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.

Creativity Challenge # 10: Help your group understand innovation thinking

If you attend a class or an executive program at the d.school, the first day will most likely include a fast-paced, hands-on activity we call Design Project Zero, or DP0 for short. Rather than try to explain our process for innovation, a DP0 is intended to give people an overview by experiencing it in a microcosm. Faced with a simple innovation challenge, you have a chance to start with empathy, create new ideas, and then build some rapid prototypes, all within about 90 minutes. DP0 projects focus on everything from the gift-giving experience to the ramen-eating experience. The original DP0, explained very briefly here, is called The Wallet Exercise.

The exercise uses a simple object that most people carry with them as a prop to discover needs, design and prototype solutions, and get user feedback. It gives everyone a chance to cycle quickly through the human-centered design process.

Tool: The Wallet Exercise
Participants: Pairs in groups of any size
Time: 90 minutes, plus preparation
Supplies: The facilitator’s guide (available on the d.school website) includes a complete list of instructions, worksheets, and prototyping materials. The instructions and worksheets can be printed out for each participant or projected on a screen. Provide prototyping materials (essentially basic craft supplies, which may include markers, colored paper, aluminum foil, tape, pipe cleaners, etc.).

Instructions

Step 1: Participants pair off, with one starting as the interviewer/anthropologist, while the other plays the part of the prospective customer. The interviewer spends a few minutes understanding and empathizing with the other person. The interviewee/customer takes out his or her wallet or billfold, and they have a discussion about the items inside and the meaning attached to them. The interviewer asks questions to see how the wallet fits into the customer’s life, looking especially for problems or friction points associated with the wallet. For example: "Have you ever lost your wallet?" "Do you use it differently when traveling internationally?" "Which items do you take out most often?"

After just a few minutes, the facilitator calls time, and the team members reverse roles, with the interviewer in round one becoming the customer in round two.

Step 2: After the participants have had a chance to understand the customers and their wallets, the next step is to develop a point of view about their latent needs and missed opportunities with regard to their wallets. Those need-based points of view can take the form of a sentence like, “My customer needs a way to ... [user needs] ... in a way that makes them feel...[meaning/emotion] ... because ... [insight].”

For example, “My customer needs a way to keep track of the contents of their wallet in a way that makes them feel secure, because if they lose their wallet, the anxiety of not knowing what has gone missing can be worse than losing the cash inside.”

Step 3: In a form of mini-brainstorming, each participant generates a few concepts for new objects—they may not be physical wallets at all—that satisfy the needs highlighted by their point of view developed in step two.

Step 4: In the most kindergarten-like phase of the wallet exercise, participants create the roughest of prototypes to bring their ideas to life. Using an eclectic mix of materials like construction paper, duct tape, pipe cleaners, and binder clips, each person will build a prototype just good enough to make the idea tangible so that they can get feedback from their future customer.

Step 5: Using their storytelling skills, a selection of participants “pitch” their new-to-the world wallet concept to their customer and/or to the room at large.

Tips from the Field

The wallet exercise is all about the journey, not the destination. Reading about the wallet exercise doesn’t deliver experiential learning. The value is in the doing.

Much of what people take away from this experience happens when debriefing the wallet exercise with the whole group. Ask a few pairs to share their prototypes with the larger group. You might ask, “Has anyone’s partner come up with a solution that is so great that you need it right now?” or “Is there an idea so ingenious that it should be backed on Kickstarter?” or “Has someone designed something that is incredibly personal?” Have each pair come up and describe the need they discovered and the prototype they built. Use these shared stories to drive home lessons about empathy, prototyping, getting feedback early and often, and so forth.

This fast-paced format can work for many kinds of challenges. Once you have mastered The Wallet Exercise, think of other innovation challenges to tackle, like redesigning your daily commute or exercise regimen.

Making New Habits

Some psychologists claim that you have to practice a new behavior for twenty-one days before it begins to become a habit. The operative word is “practice.” The weeks, months, or years spent thinking about new behaviors don’t count. So pick your favorites from this chapter or create some new experiments of your own. Start accelerating down the runway now if you want your new skills to take flight.

This post was taken from Chapter 7 of Creative Confidence. Purchase the book for more on how to use creativity to solve problems, or read more from this series of creative exercises on the IDEO blog.

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Everyone is creative. This belief runs through everything we do at IDEO, and in 2013, it led my brother David and me to write a book that would help others—even those who don’t think of themselves as “creative types”—to unleash their creative potential. Creative Confidence has inspired thousands of people to adopt a creative mindset and apply it to the diverse real-world challenges they face. In this series, we’ll share some exercises from the book that can help you approach your challenges from a new perspective.

In this post, I'll be sharing a method that I've developed to help IDEO designers prototype immersive media experiences for our clients. But first, let's think about the emerging medium we're designing for.

Tools enable, storytellers enthrall

Early filmmakers in the 20th century had a new tool in the motion picture camera, but had yet to fully explore how to use it to maximum effect. The closest frame of reference for film was theater, so in the silent era, many directors placed the camera “fifth-row center,” and filmed movie scenes as if they were sitting in a theatrical audience—no cuts, close-ups, zooms, or pans.

