The urgency of attending to our children’s mental health cannot be overstated.

Concern about their well-being was already on the rise in the decade prior to the pandemic. Alongside social inequity, the COVID era has seen soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. Knowing that mental health is influenced by numerous systemic factors, we met with families of all income levels and heard from practitioners throughout Massachusetts. In some communities, mental health is candidly discussed, in others it remains a taboo subject. Through these conversations, we learned that mental health requires both individuals and their families to be educated, supported, and empowered.

HandholdMA.org helps families find services that work for them and gives them easy access to information on a range of mental health topics. It allows parents to learn from and support one another as they navigate the landscape of mental health together. We took special care to make resources feel approachable for those in communities of color, and curated new resources for everyone from preschoolers to teens—because mental health challenges do not discriminate.

In 2020, a coalition of the nation’s leading experts in pediatric health issued an urgent warning that the mental health crisis among children had become a national emergency.

The percentage of emergency department visits for mental health crises rose by 24% for children between the ages of 5 and 11, and 31% for those 12 to 17, compared with 2019.

87,000

site visits to to HandholdMA.org since launch

223,000

people reached in bilingual social media campaign

To help shift vivo’s thinking from a focus on products to a focus on brand-building, IDEO set out to help the company understand how young consumers experience fun—a core tenet of the vivo brand. The new concept store needed to convey joy and fun in a meaningful and memorable way. The project was about more than just designing the space; it was also about piloting into vivo’s future brand systems.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team conducted user research in four different cities in China, then shared the stories of young Chinese consumers with the vivo team. Their interviews revealed that young people value experiences that enrich their lives and create a feeling of positive personal transformation. They seek opportunities to discover new experiences, express themselves in different ways, expand and deepen their social connections, and build knowledge and skills. By leaning on this definition of “enjoyment,” IDEO helped vivo identify the value proposition of the concept store, helping consumers express themselves in new and different ways. The store would allow every visitor to see something unique and find a fresh perspective.

The vivo team took that value proposition into a design brief and later built out the space and interactive experiences. The second floor of the store is dedicated entirely to interactive experiences using photo booths, sound recording, and lighting technology, designed to provide consumers with the kind of enjoyment they seek. vivo launched the concept store in Shenzhen on March 22, 2019, marking an important milestone in vivo’s transformation from a smartphone maker to a consumer brand.

China consumes roughly 30% of the world’s smartphones—which presents a tremendous market opportunity for brands looking to capture young consumers’ loyalty.

Top 1

in China's smartphone market, topping both shipments (sale-in) and retail sales (sale-out), in the first half of 2024

260M active users

within two years of vivo Lab's official opening, with 70% of them young users

The program Tsinghua and IDEO created together consisted of six modules focused on creative leadership: Rediscover Design, Build Design as a Core Competency, Creating the Conditions for Creativity, The Financial Levers for Innovation, Designing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and Leading for Tomorrow. 73 Chinese and foreign experts helped teach the modules, including former Forbidden City Palace Museum director Shan Jixiang, the father of Japanese industrial design, Masayuki Kurokawa, and Jake Knapp, author of the book Sprint.

The program’s first cohort included more than 30 entrepreneurs from 20 different industries across nine cities. Participants completed the courses throughout the year, taking full advantage of holistic, interactive teaching and the opportunity to share their own practical experiences. Their feedback consistently demonstrated how the course had given them fresh approaches to problems their companies faced, whether improving internal communication or helping them see the clients they serve from a new perspective.

Liu Feng, the founder of a fast growing tourism development company, was particularly inspired by the Creating the Conditions for Creativity module’s six pillars of corporate transformation concept. Using these pillars, he not only refined the mission and value of his company, but also launched a series of measures to improve all aspects of its operations, from customer service to annual company gatherings. With a newly empowered team, he significantly increased the agility of the organization.

