more we can understand our students’ experiences and
influences, the easier it is to help imagine how they might play a role. When I notice what lights them up, I know we’re getting somewhere—whether it’s a project, a conversation, or a challenge. One of my favorite parts of working with rising designers is being with them as they overcome and move through challenges. It reveals their approach to problem solving as well as what they find exhausting and energizing. We also talk about the importance of prototyping through their work experiences while holding professionalism and respect for their work environments. By prototyping I mean that if they can approach each opportunity, role, and project as a chance to get closer to both what they’re fully able to offer as a designer and what fits for them, that’s a career track in the simplest terms.
Through their educational journey, we shape a lot of design experiments for our students. But within the domains, they begin to consider and shape their own design experiments, which gets them more acquainted with their own agency and curiosity.
NOTE
OFCelebrating a d.school Icon: Bernie Roth
Bernie Roth has had many acts. He grew up in the collectivist co-ops of the Bronx in New York City. He got his doctorate at Columbia. He’s been in the School of Engineering faculty at Stanford since 1962, teaching, researching, and advancing the field of kinematics. His work drove the development of robotics. He led the Faculty Union for a time and participated in the formative years of the Design Division (today Design Group) in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He has taught a class entitled The Designer in Society since 1970, pioneering human values in design with other members of the Design Group. But most lucky for us, Bernie was a part of the first cohort of faculty collaborators to launch the Stanford d.school. His positivity, creativity, and humanist approach to design have been instrumental to the d.school’s culture and curriculum. We came to appreciate Bernie’s talents and experience even more deeply
in 2006, when David Kelley was sidelined with a cancer diagnosis and Bernie stepped in as our interim faculty director. We were still a brand-new institute, and Bernie was our champion and rock while David beat his cancer. So much so that when David returned, he asked Bernie to continue in his role. For the past 18 years, Bernie Roth has been the d.school’s permanent interim faculty co-director, shepherding our growth from a tiny startup in a trailer out by the parking lots to a world-renowned degree-granting interdisciplinary program in the historic center of campus. Through it all, he has been our sage guide to life, the university, and everything. Early this year, at the fine age of 90, he retired from his role and went emeritus. While he’s no longer signing our checks, so to speak, you can find him most Wednesdays at the d.school Home Lunch, where we’re still benefiting from his incredible presence.
Building a New Print Shop and Visual Design Workspace Congratulations to Our Graduates!
Part of the d.school’s program for the students in our interdisciplinary design major is a renewed commitment to visual expression and visual design. Guided by master printer and design instructor Patrick Fenton, this year we set out to build a dedicated studio to give students the ability to bring their visual design work to life with tools that range from antique to anticipatory. The d.school Print Shop is starting with two vintage letterpress machines—a C&P platen press from the early 1900s that once belonged to Professor Jim Adams and a Vandercook cylinder proofing press from the 1940s that was once a part of the Stanford University Press. Alongside these vintage presses we installed a new RISOgraph printer, a vinyl cutter, and silk screen resources. Students also have access to a 44-inch wide Epson digital art plotter printer. Investing in our students’ capacity to create tangible expressions of their work is already paying design dividends, with posters, zines, cards, and even books beginning to roll off the presses. Watch this space!
June 16, 2024, was a gorgeous afternoon and the perfect day for our second annual Design Diploma Ceremony. The d.school faculty presented 71 undergraduates and 11 graduate students with their design degrees. We are so very proud of
Sharing Design Ideas and Tools
This year, d.school designers worked on everything from election administration to opportunities for belonging. Much was done, with still more to be done.
The State Black Design
The d.school is committed to tackling systemic barriers to diversity and inclusion present in the field of design. We work to offer students a program that creates a fundamental sense of belonging and incorporates values, ideas, and tools created and led by historically marginalized people. Building community and belonging for BIPOC students within the d.school also requires us to go outside our doors to seek out spaces that promote and celebrate the work of BIPOC designers. In 2024, several students and team members attended the State of Black Design (SOBD) conference, a culturally rich celebration of Black design across many fields and a transformational space for community building.
SOBD is a groundbreaking conference and career fair that started as a response to the murder
Imgard Bonheur, Design Major, Class of 2025
Ameera Waterford, Product Design Engineering Major, Class of 2024 and MS Management Science and Engineering (Engineering Management), 2025
State of Design
of George Floyd in May of 2020 and in recognition of a need for more conversations about race in the field of design. The event explores the impact of Black design on various industries, including fashion, architecture, graphic design, and more. It is the only national effort dedicated to establishing young professionals and recent college graduates of color in design careers.
How are design students building belonging in the world of design?
Omari Souza, an assistant professor in the College of Visual Arts & Design at the University of North Texas, founded SOBD as a virtual conference. In 2024, Omari partnered with Tennessee State University (TSU), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Nashville, to present the conference in person for the first time and sought out partners to help sponsor it. Milan Drake, community design lead at
the d.school, who attended the first SOBD conference virtually, saw alignment between the d.school mission and the SOBD’s commitment to amplifying voices and design at the margins. Milan noted, “Acknowledging the need for more representation in design is boldly stated through our sponsorship of SOBD. This event offers a prime opportunity for Black students to better understand and cultivate community on our own campus.”
