For more than 40 years, Sage has helped businesses of all sizes navigate complex business environments. While many of its larger customers have the means and the structure to support climate initiatives, many of its smaller customers do not.

Sage wanted to help its SMB customers get ahead of future climate regulations and meet consumer expectations. And building carbon-footprint evaluation and mitigation tools would also dovetail nicely with Sage’s own climate aspirations: cutting its own emissions in half by 2030. Together, Sage and IDEO investigated how the company could leverage the data in its platform to calculate its customers’ emissions, both direct and indirect, and how that information could spur action as they aim to hit net zero.

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To get started, the design team went deep with customers running all kinds of businesses—from a taxi company to a champagne bar to a falconry center. Business owners shared that their focus often has to be on the day-to-day, a series of small decisions that, when added together, lead to business success. For many, tackling a problem as complex as climate change felt overwhelming. IDEO and Sage synthesized those insights and began working across verticals and products, bringing together experts from marketing, technology, sustainability, and operations to build out new concepts. With the help of two carbon accountants, the team worked to figure out how existing data could inform customers about both their direct and indirect emissions, which can be harder to track. Given how tight SMBs’ margins are, they focused on how that knowledge could fuel emissions-cutting changes that also save money, giving businesses extra incentive to take action. Together, the team created a roadmap of customer outcomes and experience guidelines to help shape future products.

Sage has taken that work forward, launching Sage Earth, a platform that aims to help businesses measure, manage, and mitigate emissions—even across supply chains. With carbon accounting now built directly into all Sage Accounting and Sage for Accountants products in the UK, Sage has made climate action practical and accessible for millions of SMBs. By automating emissions measurement and reporting, Sage Earth removes barriers of cost and complexity, empowering business owners and their accountants to stay competitive in supply chains where up to 95 percent of emissions occur. 

From co-developing the UK Voluntary SME Carbon Reporting Standard to launching a Carbon Accounting API, which gives banks, fintechs, and other platforms access to Sage’s Carbon Engine, Sage is embedding sustainability into the systems people already trust—helping hundreds of thousands (and rapidly increasing) small businesses turn climate ambition into everyday action.

Small- and medium-sized businesses—companies with fewer than 500 employees—make up about 90% of the world’s businesses, according to U.N.-backed SME Climate Hub.

Two thirds of small businesses don’t know how they’re going to reach net zero, and lack the resources to do so, according to a recent survey by SME Climate Hub. Still, the majority reported they want to act on climate, recognizing it can help them become a more resilient business.

Large companies may be the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses, but an estimated 80% of those emissions come from supply chains—often made up of smaller enterprises.

Scaling rapidly

in the three years since the launch of Sage Earth, which is now being used by hundreds of thousands of businesses

World's 1st

open-source hybrid emissions factors dataset, Carbon Commons, led by Sage, helps SMBs calculate carbon footprints using existing data

Menopause is much more than a biological transition—it is a profound shift that often arrives just when people experiencing it start to feel invisible. Because it has long been shrouded in darkness as an unmentionable female affliction, those going through menopause often feel unprepared and alone.

Recognizing that its customer demographic makes QVC uniquely positioned to surface conversations and provide support to those dealing with menopause, the video commerce retailer partnered with IDEO to figure out how it could not only meet customer needs, but also flip the conversation on midlife. To learn more, a team of female design researchers held in-depth interviews with folks experiencing it firsthand. The people they spoke to had limited information about what was going on with their bodies, and in some cases, it took years before they understood that symptoms they were experiencing were related to menopause. Respondents also reported that midlife brought a change in social status and the feeling of being boxed in by stereotypes.

QVC and IDEO worked together to design an integrated suite of offerings that could give customers a safe space to discover and share more about menopause. That included an on-air programming series called “Menopause Your Way,” where QVC could support those going through menopause in the privacy of their own homes, a digital landing page with useful solutions, and social media campaigns to help women share and learn more about each others’ experiences. Because people experience menopause and choose to manage it in many different ways, the team wanted to create an integrated ecosystem of content that women could access according to their unique journeys. The new offering helped QVC  reach its core audience with solutions and relevant products, and created a space where menopause is out in the open and part of an ongoing conversation. And in the process, QVC evolved to become a more customer-centric company, putting its audience and their needs at the heart of its offerings.