Ting Zhihong, the chairwoman of China’s leading logistics technology company, managed to double its profit during the course. She said her biggest takeaway from the course was how important it is to empower the team. Her company has now set up several platforms that give employees more room to experiment, create, and take part in frontline decision-making, bringing them closer to the company’s management.

Hu Chao, founder and CEO of China’s largest e-commerce platform for childcare goods, found that while other executive courses simply teach knowledge, Lead a Creative China taught him the importance of placing people at the center of what his company is doing.

The first cohort of the program graduated in December 2018. On April 8th, 2019, the Lead a Creative China program received an honorable mention in the education category as part of Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards, becoming the only award-winning Chinese project in the category.

After 40 years of rapid change, China has reached a pivotal point in its growth trajectory. Across the globe, traditional drivers of economic growth have slowed down, creating opportunity define the new economy.

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The Chinese government has laid out a wide range of ambitious policy plans to ensure that China successfully manages this transition, and that the country continues to grow and lead.

Honorable Mention

education category, Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards

China’s digital landscape is dominated by highly integrated mobile apps like WeChat and Alipay that seamlessly combine messaging, shopping, bill payment, and finance management. This shift toward digital-first interactions that are hyper-convenient, personalized, and intuitive has significantly shaped consumer expectations for experiences like finding, booking, and staying in a hotel. To stay competitive and meet—or exceed—young guests’ expectations, Huazhu needed to redesign its Membership App 3.0 to prioritize guest needs across all touchpoints of the hotel journey.

Through in-depth research and member feedback, IDEO discovered the true pain point the Huazhu membership app needed to address: seamlessly integrating the hotel brand’s online and offline experiences. The Huazhu Membership App 3.0 adopted “simple, stable, and real” design principles, simplifying user operations, optimizing the interface, fixing lingering experience issues, maximizing page load speed, and reducing crash rates.

The IDEO team discovered users have different functional needs. Sometimes, users want to search for hotel information quickly. Other times, they prefer to explore and browse content slowly. To meet both needs, the app needed to be optimized for efficiency and exploration. So, the IDEO team upgraded the interface of the Huazhu Membership App, adding quick operation modules and information blocks on the main page, as well as a downward scrolling interface that gradually slows the experience, offering channels for detailed exploration.

Customers also had different needs at different points in their travel journey: before, during, and after their stays. IDEO designed the language and user interface to provide personalized service information for each stage, from booking to post-stay. The app’s content adapts to the user’s travel phase, showing the most relevant service experiences at each point. The content displayed on the app also changes based on user habits, helping the app flex to meet their needs. The design aligns with the Huazhu Hotels Group’s mission to provide personalized service to a diverse clientele.

The team also worked to inject Huazhu’s brand characteristics by offering an upgraded experience in booking, stay, dining, and member benefits and adding features like a 30-second, automatic check-in experience. These thoughtful, personalized updates integrate Huazhu Hotels Group’s meticulous service philosophy, providing customers with a welcoming, human-centered hospitality experience. The updated Huazhu Membership App 3.0 is now available in major app stores, shaping a new generation of user experiences for Huazhu Hotels Group.  

Young travelers in China expect the first touchpoint with a hotel brand to be digital.

5% increase

in monthly active users after the launch of the App's 2.0 version in 2021

Name: Shruti Ramiah
Location: Munich
Role at IDEO: Design Research Lead
Joined IDEO: 2011
Website: www.shrutiramiah.com
Titillating Fact: I travel a lot for work, and one thing that helps me make every new place feel like home is the BBC World Service Radio (plus a healthy dose of BBC Radio 4). My grandfather used to tune into the World Service News every evening on Shortwave Radio. Now I have the digital radio on almost all the time, and I find the familiar voices very grounding. It’s also why so many of my conversations start with “So, I was listening to this show…”

1. Flash Forward

Flash Forward is a podcast about the future. Each episode starts with a little audio story playing out one potential future scenario—from the believable to the bizarre. I love the way Rose Eveleth brings intangible futures to life in these stories and then breaks them down to investigate the elements of the scenario.