This year, three undergraduate design students attended SOBD to celebrate Black perspectives and design contributions: Imgard Bonheur, Michael Crinot, and Ameera Waterford.
Michael Crinot, Design Major, Class of 2025
Milan noted, “I was especially grateful that our organization made it possible for three undergraduate students to attend SOBD. Seeing their excitement, engagement, and smiles as they participated in workshops and networked was inspiring. They were fully immersed in the learning and networking opportunities SOBD offered; watching them take ownership of their experience and navigate the event with confidence and curiosity was incredibly rewarding.”
Imgard shared her own thoughts on attending SOBD:
The unexpected enrichment from attending SOBD exceeded my initial expectations. It provided amazing
learning opportunities in a more relaxed atmosphere with people like Andrea Pitter, a fashion designer whose journey in navigating her career was particularly inspiring, and John Ferguson, who discussed the Black Bauhaus Movement and his work in digital design. As someone eager to delve deeper into digital design and similar areas where I lack experience, his work and the opportunity to learn from someone actively experimenting in these fields were incredibly appealing. One aspect that truly drew me was his discussion of how one of his projects had stalled. He was exploring ways to redirect and navigate this challenge, which resonated with my experience trying to bring Black hair products to Stanford’s campus, where
I faced similar obstacles. His candid sharing of these struggles inspired me. Following the conference, I reached out via email. John was very responsive and accommodating in making time to meet with me.
Attending this conference was a breath of fresh air. Being on an HBCU campus . . . where you constantly see others who look like you can be incredibly affirming for Black students who are often in predominantly white institutions . . . It reinforces a sense of belonging and community. Conferences like SOBD ensure that the Black experience is not monolithic. It is a varied and rich exploration of what it means to navigate these spaces as a Black individual.
Designing for Democracy
What is the role of design in our election process? How can designers better serve our democracy? How might designers work with election administrators to support their work? The d.school tackled these questions by looking at how US elections are run by the over 10,000 local election offices across the country. A small team spent countless hours with election administrators, at election conferences, and working alongside election experts and voters. They saw firsthand how design touches almost every part of the election process.
These nonpartisan efforts aimed to explore how human-centered design can better serve our democracy and improve the election experience for both administrators and voters. From civic engagement to innovations in public policy, design tools and mindsets can help us better understand complicated systems and identify new ways to address them. What follows is a report from Nadia Roumani, David Janka, and Thomas Both on their work around election administration.
Design for Democracy: 2022–2024
Following the d.school’s involvement in the Healthy Elections Project in 2020, we—Nadia Roumani, David Janka, and Thomas Both—dove deeper into how design can better help election officials. Over three years, we worked on building the design capacity of election administrators, designed and built an exhibit on the role of design in election administration; and developed a Stanford course on design in election administration.
We recruited some wonderful partners to help with this work. First, we established the Election Innovation Corps, which included Stanford undergraduate and graduate students who worked alongside us. We also recruited Tammy Patrick as a senior advisor. Tammy has an impressive resume in election administration and is currently the CEO of the Election Center.
Students listened to a discussion about civic engagement. No classes were held Tuesday to encourage students to vote and participate in Democracy Day programming. Student–athletes discussed the importance of civic engagement.
Building the Capacity of Election Administrators
During our work with election officials in 2020, we were struck by how many local election officials are innately designers—iterating and adapting spaces and processes to increase efficiency and improve the overall voting experience. While most officials had not been formally exposed to design skills, all could benefit from some design tools and mindsets of designers. The d.school team worked with Tammy to explore how they might share more design tools and practices with officials to help them improve their work.
To do this, the team ran design workshops at national Election Center Conferences in Pasadena, Houston, and Orlando. The Election Center, a.k.a. the National Association of Election Officials, is a nonprofit organization whose members are almost exclusively government employees who work in election administration.
The d.school team shared design behaviors and practices that are particularly relevant to election officials in helping them improve their election administration. These tools ranged from identifying ways in which design is already being used to administer elections to resources for improving the design of an existing experience within the election administration process and design techniques for obtaining feedback from their intended users.
Developing the Election Administrators // Election Designers Exhibit
As we worked alongside election administrators, we were inspired by their dedication, creativity, and problemsolving. We saw that election officials were in fact acting as de facto designers, and we continued to discover ways that design can play a role in improving the election administration process— from voter registration and ballot design to poll worker recruitment and training and to election results reporting.
How can design help elections run smoothly?
We developed an in-person exhibit, and subsequently an accompanying book, that highlights the design behaviors and design work that shows up in the process of administering elections. The exhibit highlights many of the design decisions that election officials make throughout the election process. It also celebrates election officials, not only as the logistical experts that they are but also as invisible designers who strive tirelessly to improve the way they administer elections, all the while overcoming new and increasingly complex hurdles and constraints along the way.