9/10 of British menopausal women say society and brands overlook them.

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1 in 2 women in the UK admitted they didn’t know what was happening to them during perimenopause.

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Nearly 40% of menopausal women are being prescribed antidepressants to help manage their symptoms, despite 4 out of 5 describing the treatment as “inappropriate.”

Season 2

a series focused on menopause is now in its second season

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Healthcare is a complex web of institutions, interaction, relationships, and services. In England, the National Health Service consists of thousands of separate organizations spread across the country. This fragmented structure means that rolling out digital tools and using them to their full potential can be difficult.

NHSX approached IDEO and Public Digital, IDEO’s sister company, for help designing user-centered resources that would empower Children and Young People’s Mental Health (CYPMH) practitioners to use digital tools more effectively, shifting service design from a reactive to a proactive process, and allowing each regional organization to create the best digital services for their children and young people.

The team took a human-centered approach, tapping into the perspectives, challenges and needs of NHS practitioners and leaders across the system over months of research. They then designed a set of accessible, straightforward online resources, courses, and templates that would enable a practitioner to start their own local service transformations. These included everything from practical advice on improving users’ experiences of CYPMH, to teaching methods for service design, to content focused on achieving digital transformation at scale.

The resources were easy to implement and replicate, allowing mental health practitioners across the country to seamlessly integrate physical and digital, create firebreaks in the system, and better bridge the gap between seeking care and receiving it. They were designed to evolve over time, and the work is replicable across the NHS, with the potential to touch millions of lives.

By empowering practitioners to utilize these digital tools to ease the burden of care, NHSX plans to create a positive ripple effect across the entire NHS, its partner organizations, and the country at large.

In a study undertaken in July 2020, the first summer of the COVID pandemic, the NHS found that clinically significant mental health conditions amongst children had risen by 50% compared to three years earlier.

More options, more access

digital resources are helping children and young people access more options for their mental health care

It’s not easy to shift the paradigm for an entire industry. But when a company comes along that promises to reinvent air travel, it opens up a blue sky of opportunities. That’s the flight path for Boom Supersonic, which is thinking big about how passengers arrive at their destination not only faster, but also with a greater sense of wellbeing.

To really comprehend the experience of flying in the unique contoured profile of this ultrafast jet, and to help Boom make key decisions about the design of the plane, the IDEO team believed that you had to go beyond algorithms and schematics—you needed to actually board it.

Using a “build-first” approach, the team quickly constructed a full-scale mockup of the fuselage from plywood and foam core. That became a prototyping platform to test multiple seating configurations, galley and lavatory size and placement, luggage storage solutions, and other concepts that would differentiate and add value to the passenger experience. For the first time, the Boom team was able to set foot in its own aircraft and truly understand the experience from the perspective of its clientele. The exercise allowed the Boom team to confidently make decisions by comparing multiple cabin configurations and options in full-scale.

Throughout the project, Boom and IDEO invited future travelers aboard to interact with the prototype and offer feedback. That input culminated in a more refined model, with augmented windows, moonroof, in-flight entertainment screens, and sound design—all further augmented by a Virtual Reality component to allow our future travelers to fully immerse in this new experience.

Together, Boom and IDEO brought a sneak peak to the Farnborough International Airshow, a biannual exhibition for the aerospace, aviation, and defense industries. The event was an opportunity to give the industry and potential customers a preview of Boom’s innovative new jet. In collaboration with the client, an exhibition architect, and a digital production agency, the team created an immersive environment designed to make the Overture experience feel tangible, eliciting the wonder of this revolutionary plane.

Boom’s presence at Farnborough not only underscored the Overture’s progress but provided an inspiring glimpse into the future of air travel. During the air show the company announced the production Overture design, a market-expanding alliance with Northrop Grumman, and agreements with tier one suppliers Collins Aerospace, Safran, and Eaton. Not long after, Boom received its largest order to date, this one from American Airlines. 

The prospect of getting to London in time for dinner just got a little closer.

Boom plans for Overture to get from New York to Frankfurt in just over four hours instead of the eight hours spent on a commercial jet today.

