IDEO and Fotile have had a relationship since 2009, working together on projects including a unified design language for product offerings, retail environments, and IoT strategy. For the dishwasher, IDEO and the Fotile research team came together for design research, shadowing Chinese families in different cities as they prepared meals from start to finish. Together they discovered that unlike in Western cooking, where several kinds of cookware are used for different dishes, Chinese cooks tend to use the same cookware to prepare all of their dishes.

That meant that the cookware needed to be cleaned several times during a single meal preparation, rather than once at the end. In this context, the sink serves different purposes over the course of cooking—it’s a place to wash and store prepped ingredients, rinse the cookware, and deep clean the dishes used in food prep and during the meal.

Based on this insight, IDEO made a list of product design recommendations that became Fotile’s Sink Dishwasher—a counter-level, multi-purpose appliance that specifically suits Chinese cooking habits. IDEO’s design guidance gave Fotile the confidence it needed to launch its product into the market, and served as a blueprint for the future iteration of Fotile’s Sink Dishwasher.

On March 25, 2015, six months after the project ended, Fotile launched the world's first sink dishwasher designed for Chinese families. Eight months later, its market share exceeded 30 percent, setting off a wave of innovation in the Chinese dishwasher category.

In 2016, Fotile introduced a three-slot dishwasher with an added compartment for cleaning fruit and vegetables—a direct response to a research finding that Chinese families are concerned about food safety. When this new model hit the market, Fotile’s dishwasher market share jumped to 41.1%. In China, Fotile is now synonymous with “sink dishwasher,” and the company has a widespread reputation among consumers as a symbol of a safe and healthy Chinese family kitchen.

Since its founding in 1994, Fotile’s Chairman, Mao Zhongqun, has made it his goal to “do nothing but build a high-end Chinese family brand.”

30%

Fotile Sink Dishwasher’s share of the market in China, just eight months after launch

41%

Fotile’s dishwasher market share after it launched a three-slot version in 2016

#1 selling brand

in the mainstream price segment of the Chinese dishwasher market as of August 2023

BoAo Group’s idea to design a new baby car seat was fueled by a newly revised minor protection law, which made using child safety seats mandatory beginning June 1st, 2021. As ZUOWE and IDEO looked around China’s emerging car seat market, the team noticed a singular focus on safety and safety features across most international and domestic brands. There was a clear opportunity for a new product that could meaningfully differentiate itself by not only providing safety features but also meeting the needs of modern Chinese parents.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team needed to answer two questions: What matters to the new generation of parents in China? And how will their style and approach to parenting affect their expectations for baby car seats? Taking into account the potentially different consumer needs in different geographies, the IDEO team headed to Shanghai, a city with more than 25 million people, and the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, which has a population of 2 million. They conducted in-depth home visits to local families, visited many brick-and-mortar mom-and-baby shops, and interviewed people like specialized nurses, parenting experts, and child psychologists. 

Despite the differences between the two cities, IDEO discovered commonalities during consumer conversations. Young Chinese parents were experiencing a perceived identity gap. As individuals, they felt they had distinct personalities and a clear sense of self. They actively expressed themselves through their clothes and belongings. But when they became parents, this sense of self weakened or disappeared completely.  Their identities shifted to being someone’s mom or dad overnight. This new generation was eager to show their unique approach to parenthood as they used to express their sense of self. But many products were designed for children, with little regard for parents. 

This core finding helped set the direction for the new baby car seat design and brand Maple&Co. However, there were still two significant challenges to overcome. One, IDEO needed to design a product with stringent technical regulations and standards on a tight timeline—ZUOWE wanted to launch the new car seat at an important industry trade show within the year. And two, the team had to help the organization transform its thinking and ways of working to be more consumer-centric.

BoAo’s strength lies in its 20 years of experience developing and manufacturing car seats for major domestic and international automotive brands. This gave the company an edge in overcoming technical barriers and driving mass production. But its engineering and manufacturing mindset had become a barrier to transforming into a D2C brand. With such ingrained ways of working, pivoting to a more creative process can be hard. 

To address this hurdle, IDEO set up co-creation workshops, bringing together ZUOWE’s newly formed baby car seat team and manufacturing experts from their factories to discuss design direction and details early on. The benefits of the collaboration were clear: It was easy to share feedback in a timely manner and make product design decisions very quickly. When IDEO presented a design that emphasized natural textures during a workshop on brand positioning, a member from Bo Ao’s manufacturing team said, “This feels very different. This could become a major selling point,” and that they had “never seen” anything like it done by other baby car seat brands.

A year after working together, ZUOWE Technology launched Maple&Co and the new Maple baby car seat across its main e-commerce channels. Modern and minimalist in soft natural colors and wooden veneers, Maple appeals to the aesthetics of young parents in China. Despite a series of micro COVID outbreaks in China, within three months, Maple had already achieved better-than-predicted sales and received favorable comments about the look and quality of the car seat from parents. Fast forward two years, additional collaborations with IDEO have enabled the young startup to grow its child travel portfolio from a signature car seat into a more holistic offering that includes highly functional, fashionable, and adaptable car booster seats and strollers that thoughtfully address the needs of modern Chinese families across various life stages at home—and on the go.

