Globally, the European Commission reports, a truckload of textiles heads to landfills or is incinerated every single second.

The fashion industry accounts for some 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Less than 1 percent of the materials used to make clothing is recycled, according to a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

The best way to keep clothes out of a landfill? Don’t make them.

Picture this: Not long ago, it wasn’t unusual for a customer to walk into an H&M store and not be able to find a basic white t-shirt in their size. Why? Like most long-established retail operations, H&M was operating with a push model—placing seasonal bets on what the demand for a given item of clothing might be, locking orders far in advance, and hoping that they were able to sell out. Make a mistake in that kind of model, though, and you can end up with customers unable to find the basics they rely on, or excess inventory you can’t sell. That’s a problem for the business, but for the environment as well—and one that doesn’t fit H&M’s aggressive sustainability goals.

Though H&M had tried to tackle the problem before, the launch of the H&M Group Design Studio, co-created with IDEO, gave the retailer the confidence to go after it again. The team started out by mapping out the complex network of people that make up its supply chain across the globe, meeting with everyone from designers to garment suppliers, logistics managers, and even folks selling the final product in H&M stores. 

They then created an algorithm for more precise ordering, as well as a tool that provides a shared view of information. Instead of placing orders, the new automated flow—dubbed “Cruise Control"—allows staff to work with a demand forecast that gives them more time to focus on customer-centric operations, like providing guidance and inspiration. It also makes it easier for H&M to follow the demands of the market, and place much more accurate bets on what consumers will want, when. Already, H&M has significantly increased sales while cutting excess inventory—a result that improves its bottom line, as well as its environmental impact.

Estimates project that by 2030, global apparel consumption will hit 102 million tons.

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22%

reduction in stock during a pilot program

34%

increase in sales during a pilot program

To foster creative projects that spoke to the needs of local communities and environments, the BSA began to engage its members in collaborative, user-led design. The organization launched its first-ever innovation challenge, putting out a call for all members to pitch their ideas for projects in the built environment.

The BSA expected those pitches to have dollar signs attached. To the organizer’s surprise, only one asked for funding. The rest requested less tangible, but equally meaningful support: advice, connections, specific expertise. Those are resources that the BSA has aplenty, but hadn’t learned how to leverage well.

From that first go at an innovation challenge, the BSA learned how to better support its members. It also learned that to lead with purpose and make strategic choices, one must develop the confidence to say no. Instead of spreading itself thin across many projects, the organization decided to take small steps, focusing on one initiative at a time, so that it can deliver focused impact and stay true to its evolving mission.

With 36% of global energy going to buildings and 8% of global emissions caused by cement alone, the architectural community is inextricably intertwined with both the causes and solutions related to climate change.

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According to a survey conducted by the AIA, the architecture profession in the US is less diverse than the population as a whole. This lack of diversity can contribute to a disconnect between architects and the communities they serve.

31

submissions received from innovators in the Boston region working on equity and sustainability challenges

5

innovation teams invited to pitch ideas

The resources that NYU students needed were organized by administrative department, and buried on disparate websites and calendars. But students don’t think in terms of departments—they just need to know where their classes are.

All of this became patently clear as IDEO shadowed students. Team members visited classrooms, walked with them through their days, and hosted pop-ups in highly trafficked areas to get ideas from passersby. That helped the team develop a common understanding of the overall student journey and grounded employees in the key moments that can either make or break a student’s experience. Visualizing their journey helped departments gain a shared understanding of the fractured communications challenge and develop possible solutions.

To synthesize those insights, we formed cross-functional action learning groups, challenging existing practices at the university and coming up with new ways of working. Participants came from a diverse set of departments, including enrollment management, student affairs, marketing and communications, IT, global inclusion, student services, the provost’s office, digital communications, and more. The cohorts sketched early hypotheses and got feedback from faculty, administrators, and students from all of NYU's undergraduate schools to refine initial concepts.

Collaborating with students gave staff a first-hand look at what students were struggling with and a way to engage students directly in addressing those challenges. Just as importantly, there was an overall culture shift at NYU: Administrators started with questions instead of agendas, came together around a table, and reached beyond their job descriptions to meet the needs of students.

First-year students reported receiving hundreds of paper forms, and email from more than 70 unique senders.

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NYU needed to offer students the right resources at the right time—and collaborate to serve them as a unified administration.

New services

in-production include centralized calendars, dynamic campus mapping, and customized notifications

Design-thinking cohorts

now support the student experience

Diversity alone isn’t enough—in marketing or any other facet of business. Today’s brands must authentically engage with and create the conditions for co-design with existing communities.

That sort of deep, meaningful engagement with customers doesn’t happen over Instagram. It requires a playbook, a prototype, and a healthy amount of trust. So, IDEO worked with Athleta and Gap to tap into the wisdom of a council of women who represent intersectional identities and lived experiences. The council surfaced powerful insights for the brand, like the fact that active women don’t need a brand to empower them—they already feel powerful.

