As the curtain parted on moooi’s 2022 exhibit, the audience was treated to a multi-sensory performance unlike any other: four synchronized robot scent diffusers telling a story through dance. As the robots—called Piro—swayed and dipped to the beats of a custom-designed soundscape, it was easy to forget the performers were made by a team of industrial designers and engineers in San Francisco.

The work expressed a future vision for what it means to humanize technology. Rather than design technology to make our lives more efficient, what if instead we designed technology to make life more beautiful?

For twenty years, moooi has seduced the world with bold, imaginative design. The firm, named after the Dutch word for beautiful, made its name by designing furniture and home goods that appeal to an interest in pushing the edges of form as much as function. Moooi came to IDEO looking to create an exhibit for the largest furniture fair in the world that might provoke the audience to imagine a world where design’s primary function was to inspire joy.

“Defy Gravity”: one of several experiential “worlds” moooi created for the 2022 Salone del Mobile. Each room had its own scent, soundscape, color, and digital experience.

Our process started by going wide. We presented 20 potential conceptual designs to the team, one of which moooi founder Marcel Wanders lovingly referred to as the “farting pet,” a robot scent diffuser that could walk around the home.

A scented smoke ring lingers in the air after Piro’s final crescendo.

From there, a team of IDEO designers enlisted the support of Catie Cuan, a choreographer who specializes in human-robot interaction, and Dutch sound design firm KLOAQ, to refine the concept into a four-minute performance piece.

Piro learned to mimic balletic human gestures.

The final result was technically involved: four robots moved independently, controlled by custom electronics and software designed to mimic the movements and grace of ballerinas. But in the performance itself, the complex mechanics disappeared, allowing the audience to experience not just what technology can do, but how it can make us feel.

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What happens when a designer and a classically-trained choreographer collaborate? Attendees of Salone del Mobile.Milano, the largest furniture fair in the world, got to see for themselves.

To build a climate-resilient future, we need an all-hands-on-deck approach across industries and organizations, as well as the leadership and collaboration of frontline communities themselves. 

To that end, IDEO and CSAA Insurance Group worked together to unite nine partner organizations, including Aon and the Environmental Defense Fund, to launch an open call for solutions to help communities prevent, prepare for, and recover from climate-related disasters. The goal of the Challenge was to surface actionable and scalable ideas that experiment with new technologies, models, and partnerships, then provide innovators with the support and funding they need to get their ideas off the ground and into the hands of frontline communities.

IDEO set these entrepreneurs up for success throughout the submission process, holding one-on-one conversations with participants, sharing constructive feedback on potential solutions, and developing their ideas and skill sets. The team also hosted workshop and panel sessions to grow community bonds and provide expertise on critical topics, including assessing climate risk and storytelling for impact. Hundreds of ideas came in from around the world, ranging from harnessing the power of AI, to building resilient infrastructures, to democratizing access to climate data, and more.

Once all of the ideas were in, a cohort of judges with a wide diversity of work and lived experience screened for concepts that were relevant, impactful, novel, community-informed, and equitable. At the end of the Challenge, the team chose 13 winning concepts with high potential for impact and partnerships, including Reef Rocket, which seeks to fabricate natural biocement reefs that reduce coastal flooding and erosion, and BurnBot, which is working to prevent wildfires by conducting controlled burns at scale.  

For these winning entrepreneurs, the end of the Challenge is just the beginning. Now, they are equipped with critical early funding, as well as a cohort of climate entrepreneurs, along with mentorship from IDEO, CSAA, and the other organizations. It’s a big step forward as they introduce new forms of equitable and transparent data, promote the voices of BIPOC communities, and bring to market new technologies that will protect and support frontline communities through this ongoing crisis. 

Read the Challenge Impact Report to learn more.

In the US alone, climate-related disasters cause $120 billion in damages annually. That figure is five times greater than 50 years ago, and projections are $2 trillion by the end of the century.

Nearly 90% of counties in the US declared a natural disaster over the last decade.

418

submissions

13

winners

$1M

in prizes

Every year, the NSF provides around 30 teams with up to $750,000 and a year’s worth of coaching, training, and collaboration to develop solutions for research areas like sustainable ocean use or combating fake news. Over the course of nine months, the teams learn how to uncover insights about human needs and design durable solutions for end users. But many of the scientists and experts in the program felt stretched by the idea of putting the needs of end users in the mix with their scientific testing—something few of them have been trained to do in their previous work.