2. New Philosopher

I discovered this magazine in Sydney. It’s one of many great independent magazines coming out of Australia. Each issue focuses on one theme that is relevant to contemporary life, and explores it from a variety of perspectives. I am amazed at how they make philosophical questions accessible and understandable. Don’t be put off by the name.

3. Jean Jullien

Jean Jullien is a wonderful graphic artist with a great light-hearted sense of humour in his work. Following him on Instagram ensures that there’s always a smile (or a smirk) waiting for me in my feed everyday. @jean_jullien

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In this series, we ask IDEO designers to share the stuff they're digging right now—tools, books, music, sites, people, places—so you, too, can drink from the fount of inspiration bubbling up here. This week's guest star: Shruti Ramiah.

OUR FIRST TIP COMES FORM NJOKI GITAHI, SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS DESIGNER AT IDEO, WHO RECENTLY LED INDESIGN NOVICES IN NEW YORK THROUGH AN EMAIL-BASED INTRO TO ADOBE'S POWERHOUSE PUBLISHING TOOL.

Sometimes you need to cut to the chase. If you're learning a tool outside your discipline, it's usually because a deadline is looming and your go-to experts can't help. There's no time to luxuriate in lessons. You need Quick + Dirty tips: bite-sized tool tutorials to beef up your skills, one morsel at a time.

Working with hardware enables designers to create more meaningful, situation-specific interactions that might feel cumbersome or be impossible with software alone. Last year, I had the opportunity to work on a project with IDEO.org (a nonprofit design organization that launched out of IDEO with the mission to improve the lives of people in low-income communities through design) that tested my software and physical design skills. The brief: Apply low-cost sensor technology to precision agriculture for smallholder farmers in developing countries.

Informed intuition

Before heading to the field, our small team started by researching precision agriculture practices and technologies for farms and households. We found inspiration in devices like Parrot Flower Power. Even so, we really had no idea what a good precision agriculture device could be, or what challenges farmers faced. But at IDEO, we believe that you learn best by doing. So we quickly ginned up three devices to facilitate conversation with farmers: the Magic Stick, the Ambient Sensor, and the Rice Shoot.

The Magic Stick

Physically, the Magic Stick was inspired by traditional farming tools like rakes and shovels. The tip of the stick was a temperature/humidity sensor that could be stuck into soil or crops that have been harvested and put in storage. Digitally, the Magic Stick created a data table that combined temperature and humidity with GPS location.

The Ambient Sensor

The goal of the Ambient Sensor was to help prevent the growth of a common toxin that spoils crops in storage in many parts of the world. The sensor tested the environment for the conditions that the toxin thrives in: high humidity and temperature. We designed the device to hang on a storage shed wall, and if high humidity and temperature conditions were detected, LED feedback would alert farmers and prompt them to ventilate the space.

The Rice Shoot

We designed the Rice Shoot to measure the water content of rice fields, making the process of rice paddy irrigation more resource efficient, and potentially increasing yields and reducing disease.

We brought our early prototypes to many farms in Kenya, Tanzania, and Myanmar—countries where IDEO.org had existing relationships. During our travels, we spent our days designing, wiring, and programming in the back of bouncing trucks, tidal river boats, and turbulence-prone airplanes. All the people we spoke with were smallholder farmers who need to farm in order to live. Together, we discussed the challenges of growing specific crops in specific regions, as well as any personal challenges they faced. In northern Myanmar's dry zone, we learned that there were no consistent optimal irrigation practices for betel nut, a cash crop that is a big part of the region's economy. Each farmer was watering at different times of day and for different lengths of time, with different yields.

Introducing the Betel Meter

Our time researching with these farmers showed that what they really needed was an upgraded Magic Stick—something with a brain. So we created the Betel Meter, a device that helps farmers create optimal irrigation for betel nut.