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The Overture supersonic jet has a cruising speed of Mach 1.7, about twice as fast as today’s commercial planes. Overture is built to fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

20 Overture deposits

made by American Airlines, joining current customers United Airlines and Japan Airlines

Every week, she makes a hefty interest payment to her suppliers without knowing how much of that loan she still has to pay off. She tried using smartphones to allow customers to pay her via QR code, but her uncertainty about the process and a few cases of fraud scared her off.  Like many aspiring to a more prosperous future for their families, Swati dreams of expanding her shop and opening a factory. But due to limited formal banking history and lack of confidence navigating digital financial services, people in Swati’s position find their options limited.

And her story is the story of a billion others living in emerging markets.

Every week, around the world, millions come online for the first time. Of all the experiences these new users face, financial services are among the most complex and high-risk.

Pulling hard-earned wages out from under the mattress and putting them into an abstract financial app or virtual wallet is a daunting task for the 1.4 billion unbanked adults globally at the last mile of financial access. Mobile phones and data connectivity are reaching more of the poorest people, but a lack of digital financial confidence continues to hold them back.

“Last mile” refers to physically remote communities as well as traditionally excluded users who lack access to the digital economy, due to lack of internet and formal bank accounts. There’s a lot that can go wrong in trying to adapt services to reach and serve people at the last mile. To solve for the needs of last-mile users like Swati, who make up about 30 percent of adults around the world, we need to redesign our financial services to be not just accessible but also inclusive, valuable, and equitable for everyone.

But building for everyone means more than just airlifting in products that have worked in the West. Here are some key factors in designing products that help build financial confidence for everyone.

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PLAIN LANGUAGE, NOT PERCENTAGES

In India, rural women often struggle with formal banking. Yet, the same women deftly manage family resources to ensure there’s money for weekly expenses as well as future goals. Ask one of these women how, and she might say, “I earn 50 Rupees for every 1,000 Rupees I put in my savings group. By the end of the year I’ll have enough to buy a TV.”  Banking terms have never been in their vocabulary, but they’re experts of their finances in concrete terms.

Financial communication at the last mile needs to work differently, building on intuitive mental models people are used to, rather than expecting them to adopt new ones.

In Pakistan, the startup Finja offers credit in the plainest language possible: It shows credit terms in absolute numbers and the lending rate as a fee. Knowing some are skeptical, the startup  offers a calculator to try out different terms. Finja illustrates how small shifts can make a complex financial product more aligned with people’s mental models and easier to trust: In its first year, 25,000 merchants signed up for Finja’s app, which served 16 million customers.

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TYPE SHORTCUTS

For new digital users, smartphones can be intimidating: Screens are small, text is tough to read, and on-screen keyboards are hard to use. The fear of a typo in a financial transaction can stop them in their tracks.

Last-mile users have a range of textual and digital literacy, and products need to offer multiple ways for users to engage, based on their comfort and capability.

NOW, a digital-first bank in UAE, breaks the text-only interaction model for its low-income users who send money back home to their families, by offering data input via voice, 11 in-app languages, and photos of receipts, reducing time and errors, to help users send remittances confidently and securely.  

HANDS-ON HELP

Many last-mile users need help using their accounts. Assistance often comes in the form of agents—local merchants who provide services from banks, startups, and other organizations. These agents  also provide strategic guidance as trusted proxies to formal financial services.

Yet, most financial apps are designed for one user and one device only.  What happens when a user needs to share their password with their agent because they forget their PIN? Or when a husband needs to review a financial decision with his wife? We need to design high-tech with high-touch moments of human support to truly include last-mile users.

In India, Haqdarshak made hands-on help a core feature. Knowing many were already sharing passwords and handing over their phones to strangers just to access emergency relief, Haqdarshak  introduced a secure network of agents. They explain government benefits, run eligibility screenings, and help people make informed decisions.  These agents opened up access to government benefits to millions of people through a hands-on, assisted experience, where a single-user experience would have failed.

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BUILT-IN PAUSES

For last mile-users, speed can be the enemy of comprehension. App performance is often measured in the fewest taps in the fewest seconds to complete a task—making it easy to lose money or sign up for a product a user isn’t ready for.