China's minor protection law mandated the use of child safety seats beginning June 1, 2021.

‍

Despite incoming regulations fueling a surge in purchases, car seats on the market rightly prioritized safety but did not consider the emotional needs and lifestyle preferences of a new generation of Chinese parents.

1 year

after the project ended, a new, differentiated baby seat product and brand, Maple&Co, launched

Top 6

during the 2023 “Double 11” shopping festival, Maple&CO secured the 6th spot on Tmall's new brand pre-sale list

‍

“Over a year ago, I had to take my cat to the vet for an unexpected and expensive surgery,” says one Card Member. “To be honest, I still don’t know if I’ve paid the bill off.”

Many crave the flexibility to pay for large purchases over time, but also want to avoid the pitfalls of debt. Others rely on debit or cash for small items—no one wants to accumulate interest on a cup of coffee, lunch with a friend, or box of Kleenex—but then miss out on valuable rewards.

American Express worked with IDEO to help them attract new customers by understanding what financially stable young adults wanted in a credit card. The team began by interviewing more than 120 millennials to understand their payment behaviors around debit and credit, and how they think about borrowing and spending.

One person described the monthly panic of receiving his bill—described as “statement shock”—and his habit of making multiple payments before his billing cycle closed to ease this anxiety. Others were wary of credit because of a large veterinarian bill or financial mistakes made in their 20s, and relied on debit because it felt safer than accruing a balance to pay off. Overall, the team learned that many consumers experience anxiety about paying their bills. And while financial products that offer more flexibility and control have been needed for years, they are especially valuable in times of economic uncertainty like today.

Based on this research, IDEO prototyped, iterated, and refined two concepts, with frequent feedback from users and the client. Called Pay It Plan It, this feature offers financially responsible consumers more transparency, confidence, and control.

Pay It allows Card Members to quickly pay for small purchase amounts under $100 with a few taps in the American Express mobile app. When that purchase shows up on their account, they can choose “Pay It” and still earn rewards on the purchase. This ensures Card Members can take advantage of rewards while lowering their monthly bill by paying for smaller items throughout the month.

With Plan It, Card Members can split up larger purchases of $100 or more—like an emergency trip to the vet or a new sofa—into equal monthly payments, with a fixed fee and no interest. When the purchase appears in their account, they can select “Plan It,” and will be offered up to three monthly payment plans, ranging from three to 24 months. Each plan comes with a fixed monthly fee and no interest. Card Members know exactly how much they have to pay each month, so there are no surprises. And if they pay the purchase off early, they no longer have to pay any future plan fees.

The design of Pay It Plan It did not come without challenges: Bill pay is critical, complex, and highly regulated. Pay It Plan It required a significant internal financial and technical investment, which was achieved after IDEO shared many of the emotional, compelling stories from credit card users with leaders at American Express.

The team worked closely with the American Express regulatory and digital teams to ensure compliance and seamless integration into the mobile app and website’s user experiences and interfaces. To heighten the sense of competence, control, and transparency for users, the designers focused on small interactions like status animations, proactive suggestions, and straightforward language. These interactions help Card Members anticipate upcoming payments and clearly understand Pay It Plan It.

Plan It was designed with transparency, control, and accessibility in mind: The payment plan fee is displayed in dollars to give the customer certainty over their total costs.

Initially, the team set out to create a new credit card with the needs of young adults in mind. But IDEO and American Express realized that Pay It Plan It could be scaled across existing credit card products to ultimately benefit and attract more Card Members. Now, almost all U.S. American Express Consumer Card Members have access to Pay It Plan It through credit cards, co-branded cards, and the well-known Green, Gold, and Platinum Cards. Since launching in 2017, Card Members have created nearly 5 million Plans, totaling nearly $4 billion in purchases, with an average Plan size of $789. Millennial and Generation Z Card Members have created approximately 44 percent of these Plans.

The flexibility and control offered through Pay It Plan have earned American Express positive press, including a call-out in The New York Times for being among solutions that “make it easier for their customers to borrow money, and to manage their monthly cash flow.”

At first glance, design-led innovation may seem difficult to achieve in large, established organizations like American Express, operating in a highly regulated and deeply rational industry. But the IDEO and American Express team successfully found ways to introduce new behaviors like rapid prototyping, cross-discipline collaboration, and leading with emotional customer stories within the existing organizational culture and structure. American Express has since established a permanent Pay It Plan It team dedicated to evolving the feature. Made up of employees across departments, this points to a new and collaborative team structure for the company.

By seeking to understand the human behind the Card Member, American Express has transformed credit and financial services for the better, helping both to be defined by empathy, utility, and transparency.

For more than two centuries, The Times held a strong reputation as a storied British newspaper. Then came the digital deluge. Publication after publication began adopting a relentless online publishing schedule aimed at capturing eyeballs and subscribers, and guarding against waning advertising sales and print readership. But The Times and its sister publication The Sunday Times thought there might be a different way forward.

