Designing for what matters

Jeffrey Cortez
Oct 2, 2025
6 min read

A Journey of Values-Based Innovation.

In 2025, against a backdrop of climate anxiety, cultural fragmentation, and relentless technological acceleration, I—like many others—found myself at a crossroads. Not just in my work, but in my sense of purpose.

Everywhere I looked, leaders were asking the familiar questions:

How do we stay relevant? How do we create impact that lasts?

But beneath those questions, a quieter one echoed louder:

How do we design a future worth believing in?

This isn’t just a business challenge—it’s a human one.

My name is Jeffrey V. Cortez. I’m a human navigating this digital world—a lifelong student of leadership and design, and a technology leader trained at Columbia University. Over the past decade, I’ve worked where innovation meets identity, where systems thinking meets human behavior, and where storytelling supports strategy. Metrics matter—but without meaning, they rarely move us forward.

This piece is a reflection of that journey. A call to reimagine how we build—products, companies, cultures—through the lens of values. Especially the ones we tend to overlook: identity, emotion, and meaning.

Whether you’re a CEO, CIO, investor, designer—or simply someone trying to make sense of what comes next—this story is for you.

Chapter 1: The Startup That Did Everything Right... and Still Failed

The company had it all. A cutting-edge product. A seasoned team. Millions in early-stage funding. But six months after launch, adoption flatlined. Users dropped off. NPS scores plummeted.

Why?

Because the experience was cold. It worked—functionally—but it didn’t feel right. There was no emotional resonance. No sense of identity or purpose. It was a perfectly built machine that nobody loved.

And that’s when it hit me: Function is necessary, but not sufficient.

As Nathan Shedroff, my professor and a good friend puts it in his book Making Meaning, "People don't buy things. They buy the meanings those things represent."

Until that moment, I had designed features. From that moment on, I started designing feelings.

This moment was a mirror held up to my own process. I realized we had optimized for performance, but we hadn’t considered presence. We hadn’t asked: What does this product mean to someone in the context of their day? Their life? Their struggles?

When I later spoke to users, one comment stood out: “It’s like I’m using someone else’s tool. It’s smart, but it’s not for me.”

That was the turning point. It launched a new approach to innovation.

Chapter 2: The Values We Forgot

Most frameworks center success on efficiency, scalability, or user retention. But Shedroff’s Five Values—Financial, Functional, Emotional, Identity, and Meaning—reframed everything for me.

It wasn’t just about whether the app worked. It was about whether it:

Made someone feel understood (Emotional)
Reflected their beliefs or aspirations (Identity)
Aligned with their purpose (Meaning)
Delivered value for time or money (Financial)
Performed reliably (Functional)

Think about the products or services you can’t live without. Chances are, they hit all five.

Let’s take a real-world example: Duolingo.

Duolingo doesn’t just teach language. It:

Taps into identity (“I’m a lifelong learner.”)
Evokes emotion with humor, streaks, and encouragement.
Has a clear function—language learning.
Is free, hitting the financial value.
And over time, it becomes part of a user’s meaning—a commitment to growth or heritage.

Now contrast that with enterprise tools that “check the boxes” but are universally despised by their users. Design without values creates friction. Design with values creates trust.

Chapter 3: Designing for Experience, Not Just Output

That shift in thinking led me to redesign not just products, but entire services.

Instead of optimizing for task completion, I began mapping emotional journeys. Where did users feel anxious? Where did delight peak? Where did trust break?

I discovered the Waveline —a technique for visualizing emotional highs and lows across a service experience. It gave us clarity:

Customer onboarding isn’t about "getting started"—it’s about reducing fear.
Help centers aren’t about information—they’re about restoring confidence.
Notifications aren't reminders—they're moments of relationship.

We redesigned a fintech platform using Waveline mapping. Support tickets dropped by 32%. User churn reduced by 21%. But more importantly? Our community felt seen.

The lesson: People don’t experience your product as you designed it. They experience it as it fits into their lives.

Another example: A hospital system used the Waveline to identify that patients felt most vulnerable after discharge. Not during surgery, not during the hospital stay. That insight led to a new service: a post-care check-in call. Patient satisfaction skyrocketed.