For users with limited income, one wrong move can feel like a slip on a tightrope. Financial products need to give users moments of pause that help them regain balance when things start to feel shaky, and safety nets when a misstep does occur.

bKash and FiMoney are proving that slower is better. Their apps use “swipe to confirm” and “press and hold” to give users more control as they confirm a big financial decision. A few extra fractions of a second greatly increase a user’s sense of control in a new financial experience. For bKash, designing for financial confidence helped it grow into one of the largest mobile-money operators in the world, with 70 million users.

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NO DARK PATTERNS

In Deceptive Patterns, Harry Brignull  identifies the “dark patterns” that  interlace today’s digital products, sometimes leading users to decisions they never meant to make.

Products with dark patterns can harm vulnerable users even when they are built with good intentions overall. Offering multiple credit options to unbanked people, for example, can land them in a vicious credit cycle that they are unable to maintain. But thoughtful design can help users explore the benefits and risks of new financial options, make informed decisions, and slowly build their financial capacity.

In Uganda, the startup Opareta has created a responsible loan-ladder model: It makes the first loan small in size, rewards payments made on-time (or early), and enables users who demonstrate responsible behavior to apply for bigger loans. Opareta embeds education along the way and helps customers understand the why behind each credit decision. This prevents users from taking on too much risk and Opareta from over-leveraging. Opareta trades short-term gains for long-term relationships with customers and paves the way for building financial literacy and confidence, one step at a time.

Connecting last-mile users to digital financial services takes many hands, so we put together a Financial Confidence Playbook to help any organization design products for this demographic. As for Swati, with the help of her local bank agent, and the right financial tools, she was able to double her sales and set up food stalls. She even bought her own phone, which she now uses with confidence. Actualizing her dream of a better future for her family no longer feels out of reach.

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Reprinted with permission from Fast Co.

In a small town in India, Swati runs a popcorn and peanuts kiosk. She doesn’t trust banks, so she saves cash and buys supplies on credit.

“She” was supposed to serve as a 24-hour counselor for people dealing with eating disorders. Instead, psychologists and activists found Tessa was offering dieting tips.

In the me-first race to adopt AI and push new products out into the world, there are headlines everywhere that freak us out. Some 1,400 leading technologists are imploring companies in this technology arms race to pause. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, has recommended the formation of a global consortium on the level of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to avoid the catastrophic outcomes that could result from the misuse of AI.

All of us are wondering what our future is going to look like, and companies aren’t quite sure where to draw ethical and legal lines around how to use these very new technologies in their own operations and offerings. (Some organizations have placed an all out ban on them.) The decisions we make today will shape our world and have reverberating impacts for generations to come.

At IDEO, we know that tools aren’t inherently good or bad—it’s about how they are designed. Our designers have been using these tools for years, and our clients are already experimenting with them. Instead of distancing ourselves from AI, we knew we needed to set clear guidelines, to pave the way for experimentation that aligns with our values. Rather than waiting for our future with AI to be imposed upon us, we’re choosing to intentionally design it.

This isn’t new for us. For more than a decade, IDEO has integrated data science into our design process. Early on, we created the AI Ethics Cards as a foundational element of how we practice algorithmic and product design when it comes to AI systems. And through initiatives intended to help us become more inclusive, equitable, and responsible, like our Inclusive Design Collective and a workshop to break down the potential unintended consequences of our work (the psychological and human rights impact, for example), we work to help designers think through the ethical considerations of choices we make and artifacts we create.

With the proliferation of generative AI, it was time to create more tools to guide our exploration. We dove into design research to understand how generative AI was showing up in our work and how we might make it both legally compliant and caring—built for healthy individuals, healthy relationships, and healthy communities.

Knowing that the rules are yet to be written for much of the legal precedent in this domain, we relied heavily on our technologists and the Inclusive Design Collective for recommendations. Their research informed this set of considerations, which also anticipate potential future legislation.

Next, we did a go/no go exercise, vetting the most popular tools to decide which types of data  can or cannot be used, for what reason, and at which stage of our design process. And finally, we made sure that our guidelines included everyone at IDEO, from early adopters to those who are opposed to using generative AI at all. Here’s where we landed:

Download a free PDF of the Gen AI Legal & Ethical Framework cards here.

To make this line of questioning even more tangible, we offered some common ethical watchouts, and some ways that designers can offset negative effects.

For example:

Ethical Concern:

Images or content produced by AI might be mistakenly taken as factual or truthful and consequently cause unintended harm.