As Editor John Witherow explains, “the power of an edition” had long endured at The Times, but began to erode amid a round-the-clock breaking news cycle. Witherow didn’t want to do away with editions, but rather to update the model for the digital age. Times owner News UK approached IDEO in 2014 to explore exactly that: what the edition of the future might look like and how its design could drive revenue and subscribers.

IDEO’s research and design phase included interviews with readers, journalists, editors, and marketers at News UK. The team found that people’s reading modes vary—some reflecting new digital behaviors and others adhering more closely to paper-reading styles.

Readers, the team learned, chose The Times for its editorial opinion: a perspective that cuts through the overwhelming flood of information. They viewed the daily Times and weekend Sunday Times as one paper, despite the organizational distinction. And they were proud of their choice, valuing the papers’ consistency, trustworthiness, balance, and authoritativeness. Readers wanted these qualities distilled in a digital edition, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or on the web.

Those insights led to strategic recommendations spanning digital products, editorial, advertising integration, online membership offers, and social sharing. But the boldest among those was a publishing strategy that seemed to run counter to media trends: abandoning a real-time approach in favor of publishing separate digital editions.

The Times in March 2016 introduced an editions-based publishing schedule, with new editions available across all platforms four times each weekday: overnight, 9am, noon and 5pm; the weekend schedule shrank to three editions. A year in, they had broken that schedule fewer than a dozen times—making exceptions for major moments like the terror attack in central London and David Bowie’s death—but even in those cases, The Times refrained from incessant updates, instead resuming its regular pacing.

“The way we’re publishing now, taking our time over news...taking a more considered view of the world, it’s helped us offer something different from everything else,” digital news head Alan Hunter told Digiday in 2018. Readers demonstrated that this different approach was something they’d been wanting.

In the first half of 2016, new paying-subscriber sales were up 200% as compared to the same period in 2015. At the end of June 2016, there were 413,600 subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times, up 3.4% from a year prior. Of those, 182,500 were digital-only subscriptions—a 6% rise and a notable figure given how much online news can be obtained for free.

Through collaboration with IDEO, News UK's own digital teams capabilities grew, enabling them to implement and evolve their new digital strategy. The capabilities of the newsroom grew, too: “The decision to move to four editions a day has freed up tremendous resources to focus on big stories,” says Emma Tucker, Editor of The Sunday Times—the kind of stories that "supercharge engagement." The approach is working: By August 2019 digital subscriptions had increased 19% year-on-year to 300,000, showing the progress the legacy publisher has made in attracting readers to its online proposition. Total subscribers for the two titles' print and digital products now stand at 539,000, and their websites total five million registered users.

More than 230 years after its first edition was published, the new Times has established solid footing in the digital age and designed its own future—one based not on the habits of its competitors but on its legacy and the reading behaviors of its audience.

He had taken a disability leave from work to prepare for the removal of a tumor on his spine. The drives to his appointments had become routine, each trip a reminder of how much his body was changing—and how much he now relied on me. He said, “I’m going back to work after my surgery.” Despite my uncertainty, I didn’t argue. The surgery gave him a 50 percent chance of walking again, and for him, that was enough. But the probability alone was not enough to prepare me for what came next.  

At 22, I came face-to-face with the hidden costs of healthcare when my father became paraplegic. Since then, I’ve become his sole full-time caregiver. This role has profoundly shaped my perception of the healthcare system—not only exposing the many gaps in healthcare but also the massive opportunities to improve how care is designed and delivered.

Today, alongside my role as a caregiver, I am an interaction design fellow at IDEO, where I spend my days collaborating with other designers to shape and refine human-centered experiences. Part of our job is to listen with empathy to user pain points to craft useful solutions that foster trust and understanding. As both a caregiver and a designer, I deeply understand these pain points and how we can design solutions that ease the burden on the 24 million caregivers in the US alone—whether it’s creating clear, comprehensible medical bills or developing devices that help prevent further health complications. Here are four massive opportunity areas I believe we need to solve for.

Mitigating enormous burnout

The first few years were by far the most difficult. My peers were embracing the newfound freedom of adulthood, while I was responsible for everything from dealing with insurance companies to daily cleaning and bandaging his stage-four wounds. I was in and out of the hospital, drowning in paperwork and trying to make sense of my father’s condition, his medications, new routines, and medical bills. I spent countless hours battling with insurance reps, demanding appeals, chasing down unreliable case managers, and pushing charge nurses to advocate on my father’s behalf. The burnout was debilitating. But there are so many opportunities to lessen that load.

Technological tools that patients and their families can trust can help close the gap in an inequitable healthcare system. Already, AI tools like Hyro AI and SICURA by Nohold are taking on some of these pain points by reducing the complexities of dealing with insurance, treatment options, and medical jargon. Hyro AI is even integrated into many electronic health record systems, allowing patients easy access to their personal health information to understand and manage treatment.

But what if AI patient advocates could take things a step further, flagging biases, challenging questionable denials, and assisting with appeals? As insurance companies increasingly use AI to deny claims, such a tool could help level the playing field, ensuring that vulnerable patients aren’t silenced by the very systems meant to support them.