As we built this exhibit, we started to envision where and with whom this material could have the most impact. We first presented our Election Administrators // Election Designers exhibit at the Election Center’s annual conference in 2023. We then shared the exhibit at Stanford University’s Democracy Day at the d.school in November 2023, where the team walked members of the broader Stanford community through the exhibit and engaged in a dialogue on the role of design in election administration. We heard from students and faculty that the exhibit was a great way to showcase how design can play a role in civic engagement, inspiring some to even sign up to volunteer with their local election offices.
In the summer and fall of 2024, the exhibit was on display at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. These organizations have partnered on a collaborative initiative titled “Bolstering Elections” to promote investment in American electoral administration and processes. As part of this series, David and Thomas participated in a virtual panel on Designing for Democracy, alongside Tammy Patrick.
Designing for Democracy: Election Administration, 2024 Spring Quarter Class
After a few years of working in election administration, we knew we wanted to share this knowledge and experience with Stanford students—specifically the powerful role of design to improve the administration and experience of elections, whether through visual design, service design, strategic design, or systems design. We also sought to excite students about the field of election administration and civic design, and hopefully inspire some to enter this space. We designed and led a new Winter 2024 d.school class titled, Designing for Democracy: Election Administration.
We created a project-based course that exposed students to multiple levels of design. We also designed the class to be an opportunity to work on real-world applications that can help improve how local election offices administer elections. We partnered with the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials, which was established in 2022 by eleven Bay Area Counties with a goal of working together to increase public trust in elections in their shared media market. It was the ideal partner for a d.school class, offering students the opportunity to obtain a focused understanding of the election administration ecosystem in the Bay Area and the opportunity to interview and go deep with specific offices.
Sometimes we take things for granted— for us, running a smooth election was one of those things. That is, until we had the opportunity to look behind the curtain, and learn about all the different steps, resources, and coordination required for often small and under-resourced teams to run elections in the United States. We are honored to have had the chance to do this meaningful work, and we are grateful to all of the election administrators across the country who made time to meet with our team, and students, over the course of the past four years. We hope that our work adds to the growing appreciation of this field, scholarship in this space, and that it inspires more people to dip their toes in the field of election administration and pursue careers in civic engagement.—Nadia Roumani, David Janka, and Thomas Both
EdTech Remix
“Education is most powerful when it’s communal, when there’s joy, when there’s love, when there’s community, and that’s what this cohort represents.” This quote from cohort member Aaron Schorn, head of growth and community for the edtech company Unrulr, speaks to the spirit of EdTech Remix, a transformative initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This initiative is fostering a community in which stakeholders interested in issues of equity in edtech product development can collaborate to generate new design strategies, user-centered initiatives, and feel a sense of belonging.
Too often educational technology, or edtech, replicates rote learning, ignores students’ culture and context, and exacerbates inequity—as such, edtech designers committed to equity often feel siloed. We’re building a community of edtech designers, funders, students, educators, researchers, pedagogy experts, and education network and nonprofit leaders to change that.
We brought together a small cohort of edtech designers to develop new equitable design strategies. As sam seidel, d.school director of products + publications and co-director of the K12 Lab, put it, “Designers need a place to come together and just get into it, get real nerdy, talk about
what’s happening, what needs to be happening, how to make it happen. That’s what this is about.” These designers are committed to equity, and some of them are building products they needed as young people.
As member Romane Armand from Book of Rhymes put it, “I love the concept of human-centered design and equity-based design because it starts with people and it ends with people. Some of us, we have that empathy because we struggled, we didn’t feel seen, heard, or valued and now we want to change that.” Tiffany Green from Uprooted Academy also shared, “I do this for little Tiffany, first gen, low income, student of color,
high achieving, and I needed all these tools that are here. Being part of this community as a founder means that I get the best of other people’s ideas who have the resources.”
In addition to the designer cohort, we’ve launched a much broader network of stakeholders in order to foster a more connected ecosystem. Networking sessions, conversations about topics like school district procurement and artificial intelligence, and in-person meetups are just some of the ways members of the community are finding new collaborators and generating new ideas—all with the shared goal of creating equitable technology for all educators and students.
What if educational technology supports creative, effective learning for all students?
OF NOTE
Catherine created Black Design Week to respond that need. It provided professional development workshops to educators focused on bringing the practice of design to Black educational spaces. Joined by d.school community lead Milan Drake and JEDI coach Courtlandt Butts, the workshops took place in June 2024 at Tennessee State University and Fisk University. It was attended by 35 educators across 17 schools, 14 of which were HBCUs. This culturally responsive workshop engaged the group in sessions crafted to break out of perfection, storm assumptions, and draft action plans. Black Design Week was both a bookend to an University Innovation Fellows student program with HBCUs and a launchpad for an ongoing community to make design more inclusive.
Introducing Integrative
Black designers change the world. This is what motivated Catherine Randle to dream, design, and deliver the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Student Summit and Black Design Week.