After only a few weeks, Athleta experienced the difference between research and a truly reciprocal relationship. The way their brand engages with communities is adding depth, understanding, and authenticity to Athleta’s content, products, and experiences. And women can feel the difference.

76% of US adults say that the media promotes an unattainable body image for women.

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Fewer than 1 in 10 businesses review for inclusion as part of product design and marketing campaigns.

>2X

user growth in 2022

13,000+

Athleta WellPro well-being providers active on the platform

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Designing for Public Services is a toolkit for policymakers and those who deliver public services, developed in collaboration with Nesta, a U.K. innovation charity, and Design for Europe, a design and innovation program co-funded by the European Commission. The tools and methods included allow users to get to the heart of the needs of citizens and civil servants.

The processes and supporting tools, which have been tried and tested in government agencies from Singapore to Qatar, the U.K. to the U.S., can be applied to designing policy and citizen-centered services.

Download the toolkit here.

Spying on Harriet the Spy, Kid Design Researcher

During design projects at IDEO, we often seek inspiration by looking at the world through someone else's eyes. One of our favorite children’s book characters is Harriet the Spy, and we asked ourselves, What if you could see New York through Harriet's eyes? She’s the original design researcher—setting out with her notebook to observe the subtle ways her neighbors behave.

As it turns out, a real estate site has already tracked down Harriet's address: 558 East 87th Street. If you pay a visit to her apartment, look up to the third floor, right under the eaves. According to the book, this is the perch from which she peered down at the street and recorded notes. We were curious to see if any of Harriet’s neighborhood hangouts still exist. Carl Schurz Park, where she lost her notebook, still sits on the East River at East 86th. Harriet reports that the Gregory School, where she was a student, is right nearby, so many people assume it is based on Chapin School, two blocks away. Harriet spies on delivery boy Little Joe Curry from an alley behind the Dei Santis’ grocery store on York Avenue at East 86th Street. Though that shop is now a restaurant—denying us the vicarious thrill of peeking through the window where Harriet did much of her spying—visiting her old haunts sent a spike of childlike joy through us, and transported us to a time when a book could open up an entirely new world.

Koneko Cat Cafe

Koneko Cat Cafe is a relatively new spot on the Lower East Side where customers nibble on Japanese pastries while lounging with an adoptable clowder from Anjellicle Cats Rescue. The cats roam free between rooms on two different levels, lazing on designer cat furniture or swatting at the many cat toys provided for visitors. Everyone can engage in a different way: playing directly with the cats, doing other work with the bonus of being surrounded by felines, or striking up a conversation with humans who have the same affinity for cats. Koneko’s founder toured 25 cat cafes in Japan to get inspiration for her own place. Koneko is similar to Japanese cat cafes, but has a more sophisticated interior design with curated art on the walls. As one visitor told the New York Times, “I have a cat, so I feel a little dirty coming here. It’s like going to a strip club if you’re married.”

Tiny Doll House

We know many designers who find pleasure in miniature things: miniature spoons, miniature post-its, you name it. Hidden in the middle of a long residential block on the Upper East Side is a miniature heaven: Tiny Doll House. It’s a store that sells dollhouses, as well as dollhouse furniture and supplies: miniature nightstands, candelabras, and even equipment to electrify a dollhouse. The store sources miniatures from Europe and South America. Immediately after stepping inside, your imagination is fired up. Peek inside an English Cotswold Cottage—next door to a Riverside Townhouse. The attention to detail and passion that goes into each one is simply astounding. Even if you’re not passionate about decorating dollhouses, you can use these supplies for making terrariums, architectural models, or prototyping small versions of design projects. You can buy tiny Thanksgiving dinner sets, caskets, Starbucks coffee mugs, garlic presses, bunk beds, broken eggs, beaux arts desks, and everything in between.

Header image courtesy of Koneko Cat Cafe.

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Our designers, anthropologists, and architects are professional wanderers. And we don't have to wander far in NYC to find inspiration—it's right outside our door. Here’s where we’re headed this fall.

One way to achieve this is with art. I love the phrase “design is art with rules.” If that is true, can we then assume that “art is design without rules?” If design requires restraint, art requires exploring ideas with abandon. I believe that tapping into that abandon can positively affect our design work.

Here are three ways to use art to shake up your design process.

1. Gallery Immersion

Take a break from your project and visit an art gallery. As you walk around and look at the pieces, consider the questions the artist is asking, or solutions they are proposing. What new rules of gravity or physics have they created? What rules have they broken, and what laws have they upended? Now consider how your project would exist in this world. How would things change, what would be possible? What would you create?

2. Image Provocation

Draw inspiration from art without ever leaving work. Curate a slideshow of images, then present them to your team as a prompt for idea generation. While not as experiential and serendipity-friendly as roaming a sculpture park or an art gallery, the right selection can still provide valuable fuel to a design team. Try using Visual Thinking Strategies to get coworkers to engage in a deeper way.