Navigating the system

My father was hospitalized for over a year following his surgery, moving between the ICU, skilled nursing facilities, and acute rehab centers. Each stay brought hefty bills, frequently arriving months later with little clarity about their origins. They were outrageously expensive, and I struggled to understand what we actually owed—or why we owed it in the first place. Between the maze of Medicare, state programs, and private insurance, determining financial responsibility was completely overwhelming, and cost transparency was non-existent.

What if medical bills were as clear as itemized receipts, with straightforward descriptions alongside hospital codes? Originally designed to prevent fraud, medical billing systems rely on cryptic codes like “ICD-10” and “CPT”—effectively standardizing claims but making them nearly impossible for patients to decipher. While these systems serve the industry, they often do so at the expense of patient transparency and accessibility. An app that translates these complex codes into a simple, easy-to-read breakdown would be invaluable.

Beyond that, there’s an opportunity to design a visual progress tracker or dynamic dashboard, helping caregivers and patients manage payments, track processing status, and reduce the financial guesswork that adds unnecessary stress to an already difficult journey.

As a young adult learning to manage my own financial responsibilities while taking on my father’s, I found myself in need of a financial “buddy”—someone who understood my situation and had the expertise to guide me. While some companies, like the AI app Cedar, are tackling this issue, there’s still significant potential for innovation in this space.

Providing physical care

Whenever my father developed a stage-four bedsore, I had to administer IV antibiotics every six hours for eight to 12 weeks. During these times, I was stuck at home, bound by the six-hour window, having to reposition him every two hours to help the wound heal and prevent new sores from forming.

When you care for someone with limited mobility, bed sores are one of the most challenging issues. In the US alone, nearly 60,000 people die from bed sore complications annually. They emerge shockingly quickly and can go from the size of a nickel to so deep you can see bone. For caregivers, the physical toll of lifting and repositioning their loved ones can be overwhelming; it often left me physically drained and emotionally exhausted.

After dozens of hospital trips and many sleepless nights, I decided to invest in a specialized bed that could handle repositioning. But insurance doesn’t cover them. And they range from $2,000 to $15,000. A pressure-relieving mattress adds another $500 to $3,000, and professional assembly—often required—can cost an additional $200 to $500.

Imagine if there was a smart, modular bed for paraplegics that automatically adjusted using an AI-powered scanning app to track movement and prevent pressure sores. It could offer personalized configuration by allowing users to add or remove features as needed, enabling customization at home. Additionally, an affordable smart mattress that monitors sores and relieves pressure could greatly benefit both the caregiver and the patient. Accompanied by an AI-powered scanning app, the bed could track movement and prompt timely repositioning. Companies like Tidewave and Arjo already use technology to help mitigate bedsores, and the ForeSite Intelligent Surface (IS) by XSENSOR uses AI to monitor the real-time emergence of sores. However, these solutions are largely limited to hospital settings. If a company could create an affordable version for home use, it could significantly improve the lives of millions of patients and their caregivers.

Accessing home modifications

When my father was discharged from the hospital, it was up to me to find a wheelchair-accessible home in the Bay Area. Whether it was too-narrow doorways, steps, or tight corners, none of the homes I toured had the necessary modifications for him to navigate in his power wheelchair. The home we finally found had enough space to meet his mobility needs, but we still had to pay out of pocket for ramps, touchless light switches, and other accessible features. Even now, he can’t leave the house on his own. He can’t reach the door handle from his wheelchair, and the ramps are too narrow for him to safely navigate alone, leaving him at risk of getting stuck—something that has happened more times than I’d like to count.

Instead of having to tour each house with a tape measure in hand and the wheelchair measurements stored in my phone, it would have been incredibly helpful to have an app that could instantly tell me if a wheelchair would fit through the doorframe or if adding a ramp was feasible.

Imagine if that app connected to stores like Home Depot or Amazon, curating a list of items I could purchase directly, without the hassle of checking measurements myself. Or, what if real estate or rental apps had a special section for homes that had already been modified or were built with accessibility in mind? With the right tools in place, I could have avoided much of the uncertainty and frustration, making the journey to find an accessible home much smoother for both my father and me.

What began with inexperience and uncertainty has evolved into a journey of growth and adaptation, both as a caregiver and a designer. Together, my father and I have learned a lot about how to live our new life—and each other. It has not been easy. And there is so much opportunity for insurance companies, healthcare providers, and startups to alleviate the unnecessary stress for caregivers and their loved ones. As the caregiver population continues to rise, the need for innovation is clear—without it, millions will continue navigating these challenges alone. As designers, we’ve only scratched the surface—there is so much more that we can do.

As my father and I prepared to head to Stanford for yet another doctor’s appointment, I remember asking him, “Are you prepared to never walk again?”

As you play, your job is to move a circle from one side of a line to the other. At each level, you have to wait one more second before you can cross the line. It’s both easy and increasingly boring—until you up the level of friction. The harder you make it, the more obstacles fill your path, and the more points you score. The higher the friction, the greater the fun, sense of accomplishment, and meaning.

