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 2020
Immersive Design Summit keynote 2019
Voices of VR Interview 2019
Expanding Mind Interview 2019
The Gathering Summit Talk 2019
Cusp Design Conference 2018
Harvard Graduate School of Design Talk 2018
Voices of VR Interview 2017
No Proscenium Interview 2017
Businessweek’s Design Conference Talk 2016
Tribeca Film Festival talk 2015
Book Mentions
Surviving Change At Work 2023
Rituals for Virtual Work: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships 2021
Life Is In The Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age 2020
The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters 2018
Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt 2018
Odyssey Works: Transformative Experiences for an Audience of One 2016
Selected Press
MSNBC 2021
The New York Times 2020
Fast Company 2020
Fast Company 2020
Businessweek 2016
NPR 2014
The New York Times 2014
The New Yorker 2013