The HBCU Student Summit was held at the University Innovation Fellows Global Meetups in 2023 and 2024. The summit held space for 32 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities who were able to gather as a community before attending the larger event of 300 people. In 2024, 60 HBCU students were enrolled in UIF and attended the summit. During the UIF program, educators from HBCUs journeyed with their students to learn design practices. As a result, a new community of educators eager to learn design and apply it to their own work was being cultivated.
The Futures Studio at SXSW EDU
A full team of d.school staff and students not only attended SXSW EDU but created a futures experience open to the 10,000 educators in attendance. The Futures Studio, powered by the Siegel Family Foundation, was a space to activate the future of learning. We invited attendees to find their future and make an impact through hands-on activities: a team from the High School of Recording Arts offered an audio experience that included a beat lab; Patrick Fenton showcased his Print on Purpose class by offering a zine-making station; Milan Drake,
led a design sprint called Mixtape Manifesto where attendees were asked to consider their future contribution to education; and The Soul Spa by student Carmen Leiser offered a menu of transformational practices and one-on-one support.
In addition to all of this, we also held a Publications Pop-Up, conceived by Ise Lyfe, which offered a forum for community building through books. Attendees were able to receive a special d.coin (created by student Dylan Yap) in exchange for their email address, with which they were then able to “purchase” a book or print. Authors of the d.school Guides, along with students, were on hand to engage in conversation. The space was a celebration of ideas for design process and work.
Building the Future Foundations
of Design
In this time of rapid change, we’ve used classes, bots, and books to explore how to see and shape the future.
View from the Future
“What themes and patterns did I pick up from the different speakers? Do cool sh*t and take interesting opportunities.” –Golda
“View from the Future” is a new d.school speaker series created to introduce students to tomorrow’s design opportunities, today. Each week, we invite leaders from organizations and initiatives who are changing the world with and through design. Our guests illuminate the future of their fields, illustrating how design careers are shaping the future and inviting us to expand our view of the jobs of tomorrow.
Together we explored futures when homes might be built out of mycelium (mushrooms) and plastic wrapping replaced by algae. We looked at sustainable agriculture processes that strengthen local farming communities. We discussed the design opportunities that lie ahead in repairing oceans from climate change and the meaningful innovations that will come from space.
And, while our guests varied greatly in their experiences and in their future-fantastic titles—such as “Director of Metaverse Engineering” for Nike and “VP of Crypto and Digital Technologies” for LVMH—our guests shared many nuggets of advice with the students. Here’s a snapshot of what we learned over the course of the ten-week series.
Curiosity Is Essential
When the answers have yet to be uncovered and when the path forward is uncertain, curiosity is the fuel to explore new ideas and pathways.
“You can teach technology, but you can’t teach curiosity.” This sentiment came up in our conversation on the Future of Fashion with Nelly Mensah of LVMH and Andrew Schwartz of Nike. Many of the speakers also expressed how critical it is to have a learning mindset when imagining new possibilities and building toward new futures.
Questioning helps us challenge the core assumptions behind a system or industry that can keep us trapped in old models. Steve Downs, co-founder of Building H, a speculative design and strategy hub focused on reimagining health, offered a unique framing of this need for curiosity: Instead of asking “How could I make this better?”, enter with an exploratory mindset by asking “What could this look like if it was fundamentally better for humans?”
In our session on the Future of Media, Jessica Ashooh of Reddit, put it this way, “Getting exposure to different perspectives, geographies, and experiences helps you to learn how to spot emerging opportunities and develop new programs, products, and policies that don’t yet exist.”
What will human-led design look like in the careers, opportunities, and fields of the future?
“View from the Future made me really hopeful and excited to hear that a lot of the people that spoke to us didn’t take a traditional path to the career they are in now. In the design major,
it
can
be a bit stressful to
figure out how to utilize the degree I am getting. Now I’m learning how to be more intentional about building my skills around understanding and valuing climate tech and climate solutions.”—JJ
Failure Is Inevitable
While curiosity drives innovation, the path to groundbreaking discoveries is often paved with setbacks and disappointments. Failure can be frequent in speculative spaces.
“Learn how to fail well,” offered Emi Kolawole, media entrepreneur formerly of Google X. Changing your mindset around failure not only helps you become resilient, it helps you learn differently. In this context, Emi reframed “failing” as “success and learning.”
Eric Helfgott, associate at Lowercarbon Capital, shared, “There is a huge difference between failing and seeing yourself as a failure. The former is much healthier—it allows for growth and resilience, versus judgment and blame.”
Learning to take failure well can often lead to better innovations. Nelly Mensah of LVMH and Andrew Swchartz of Nike noted that “the failure of an early product can become the success of a larger project or program.” They then went on to share this insight: “Corporate innovation is not the latest technology or event. It is the permission to do things and learn.”
Values Keep You Grounded
Pioneering new ground when the path is unclear can be extremely difficult and filled with ambiguity. This is where clarity of personal values can be critical.
Again and again our speakers discussed the importance of thinking about values not just as abstract concepts but rather as a practical tool for understanding the why behind your work and for inviting others into the work.