Over time, filmmakers experimented with and ultimately developed an established visual language for the new medium. Think of it as the film equivalent of grammar—sentences, paragraphs, and so on.

Early attempts at 360° videos were effectively in the same place as traditional film was 120 years ago. Since the camera can see in all directions—and the user can look in any direction at any time—the classical visual language of film no longer applies. Creators are having to experiment all over again to develop a new visual language that works in this medium.

360˚ video is great for first-person-like views of extreme sports, but it poses a number of challenges for producing narrative content. If the camera can see in all directions, what do we do with the background? How do we direct the viewer's attention?

In response to these challenges, the creators of some first-wave 360˚ videos have chosen to plunk the camera down and orchestrate a performance around it. In other words, if the camera can look everywhere, let’s put the action everywhere.

It’s one way to deal with the format, but I’ve been exploring other ways we might begin to tackle the storytelling challenges of 360˚ video, and also address some of the production hurdles we encounter when we shoot in 360˚.

One of the first instincts creators might have is to buy a 360˚ camera. But that’s a lot of money you really don’t need to spend, and I’d even argue that in some cases, a 360˚ camera may actually limit creative possibilities. Instead, we can repurpose our existing tools.

A partial view of the world

To address this challenge, I’ve created techniques that use traditionally-shot 2D film footage to create composite, immersive 360˚ video worlds. These GIFs showcase a quick overview of the technique, in which four traditional shots are blended into a single 360˚ scene.

So what exactly is happening here?

To start, let’s look at what a spherical 360˚ scene looks like when it’s unwrapped.

This is called an equirectangular grid, and it is one of the standards that Facebook and YouTube have aligned around. As you can see, there is significant distortion at the top and bottom of the image. These are the the poles that, when spherized, represent the top and bottom of the view. The centerline, however, remains relatively distortion-free, and luckily for us, that’s the horizon line in all directions.

When wrapped, this distorted grid becomes a clear shape.

Creating your first 360˚ scene

This workflow uses Adobe Premiere Pro, but if you prefer another video editing suite without native VR export, don’t worry, there’s a workaround at the end.

First, let’s get the tech specs out of the way. You’ll want to set up your project and sequence with these settings:

• For best results, I recommend editing in a 4K workspace (3840x2160px) at either 30p or 60p.
• When compositing 2D shots into the scene, I recommend sticking to the equator of the image as it will have the most predictable results.

Once you have that workspace, import your desired 2D footage. In my example above, I used footage composited on a black background that blends seamlessly into the (also black) background of the 360˚ world, resulting in invisible edges around each of the shots. I was also able to luma-key (effectively a form of green screening) the background so I could overlay several shots to create large scenes composed of multiple individual shots. In my real-world shoots, this technique allowed me to composite multiple individual shots, helping a tiny set to punch well above its weight.

The secret sauce: 360˚ metadata

Now you’ve got your 360˚ scene prepared and are ready to export it for upload. Here’s where the magic happens: To get YouTube or Facebook to see your 360˚ video as such, you must include the proper metadata.

This is much easier than it sounds. If you are using Adobe Premiere Pro CC (2015 or above) this feature is built in. Find it in the export settings at the bottom of the “Video” tab here:

If you do not have native VR export in your video editing software, don’t worry, there is a workaround:

1. Export your 4K video to H.264 as you normally would.
2. Inject the required metadata using the YouTube Spatial Media Metadata Injector. This is not as scary as it sounds, and it will enable both YouTube and Facebook to detect your video as 360˚ content.
   — First, download the YouTube Injector tool for Mac or Windows.
   — Unzip the file, then use the application to open up your video export.
   — Select “My video is spherical (360)”.
   — Process your file.

That’s it. Just a simple press of a button, and your video will be recognized as 360˚ content on all the major platforms.

Happy uploading!

This story was originally published on IDEO Labs.

Thanks to native support on Facebook and YouTube, virtual reality and immersive 360˚ video have reached a tipping point in which production, distribution, and consumption are now available to almost everyone. There’s one problem, though: Many creators are still struggling to find the best way to tell stories with this medium.

As an adult, it's been important to me to use my design skills to recognize how much my father and my time in nature helped shape who I am. In college, my thesis project “FLOA” was a tribute to flowers and my father (FLOA = flower + appa—“dad” in Korean.) It was a small flower garden with different sizes of flower pots filled with lilies, dandelions, and roses. Working on the project created a special moment for me and my dad.

That was the first time I created something to honor the impact my father and our time in nature had on me. Years later, at IDEO, I started working on a project to redesign flowerpot systems and plant care instructions for consumers. Through the design research process, I got to observe how people take care of thousands of plants, how they are nurtured, and how they travel to consumers. I started to feel like a flower doctor, figuring out how to create a flowerpot that would best help them grow. I wanted to communicate that message to others, that caring for flowers isn’t entirely unlike caring for our own human bodies. To share that message, I decided to create a font system that combines the visual styles of botanicals and x-ray imaging. It would be a tribute to my dad and the connection I feel to nature, and hopefully inspire others to feel that same connection.