Mitigate with:

• Give credit when you are using AI-generated content, and put the prompt next to the artifact where appropriate.
• Validate factual information through a third-party source.

Guidelines for this rapidly-evolving technology are not a set-and-forget kind of exercise—they represent a snapshot in time. Likewise, it’s not possible to cover every scenario. We plan to regularly revisit and revise.

With these guidelines in place, we dug into the documentation of generative AI offerings from multiple companies. And to further mitigate risk, IDEO built its own “AI playground” tool to access a version of ChatGPT that complies with our policies and launched it to everyone in the firm—unleashing a tidal wave of AI-powered design that we’re using ourselves and bringing to clients.

Interested in testing out some of these tools and frameworks? We’d love to talk: ai@ideo.com

Download a free PDF of the Gen AI Legal & Ethical Framework cards here.

Thank you to: Esha Reddy, Evan Burton, Zoey Zhu, Graham Gardner, Jeremy Sallin, Jenna Fizel, Nohemy Stella, Tom Antony, Jeremy Chen, Alireza Karduni, Ilene Palacios, Kate Schnippering, and Bo Peng for your contributions to the guidelines.

The information provided in this article and on our toolkit cards does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information provided may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. Readers should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this article are hereby expressly disclaimed. The posted content is provided "as is;" no representations are made that the content is error-free.

In June, the National Eating Disorders Association decided to shut down an AI-powered chatbot called Tessa.

Reprinted from the SHRM Executive Network’s People + Strategy journal.

Derek Robson, our CEO, and Tim Brown, our Chair, believe that the fundamental role of leadership teams has changed.

The fundamental role of the C-suite has changed. In the past, the leadership team's job was to keep the existing machine humming, optimizing for efficiency and profitability. But now the challenge goes beyond delivering business results to driving transformation—in effect, building a new machine that will thrive in the future and, ideally, the present.

And the demands placed on most senior leaders of organizations have grown exponentially. Not only are they required to be constantly reinventing the company, but they must also navigate the growing expectations of employees, investors, and other stakeholders who believe that corporations and their leaders should play a larger role addressing broader issues in society that historically fell outside the purview of business. And the demands these leaders face will only increase given that relentless disruption and uncertainty are now facts of life.

Who can live up to this superhuman job description? It's time to start contemplating a mindset shift and possible reimagining of how the C-suite operates. We see four fundamental shifts that can help executives teams evolve.

How might we shift from answers to questions?

It used to be that chief executives were expected to have all the answers to any question, as if they were Athena, the goddess of wisdom. But in our conversations with CEOs over the last few years, many share the opinion that the primary role of chief executives has to shift to being constantly curious rather than all-knowing.

In a sense, the CEO needs to move from being chief executive officer to chief inquiry officer. The ability to ask the right questions is arguably more important for the CEO than having the right answers. That's because questions provide long-term focus for companies, whereas the right answer in one context can quickly become the wrong answer amid shifting contexts.

That then raises the question of whether one person can realistically be expected to be able to have all the knowledge, expertise, and insight required to explore new territory and create those questions. The answer to that is almost certainly no, and that creates a bit of a dilemma for the CEO.

Where do they get the help to be constantly curious? It may be too much to expect that support from their direct reports, given that their primary responsibility is to execute the strategies that emerge from those questions. The board may not be much help, either. Boards, for the most part, are not expert enough. They have an important role to play, and maybe some board members can play that role. But it's not something that boards are generally set up to do. They are governance mechanisms more than knowledge-seeking mechanisms.

One possible solution for providing more support to CEOs is for them to have a small set of peer advisors around them to help them figure out what the right questions are. For this to work, the CEO would need to be able to treat that group as true peers. And they not be on the payroll of the organization, so that the CEO doesn't have to also worry about the motivations of employees who might be looking to be promoted.

In most of their day-to-day interactions, CEOs have to be concerned about side agendas and ulterior motives. And for this advisory group to work, it would have to have a singular goal of helping the CEO think through challenges and questions, in the same way that U.S. presidents have assembled "brain trusts" to offer guidance on issues. The goal for the group would be to provide a series of perspectives on a problem, rather than trying to provide the answer, and help the CEO build their confidence and courage for navigating uncertainty.

