Welcome to our learning design shop at Cultivate! We recently developed a new program called the Empowered Cultivator Lab. You may have heard about it.

For those of you curious about how we create this sort of thing, here's a behind-the-scenes look.

The beginning of the year is frequently when many of us focus on building new habits and taking new actions. And while we may feel steadfast in our commitments to these new behaviors at the outset, keeping up with them over time can be challenging.

I don’t know about you folks, but I LOVE research, and that’s a good thing because I had a chance to do a lot of it over the past several months as we designed our Community Accelerator program.

At Cultivate, we talk a lot about turning ideas into action—but first, you need that essential spark. And then you need to give that spark the space to turn into a fire. But amid the repetition of day to day life, it can be hard to make space to nourish creative thought.

What sets a true changemaker apart? Action. The trailblazers who create real cultural change don't wait to be asked for their opinions. Instead, they take decisive action based on their convictions.

Recently, I was inspired by a fellow Cultivator, Clemens Wan, who writes Lists of 30s for breakfast. When he told me he was going to write a list of 30 ways to grow a virtual community, I made a calendar reminder to follow up with him about it in two weeks. He had it published in less than 24 hours.

I don't know how to play chess, but that hasn't stopped me from watching The Queen's Gambit twice. When Benny gets salty with Beth for not coming to New York City, he says something profound: Maybe is a loser’s word, Beth.

Internal communities, in their simplest form, are organizational support systems. There can be multiple types of internal communities within one organization, and they can have varying degrees of formality or structure.

When I learned how to design for a better over-all human-centered experience, I became more aware of the barriers and challenges people face when interacting with various products. Over time, I noticed my visual impairments and began focusing on creating more accessible products across the board. It proved that designing with everyone in mind coincidentally makes an attractive product for all to use.