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.

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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

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“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.

The daughter of British and Japanese mathematicians, Sputniko! has become both a fashion icon and feminist spokesperson in Japan for speculative designs like the Menstruation Machine (which imagines a future without menstruation, in which people simulate having periods as a nostalgia exercise) and The Red Silk Of Fate (in which genetically-engineered silkworms produce a thread impregnated with the love hormone oxytocin—the perfect material to weave into a seductive outfit). We wanted to know more about why she chose speculative design as a medium, so we caught up with her to ask a few questions.

COMMUNICATING IDEAS THROUGH POP VIDEOS IS A BOLD MOVE. WHAT LED YOU THERE?

I started as a pop musician. I was writing songs when I was at Imperial College in London, before going on to the Royal College of Art. So I was already making music videos. They seemed like a good way to challenge the "high art" culture. I liked pop art, like Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Andy Warhol. Plus, at the time I was graduating in 2010, YouTube was becoming more significant. So I wanted to tap into that. Nowadays, the internet is so important for this kind of work. I thought that there needed to be more new speculative design work that was intentionally aligning with internet culture and viral culture.

HOW DO THE SCIENTISTS AT MIT FEEL ABOUT HAVING THEIR WORK PORTRAYED IN THIS WAY?

I work hard to be close to the scientists, and discuss with them how to best show their work. So far their reaction has been very positive. Some of the genetic engineers I've worked with have been getting more interest from investors because of the media interest. I think that a lot of scientists secretly want to be passionate and tell stories about their work. But they can't, because they need to be very precise. With us, and these stories, they can detach from that precision in a good way.

Crowbot Jenny by Sputniko!

WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS COME FROM?

I read a lot of science news blogs—I'm an information addict. I'll go through the news about AI, genetic engineering, and so on. What designers can do is imagine a consequence of these new technologies. If any of these imagined narratives ring a bell for me, then I'll do further research, in order to make the idea more concrete.

WHAT TECHNOLOGY IS CAPTURING YOUR ATTENTION RIGHT NOW?

AI and self-driving cars. And of course genetic engineering. But right now, my hottest interest is blockchain. This new system for handling money and identity is increasingly being adopted. Many people are thinking about it in terms of security. But creatives can think of other consequent narratives that could come from Blockchain. For example, how could it change lifestyles?

YOU'VE BEEN AT THE MEDIA LAB SINCE 2013. HOW DID YOU END UP THERE?

I first came to the Media Lab as a TV reporter when I was 27. I had my own TV show in Japan about design, and I came to interview Nicholas Negroponte. I told him how interesting I found the Media Lab, and he responding by telling me that they were looking for a new assistant professor in the arts category, and that I should apply. I was like, what? Me? I don't have a PhD! But I applied, they liked my work, and they invited me to start a new group.

Red String of Fate by Sputniko!

WHAT'S THE ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE LIKE FOR YOU?

I love being in this environment. The only thing that is a challenge is that academia is very paper-based. I don't publish papers, nor do my students. We are more about exhibitions and storytelling. It's not so much in the academic format.

WHY ARE YOU CALLED SPUTNIKO!?

It was my high school nickname. I attended an American school in Japan. I was tall and pale and I liked science and space. So the other students thought I must be half-Russian rather than half-British, and they started calling me Sputnik. Japanese girls' names often end in "ko", so Sputnik became Sputniko. Then, when I started doing music gigs as a student in London, I added the exclamation mark, because I liked the German band Neu!. It was completely not serious—just a band name. I never expected to be making and showing work, let alone teaching at MIT with this name. In Japan, when I go to symposiums and conferences, government ministers call me Sputniko-san. It's so surreal. My name reminds me of my weird career path.

YOUR WORK IS VERY CROSS-CULTURAL. WAS THAT A PRODUCT OF YOUR UPBRINGING?

Partly it was having a British mother and a Japanese father. And also growing up in Tokyo, where western culture and eastern culture are present at the same time. I grew up in Shinjuku. It's where all the skyscrapers are, but also yakuza bars and the red light district. My parents are both mathematicians, so I was surrounded by math. But I also liked art and music. For example, take the way I read books. I usually read about ten books at once, on a kindle. I usually just read five pages at a time. And then I move to the next book. The way I consume information is very parallel. For me, associations and connections are the seeds of my creativity.

DO YOU OVER WORRY ABOUT BEING OVERLOADED WITH INFORMATION?

Overload is not so much a problem for me. For example, I get my eyelash extensions done every three weeks. While that happens, I have to close my eyes for an hour. Which means that I can't look at my smartphone. I used to hate doing eyelash extensions so much. But then I found an eyelash specialist who was a beauty technology expert. She's like a Google for me. When I close my eyes I always ask her, what's a new technology that you've found? That's an example of how information-addicted I am.

