Ana Monroe founded Ishmael Interactive in New York City in 2009 to support her expansive, technology-forward design practice. The company’s first major offering, D_Coder, was a text message-encryption platform predating the text encryption revolution brought on by WhatsApp. Since its 2012 launch, D_Coder has been awarded both US and global patents.

In the decade from 2014-2024, Ishmael Interactive acted as a consultancy and educational portal for the growing practice of human-centered design. From in-person workshops to conference talks, Ana grew Ishmael Interactive in stealth mode while earning a terminal STEM degree in design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and joining the Lab at OPM as one of the US federal government’s first professional designers.

In 2025, the company received a major reboot when the Trump administration’s DOGE debacle booted Ana and her team from their federal government careers. Ana and the team refuse the incompetence, nihilism and dehumanizing actions of Russell Vought, Elon Musk, and the others in the administration and are proud to offer the essential human-centered design process for the 21st century.

This guidance takes the form of individual workshops and, primarily, of the Human-centered Design Guide series, the only full-cycle, fully real-world tested, and technology platform-agnostic product and service development resource in the world. The foundations of these guides were laid in the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Office of Personnel Management, and the General Services Administration. The testing for these guides occurred at the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Environmental Protection Agency, and other government agencies.

Now Ishmael Interactive is proud to offer the first edition of the HCD Guide series specifically tuned to the private sector. The 2025 version blends Ana’s 18 years of agile, private sector design experience with her near-decade of public sector work in organizations of over 350,000 people. With entirely new illustrations, formatting, and new sections focusing on artificial intelligence, the Human-centered Design Guide series is the tool for people seeking to systematize great product and service development for their organization.