Instead of relying on existing x-rays of flowers, I decided to use the flowers from my memories to make the font. I went back to the journal of flowers I’d kept for 20 years and scanned them to convert them into a digital format, then applied the x-ray effect and arranged them into an alphabet. I named the font Small Forest.

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I then connected with my IDEO colleague Todd Vanderlin, who is a genius creative coder. He used the flower scans to create an interactive digital experience that allows people to draw with flowers, stems, and leaves. Lines drawn by the user turn into beautiful botanicals before their eyes.

The program does not use any fancy machine learning algorithms or computer vision techniques. Todd wanted me to choose the direction, orientation, and type of each flower, building my own library of botanicals.

The software starts by analyzing the line stroke, search for long continuous segments based on the change in angles. The segments then source flower parts based on their tags and configurations.

When Todd showed me how he created the coding system, it was mind blowing. I felt like I was on a spaceship traveling to the future. We unveiled the digital experience at an event that IDEO Cambridge and MIT Media Lab hosted earlier this year called Future Fest, an interactive art show that invited guests to explore the interactions of art, technology, and humanity. I loved watching guests interact with the botanicals and create their own nature-inspired art.

Small Forest is a project that ties me to my dad and my childhood. But thanks to Todd, it became something much bigger—something that can delight others, and inspire them to take on art projects of their own. As you think about your own journey, don't forget to recognize the people and experiences that got you here, and to use your skills to create something that just might inspire someone else.

Special thanks to Todd Vanderlin for collaborating with me on this project.

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My father always told me the most beautiful and creative art in the world can be found in nature. Growing up in Korea, visiting botanical gardens was our family ritual—I even kept a journal where I picked leaves and flowers, and dried them in its pages. These memories and the spirit of nature helped me build my creative world.

It turns out there’s a strong correlation between social media use and nap entrapment. Personally, I found my Instagram use skyrocketed during the first four months of my then-newborn’s life. And during the entrapment days, two Instagram accounts really stood out from the rest. The first was the actor/rapper Will Smith’s energetic, curious, family-friendly account. His posts are a mix of throwback photos featuring Jeff Goldblum, comparisons of his baby pictures to Rhianna, and vintage videos of wife Jada mouthing off to Eazy-E about feminism.

The second belonged to the musician and artist Patti Smith. Her account is poetic, reflective, and sincere. Its posts range from a meditation on the morning light playing upon her “thinking chair,” to fanning out hard over Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation. Or maybe it was a hankering to fit some synthesis—the IDEO designer's process of creating a cohesive narrative from a sea of nuanced human stories—into my maternity leave. But I grew intrigued by their common last name.

Thus came constraint number two: Could one create a captive, compelling Insta feed, one that guides the viewer on an engaging, winding, whimsical journey, featuring only Smiths? What story would come out of weaving multiple online personalities together? It was synthesis, but with other people’s lives.

To make things really interesting, I added two more Smith feeds. Kevin, one of the masterminds behind films like Clerks and Dogma, balances goofball humor with poignant reflections on life and health. Singer Sam, the fourth and final Smith, is a modern day crooner who keeps his posts pithy and punchy.

Together, the four Smith feeds created balance in a random sort of harmony. Squinting from just the right angle, I was surprised to find common threads in their posts. Stills from Sam’s iconographic performance stages flowed seamlessly into Patti’s gently-lit trip to La Recoleta cemetery. Kevin’s collection of Weebles set up Sam’s visit to a trinket-ridden open air market, before handing off to Will’s portrait of an eclectic man’s fashion in Tybee Island, GA.

With nothing more than a ubiquitous last name and fame connecting these four, gestural themes emerged. Parenthood, childhood, dental hygiene, activism, Rhianna.

These are more than Smith themes. These are modern human themes. But Instagram’s real-time format muddied this story. I wondered if there was a way to create a thematic flow—one long, chaptered story—rather than a chronological one. The solution lied in a third, and final, constraint: a fixed feed. One in service of a single story in time, rather than a constantly evolving one.

And so, Selected_Smiths was born. A static Instagram narrative, comprised of snaps from all four instagram feeds. The final edit was made on July 22, 2018. 59 posts total, culled from the original Smiths’ feeds. Best viewed from bottom to top and with 30 minutes to spare, so as to read all comments and hashtags.

What started as a nap-trapped experiment turned into a lesson on the power of constraint. Selected_Smiths was born of three constraints: one situational, one coincidental, and one editorial. If Selected_Smiths is the steel ball, then these constraints were the bumpers in the pinball machine of my mind. Launched with gusto, frantically bouncing past flashing lights and through sound fields, the bumpers present a barrier, ricocheting the ball to loss or victory. Constraint demands perseverance, triggers ingenuity, and every once in awhile helps you execute on a weird idea.

Like creating one story with four people who share the same last name. Funny, serious, flip, human—the internet really does it all.

Nap-trapped (noun): When an infant falls asleep on a person in such a way that they are rendered immobile. As in: On maternity leave, I often found myself nap-trapped in a position that demanded complete stillness of all extremities… apart from my right arm. This constraint inspired a somewhat esoteric design research experiment that I took on—sometimes literally—with one hand tied behind my back.

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.