A single email can mean the difference between a student graduating college, getting a well-paying job, and moving into the middle class—or dropping out of school under a mountain of debt. Given that people with bachelor’s degrees earn 67% more than high school graduates, these small interventions can have a life-changing impact on millions looking to live the American Dream.

At Arizona State University (ASU), where nearly half of students traditionally struggled to complete their degrees, a seemingly simple change to the financial aid reminder emails led to an astounding 72% increase in filing by the priority deadline, potentially unlocking crucial funding for thousands of students. But when the City University of New York (CUNY) used the same approach, students didn’t trust the email reminders they received, and submission rates didn’t change.

You’d think there was no difference between a student at ASU seeking financial aid and another at CUNY: They both have access to email and need a behavioral nudge, but the outcomes show a stark difference in how people react and respond in different situations. This exemplifies how behavioral science can help us design solutions to match people’s precise needs.

As faith in institutions and confidence in expertise plummets, Piyush Tantia, ideas42’s founding Executive Director, shared this example to highlight how our approach can help rebuild trust and make institutions more successful at fulfilling their missions. By applying insights about how people make decisions and why they take action in real-world situations for the last 15 years, we’ve learned that finding clever solutions through academic research is usually not enough. What really matters is looking closely at people’s perspective to understand their context down to the details, and not assuming we understand what’s going on before doing that on-the-ground research. Durable solutions need to meet the people they’re meant for where they are—and that requires a deep commitment to testing and design that pays attention to the interaction of a person and their situation.

As economic security becomes increasingly precarious, systemic changes through a behavioral science lens can create ways for people to get the education they want and need, reduce their debt, increase savings, and access social protection services that are there to support them. This means going through college application processes firsthand to understand what gets in people’s way, learning about how to make credit counseling feel more accessible and stigma-free, and speaking with those who use government services about how seemingly small process changes can lead to disproportionate burden.

Unlike conducting research in a lab, this immersion enables teams to gather insights that no dataset could reveal about how people operate in the real world.

Take the work with financial reminders: At ASU, 30-plus interviews revealed email tone significantly impacted student engagement with financial aid communications, yielding dramatic results. Yet at CUNY, the same casual approach was rejected as untrustworthy. This wasn’t a failure of behavioral science but a triumph of the testing process.

In reality, some solutions fail. That’s why good behavioral science means testing them everywhere to ensure they meet the moment. By gathering user feedback early at CUNY, we caught and corrected the misalignment before full implementation, which made the intervention more effective.

If we are going to address our most social challenges successfully, we need a new partnership model between funders, direct service organizations, and the people whose lives are impacted by the work.

Funders must support the deeper, longer-term work to create lasting, systemic change. Practitioners must maintain an unwavering commitment to scientific rigor and practical effectiveness. Communities deserve solutions that genuinely address their needs rather than just testing interesting theories.

The evidence is clear: Careful attention to people’s needs and resources can create breakthrough solutions that transform lives.

The question isn’t whether design focused on meeting people where they are works—it’s whether we’re willing to invest in doing it right.