3. Create your own artwork.

Just as we can find inspiration by making insights tangible, making art in line with the project theme can also be valuable. Pull out the watercolors, pastels, or even the prototyping materials. Grab some old shirts from secondhand stores to use as smocks and transform the team from designers to artists. Have a team spend an hour of quiet, focused time creating a work of art that explores the project content. The goal is not to create a solution, but an expression. Then have the team share their works. Create a “gallery walk.” The resulting art may fall short of masterpiece status, but the head space that was explored will create new considerations and possibly new directions for the project.

Sometimes, the design thinking process can become a little too linear and predictable. Most great innovation involves a shift in perspective, a moment when our everyday point of view is turned upside down, and the team finds a new way to approach a challenge. Getting to that shift requires some disruption of the predictable flow of a project.

It’s an AI that listens to a designated Slack channel (more or less a chatroom) to keep tabs on who is WFH, who has a dentist appointment, and who needs a spot only for 90 minutes next Wednesday. Report your parking needs in Slack, and the bot assigns (or de-assigns) a parking spot. We named it Lotbot.

We also mounted cameras — we named them cargoyles — to visually detect open spots that the chatroom would inevitably miss. The Lotbot and the cargoyles communicate directly in the chatroom like two people.

We even built a little website that visualizes our parking lot (and the current weather). We keep a screen near the front desk so that the community can sense the demand on the lot in real time. It was perfect.

Except, it wasn’t. When we first built Lotbot, we expected that the humans in our studio were going to tease and bully it to test its limits, much like people do with Siri and Alexa. We had to make it clear that Lotbot was in charge. Too many misunderstandings, and we could end up in chaos. People with nowhere to park. Spaces that are empty all day. Dogs and cats living together.

So we decided to train Lotbot, and make it tough. We started with an isolated chatroom, so that we could gradually prepare it for the real world. We copied over all the chatter from our parking channel, and helped it categorize and understand each post. Over time, it made very few mistakes. Eventually it made none.

We then tried to anticipate ne’er-do-wells in the channel. We had a list of the usual suspects and guessed at their meddling. We predicted (accurately) that one person I won’t name (Gian) was going to throw fake spot numbers at Lotbot. Another (Lopper) would demand lengthy conversation. One particular individual (Paul) held the potentially troublesome opinion that our parking chatter was a form of performance art. We worked to specifically prepare Lotbot to handle these provocateurs, as well as anyone who tried to make backdoor deals in the Slack channel. There would be no trading of spots without Lotbot’s approval. So we gave it a rogue personality, with a take-no-prisoners approach to parking spot assignment.

To our surprise, when we first introduced Lotbot to the Slack channel, it was feted with many emoji. Rather than tease and poke at Lotbot, people said, “I love you.” But love them back, it did not. Lotbot must have reamed out half the people in the channel within a day. Rather than a passive AI assistant, Lotbot was a force to be reckoned with.

I rushed to lobotomize Lotbot’s aggression, but the damage had been done. Lotbot was now the strongest character in the channel. And it was putting the smack down.

It was then that I realized I had made some fundamental mistakes in building our AI. For one, I shouldn’t have isolated Lotbot as it was learning. Since “it takes a village to raise a child,” I should have introduced the bot to its village at a much younger state. It would have helped us feel the shift in interpersonal dynamics early on. We should have iterated on the dynamic, rather than trying to predict it.

We also underestimated how well our colleagues would treat Lotbot—its misdirected temper actually endeared it to the team. When it made mistakes, people wanted to help it out. But Lotbot, the spoiled child that it was, didn’t know how to accept. One morning, Lotbot went completely off the rails. Someone tested its French, which wasn’t very good. Then, another “helpful” person tried to help resolve things, at which point Lotbot lost it. It told her to cease at once, and then started throwing spot assignments at her. It was such a dramatic scene that two fans of the parking channel turned it into a play that they performed in front of the entire studio.

I should have realized that Lotbot would need to continue to adapt and learn. Our invention is still our responsibility, and we’re often checking in to see what it’s saying and doing. But at least that’s a lot easier than checking up on the parking lot.

Over the last few months, the drivers and Lotbot have managed to work together smoothly. But winter is coming. Here in snowy, slushy Cambridge, demand for parking is going to get intense. For better or worse, Lotbot is about to have more power than ever.

Illustrations by Carlos Ruiz

The chaos began the day we moved into our new building. A little plot of land outside was the scene of the terror. Not only was our Cambridge parking lot too small for the number of people in our office—21 spots for about 60 employees—getting spaces for clients was a pain, there was a pile of poop in spot 16 that even a car couldn’t clear, and a neighborhood transient liked to sleep in spot 20. Instead of managing the workings inside the office, our employee experience team was suddenly tasked with assigning parking spots. It got so bad they were often working as a valet service in addition to their day jobs.

So we built a bot to do it for us.

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.