To make that process feel more achievable, the teams built out prototypes and received guidance on refining and pitching their ideas along the way. IDEO joined the project as an innovation partner, facilitating hands-on workshops and creating “Science TV” episodes that could help the program reach a broader audience, deepening its impact now and in the future.

To help grantees get vulnerable, and evolve their ways of working, IDEO sent grantees to improv training  so that they could learn to build off each other. The team also took them to magic shows and on ghost tours in downtown San Francisco to learn the value of compelling storytelling in their work. The fun was part of the plan—gelling as a team and building relationships meant participants could make mistakes in front of one another. Being wrong doesn’t come naturally to academics, but it’s a key part of the design process, and a crucial part of solving complex problems .

Each year, a select group of teams move onto the next phase of the “coop-etition,” receiving up to $5 million in additional funding. And all of the participants leave with valuable new skills they can use to break out of their own silos and create human-centered, ground-breaking solutions for the rest of their careers.

When the NSF launched the Convergence Accelerator and made the radical move of bringing together teams from different disciplines, these academics, scientists, and industry partners didn’t have a shared language to move their ideas forward, and needed a structured approach to coming up with new solutions.

164

trained research teams

$200M

in federal support granted to AI-driven innovation, quantum technology, food security, sustainable materials, opportunities for people with disabilities, and more

IDEO and The Earthshot Prize built a nine-month Fellowship program and a five-day, in-person retreat to give Finalists the best shot at reaching the Prize’s ultimate goal: to scale the solutions that will repair our planet this decade.

To build out the new Fellowship, IDEO took a deep dive with the previous year’s Finalists to uncover where they needed critical support. This research revealed that the Finalists needed more ways to leverage the Earthshot platform, connect with potential partners to help scale their ideas, and build community with each other. The IDEO team then used those insights to create a set of recommendations The Earthshot Prize team could implement to create a more supportive and structured experience. Ideas they took forward included assigning a designated “Leap Advisor” who could provide guidance and assistance for each Finalist, as well as an advisor from the Prize’s Global Alliance Network who could partner on specific growth initiatives, like scaling product design, or policy change. 

Next up: the design of the retreat itself. Together, IDEO and the Earthshot team had three goals for the cohort’s week together in Windsor: focus on new forms of leadership and movement building, spur action through storytelling, and foster community.

The team developed the curriculum with leaders from Google X and Speed & Scale, alongside startups like UPSIDE Foods. They designed moments to build community, like paired walks and a chocolate-making workshop where Finalists could get to know each other away from the noise of meetings. 

Photographers captured the event to create assets for Finalists to use when pitching their ideas, and Finalists honed their storytelling skills. But what most remember is the magical moments of coming together as a cohort of next generation climate leaders who will help each other make an impact on the problems facing our planet, long after The Earthshot Prize has concluded.

The problems facing our planet are enormous, spanning industries, borders, currencies, and regulatory environments. Meaningful solutions will require leaders who can work across those lines.

30

climate solutions accelerated in first two years

Since 2008, when I officially started making music under the name Crunchybird, I’ve learned a fair amount about recording and playing. One of the biggest lessons has been how awfully lonely being a one-man band can be—not just socially, but creatively. There's no pushing and pulling, no building on each other's ideas.

So I asked myself: How could I pull in some of my friends from around the globe to make music with me?

I’ve always loved the concept of Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist parlor game where someone starts a drawing and passes it on to others to continue. The final artwork is always unexpected, occasionally horrifying, and unavoidably original. Could we pull off a musical version? I was curious to see where it could go, so I threw the challenge to a motley crew of musically-minded colleagues around the world.

The rules were simple: Start something and pass it to someone else, somewhere else. That person spends a day adding to it, then sends the track to the next collaborator. And so on. We called the project "Exquisite Chords."

I learned a lot from the process. Before I walk you through the track my friends and I built together, here are some design principles to get you going.