Many of our speakers explored how personal values provide the foundation for critical relationships throughout their work: with cofounders and collaborators as well as their customers, suppliers, and strategic partners. Two pioneers in living materials and systems, Philip Ross, co-founder of Open Fung and MycoWorks, and Julia Marsh, co-founder of Sway, spoke about personal values as a source of strength during the early days of building a business, and being particularly important when the business felt taxed and stretched.
Suzy Ryoo, president of Venice Music, recalled her first conversation with music legend and now co-founder Troy Carter, where they shared life stories and explored overlaps in the underlying values that drive their shared ambition to lift up others.
In our talk on the Future of Space, Tess Hatch, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, acknowledged the importance of gratitude and appreciation to fuel meaningful relationships and purposeful pursuits, even when considering big questions like, “What might help us learn new things and create value for our home planet Earth?”
“View from the Future” offered a front-row seat to how design careers are shaping the world. Our guest speakers showed us that being a successful, future-focused designer doesn’t require one to be tech savvy. Instead, the future of design demands that one be curious about the world, resilient in the face of setbacks, and committed to values that benefit humanity and our planet.
Scopey
Design is a powerful tool. That power makes it an attractive solution to solve tough problems. Unfortunately, those same tools aren’t effective or meaningful without first doing the less-attractive but essential groundwork of clarifying a project’s strategic goals and effectively scoping the work.
In 2023, d.school members Thomas Both and Nadia Roumani embarked on a project to develop Scopey, an AI-generated tool to make that early groundwork more approachable and generative, and to support leaders and practitioners who are looking to use design to make greater impacts. Scopey helps guide users to figure out where design might be most useful by first creating a space for exploration for teams to gain a better understanding of their community’s needs and their project’s goals, then helping them scope the work to suit their needs.
In their ten years of running the Designing for Social Systems program and working with complex organizations facing pressing problems and multiple stakeholders—
particularly social sector leaders in philanthropy, nonprofits, and government agencies—Thomas and Nadia have met with hundreds of people who aim to have a positive impact on others’ lives. They have uncovered many recurring stumbling blocks:
• One team member has a vision for where the project should go, but the rest of the team is not yet aligned with that vision.
• A team is working on very different assumptions about user behaviors.
• Team members’ thinking differs significantly regarding their audiences and stakeholders.
• A team member, or some team members, already have a strong feeling about what the right solution is and they are pushing their team to conform to their idea.
• Teams have hopes for scaling a project globally but have not started by thinking about where they might practically begin or how different communities, regions, and countries might hold very different needs or react very differently to the proposed concepts.
“One
of the key challenges in starting a new project with the HCD framework is encouraging new team members to approach opportunities in a fresh and innovative way. Having those design questions helps to shape solutions in a communitycentered and innovative manner, ensuring our projects remain focused on the community throughout their entire lifecycle.”
—Roman
Sanchez, a participant in our SSIR webinar
This lack of clarity means that much of their time is spent helping teams better understand their project goals rather than actually addressing the problems they are trying to solve. Teams needed more support in the groundwork that leads to good design: generative conversations to explore, better understand, and articulate the community they’re working for or with; the needs they’re addressing; and their underlying goals.
Nadia and Thomas began to wonder, How might we guide teams to be able to more quickly and efficiently clarify and align around their strategic goals? How might our coaches guide teams to more quickly identify where design can be incorporated and leveraged for greater clarity and impact?
This led them to create Scopey, in partnership with developers at Enchatted, to help leaders and practitioners scope and refine how they approach human-centered design projects. Scopey helps you clarify your strategy and scope your design project.
Scopey is built from the existing d.school Scoping Guide. The bot walks teams through the same kinds of conversations that come up in our live workshops—built upon clarifying questions that help teams to name and narrow the work they are doing.
Scopey starts by asking five questions:
1. The Problem. What issue do you want to address? Who does itimpact and why?
2. The Change. What change do you want to create and for whom?
3. The Stakeholders. For which group of people are you designing?
4. The Place. Where are you focusing?
5. The Goal. What key questions are you trying to answer about human experiences, behaviors, motivations, or beliefs or what assumptions are you trying to test?
Scopey then engages the user in a generative conversation, asking clarifying questions as a way to help them get clarification on their goals. Scopey can then help the user determine which design tools will be best for them given their context, questions, and goals.
Unlike most AI tools, which are designed to offer answers, this tool is specifically designed to ask clarifying questions—both about the project and about the design work. What’s also different about Scopey is that it doesn’t capture and use the data it’s being fed—it’s built solely on the d.school’s own materials.
While in-person conversation will always be Thomas and Nadia’s preferred method of teaching and coaching, Scopey is invaluable as an on-demand resource that can be an excellent introduction to the kind of humancentered design work we teach at the d.school. The team is currently exploring ways to share the resource with a broader audience.
What is the potential of AI in building positive learning experiences for others?
A History of the Future
Future
We all make the world—whether as teachers or parents or leaders or any of the many roles we play. As designers, that is our explicit goal: leave the world better than we found it in some way, big or small. As we consider the future of, well, just about everything, designers need to become more adept at understanding the consequences our creations might have—whether obvious or unforeseen. A new book by Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley, Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future, explores the intangible ways design shapes our lives and provides fresh tools to design with the future in mind.