This is a principle that’s true across play. Think about it: You could walk to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, or you could pretend your kitchen floor has turned to gooey molten lava, and hop  from chairs to rugs to the sink to get what you need. You could sit around at home mindlessly watching TV on a Friday night, or you could pay money to be locked in a room with your friends, forced to solve puzzles to earn your collective freedom.

As the Executive Managing Director of IDEO’s Play Lab, I lead a team of toy inventors and designers who use play to create effective and joyful products and experiences. Rarely does our work involve making things seamless. It’s usually about inserting obstacles, adding layers, and crafting challenges to help motivate and delight players, employees, and customers alike. 

And yet, as technology accelerates at an unprecedented pace and becomes intertwined in all aspects of our lives, from dating to healthcare to managing our time, we’re constantly trying to remove as much friction as possible. Digital tools promise to streamline our calendars, show us the shortest routes to destinations, enable us to make purchases with a single click, and even facilitate our relationships with each other.

But at a moment when technology promises frictionless living, we have to ask: What are we losing when everything becomes too easy?

Lessons from Gen Z

Gen Z is our first generation of digital natives, people roughly between the ages of 14–28, who have known digital technology and the internet for their entire lives. They have also seen the downsides: cyberbullying, superficial relationships, and broken attention spans. In many ways, they understand the costs of tech better than the rest of us. 

Last year, we tested early prototypes of creative and relationship AI tools with a group of young people to gain a deeper understanding of what they truly want from technology. They were universally clear: They’re happy to use AI tools that can make them more efficient, but they don’t want to get rid of the messy parts of life. As one of them told us, “I want to go on a date for myself. I want to go on a bad vacation. You know what I mean? I want to experience things and be like, ‘Oh, I hated that.’”

There are numerous videos on YouTube featuring young people questioning the value of tech making their lives more convenient. Some are going so far as to turn back the clock, embracing flip phones, embarking on digital detox journeys, and becoming digital minimalists. On YouTube, Jess Farnham shares how intentional tech breaks help her feel more grounded. Sakura Opal explains her switch to a flip phone as a return to intentional living. JV Scholz paints a picture of the creative rebirth that comes with limiting your screen time.

The comments on their videos reveal a growing groundswell: Consuming mountains of content is becoming overwhelming. These young people want to return to creating content through activities they loved as children, like writing stories and drawing. They’re also recognizing that our brains have lost the ability to sit with our thoughts or commit our full attention, factors that can be contributing to our growing loneliness epidemic, because intimacy requires time, focus, and effort.

Young people aren’t the only ones—brands are responding, too. Bottega Veneta shut down its social media channels to focus on in-depth, slow storytelling. Heineken and Bodega created the “Boring Phone,” a tongue-in-cheek device that encourages users to step away from digital distraction. Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year? “Authentic.”

Designing for meaningful friction

Instead of assuming that we should always design for efficiency, we should look for opportunities to design for deliberate friction, perhaps making our lives a little bit slower and maybe even more challenging.

As human-centered designers, friction has long been a part of our toolkit. And not just recently with the proliferation of AI. In 2011, we partnered with the beloved nonprofit Sesame Workshop to develop Elmo Calls, an app that allows preschool-age children to call Elmo to hear advice, educational stories, songs, and jokes. Going to the doctor for a shot? Need help going potty? Call Elmo for support and a positive message about the challenge ahead! The app’s purpose was never to have kids glued to a screen, though.  Together with Sesame Workshop, we made a decision: Elmo will show up for a few minutes when kids need him most, and when the call is over, he will hang up. 

We did something similar when we designed a VR version of the classic ViewMaster with Mattel. The toymaker asked that we purposely design it without a headstrap, so that kids could interact with incredible scenes enabled by the new technology for a reasonable amount of time, but would put the device down when their arms grew tired. This purposeful friction moderates usage and ensures that kids can experience the fun while encouraging most of their playtime to be in the real world, with real people.

Can you imagine if our phones weighed as much as bricks? Our lives would be very different.

Maintaining the rewarding parts of work

Recently, we’ve been involved in several AI projects where the initial impulse is to outsource work to tools that can automate tasks, generate content, or make decisions on behalf of users. But, there is a danger in outsourcing all our work to AI, because not all work is created equal. True, there’s burdensome work that you don’t want to do, but there’s also rewarding work that you wouldn’t want AI to take away from you.

When an early-stage startup approached us for help designing an AI-powered writing hub for high school students and their teachers, our research quickly made it clear that both students and teachers value the process as much as the result. As one student said, “I feel like writing kind of helps you learn more about yourself, and I feel like just having a computer do that for you...you don’t really get to tell your own story.” Their teacher told us, “It isn't just about the strict grade that I’m giving them, but also making sure that their writing connects to them as a human being. It gives me a peek into who they are as a person.”

Writing isn’t just about writing. It’s testing ideas and practicing critical thinking. The effort that goes into it is well worth it if it lets us share our thoughts with others, gives us a sense of accomplishment, and enables us to learn more about ourselves and each other.