The Betel Meter is planted in key positions in a field and takes moisture readings once an hour. Once a day, a farmer presses the meter’s button. A green LED signifies that soil has a healthy moisture level and the farmer can irrigate normally. Red LEDs signify that the soil has been too dry, and farmers should keep irrigation taps open for an additional five or ten minutes. Blue LEDs signify when soil conditions are too wet.

To build the Betel Meter's brain, we used a TinyDuino from TinyCircuits, an Arduino compatible micro-controller with the power of an UNO. The TinyDuino, which is about the size of a quarter, has a brilliant architecture that allows any additional functionalities beyond basic processing to stack on top of each other. This allowed us to keep the core device small, even though it has a real-time clock, a data SD logger, and GPS boards.

Creating the baseline data for the meter turned out to be one of the biggest challenges of the project. Because optimal irrigation for betel nut in an agricultural zone as specific as northern Myanmar is unknown, we had to rely on white-paper research and some intuition. We first researched ideal moisture conditions for all plant life. Then we normalized evaporation rates for water in sandy soil, and cross referenced it against average temperatures for each month in the region.

The physical

The physical design was equally tricky, since the meter needed to withstand extreme weather for long periods of time to protect the sensitive electronics inside. Luckily, we had IDEO.org's Design Director and Co-Lead of the San Francisco studio, Adam Reineck, on the team. He quickly designed a 3D model in Solidworks and printed the form in nylon, which stood up against heavy rain—and even a sandstorm.

Our early prototypes used USB power banks; however, we knew that the Betel Meter had to be an “always-on” device with a reliable and constant power source. We opted for solar power, something the team had experience with. We began by hacking panels out of old solar camping lights and adding a few resistors and extra batteries to the circuit. That way, we could ensure that the device would store enough energy to power the micro-controller and components through the night.

Once we had our prototype, we returned to Myanmar to field test the Betel Meter, planting four of the devices in two fields. Not only did the Betel Meter provide irrigation feedback, it also recorded and created what we believe to be the first-ever dataset around optimal soil moisture for betel nut. People from all over the region came to see and take photos of the meter, and we were continuously asked to come back with the final working product.

From here, our ideal next step is to add machine learning that allows the device's software to evolve from its own data.

Working on the Betel Meter changed my personal approach to design and how I attack problems. Now, on every project, I try to find opportunities to create products that reach deeper into people’s physical lives than pixels on a screen.

Working with such an amazing team, in such a great place and on a product that challenged me the way the Betel Meter did, changed my life. I will be joining the team full time at IDEO.org in New York City this fall, where, hopefully, I will be part of the next chapter of the Betel Meter.

Read more on Fast Company

In my last article, I wrote about a hobby of mine: translating physical objects into digital experiences as a way to test my skills. Like most interaction designers these days, I am fascinated by understanding how digital can connect to our physical reality.

In a studio like ours, with a very distinctive creative culture, where people feel like they have ownership over their workspace, a massive, group art project would help us say goodbye together. Not only would it be one last hurrah for this studio, but it would also help reinforce the idea that our culture would be moving with us to the next space.

For years, our tradition at the Cambridge studio has been to reinvent our kitchen wall every six months or so. We’ve created everything from a hand-cut monster wall to a science fiction fine art series (think Yoda portraits in renaissance style). Knowing this mural would be the studio’s last, we wanted to create something that made people think and talk about design—reinforcing our values—and, of course, something big enough for everyone to be involved.

We also wanted to leverage our skillsets—Grace’s in drawing and painting, Greg’s in industrial design and fabrication—to pull together the project. At the time, Grace had been working on a series of dot drawings that caught Greg’s eye. They mimicked that phenomenon in nature when many tiny things form a greater whole. That seemed like a great metaphor for celebrating the multidisciplinary magic of the studio. So we decided to create a drawing as a base, and then scale it up into a wooden dowel installation.