We’re living in an era where the outcomes of our creations are impacting our lives at a greater scale. Despite good intentions, the effects of innovations like social media, the uncertainty of tools like AI, and the consequences of scale like climate change make it clear that the things
we make and do are hard to predict and repair. As makers, we bear a greater responsibility to understand materials, methods, and the implications of what we put out into the world.
Assembling Tomorrow illuminates new approaches to making in our changed and rapidly changing world. It offers new tactics for creating in the world today—where our materials are mischievous, the pace of change is speedy, and our culture is becoming more global and less diverse. More than just a handbook, it’s a call to action for all designers to prioritize healing through our work, and a vision for the future of design—one where we’re more thoughtful and ultimately more impactful in shaping the world around us.
As designers how can we navigate the tension between the draw to innovate something new and the need to fix something that’s failing?
From the Book
Deliberate Disorientation
Control, or even just the illusion of it, feels good. People love it when things make sense and are |o|r|g|a|n|i|z|e|d|. But sometimes it makes sense to lean into the uncertainly-ambiguousstochastic chaos and practice deliberate disorientation—which is a bag of tricks that help you un-take things for granted and see what you’re missing so that you are ready to repair when your best-laid plans go awry.
Lose the Object
Getting rid of objects is a trick that has practical uses. It brings often unseen factors like interactions and relationships into better focus.
Start small. Take an ordinary situation where someone or some people are doing something, then ignore the
tools and the setting and just focus on their movements. For instance, watch a loved one or roommate make a meal. Ignore the cabinets, stovetop, tools, and appliances and turn your attention toward the choreography of the kitchen. What is the sequence of events? How does the person’s body move from here to there? Are they reaching or bending? Crossing from one side to the other? You’ll find that the way you’ve set up the kitchen leads the dance of cooking. It may inspire you to reorganize your countertops and cabinets to create a smoother dance. Architects are aware that the spaces they design are recipes for these little dances.
Try a more complicated situation. This silly method works in serious situations too. It is an amazing way to reveal power dynamics. Subtract the tables, whiteboards, podiums, desks,
food, and whatever else from any “official” gathering—like a meeting or a class—and it will bring human relationships into focus. Who’s facing whom? Who’s talking and who’s not? What’s everyone’s posture? Who makes eye contact, who doesn’t? Who has high status and who has low? Who moves and who doesn’t? Does status ever seem to shift?
When you put this technique into a prickly context, the exercise strays from its whimsical roots. You might find it so profound that it makes you uncomfortable. Taken to an extreme, it can feel a bit like eavesdropping on someone else’s soul. That is the sheer power of sticking with what’s happening rather than letting it pass by. That’s deliberate disorientation.
The K12 Futures Library
It’s time to become the dreamer and builder of new futures—for you and your students! This year we introduced the K12 Futures Library. A resource center for educators, administrators, and learners full of tools for imagining new futures in education—futures that reward deep learning over content consumption, experiential discovery over efficiency, and holistic well-being over measurable metrics.
Sparking Civic Imagination
In April, the d.school hosted our first “Future’s Happening: Democracy Edition,” a generative, interactive, future-focused gathering for democracy makers, movers, and multipliers. This experiential gathering was designed to activate those who are committed to building a better version of the tomorrow than exists today. Participants explored and expanded their capacity for civic imagination and creative agency. Stay tuned for more Future’s Happenings!
Emerging Tech for K12 Students and Educators
Rep magazine is aimed at helping young people understand how emerging technologies work and how they can equip themselves to ask better questions, design equitable technologies, and become better at understanding their own bias as designers and creators. We recently released issues 2 and 3. Issue 2, explores gene editing through the story of domestication. While the field of gene editing is vast and rapidly expanding, it’s actually a technology
we’ve been using for a long time. Discover gene editing goals by thinking through technologies, products, and systems, then come up with your vision of our future through an art remix project. Issue 3, invites readers into Constella, a world made up of algorithms and datasets that readers get to design and shape. By playing this game, readers better understand how algorithms affect our lives and how they can become a designer of them, shaping the world around us.
Data
The 2023–2024 academic year was the d.school’s second year offering a BS Design and MS Design degree in addition to the portfolio of university–wide elective courses open to students across campus. The student and instructor communities across the undergraduate, graduate, and elective programs are coalescing and taking shape as one academic collective. And we continue to offer programs that reach learners and leaders beyond the university as well.
Academic Collective
Classes
The d.school offered a total of 71 courses through the academic year that offered 1,876 for-credit learning experiences for Stanford students (total number of enrollments). The electives are an unconventional, interdisciplinary, project-based program that offers a portfolio of courses for students from any of Stanford’s seven schools who want to explore design.
27 BS Design Courses
10 MS Design Courses
34 University–Wide Elective Courses
Students
Number of unique students in each academic program
BS Design Students
MS Design Students University–Wide
Instructors
Our instructor community for our university–wide electives consists of 89 student–centered contributors from across industry and academia. Each year, a portion of our overall community is fresh to teaching (19% in 2023–2024), offering new perspectives.