3 tips for creative collaboration

1. Start small and let go. When you collaborate with others, it’s tempting to set up a very detailed structure with a lot of constraints. For this project, it was fun to start with something more basic and give people the room to interpret it and shape it their own way. Don’t overthink it. Just let everyone throw something into the mix.
2. Make each other successful. It can be really cool to see how participants take each other's work and improve on it. It's the musical version of the classic improv response "Yes, And…" Take what’s awesome and make it more awesome.
3. Guide the vision. Creative collaboration can be terrifying. You have no clue how something will turn out, and it can be a disaster—the phrase "too many creatives in the kitchen” comes to mind. But as the leader, you have the opportunity to influence the end result. It’s important to respect people’s contributions, but to also know when to take the wheel and shape the outcome.

Exquisite Chords, step by step

Here's how our musical experiment started: One night, while sitting on the couch on our tiny apartment in Tokyo, with my wife and kid sleeping in the next room, I recorded a one-bar bass line over a simple beat on my Mac. What you’ll hear is an insomniac trying to make some sound very quietly:

I tossed the track over to my friend George Joseph, a communications designer at IDEO San Francisco, and an actual musician. He laid down some sweet, dynamic goodness atop my track in just a couple of minutes because he is, as noted above, an actual bassist. He also recorded an awesome vocal take. The lyrics are still a mystery to me:

George then shared the track with our friend Simon Heather, a business designer at IDEO New York, who we had heard has some shreddy chops on the electric guitar. It was true:

Simon passed the ball to Nick Dupey, a design director at IDEO Cambridge. Nick has a toddler named Julian Rose, who he recorded making toddler sounds:

Nick punted it to merry Munich, where design directors Franz Blach and Trent Huon took the whole affair to another level. Franz busted out a cornucopia of manipulated acoustic guitar sounds. He then arranged the pieces into a more dramatic song structure—verse, chorus, bridge, and outro included:

Trent added a touch of madness, crooning about the changing of the seasons on top of the new arrangement, improving the melody George had created:

And then it went back to San Francisco, where interaction designer Zubin Pastakia tacked on some angelic synths to round out the crescendoing finale:

Once the track was back in my hands in Japan, I realized the bass line that started it all would work better on the piano, so I re-recorded the melody and added a few parts to fill in the new arrangement. The piano complemented Franz’s acoustic guitar, which unfurled into a nice little wandering outro that could probably go on to be another song.

Finally, I worked with my producer friend Hamacide (a.k.a. Yusuke Hama) here in Tokyo to help tuck everything in, smooth it out, and make some final mixing and mastering adjustments to bring it all up to the next level.

Here's the final track, “Leaving Light”:

Our first collaboration as Exquisite Chords was indeed unexpected (and not too horrifying, I hope). What started as quiet plucking on a sleepless Tokyo night had blossomed into a trip-hop adventure for eight people from five cities in three countries. We never spoke to one another—it all happened over email and Dropbox.

It may not be perfect, or even be for everyone, but it's ours.

Want to join our digital jam sesh? Download the tracks above, add your own layer of sound, and tag your new mix with #ExquisiteChords.

I’m not a trained musician. But music is my favorite way to carve things out creatively. That is to say, I tinker with instruments to make noises that sound good together until I am smiling a lot. I'm not spitting out perfect tracks, but I'm having fun.

1. Keep a steady rhythm with ideal line lengths

The length of a line determines how much distance the reader’s eyes must cover to read it from left to right. Long line lengths make the text seem never-ending. Short line lengths make the reading experience erratic, and can cause the reader to miss important words. An ideal line length is 66 characters (including letters and spaces). For one column of text, aim for 45–75 characters per line; for two columns of text, 40–50 characters per line.

2. Use the right kind of dash

Dashes, such as hyphens, vary in length depending on the typeface.

The em dash (—) is a long dash, the length of the uppercase “M.” It can be used as an alternate for commas, parentheses, or colons, and is an incredibly versatile way to create emphasis in your writing. When used in multiples, the em dash also indicates missing portions of a word (s——t).

The en dash (–) is half the length of the upper case “M”—shorter than the em dash, but longer than the hyphen. It is used to separate a range or span of numbers, and is sometimes used to connect a prefix to a proper noun.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Em dash (—): shift + option + hyphen
En dash (–): option + hyphen

3. Don't put hyphenation in auto-drive

In the digital age, we often take hyphenation for granted, opting to use the “auto-hyphenate” setting, but there are some best practices to keep in mind when typesetting with hyphens.

