About

Hello

I’m Ida, an experience director, design strategist, and researcher based in New York City.

I’m often the front-runner in design processes, founding innovative creative practices and advising boundary-pushing projects. I’ve been recognized as an innovator in the field of experience design for creating transgressive adventures for major cultural icons and transformative strategy sessions for heads of industry. My research has been used in coursework at Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and NYU. I’ve been featured in multiple New York Times Bestselling books, as well as Businessweek, NPR, and the New Yorker.

I’m passionate about design and research that defines new frontiers and creates new possibilities. Nothing delights me more than seeing people surprise themselves when they stretch beyond their known limits, and I believe good design can make this possible.

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

Currently

I’m a Director at NOBL Collective, where we reshaped world-famous organizations and unleashed the potential of employees around the world.

My ongoing research on the design of transformative social experiences started through graduate work in design research at the School of Visual Arts. I teach designing organizational culture at Stanford’s d.school.

I’m an advisor to:

  • NEW INC, the first museum-led cultural incubator dedicated to supporting innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship across art, design, and technology
  • The Artist in Residence program at the Esalen Institute, a retreat and research center that explores human potential

You can find me working out of Friends Work Here. I’m a regular participant in Mesas, a team-based working system for solving complex challenges with the best talent in 5 days. The New York Peace Institute trained me in conflict mediation, and I’m on the roster of volunteer mediators who help New Yorkers resolve their conflicts for free.

Formerly

I have worked at the Rockefeller Foundation and the consultancy SYPartners.

For six years, I served on the steering committee of the School for Poetic Computation, an artist-run school exploring the intersection of code, design, hardware and theory.

I co­-founded two design practices:

  • Sextantworks orchestrated adventures in places you aren’t supposed to be, with press coverage in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Businessweek, and Folha de São Paulo
  • Antidote Games creates playful experiences for understanding complex realities for clients like the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the International Federation of the Red Cross, and the Innocence Project

Early in my career, extensive travel for documentary projects and collaborative media production took me to Guatemala, India, and Brazil. I was a Fulbright Fellow to Ethiopia.

Academic degrees:

  • M.A. in Design Research, School of Visual Arts
  • B.F.A. in Design & Technology, Parsons School of Design
  • B.A. in History, The New School University

In junior high school, I was voted “Most Likely to Discover Time Travel.”