This perspective is adapted from a talk originally given by Hailey Brewer, Executive Director of Partnerships and Programs at IDEO.org, at the Aspen Design Conference in September 2025.

When I told my family I was preparing to speak about the American social contract, my father-in-law laughed and asked, “Do we still have one of those?” It wasn’t the response I was looking for, but it wasn’t a surprise.

Fragmentation and polarization dominate our national headlines, and reasons for pessimism are plentiful. At work and in the everyday moments of life, I find myself searching for an antidote. How do we begin stitching our communities and our social contract back together when the forces pulling us apart feel so overwhelming?

I’m a designer by trade which means I’m trained to look for possibility, not despair. Design doesn’t deal in pessimism. It doesn’t end the conversation by asking, “what’s the point?” It opens space to imagine by asking, “how might we?” At its core, design is a practice of pragmatic optimism. It works from the belief that where there is a will, there is a way.

And right now, our will to act has never mattered more.

Stories: Indomitable Communities > Indomitable Individuals

Our dominant narrative today often sounds like “survival of the fittest.”

In 2018, Hurricane Michael whipped through Mexico Beach, Florida, flattening nearly the entire community. One of the only structures left standing was the Sand Palace, a home designed to weather “the big one.” While it’s an impressive feat of design, it also perpetuates a social myth: that safety and progress come from outlasting others. That myth invokes scarcity and competition.

But evolution is also a story of cooperation and altruism. Researchers have found that communities with strong social ties are more likely to recover quickly from a natural disaster than those without them.

What we need, then, are more stories that celebrate the strength and richness of communities in all their diversity and complexity. Photographer Simbarashe Cha’s portraits of a London flower market capture that spirit, celebrating the wild cohesion of a diverse community. Similarly, Brandon Stanton’s ongoing Humans of New York project has collected thousands of stories of everyday New Yorkers, bringing together the city’s contradictions, struggles, and joys into a shared narrative of humanity.

Instead of stories about solitary fortresses, we should tell stories that look like wildflower meadows—diverse, unruly, and strong through interdependence, where our future rests on community rather than individual survival.

Products and Services: Leaning into Democratic Design

In her book The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee recounts the story of drained swimming pools. In the early 20th century, public pools were built across the country as a form of social infrastructure, giving middle-class white families a resource for leisure and connection. But when desegregation arrived, many white communities chose to drain their pools rather than share them with Black families. It was a striking example of zero-sum thinking: if everyone could benefit, then no one would. McGhee traces that zero-sum mindset forward to today’s divestments in our shared social safety net.

Too often, what we consider “the best” is designed to separate—single family homes, elite schools, neighborhoods without affordable housing, privately owned cars. The reward for success is often distance from others. But what if our best products and services strengthened connection instead?

We can take a cue from Scandinavian modernism, which emerged between the world wars as communities rebuilt. At its core was democratic design: the idea that beautiful, functional solutions should meet universal needs, not just serve the wealthy. You can see it in Alvar Aalto’s bent-plywood stool—mass-produced so it could sit in a schoolroom as easily as in a concert hall—and in the early IKEA catalog, which brought thoughtfully designed furniture that meets universal needs, not just serve the wealthy.

This kind of design matters. It disrupts the equation of quality with exclusivity and channels energy and resources toward solutions that raise the standard of living for everyone. The challenge is to resist the siren call of elitism and imagine what an iconic example of democratic design could look like today.

Time: Design for Friction in Everyday Encounters

We often treat time as a resource to maximize productivity: the 40-hour work week, the 9-to-5 school day, the efficiency of self-checkout. Consider the dominant refrain: time is money. But that’s a design choice. Time is so more than efficiency. It’s a building block of social capital that builds meaning, connection, and trust.

You can see it at work in everyday moments: the public space that invites strangers to linger, the neighbor who pauses to hold the door, the coworker who takes the long way back from lunch to share a story. The other week, a cashier at my local grocery store taught my daughter how to hula-hoop—a 90-second interaction that transformed our relationship from customer and cashier into neighbors. These interactions seem microscopic, but they’re invaluable. In our rush toward a frictionless and efficient society, we’ve stripped away the very moments that bind us together.

But what if we reimagined those rituals that define our days? Earlier this year, IDEO.org worked with high school educators in a Texas school district redesign key rituals—the start of class, the way an educator responds to disruptive student behavior—through the lens of strengthening care, connection, and accountability. The results of the pilot were staggering: a 36% decrease in exclusionary discipline measures, and anecdotes of transformed behavior and outcomes for adults and students alike.

So instead of designing frictionless paths to efficiency, let’s design for the kind of friction that sparks connection and strengthens community.

A Final Note

Artificial intelligence dominates the conversation and agenda in many spaces right now. It’s full of possibility, and it’s where the money is. Yes—it holds tremendous potential to streamline and unblock bottlenecks in delivering critical services. But the fervor around it can also obscure a deeper truth: many of AI’s fastest-growing consumer applications focus on companionship and therapy, treating the symptoms of our deeper need for connection.

Design for cohesion—design that bridges relationships—meets that hunger at its root. By investing in connection, we unlock shared health, prosperity, and resilience. We also build the collective strength to ensure artificial intelligence uplifts all of us, rather than overunning us.

Each of us holds design power, whether we’re shaping stories, structuring products and services, or deciding how we approach our everyday experiences. Let’s wield it well.

If this sparked something for you, let’s be in touch.