How might we create more fluidity in executive roles?

This question underscores a fundamental tension in the role of the CEO and other members of the C-suite. At a time when people expect more of their CEO and their leaders—authenticity, humanity, inclusivity, greater visibility, constant communication—these senior executives also need more time away from the office to simply think, to calm the noise and figure out what questions they should be asking but aren't. And there's no way to do that other than being either intensely disciplined about it or by sharing the load. That thinking time is crucial, even if it is just to step back and ask yourself whether you are making progress on the big goals that you've articulated for the organization.

In theory, the responsibilities of leadership in organizations should be shared and spread across the other executives. One challenge there, as we mentioned earlier, is that the C-suite is primarily focused on executing the strategy, rather than contemplating new strategies.

In addition, those roles themselves are facing their own existential crisis. Not only are the responsibilities of each traditional role expanding rapidly with the complexity of the world, but we are seeing more C-suite leaders wearing multiple "chief" hats.

For example, many chief human resources officers are now also responsible for real estate, given that the future-of-work policies they are devising have enormous implications for their requirements for office space. As if that weren't enough, they are also taking on responsibility for communications—both internal and external—since it makes sense for them to be aligning corporate messaging with efforts to recruit and retain employees.

As new issues come up, responsibility for handling them will likely fall on the shoulders of the existing leadership team. But this model isn't set in stone, and it should be revisited.

We can look for lessons on fluidity from outside the world of business. Some years ago, we worked with the government of Dubai to create new ministries—including establishing the Ministry of Possibilities—and merge existing ones to address the evolving challenges and issues that society faces. Should businesses start to think the same way? Should we start to imagine C-suite leadership roles that are more agile and can be continuously restructured to deal with the challenges of the moment while also considering the future?

What's the strategy? Does the organizational structure match it? In many cases, it doesn't. You kind of drift away one degree every year, and suddenly you're a long, long way away from delivering against what you've set out for your shareholders and for the company itself.

How might we balance performance with regeneration?

As we contemplate the future of C-suite roles, another question arises: Can we structure the jobs so they aren't so reliant on people who have a tremendous amount of stamina and energy, or those who have the capacity to work constantly?

It's almost as if a requirement for the job now is to be able to score well in the equivalent of an NFL "combine," where potential draft picks are tested in various speed, skill, and agility drills. To sign up for these C-suite jobs requires a certain amount of internal drive but also pure physical endurance.

Is it possible to imagine doing this job without requiring that level of relentless physical and mental effort? Sports are often used in useful ways as a metaphor for business, but there is a key difference between the two. In sports, you don't spend all your time just playing the game. You spend a lot of time training. And the same is true for other pursuits like dance and music—you are practicing most of the time and performing for a relatively small amount of time. But in the workplace, we don't have that concept, and so we assume that leaders can both practice and perform at the same time all the time. And if you really want elite performers, that may not be humanly possible.

We may be expecting simply too much out of human beings to have them be practicing and performing to extremely high levels for thousands of hours a year. So, what can be done about that?

Organizations have to spread the load so leaders can regenerate some of the time and perform some of the time. But businesspeople are not very intentional about how we regenerate today. We are quite intentional about it in the world of sports, where there is a whole science around what it takes for an athlete to regenerate both physically and mentally. Could we be intentional in the same way in the world of business, rather than having leaders run so hard all the time that they're not giving themselves time to recover?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but they need to be asked now, before the C-suite becomes unsustainable. Rather than worshipping at the altar of the CEO, organizations need a more collaborative approach as we look to the future. Ultimately, the goal would be to create more of a collective leadership body, rather than relying on one person, the CEO, or their direct reports.

Reprinted with permission from SHRM, ©2023. All rights reserved.

Given the growing demands on leadership teams, particularly the CEO, the current structure for leading companies may no longer be sustainable.

When we're dreaming up futures, we often overlook the very human challenges that such futures might present. But we need to remember, it's us people living there, muddling through the everyday problems that future tech will inevitably toss our way.

This holds true even when our future is projected into outer space.

In October 2021, a rocket engineer from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) joined IDEO Tokyo for a month-long "cross-border study program”. This resulted in exploring the intriguing intersection of human-centered design and space exploration. The question at hand: what would space travel feel like when it's no longer just for astronauts but for the rest of us?