The designer and artist Sputniko! may sound like she's from outer space, and that's not far from the truth. An associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab, her work feels like a Large Hadron collision of design, fashion, technology, and pop music—all filtered through the multiple personas she presents on YouTube.

A few years ago, I traveled to Amsterdam in the wintertime. Amsterdam is famous for having rivers flow through its streets, but this winter, the rivers were frozen and they became new roads. Simultaneously, people took advantage of the sudden change and switched to an alternative form of transportation (ice skating!). One person’s thoughtless act can attract other people and become a sort of movement when other people start to join.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

Snow in NYC!

I decided to frame my questions into City Play Project—100 days to observe, create, and capture playful moments in the city. Sometimes I found playfulness in the street cats of Istanbul, or a serendipitous moment of two strangers dancing in the West Village, or even a painted mural in East London.

Once I started my 100-day project, lots of friends—even friends of friends—started making and sending me images of playful interventions from all over the world—Florence, Istanbul, Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, and San Francisco. The most wonderful part about it was seeing how each person defined playfulness. Comparing all the differences helped me find some universal truths. Here are six things I learned from the project.

1. Playing in the city makes you notice things in a completely different way

Once you start looking for playfulness, you see things differently. It’s almost like adopting a traveler’s mindset. A type of pavement or a trash can suddenly look more interesting. You realize that you can be more playful with everything—even your own shadow.

2. It’s contagious

When you play in streets, others play with you. One moment can inspire a movement—just like the sticky notes in the New York subway. Sometimes, you just need to find a way to give others permission to join you in changing the city around you.

Taking over the subway with post-it notes!

3. Playing alone is harder than playing with others

People are terrified by empty spaces, public humiliation, and interacting with strangers in the street. Being silly alone is hard, and being silly with strangers is even harder. Often, we need encouragement from friends to start playing. The person who goes first makes it easier for the rest to be more playful.

4. It brings intimacy, trust, and love

Playfulness brings people closer. If you are brave enough to play with strangers, you can build trust in an instant, unspoken way. People who have never met before can play together. It helps you see the child in others and initiate creative collisions. It creates intimacy, and all that magic leads—or might lead—to love.

Play with city signs and spread the love.

5. Playfulness builds confidence

Allowing yourself to be more playful when you are walking down the street brings more confidence. You become more comfortable with your surroundings, and in how you interact with people, even—strangers. You stop asking for permission to do things, you just do them. A playful mindset allows you to try things, step up, express your thoughts in a physical way without being shy about it.

6. A framework can help encourage it

Constraints may seem like the last thing we should think about when we play, but they can actually spark playfulness. Constraints aren’t always restrictive—especially at an urban scale. The limitations of a cul-de-sac or the weather can push people to unique ways of playing. Sometimes it’s the boundaries that makes us embrace playfulness.

Want to join me in observing playfulness in cities? I challenge you to do the same! Tag your photos with @cityplayproject.

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I’ve always been intrigued by what makes city life so charming. Having spent most of my life as an urbanite, I’ve come to realize that what captivates me most is the playfulness I see around me. Just as we can find inspiration by writing or reading about what interests us, I decided to find inspiration through observation. I wondered “How does play affect how we behave in cities? What are the social and physical effects of play in urban design? If we played more in cities, would we be happier? Fall in love more often?”

Spirit is a simulated AI, a provocation created by IDEO’s London Studio in response to a commission from the Design Museum. It asked designers and their teams—including Yves Behar of fuseproject and furniture designer Konstantin Grcic—to contribute to a project on the future of aging as a sequel to an exhibit of the same topic that they hosted 30 years earlier. The museum asked IDEO to explore what community might look like in the year 2047.

For our project, we aimed to start a dialogue about the role emerging technologies might play in the way people connect as a community. In the future, we may no longer need to drive our children to school, speak with anybody to go grocery shopping, or visit a human doctor. Technology often makes us more independent, and less reliant on human contact and support. To counter the social isolation that may arise, we developed the concept of a free and open-source social AI, a system built to foster strong and healthy communities by strengthening social bonds and keeping people active and mentally stimulated.

Creating the Exhibit

We designed the interactive part of the exhibition for three reasons: We wanted to give visitors a glimpse of what it would be like to interact with an artificial entity; we wanted to see how people would feel about the interaction; and, obviously, we like playful experimentation and prototyping.