Diverse perspectives are an essential part of good design work. We look at diversity in multiple ways in our university-wide electives.
By Discipline Diversity
University–Wide Electives
Distribution of home departments or majors of the graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in d.school elective courses during the 2023–2024 academic year.
Graduate
d.school Students
All Stanford Students
By Gender
All Stanford Faculty
d.school Students
All Stanford Undergrads
All Stanford Grad Students
By Race
Student Advising and Leadership
Faculty Advising
The undergraduate and graduate Design programs are supported by a robust advising ecosystem that provides multiple formats of advising from a diverse group of people so that each student feels they have the right resources and guidance for success. Students are part of this network of support and leadership, contributing as Peer Advisors, Course Assistants, and Community Leads.
Undergraduate Advisors
Graduate Advisors
Student Advisors and Leaders
Course Assistantships
Peer Advisors Community Leads
Public Audiences
150K+
Copies of Our Books Sold
1,708
Participants
The d.school reaches people just about everywhere in the world. We actively share ideas and methods from the d.school through books, workshops, and events. Here are some ways we’re passing along knowledge and building community around the globe.
Books
In 2022–2024 we published twelve books through Ten Speed Press/ Penguin Random House. That’s over 150,000 professionals, educators, and students engaging with d.school mindsets, methods, and tools.
Professional Programs
You don’t have to go to Stanford to learn from the d.school. We actively reach people through a variety of workshops and courses–from Design Thinking Bootcamp for professionals to the Teaching and Learning Studio for educators–and through the University Innovation Fellows engaging educators and students around the world.
Creating Community
Public Events Held
We bring people together to think big in a variety of ways: by presenting the Liu Lecture series, organizing a Design Lit Pop-Up with SF Design Week, hosting the Design Leadership Initiative with the Watson Foundation, and more.
2023 2024
d.school Contributors
Jennifer Aaker
Rebecca Ackermann
Maneesh Agrawala
Valeria Aguayo
Temitope Ajibola
Rayouf Alhumedhi
Irene Alisjahbana
Lhisa Almashy
Angela Amarillas
Erik Anderson
Kwaku Aning
Nicole Ardoin
Vincent Arena
Jan Auernhamner
Ilya Avdeev
Daniela Bahamon Arango
Michael Barry
Amanda Baum
Ryan Baum
Patrick Beaudouin
Aaron Berg
Dagan Bernstein
Michael Bernstein
Chloe Bertrand
Ahmed Best
Gurvinder Singh Bhatia
Aayush Bhatta
Arin Bhowmick
Rohith Bhupathi
Serhat Bilge
Cassie Bingham
Taylor Blackwell
Robert Bland
Gordon Bloom
Sean Bolton
Noah Borden
Thomas Both
Bruce Boyd
Brendan Boyle
Dennis Boyle
Aaron Bradley
Maddy Branham
Colton Brasel
Marlen Braun
Leticia Britos Cavagnaro
Jennifer Brooks
Lonny Avi Brooks
Isaac Brown
Jennifer Brown
Camila Buenamar
Camila BuenaventuraMárquez
Charlotte BurgessAuburn
Courtlandt Butts
Bruce Cahan
Emily Callaghan
Julieta Caputo
Carissa Carter
Shawnee Caruthers
Julieta Matos Castano
Greg Cathy
Nurefsan Cebeci
Dean Chang
Michelle Chang
Susie Chang
Renée Chao
Natalia Chen
Joanne Cheung
Naita Chialvo
Durgadinesh Chintapalli
Vicky Chung
Stuart Coulson
Michael Crawford
Michael Crocker
Nancy Cuan
Jackie Curtsinger
Svenja Damberg
Lara von Däniken
Luise Degan
Tracy DeLuca
Lyn Denend
Jennifer Dionne
Kristen Domingo
Aurelia Donald
Scott Doorley
Steve Downs
Milan Drake
John Edmark
Anthony Edwards
Tevah El Emett
Michele Elam
David TC Ellis
Jeffrey Embleton
Drew Endy
Taniyah Epps
Erica Estrada-Lio
Meghan Everette
Marley Ewell
Glenn Fajardo
Tatiana Fakoukaki
Humera Fasihuddin
Jon Feiber
Elysa Fenenbock
Patrick Fenton
Justin Ferrell
Lisa Fitzgerald