So, rather than create a tool that makes writing easier, Ethiqly was born out of the question: What if teachers could give individualized writing instruction to every student? The product we designed with our clients guides students through the steps of developing their own creative thoughts—surfacing topics they are excited about, providing the right prompts to draw out ideas, and helping them craft a story that feels authentic to who they are. It also helps teachers provide individualized feedback at scale. It’s not about having AI replicate our work; what we want is for technology to help us do our work better so that we can continue to learn and feel the exhilaration that comes with that accomplishment.

Designing a more rewarding future

If, at this point, you're rolling your eyes at my proposal to purposely add friction, don't worry. I’m not suggesting we slow everything down. AI is poised to bring incredible enhancements to our lives. There are many things we want to do as quickly as possible, from curing diseases to predicting natural disasters. Even mundane everyday moments, like finding directions quickly when we’re running late, benefit from AI’s frictionless speed. There’s plenty of drudgery we can get rid of, too. But we need to be thoughtful about where we apply efficiency versus just creating efficiency wherever we can. 

Imagine if instead of watching videos at 2x speed, they automatically paused and invited us to explore the content in more depth, allowing us to click on elements that catch our eye so that we can learn more about an object, person, location, or event. It could even compel us to reflect and comment on what we're seeing. What if our map apps didn’t automatically take us on the shortest route between points A and B, but instead offered a discovery mode option when he have the time for a more inspirational route? What if we abandoned endless scroll for a feed interrupted by challenges that prompt us to put our phones down and go interact with nature? What if it offered us rewards for time away from our screens, like a coupon for a cup of coffee at the cafe down the street?

Technology will keep evolving. AI will keep getting smarter. And there will always be new temptations to make life easier. But human-centered design has never been about making everything effortless. It’s about knowing when to embrace the effort—to design for friction, for complexity, for depth. Because it’s in those deliberate moments of challenge that life becomes more meaningful, more social, more joyful. Imagine what the world could look like if we design for meaning, not just for speed.

Looking to design for friction in your own products and services? Get in touch. We're here to help.

(This article was adapted from Michelle Lee's main stage talk at Config '25. You can watch the full talk here.)

Recently, my colleague Takashi Wickes designed a deceptively simple game called wait. wait.. wait…

“What might be” was suddenly overshadowed by “what must happen now.” The pandemic disrupted every aspect of our healthcare ecosystem and forced us to adopt an entirely virtual primary medicine model, something most health systems had previously only experimented with. It felt like everything was urgent, and getting anyone to focus on the future seemed impossible. Surrounded by all that chaos, I decided to look back to see what history could tell me about major shifts in this industry during other periods of great uncertainty.

The past is filled with patterns of human triumphs, mistakes, and missed opportunities. These moments can give us a strong sense of how humans, governments, markets, and organizations might react to profound change. A century before COVID-19, the 1918 influenza pandemic similarly upended global healthcare, exposing the limitations of existing care delivery systems. Looking back at this period offered significant insights into how a crisis catalyzes transformation. In that era, patients received healthcare in their homes, by general practice doctors who were also members of their community. Just as COVID-19 forced a rapid transition to virtual care, the devastation of the 1918 pandemic led to the expansion of healthcare systems, the professionalization of medicine, and public health reforms. Despite the realities of the moment, the feelings of fear and uncertainty people felt in public settings in 2020 were eerily reminiscent of the fears that marked the 1918 influenza crisis.

Each decade of our past tells stories about how change develops. The Industrial Revolution demonstrated how rapid technological advancements could reshape economies; the Space Race of the 1960s highlighted how global competition could fuel scientific breakthroughs; and September 11 proved how tragedy could bring a country’s diverse communities together in a shared purpose. Adding the context of examples from human history brings rigor and believability to the futuring process, upping the likelihood that people can understand potential opportunities and consequences in tangible ways.

But how do futurists do this? How do we pick which pieces of the past apply to what we’re trying to solve for, and how do we arrive at tangible takeaways? Here are three ways history can help you understand what could be.

1. A frame for ideation

History doesn’t always offer clear predictions for how change might unfold, but it can provide a scaffolding or starting point for the imagination. A historical lens anchors storytelling, making speculative futures more relatable and actionable by drawing on connections to known human experiences.

In 2023, IDEO partnered with LeadingAge California to explore a fundamental question: What does it mean to age well in a world of rapid change? Through a series of workshops, we examined how traditional older adult care, long centered on institutionalized models, could be reshaped by shifting demographics, emerging technologies, and evolving cultural expectations. We started by grounding our work in historical precedent to add credibility. Then, we crafted six bold, forward-looking narratives that reimagined aging as a deeply human-centered experience, one defined by purpose, autonomy, and connection rather than decline. These stories introduced new possibilities for older adulthood, where updated mindsets on aging, advances in AI, regenerative medicine, and assistive technology redefine what it means to grow old, allowing people to maintain their physical and cognitive health in previously unimaginable ways. Using the past as a framework clarified how services for this population could be reimagined to evolve in response to social and technological change. Within these constraints, we designed futures that felt not just visionary but entirely within reach, creating a roadmap that could help bring these ideas to life.