If you are breaking a word between two lines, keep at least two characters in the first line and at least three characters on the second line. Try not to hyphenate consecutive lines. To “un-break” a word between lines, use a soft return (shift + return) at the beginning of the word to force it onto the second line.

4. Know the difference between smart quotes and prime marks

Prime marks ( ' ), also known as straight quotes or dumb quotes, are often accidentally used in place of smart quotes ( ‘ ), also known as curly quotes. Prime marks are a remnant of the typewriter, which only had prime marks to save space on the keyboard. So what’s the difference? Prime marks are used for units of measure (feet, inches, seconds, and minutes); smart quotes are used to indicate something someone has said.

Keyboard shortcuts
Left single quote ( ‘ ): option + ]
Right single quote ( ’ ): shift + option + ]
Left double quote ( “ ): option + [
Right double quote ( ” ): shift + option + [

5. Maintain a strong vertical axis

Hanging text, or outdenting, means moving typographic elements into the left margin. You do this to create a consistent vertical axis along the left end of the text. Quotes, bullets, and dashes do not take up as much visual space as a letter, so a list or quote that has not been hung, or outdented, can sometimes be mistaken for a new paragraph and cause unintended breaks in the reading rhythm.

6. Be on the lookout for widows and orphans

Try to avoid widows and orphans in your text. Widows and orphans are one or two words at the end of a sentence that are pushed to a new column or page; widows are at the end of a column, orphans are at the top of a page. They create very short lines and gaping holes of white space that can be visually disruptive for the reader. Maintain the flow of each sentence by using a soft return to eliminate stray words.

7. Track out all-caps text and use all-caps sparingly

When designing fonts, typographers must determine the amount of space around each letter so that letters of different sizes appear evenly spaced. The spacing around uppercase letters is often a little tighter, so that they can sit closer to the lowercase letters in a mixed-case word. When you typeset a word in all-caps, the letters will appear very close together. Remedy this by tracking out, or letter-spacing, all-caps words by about 10% of the point size height. For more details and examples on tracking (and how it’s different from kerning), take a look at Ellen Lupton’s book Thinking with Type, also available digitally here.

If your writing uses a lot of acronyms, consider selecting a typeface with a small caps font. Small caps are all-caps fonts designed within a typeface so that each letterform is only slightly taller than a lowercase letter. Small caps are automatically letter-spaced, and should not need any additional tracking.

Hungry for more on typesetting? Below are a couple of my favorite tried-and-true typesetting references:

A Type Primer by John Kane

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Practical Typography by Matthew Butterick

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Typography can be expressive, informational, or abstract. But sometimes it just wants to be invisible, allowing the content to take center stage. In this first installment of our Type Talks series—where IDEO designers nerd out about all things typographical—we offer tips for seamless, sexy typesetting (that you hardly notice).

In one sentence, who are you?

I'm a nomadic filmmaker.

How did you learn to do it?

I travel the world and make short films about the places I visit. While I did go to film school, I'd say I learned most of my skills on the road, by trial and error.

WATCH: Hong Kong Strong. A film about the madness and beauty of this seemingly impossible city in the days leading up to Chinese New Year.

What are your three favorite possessions?

1. Good boots

2. My phone with Google Maps

3. My camera gimbal

What does a typical work session look like for you?

Shooting for about 12 hours a day, in the thick of a crazy festival in a foreign country. Then spending another 12 hours editing the footage and hiding from society.

WATCH: Nomads of Mongolia. Training eagles to hunt, herding yaks, and racing camels are just a few of the daily activities of the nomadic Kazakh people.

How do you get over creative block?

Travel to a new place.

WATCH: Tokyo Roar. Tokyo saturates the senses. This is my impression of the city's many personalities.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I see a mix of environmental catastrophe and remarkable human innovation. As the seas rise, we'll meet the challenge with ingenuity and eventually become fully sustainable, because it's the only way to survive.

Who are you (creative) crushing on lately?

Tokyo-born filmmaker Hiro Murai.

Getting the energy of a place on film is not an easy thing to do. Especially a transient place like Hong Kong. The city is both familiar and foreign to me. I was born there, and though I moved away at age 12, work has brought back many times over the years. On one of these trips, I was introduced to Brandon Li’s short film Hong Kong Strong (chosen by Vimeo as one of the best of staff picks in May 2016). In swooping, panoramic shots, it puts the beautiful madness of urban life and ordinary people on display. As a designer, I was instantly taken by Li's approach, as we, too, set about taking snapshots of daily life for inspiration. In this installment of Creative Crushes, I caught up with Brandon to find out more about his work.