Christy Fletcher
Sean Follmer
John Fontaine
Tim Foxx
Daniel Frumhoff
Felipe Garate
Nariman Gathers
Megan Gee
Dom Gelfuso
Sienna George
Tyson Glover
Martin Gonzalez
Thomas Goudsblom
Stacey Gray
Mark Grundberg
Aatish Gupta
Gillian Gural
Margaret Hagan
Nora al Haider
Jay Hamilton
Sabrina Hammell
Jeff Hancock
Seamus Harte
Isabelle Hau
Grace Hawthorne
Aleta Hayes
Erica Hernandez
Mark Hillman
Pamela Hinds
Mark Hines
Justin Hino
Owen Hipwell
Christina Hnatov
Patricia Ho
Shauna Hobbs
Jet Hodgson
Suz Howard
Isabel Huff
Maartje Huinink
Miriam Iliohan
Magdalena Ionescu
Alex Ionnidis
David Janka
Kadee Jankowski
Liv Jenks
Michelle Jia
David Johnson
Tiara Johnson
Antonina Johnston
Tim Jones
Robert Joseph
Raymond Juballa
Christine Jun
Radhika Kapoor
Jannah Kara Vira
Barbara Karanian
Jill Kasser
Lisa Kay Solomon
David Kelley
Tom Kenny
Saara Khan
Paul Kim
Minjeong (MJ) Kim
Perry Klebahn
Marlo Kohn
Tami Kopischke Smith
Lennard Korte
Leslie Krafft
Malte Krohn
Anjali Kumar
Sasumana Vinay Kumar
Katrina Kuo
Steven LaiHing
James Landay
Carmen Leiser
Malini Leveque
Michael Lipset
Dustin Liu
Tomohiro Loeer
Rodrigo López
Jenny Luna
Trinh Ly
Ise Lyfe
Catherine Madden
David Madey
Kate Maher
Guadalupe Makasyuk
Jimmy Manley
Goutham Marimuthu
David Martinez
Laura McBain
Britnee McCauley
Charlotte McCurdy
Aaron McGee
Claire McGee
Indya McGuffin
Terrance McNeil
Fiorenza Micheli
Brandon Middleton
Bozena Mierzejewska
Craig Milroy
Haruka Minemura
John Mitchell
Ariam Mogos
Louie Montoya
Laurie Moore
Myisha Moore
Caitlin Muelle
Diego Muñoz
Shannon Murtagh
Peter Musenge
Kiel Mutschelknaus
Lars Neustock
Brett Newman
Seth Nguyen
Alison Nishiyama-Young
Jeff Niu
Rolando Nuñez Baza
Gerrit Olbert
Zişan Özdemir
Kursat Ozenc
Babitha Padiri
Hesam Panahi
Mason Pashia
Manish Patel
Nate Persily
Michelle Pledger
Brynn Poskey
Bre Przestrzelski
Aditya Shashank
Jonathan Puhl
Lisa Puttagio
Marithza Quiroz
Mary Raber
Tara Rahmani
Raghav Ramki
Catherine Randle
Ariel Raz
Rob Reich
Taj Reid
Manuel Rivas
Mirella Rivas
Glenn Robbins
Jeff Rodgers
Margo Roen
Greg Rosenbaum
Nadia Roumani
Emma Ruohoniemi
Sungene Ryang
Victor Saad
Jeremy Sabol
Lee Sanders
Radha Ravi Sankar
Alex Santarelli
Lou Sassoubre
Kelly Schmutte
Alison Scott
Bill Scott
Carl Scott
sam seidel
Debbie Senesky
Izma Shabbir
Abdul Wadood Shaik
Ghanashyam Shankar
Sheri Sheppard
Mana Short
Omar Siddiqui
Tony Simmons
Sara Singer
Meenu Singh
Parwinder Singh
Jessica Slusser
Jacqueline Small
Olatunde Sobomehin
Miki Sode
Sarah Soule
Arianne Spaulding
Julie Stanford
Sabrina Stangler
Megan Stariha
Sarah Stein Greenberg
Lauren Steltzer
Debbe Stern
Mike Strong
YC Sun
Kehlin Swain
Dominic Swayne
Payam Tabrizian
Nikita Tan
Stergios Tegos
Bryant Terry
Amanda Tiet
Tatjana Titareva
Jamie Tjornehoj
Kenae Turner
Michelle Udeli
Kavya Udupa
Jeremy Utley
Furkan Varol
Kathryn Velcich
Ross Venook
Morgan Vien
Dan Watters
Jeni Weber
Leslee Weible
Jeremy Weinstein
Josh Weiss
Syeedah White
Justin Willow
Felipe Wilson
Matt Winters
Eli Woolery
Kalina Yang
Dylan Yap
Marcela Yeckle
Manasa Yeturu
Paul Yock
Seamus Yu Harte
Zein Zebib
Dawn Zidonis
Zio Ziegler
Special thanks to our partners and collaborators this year, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kapor Foundation, Omidyar Network, and Siegel Family Endowment.
Editorial Team
Jennifer Brown
Laurie Moore
Charlotte Burgess–Auburn
Data Acquisition and Analysis
Megan Stariha
Creative Direction and Visual Design
Daniel Frumhoff
Cover Lettering
Hulises Ortiz
Daniel Frumhoff
Photography
Patrick Beaudouin
Elle Danielle, p22+24
Photo Retouching
Daniel Frumhoff
Proofreader
Emmy McCombs
Illustrations
Louie Montoya, p13
Amélie Tourangeau, p40
Armando Veve, p44–45
Art Consultants
Nan Cao
Scott Doorley
Printed in Canada
Hemlock Printers
Colophon
Verve Display by
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