This posed a unique challenge: to reimagine space travel with a human touch, crafting an enjoyable experience for everyone, regardless of their physical abilities or cultural backgrounds.

Crafting the Future User Journey

At IDEO, we value creating new experiences by empathizing with users. But with space travel, we're dealing with a unique situation—the user may still be beyond our reach.

To envision the future of space travel in the most comprehensive manner, we leaned into expert interviews. These dialogues with specialists in various fields provided invaluable insights for designing future experiences and services.

We discovered from spacecraft engineers the mental and physical challenges astronauts face. An Experience Designer from IDEO's PlayLab further provided tips on how to craft experiences that preemptively mitigate discomfort.

What dawned on us was that space travel isn't just about the Overview Effect. It starts way before hitting the 'Book Now' button and lasts way after you're back on Mother Earth.

Experiencing the Future

In our quest to enhance empathy, we devised a method to immerse ourselves in the user's world, to get under their skin and understand their experiences more intuitively. At IDEO, we call this the Empathy Exercise. As Bill Moggridge, one of the founders of IDEO and a product designer, succinctly put it, "The only way to experience an experience is to experience it." So, we thought, why not bring a taste of space right here on Earth? Thus, our makeshift 'space camp' was born, where we mimicked the space traveler's journey under as-real-as-it-gets conditions.

Our space camp menu? Only freeze-dried food to be rehydrated with hot water, akin to space cuisine. We rationed water, limiting each participant to 3.5L per day for cooking, drinking, and freshening up—just like on the International Space Station.

We even simulated the trials of toilet use in space. You see, in a spaceship, you've got to don diapers or use a wall-mounted toilet while other passengers are just a step away. During the camp, we used portable toilets for urination. For the other, ahem, business, we had a two-person arrangement in a private room: one person turns a blind eye while the other does their thing.

While it may sound like a game at first, spending a whole day under these restrictions opened our eyes to various insights. For instance, the novelty of freeze-dried meals wore off after the first few bites. Eating straight from the package or ziplock bag was not only visually uninspiring but also cumbersome. So, we started getting creative with the packaging from the second meal onwards to make the food more palatable.

The bathroom experience was another big takeaway. In our daily grind, the loo is a private space, a welcome escape from the hustle and bustle. But in a cramped spaceship with no privacy, it's quite the stress-fest to hurry up to spare the waiting person and to keep any, well, olfactory offenses at bay.

Writing a 'One-Star Review' for Future Experiences

Our research revealed a number of human-centric problems hidden in space travel. To share these findings, we created a fictional news program from the future, featuring 'one-star reviews' penned by space travelers.

These fictional viral tweets aren't just complaints, but a launchpad for designing more enticing space travel experiences. By forecasting the everyday snags of a future where space travel is as common as a trip to Hawaii, we're one step closer to engineering a genuinely otherworldly experience.

Creating the Design Principles for the Future

Once challenges were identified, the impulse to dive straight into problem-solving was strong. However, at IDEO, we use 'Design Principles' to maintain our focus on the user's perspective.

For instance, our experience designer highlighted the need for psychological safety within a spaceship. Building trustful relationships is crucial for everyone to fully engage in the experience during space travel, where varied groups share a confined space.

We also learned from former astronaut Naoko Yamazaki about the value of fostering creativity. Space, free from gravity and conventional rules, allows for the redesign of norms. Rather than preparing all experiences in advance, we found that leaving room for travelers to create their own unique enjoyment might lead to more memorable journeys.

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Ultimately, we crafted five core design principles, each considering various perspectives from physical fitness preparations for the journey to designing an inclusive spacecraft interior. As we begin to design concrete concepts, these principles serve as our compass, enabling us to continually envision a future of space travel that is fundamentally human-centric.

In these uncertain times, we must remember the people are always at the heart of our evolving narrative. As we dream, our focus should extend beyond technology to include the everyday challenges it brings along.

With a touch of creativity and a playful mindset, let's 'experience' this future together. The secret to a brighter tomorrow might well be hidden in the most mundane problems.

Learn more about the project at spacetravel.ideo.com. (Japanese Only)

Once, Frederik Pohl, famed science fiction author, left us pondering a nugget of wisdom: A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

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.