To get started, Grace created the dot drawing (below on the left) that served as a guide for the dowels. She makes these dot drawings (one of which the mural is based on) over several hours of repetitive stippling. First, she measures the margins of the paper using a ruler as a guide, then forms all of the dots by keeping her hand as straight as possible.

We then scanned the drawing and used a Processing script that located the coordinates of each dot. Next, we used a custom Grasshopper script to place a circle at each centroid and extrude it up to the 3d surface that we created in Rhino. From there, we just exported the lengths of the dowels in order of installation to a CSV file for Chop-Chop, our cutting machine.

If we could design a method to cut the dowels in order, and then get the installers to place them in that same order, we’d be in business. To do it, we needed some way of organizing the dots into rows for the installers to follow—even though they’re not a perfect grid, since they were drawn by hand. By using Grasshopper script, we were able to find logical rows within the hand-drawn pattern.

Since the rows’ zig-zag route only appears in the software, we needed some type of marker for our installers to follow. By using a dot, double-dot, or no-dot marking scheme, we made it easy for our teammates to to identify and stay in their row, even if it zig-zagged.

The panel production took us seven days. We used a ShopBot Alpha to mill each hole, then made a second pass to mark the hole with the appropriate dot pattern.

Each of the 20,000 dowels is a different length, so we built a CNC bandsaw to help us cut them all. After sketching a few concepts, we settled on a JET bandsaw augmented with a custom digital stop.

We created the digital stop using parts we designed and 3D printed, as well as stock parts from Adafruit, Misumi, McMaster-Carr, SparkFun, and Arduino. Arduino reads the length of each dowel from the SD card, then turns a stepper motor and timing belt, moving the stop to the correct length. Once the dowel is cut, the miter sled hits a switch and tells the stop to move to the next position. Once we were in a rhythm, the process was pretty smooth.

One of the goals of this mural was to maintain the feeling of human touch that’s so obvious in the original drawing once we scaled it up to the mural. So we decided to design a straightforward process for our installers, and then chalk up any misplacements to the artistry of human error. As we chopped the dowels, we slotted them into trays marked with row number, tray number (some rows had up to 6 trays), and the dot scheme, so the installer knew where to start.

Four months later, we were ready for the big install. We invited the entire studio to come in on a Saturday morning, and we were blown away by the number of people who trickled in. Before we knew it, close to 40 people were helping out. Some heroes even stayed until 2 a.m. There were people hammering in dowels, cutting on Chop-Chop, filling trays, documenting with photo and video, and making beer runs. The assembly lines were staggeringly efficient and fun. It was a robot love fest.

We had hoped that there may be some errors in the process and we were happy to see them. You can find these beauty marks where the surface of the dowels gets uneven—that kind of inconsistency is impossible to predict or design, and it completely enhanced the beauty of the piece. Working together with the studio on a piece defined by the installers was a true bonding experience. It was an inspiring weekend for all of us, and we know that we’ll carry that with us in our move around the corner.

Music by Dan Deruntz. Footage by Chris Wright, Tom Kershaw, Dirk Ahlgrim, and Greg Wolos.

Materials: 20,928 birch dowels, 5/16” diameter; 7 MDF Panels, painted white; jet bandsaw; custom linear slide; Arduino MEGA; Big Easy Stepper Driver; Adafruit LED display; stepper motor; timing belt and pulleys; limit switches; custom 3D printed parts

Software: Rhino, Grasshopper, Processing, Arduino

Suppliers: Adafruit, Misumi, McMaster-Carr, SparkFun, Jet Tools

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As we prepare to move from our current Cambridge studio into a new space around the corner, we can’t help but think of it as a place where many of us began our IDEO journey—sneaking up to the roof for sunset cocktails and riding in the freight elevator to the pop-up gallery in the basement. We knew giving it a proper goodbye should mean involving everyone.

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.