What's in Your Fridge? in Creative Acts for Curious People

As a member of the founding team at the Stanford d.school, I developed the exercise What’s in Your Fridge?, later featured in Creative Acts for Curious People.

I originally designed it for senior leaders working on a national childhood obesity initiative, a team that needed to build empathy for the problem and real trust with each other. Participants share photos of their refrigerators, then observe, question, and follow the emotion. Within minutes, groceries turn into stories: family culture, habits, tradeoffs, identity.

It quickly reveals the gap between what people intend to do and what they actually do, the same gap product teams have to understand if they want to build something that works in real life. It also builds the kind of safety teams need to do creative work: the willingness to share half-formed ideas, stay curious, and build on each other’s thinking.

It’s a simple prompt, but it reflects how I lead: start with lived experience, make it safe to be real, and design from there.