About

Hello

I’m Ida, an experience director and design strategist. I design high-stakes meetings, adventures, and celebrations, creating opportunities for insight, innovation, and change. I am most delighted when people surprise themselves by stretching beyond their known limits, and I believe good design can make this possible.

I am recognized as an innovator in the field of experience design for creating intrepid adventures for cultural icons and transformative strategy sessions for heads of corporations. Industry clients have included BlackRock, Activision, IBM, Starbucks, Google, NBCUniversal, Ogilvy, Pfizer, Ralph Lauren, and the Canadian government. My research on the design of transformative social experiences has been used in coursework at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and NYU, among others. I have been featured in multiple New York Times Bestselling books, as well as Businessweek, Fast Company, NPR, and the New Yorker.

Early in my career, I co-founded two design practices, in game design and adventure design, originating creative methodologies grounded in the experience of the participants. I traveled extensively doing documentary and collaborative media projects in Guatemala, India, and Brazil and was a Fulbright Fellow to Ethiopia.

I hold an MA in Design Research, Writing, and Criticism from the School of Visual Arts, a BFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, and a BA in History from the New School. I am a volunteer conflict mediator for the New York Peace Institute. In junior high, I was voted “most likely to discover time travel.” I am a 5th-generation New Yorker who loves to kayak and read library books.

This website, uncommonplaces.com, is my online catalog of creative endeavors. Let’s go somewhere new together.

Elsewhere

Talks & Interviews

Trust & Faith for the UNFINISHED Festival
Immersive Design Summit keynote
Voices of VR Interview
Expanding Mind Interview
The Gathering Summit Talk
Cusp Design Conference
Harvard Graduate School of Design Talk
Voices of VR Interview
No Proscenium Interview
Businessweek’s Design Conference Talk
Tribeca Film Festival talk

Book Mentions

Surviving Change At Work
Rituals for Virtual Work: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships
Life Is In The Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt
Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One

Selected Press

MSNBC
The New York Times
Fast Company
Fast Company
Businessweek
NPR
The New York Times
The New Yorker