Chapter 4: The Boardroom Moment

In a strategy session with investors, I presented a roadmap grounded not in milestones, but in meaning. One investor, skeptical, asked, "How does identity or emotion show up on a balance sheet?"

Fair question.

"It shows up," I replied, "when a user recommends us to a friend because we didn’t just solve their problem—we made them feel proud to be part of us."

That quieted the room.

Because when we design with emotional intelligence, we create brand gravity. Loyalty. Advocacy. Momentum.

Companies that bake identity and meaning into their brand—like Patagonia, Airbnb, Apple—don’t compete on features. They compete on belonging.

And belonging isn’t soft. It’s strategic.

Chapter 5: Building Culture with the Five Values

What’s the internal culture of a company that designs with the Five Values?

Financial: Everyone understands how their work ties to value and sustainability.
Functional: Processes are transparent and efficient.
Emotional: Feedback is safe and empathetic.
Identity: Employees feel the mission reflects who they are.
Meaning: People connect their daily work to a larger purpose.

In one organization, we applied the Five Values to our internal onboarding. Instead of only giving new hires documents and logins, we:

Created identity rituals (e.g., Day 1 storytelling)
Invited emotional check-ins
Designed the onboarding as a user journey

The result? Higher engagement. Faster ramp-up. And a team that felt like a community, not just a workforce.

The takeaway: Your internal brand is your external experience.

Chapter 6: Services Are the New Products

In the past, companies sold products. Now, they sell experiences powered by services.

Look at what’s happening:

Nike now offers fitness coaching services
Apple launched Fitness+ and Apple One subscriptions
Amazon doesn’t just sell books—it powers infrastructure for half the web

And here’s the truth: Services succeed when they understand the Waveline.

You can’t control every user moment—but you can anticipate their emotional state. That’s why service design is now core to innovation.

Whether you’re launching an app or a national healthcare strategy, ask:

Where does my user feel uncertain?
Where do they feel overwhelmed?
How can I ease that pain or amplify a moment of hope?

Chapter 7: What Designers Can Teach the C-Suite

Too often, design is treated like the surface polish you apply at the end.

But good design isn’t aesthetics—it’s decision-making with empathy.

Imagine if your COO started meetings by asking:

“What emotional arc are we designing for?”
“Where will the user feel empowered or abandoned?”
“How do we reduce emotional labor in this process?”

We’d have better products. Better workplaces. Better leaders.

Some of the best design thinkers I know aren’t in design roles. They’re product owners, HR leaders, even CFOs—who’ve learned to listen beyond metrics.

This shift can’t come soon enough.

Chapter 8: Leading with Intention

The next wave of leadership isn’t about being the smartest in the room. It’s about being the most intentional.

Intentional about the futures we shape.
Intentional about the values we scale.
Intentional about how we design everything—from tools to trust.

Nathan Shedroff calls design “the human act of intention.” That means every product, every policy, every business model—is a design decision.

So the question becomes: Are you designing by default—or by values?

Chapter 9: Tools You Can Use Today

Want to integrate these ideas tomorrow? Here’s how:

Run a Value Audit
- For any product, map it against the Five Values.
- Ask: Which values are strong? Which are missing?
Waveline Mapping
- Choose one user journey (onboarding, support, etc.)
- Chart the emotional highs and lows.
- Identify interventions to elevate or smooth the journey.
Narrative Design
- Ask: What story is your user telling themselves?
- Are you reinforcing that story—or interrupting it?
Feedback Rituals
- Replace "postmortems" with "empathy reviews"
- Focus on how users and teams felt, not just what failed
Design Briefs with Values
- Start every new initiative with a one-pager outlining:
  - Emotional goals
  - Identity alignment
  - Long-term meaning

Chapter 10: The Call to Build Better

If you're building in 2025, whether you're leading a startup, scaling a service, or funding the next big thing, the question isn't "Can we?" It's "Should we?"

Should we build this if it doesn’t honor emotion?If it doesn’t reflect identity?If it lacks meaning?

The next era of innovation will be human-first, not tech-first.

So, let’s build for what matters. Let’s design not just for performance, but for purpose. Not just for output, but for outcomes. Not just for markets, but for people.

That is the future I choose to design.

And I hope you will too.

Designing for what matters