At some point, though, we come to accept that screwing up is a key part of the creative process. Think about how kids play: They don’t think, they just do. And if the whole contraption comes crashing to the floor, they laugh at the mess and start over. (Or throw a fit, but hey, they’re learning about emotion, too!) Point is, when you embrace setbacks and don’t let them cripple you, you’re more likely to get across the finish line.

Maybe we should stop talking about failure and call our botched projects “experiments." And let’s take a cue from Edison and crowd as many experiments into 24 hours as we can. Here are eight ways to fail your way forward.

1. Keep it basic

Don’t start by trying to find a fully developed solution to a problem. Keep fidelity low at first to allow others to see the possibility in the idea, not the flaws. The higher the polish, the more likely you’ll get the wrong kind of feedback.

2. Design impossible tasks

Such as: How might we create a new color? How might we live forever? Moonshoot thinking frees us from limiting ourselves, helping us produce a bunch of wild ideas. None of them will be right, but they’ll rev the engine of our imagination.

3. Don’t assume your final format

What are you making? Will you be hand sketching? Wireframing? Sculpting out of modeling clay? Drafting a written piece? Even when our end goal is to end up on screen, it is often helpful to start in a different medium—and maybe a tactile one.

4. Set a goal for failure

Follow this advice from 100 Days of Rejection by Jian Jiang: “We will fail at least 30 times before we figure out the right solution.” Lowering the stakes and making a solution less precious makes it easier to generate a bounty of ideas to build from.

5. "This is a bad idea, but…"

Every time you throw out an idea, start with, “This is a bad idea, but what if…” That helps you practice non-attachment and prepare for the reality that most of your ideas won’t stick.

6. The Shame Gong

Every time someone makes a mistake or fails, hit the gong and have the team whisper "shame" in unison. It actually lowers the barrier for admitting to failure and makes for more honest, less bullshitty brainstorms. It also lightens the mood when you’re struggling with a particularly tough challenge or client. Plus: Ringing a gong is just fun. Missed a line item from the plan? Shame. Couldn't guess the grape of the wine at happy hour? Shame!

7. The mis-name game

Walk around the room and loudly, courageously, and boldly point at objects and yell out the wrong name for them. Do this for three to four minutes. Then pause and debrief. What was that like? Why was it difficult? There is a stubborn voice in your head telling you what is wrong, infeasible, impractical, too risky. The exercise reminds us that there’s a voice enforcing our fear of failure that can overpower our ability to take creative risks. Our job is to learn how to quiet that voice at the right moments to break out of the expected.

8. Worst experience ever

Design the WORST _blank_ experience ever (airplane/shopping/dining/laundry) and really encourage people to visualize it. Then use that to design the best version using an insight you learned from the worst. So, if the worst dining experience involved a waiter who would not leave you alone on a romantic date, what does that say about the key elements that make or break a date?

One final note for aspiring leaders: Don’t be afraid to talk about past failures and what you learned from them. Admitting failure will help your team gracefully shut down initiatives that aren’t working and move on to the next thing. Now get out there and gong.

Thanks to Tom Kelley, Kenneth Robertsen, Neil Stevenson, Olivia Vagelos, Eri Sugiura, and Sally Madsen for contributing to the piece.

“The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.” —Thomas Edison

Most projects start with confidence. We’re going to crush this! Then come the mistakes. We squirm. We become riddled with self-doubt. Suddenly the prospect of success seems like a dim light bulb.

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I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.

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In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.

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The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.

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This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that does not neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann and Becca Carroll discuss why money is emotional before it is mathematical, and what a human-centered approach to building a generative AI financial product looks like in practice.

Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes genuinely curious leadership from performative curiosity, how power dynamics shape curiosity, and why practicing curiosity can restore energy rather than drain it.

Mina Seetharaman talks with David Epstein, author of Inside the Box and Range, about why total freedom often produces average work, how leaders can design useful limits on purpose, and what organizations such as General Magic and Pixar reveal about the relationship between boundaries and creativity.