2. A way to stress-test plausibility

History helps make future scenarios more credible by grounding them in familiar patterns and contexts. This thought experiment requires thinking critically about the past. What factors spurred a particular phenomenon? What kinds of decisions shaped action, and by whom? What decisions did people decide not to make? By examining these dynamics, we gain insights into how similar forces might unfold under new conditions and use them to inform our stories. A backward glance at the mental health impact of isolation during 2020 could provide insights into the potential effects of remote work and virtual schooling on future communities. When we think this way, the past becomes a launchpad rather than a limitation.

These methods were extremely useful in 2023, when we partnered with the DC Federal City Council to reimagine the future of downtown Washington, DC, a city with both a storied past and a future that can change radically every election cycle. To generate bold, forward-thinking ideas for revitalizing downtown neighborhoods, we convened over 100 stakeholders. We asked them to identify the past and present to surface patterns of transformation and areas of opportunity in the city. With that foundation in place, the teams developed plausible future narratives, layering ideas such as new pedestrian zones, green spaces, and artist live/work zones onto physical maps of each neighborhood. These activities helped them create stories of the future that didn’t just feel aspirational but were deeply rooted in the city’s identity, its people, and the existing infrastructure. By looking to history, the workshop unlocked new pathways for action, moving closer to the goal of a thriving, community-driven urban future.

‍3. A method for predicting outcomes

The future is about identifying strategic choices that will shape the future we want to build. History reveals how communities, industries, and organizations responded to change, offering a glimpse into potential outcomes that could have a significant impact.

IDEO’s 2024 collaboration with San Francisco public television and radio station KQED explored how public media will have to evolve to remain relevant and essential in a rapidly shifting landscape. In a day-long workshop, the IDEO team guided the KQED board through a method developed by futurist Sohail Inayatullah called “The Futures Triangle,” which examines the weight of the past, the push of the present, and the pull of the future. By discussing these different forces, we surfaced a key tension: In an era of hyper-personalized content and decentralized media consumption, KQED’s legacy of trusted journalism and civic storytelling can be both a powerful foundation and a potential constraint. So, how will these existing forces shape the future? With this insight in mind, participants crafted stories and created artifacts from the future that drew a picture of a public media ecosystem more deeply embedded in community life, one that reaches audiences through interactive, on-demand, and participatory experiences. They explored how KQED could expand even further as a multimedia organization and community convener to become an agile, responsive, and dynamic force for engagement across generations and platforms. By analyzing the historical forces pushing and pulling the public news source, the group identified key strategic choices KQED could make today to shape the desired outcome of a more inclusive, innovative, and community-driven future for public media.

To build bold, forward-looking futures, we must look backward—not to recreate the past, but to navigate the future with intention. History provides more than context; it offers structure for creativity, a stress test for credibility, and a mirror through which we anticipate consequences. When we weave these insights into our foresight practice and design efforts, we can imagine futures that are rigorous, plausible, and transformational, drawing on the past to shape scenarios that inspire action and meaningful change. Years from now, when futurists look back on today, they will be reading the signals we left behind.

At the end of 2019, I embarked on a project exploring the future of primary care medicine, looking ahead a decade to imagine stories about innovative home diagnostics, expanded virtual care, and transformative shifts in delivery models. Then came COVID-19.

But somewhere between unlocking a new badge and being reminded that your streak is on the line, you wonder, “Am I actually getting healthier—or just getting better at this game?”

Gamification, the technique of borrowing principles from game design to nudge behavior, promises motivation wrapped in fun. It has taken hold for a reason—it works. At least in the short run. Our products now nudge us at every turn. Fitness apps keep us running (literally) after digital rewards; loyalty programs make us strategize our coffee orders like it’s the Olympics; and even financial markets have started to feel more like Vegas, where winning means flipping assets before the music stops. But the important question isn’t whether gamification works. It’s who is it working for?

When game mechanics are used for product strategy without understanding consumers’ deeper motivations, it breeds fatigue, churn, and mistrust. It’s not just bad design, but rather a larger risk to customer loyalty and long-term growth. Gamification strategies that emphasize winning can also unintentionally encourage overconsumption, while attempts to gamify health, community engagement, or sustainability risk reducing meaningful behavior change to shallow, performative tasks.

In a well-designed game, the relationship is symbiotic—you play because you love the experience, and in return, the game designer thrives as more players buy in. But gamification can sometimes feel like a system imposed upon you, where participation is required to unlock basic functionality, avoid penalties, or simply keep up. When this happens, gamification starts feeling more like an obligation—or worse, a trap. The game stops being something we choose to play—it plays us instead.

So how do we harness gamification’s immense promise in a more productive way?

At the IDEO Play Lab, we leverage game design to help businesses drive deep, sustainable engagement. Because most successful products don’t just lean on gamification’s surface sparkle—they dig into the sturdy mechanics of game design itself.

Here are some of the myths of gamification and real ways thoughtful game design can lead to better products.

Myth 1: To make an experience sticky, just add points or badges!

Reality: The deeper opportunity lies in leveraging game thinking to make transformative experiences.

Reducing game design to points and leaderboards sells it far too short. True game-thinking involves designing systems that embody the foundational mechanics of games—like challenge, choice, feedback, and progression—to create deeply engaging, motivating, and transformative experiences.