Current AI technology is in its infancy when it comes to having a real dialogue with a human being. But just as autonomous cars learn with every mile they drive, these technologies will learn the more they interact with people. Current popular AI products (Siri, Alexa, etc.) listen to user commands and respond. We found it interesting to reverse that by having our Spirit actively ask visitors questions, and rather intimate ones, including: What makes you happiest? What would you be scared of forgetting? Would you trust an artificial intelligence to choose your friends? If you lived to 120, how many partners would you want to have?

The exhibit had two states: An idle state where visitors were encouraged to talk to Spirit and it displayed selected quotes from previous visitors and visualized the data it gathered through a generative visual design, and an interactive state.

The interactive dialogue state took place inside an audio booth. The system greeted visitors with an audiovisual message and a stylized speech-bubble that mediated the conversation. The system then asked different questions, engaging in deeper conversation over time. For example, Spirit might ask, "What makes you happiest," and the answers could vary from "rich relationships" to "when it stops raining," "playing football," or "creating new things and solving problems." Each answer created a new pebble in the visualization, the color, size, and shape of which were determined by an analysis of the length and the emotion of the response. When the visitor finished answering, the pebble merged into a sea of pebbles representing all of the interactions collected so far.

Visual interface design and data visualization by Studio Waltz Binaire

Building Spirit

The technical challenge of the exhibit was to have the system running for five weeks, seven days a week, eight hours per day. There were a lot of pieces talking to each other, and we needed to be able to track the feedback from thousands of visitors.

Spirit used a bespoke script to follow the conversations, and when the answers veered too far from what it had anticipated, it would send the answer to a chatbot API to find an appropriate answer. Unfortunately, the voice to text turned out to be not very reliable in the museum environment, so we focused on the scripted questions.

The technical setup consisted of two components: the audio booth and the large display facing it. To let Spirit know when somebody was present in the booth, we installed an Arduino with an ultrasonic sensor that communicated with an iPhone 6 via Bluetooth. The iPhone was connected to a directional microphone and a speaker.

Here is where the magic happened. On the phone, we ran a custom app. The app turned the voice into text using the Apple Speech Framework, and then analyzed the emotions in the answer using IBM Watson, an iconic AI developed by IBM, while also checking if the answer is in the pre-written script. If it wasn’t, it used another API to get an answer from the chatbot. The information about the answer and emotions was stored and sent to a custom program written in vvvv that communicated with the iPhone app via OSC.

Ambient noise was our biggest worry. It could have prevented the system from understanding visitors’ answers. Also, the position of the microphone was fixed, so reaching different visitor heights and voice volumes was a challenge. This actually proved to be a problem, as there were several interactions in which the voice was unintelligible.

The Data

One good perk of the interactive system is that we had real-time access to the data, so we could follow how well the installation and exhibition were performing, and what the audience was saying. After the exhibition ended, we found a bit more time to use Python and Pandas in the analysis, and Excel to plot the results.

We had a total of 8996 individual sessions with Spirit during the exhibition, about 10 percent of the visitors to the Design Museum.

The emotion recognition system that we used, IBM Watson, is not yet totally reliable (as an example, “yes” was considered a 100% J=joyful answer). But with the amount of data we gathered, the system was still able to give some hints about visitor moods. And the variations in mood could be correlated to external events. For example, we saw a peak in feelings of joy on the 24th, when London hit its highest temperature after a cold January.

When we looked at the answers, we discovered that they seemed more spontaneous and playful than others given via written questionnaires. They were also more honest, suggesting that for some people, sharing intimately with an AI might be less intimidating than talking to a human interviewer. Others, though, were critical and disconcerted. It became clear that it is important to start a dialogue about how we want to interact with AI in our daily lives.

Though the experiment obviously didn’t culminate in a fully-formed product to help the elderly, the interaction model helped us create the kind of AI we would need to build community and increase social interaction, and allowed us to test people’s reactions to emotional and intimate questions from an AI. The experiment also directly related to the work we do with design research. We frequently send design researchers out into the field to talk to people to learn more about their needs and habits, and how we can design solutions to fit their lives. Our work with Spirit begs the question—could even a design researcher be replaced by an artificial researcher at some point? For now, we don’t have a lot of answers, but this experiment helped us push our understanding forward, and we’re excited about the AI-driven insights that will come in the future.

In the top floor of London’s Design Museum, as dozens of visitors walk by and the rain hits the windows, a woman speaks with an AI bot called Spirit. It asks her how many partners she would like to have if she can live until she is 150. She giggles and answers. “Just one—and that is because my husband is next to me.” According to Spirit’s analytics, her answer is 33% sad and 12% joyful.

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.