One example: We were partnering with an organization to develop a digital platform to support the mental health of people aged 14-25. We could have simply added a point or reward system to make the app engaging for this young audience—after all, social media and other apps do just that. But we knew that the benefits of working on one’s mental health aren’t tied to those types of metrics; in fact, employing them can have the opposite effect. Instead, we ran game design workshops to explore specific mechanics and principles that would tap into users’ intrinsic motivations, then used those as a springboard to explore compelling—and beneficial—new features. One of the simplest—and most popular in testing—was a fidget drawing board, where users could make little finger drawings on a starry background that would fade after a few seconds. This playful interaction was a compelling feature that drew our testers back again and again. No leaderboard needed.

Myth 2: Make an experience feel like a game with competition!

Reality: Games do not have to be zero-sum.

Games often have a winner and a loser—one person’s success comes at the expense of another’s. But not always. Over the last two decades, we’ve seen a big rise in new kinds of gaming experiences—cooperative games, cozy games, storytelling games, and more. Games like these leverage game mechanics to build community, encourage expression, or even intentionally lower the stakes to design for new kinds of emergent experiences

On a recent project, IDEO worked with a client that was looking to introduce generative AI workflows into employees’ day-to-day work. They told us that the team responded well to competition and recommended leaning into that to motivate and incentivize participation. So, we split the group into two teams and started tracking achievements to see which team could achieve the highest overall score each week. At first, the teams enjoyed tracking points and competing. But when we introduced a challenge where harder tasks earned more points, participation collapsed. Some tried, but after high scores hit the leaderboard, they felt embarrassed to share lower ones. Others skipped it entirely, assuming they couldn’t measure up.

So, we changed course. Instead of rewarding skill, we gave points for effort and encouraged mentorship over competition. Participation rebounded immediately.

Dialing in the right mechanics for a leaderboard is trickier than you might think. Done poorly, you might discourage the very behavior you’re hoping for. Ultimately, gamification should encourage progress, not perfection.

Myth 3: Gamification works because it’s fun.

Reality: Motivations are much more complex than just fun, and game elements work best when they are tied to more meaningful values.

Fun is suuuuuper subjective. It’s not even helpful to say it’s a motivation. It is an outcome. Some games create fun through storytelling and narrative explorations (think Dungeons & Dragons); other games offer fun through the satisfaction of strategic or tactical problem-solving (think chess). Game designers look at these deeper, more nuanced motivators when they shape an experience.

When we designed the initial prototype for Ethiqly, an AI-powered writing platform for teachers and students, we began with a fundamental belief: motivation goes deeper than fun. Ethiqly is built to support the writing process, not replace it. We applied a play-centered design methodology to uncover intrinsic motivators at every stage. Students don’t just complete tasks—they explore writing voice, style, and critical thinking. Meanwhile, teachers take on the role of game designers, shaping the learning environment through challenges, feedback, and progression systems. Instead of automating away the parts of the writing process that bring users satisfaction and purpose, like students building confidence and skill in developing their point of view, we built experiences that work with their intrinsic motivation. Just like in a great game, the platform gradually increases difficulty, offers meaningful choices, and delivers helpful feedback that sparks growth. Gamification, in this case, works because it isn’t just icing on the cake—it’s a deliberate system for sustained engagement, where technology augments human creativity rather than bypassing it.

Many of the industries that are leaning into gamification—exercise, eating habits, medicine, education—tap into motivations that are similarly complicated. Organizations need to take care to align the ingredients for fun with the criteria for other meaningful outcomes.

Myth 4: Gamification has universal best practices.

Reality: You can’t slap any old game mechanic onto any experience and expect to improve it.

Picture what would happen if you added dice rolls to chess—a game that is deliberately devoid of randomness. You’d change the very essence of it. Similarly, you can’t just add badges to a workout routine and assume it will make the workout better. You might even ruin the original, desired experience.

IDEO once helped design an FDA-approved program to help people quit smoking. The team made early games that were fun to play, but something didn’t feel right.  So, we took a cue from roguelike games, a genre that uses repeated failure to make players’ eventual success more meaningful. (After all, the journey to quit smoking can often include repeated failures.) Some roguelike games even require you to fail in order to level up. Inspired, we applied this kind of game psychology to design a core loop, providing feedback that users could reflect on, understand, and apply on their next attempt. The setup gave users a reason to continue and ultimately succeed.

Layering game elements onto existing activities requires intention and design to dial in the right experience.

When done well, leveraging game mechanics isn’t about points, competition, or chasing fun; it’s about designing experiences that tap into deeper human motivations. The best games can shape how people engage, learn, and grow. But getting it right takes more than a leaderboard—it takes thoughtful design.

At IDEO, we apply play and game mechanics to complex challenges, designing experiences that empower rather than manipulate, motivate rather than pressure, and create lasting impact beyond the next dopamine hit. If you’re looking to build experiences that go beyond the surface and truly engage, let’s talk.

Imagine this: You’re halfway through your fitness challenge, hitting milestones with satisfying progress bar updates and an occasional trip up the leaderboard.

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.