D4V is a Tokyo-based early stage Venture Capital in partnership with IDEO. Two years ago, D4V invested in healthcare startup Ubie, which develops a service called AI Monshin Ubie. The digital service was created with the goal of reducing the burden on healthcare professionals working long hours, under harsh conditions. AI Monshin Ubie automates a number of patient registration and documentation processes through digital tools, enabling doctors to spend less of their time on manual paperwork, and to dedicate their valuable skills and attention to the patients themselves. Currently, the service is installed in 200 medical institutions in 41 prefectures across Japan.

With AI Monshin Ubie, patients fill out preliminary forms on a tablet, rather than paper, entering information about their health history and current symptoms directly into their digital medical record. As patients fill out the questionnaire, the Ubie AI generates questions in real-time according to patients’ responses, which results in more appropriate and accurate data. The patient’s responses are automatically formatted for the doctor to review prior to and during the consultation. As a result, doctor consultation times and facility operation times are drastically reduced.

With the Coronavirus raising fears of a possible health system breakdown, Ubie has made improvements to anticipate and possibly prevent in-hospital infections. Until recently, Ubie’s services have been primarily used by large hospitals; but in light of the global health crisis, Ubie approached D4V—who partners with IDEO—to help rethink the onboarding experience and quickly facilitate the introduction of AI Monshin Ubie in regional clinics across Japan. D4V and IDEO have been working with Ubie for many years to collaborate in various areas, including UX, rebranding, international research, and more. Therefore, they had a foundation of knowledge from which to build these new features.

Typically, AI Monshin Ubie has been introduced to new hospital clients through direct, in-depth instructional visits from Ubie sales staff. This approach has worked well for rolling out the product to Japan’s 8,000 large hospitals; but for the 100,000 smaller clinics, Ubie needed a more efficient onboarding method to enable staff to get set up smoothly and independently.

During research, D4V and IDEO team members engaged with many different clinic staff members, including full-time doctors, part-time doctors, nurses and receptionists. The researchers found that staff tend to react skeptically to new tools and services, with a common preconception that they will add to their workload. One clinic director’s first impression of AI Monshin Ubie was, “It looks complicated.” But once he actually used the service, he realized that it was very user-friendly.

The team quickly understood that it was important to remove preconceptions by clearly communicating Ubie’s benefits and ease of use. They created a two-minute animation and designed three separate guidebooks. The animation adopted a friendly tone and expressed empathy for doctors, staff members and patients, highlighting how Ubie can bring benefits to each of them. The animation showed how Ubie fits into the existing workflow and explained complex systems in a straightforward and accessible way.

WATCH: A short video clip explains the benefit of their product and service to avoid the users’ concerns in advance.

The guidebook for doctors and directors explains how Ubie’s AI smooths the patient consultation experience and greatly improves the quality of medical care. It also introduces concrete how-tos around set-up, implementation, and ideal workflow. FAQs were also included, addressing concerns about whether or not elderly people would be able to use it.

Ubie business development leader Kenji Yamada says, “D4V and IDEO have a deep understanding not only of design, but of our entire business. They provide inspiration by bringing experience and knowledge that comes from working with other industries and clients outside of healthcare. We appreciate that they can share the knowledge that they’ve obtained with our business.”

Read the Japanese-language version of the Ubie case study here.
When You Feel Unwell, Ask Ubie: Check your symptoms for free
Learn more about Ubie: Global Company Website

In the emergency room, an intervention that’s administered too slowly could cost a patient their life. With COVID-19 fueling a surge in acute respiratory conditions, intubation—a procedure that involves inserting a tube through the mouth or nose and into the airway—is more common than ever. For patients struggling to breathe, the tube can be connected to a ventilator that pumps oxygen to the lungs, keeping them alive.

While a laser-focus on the present is critical for successful patient outcomes, hospitals and physicians often don’t have time to look ahead and anticipate the future of the operating room experience. As technology rapidly improves, there is a ripe opportunity and pressing need to evolve medical equipment to be more innovative and intuitive. Verathon Medical, a global medical device manufacturer, is supporting health care providers at the cutting-edge of care.

Verathon approached IDEO to redesign the existing product system for laryngoscopies and bronchoscopies—procedures that examine parts of the throat through intubation. During these examinations, a tube with a camera embedded in the tip is inserted through the patient’s nose or mouth. The doctor can then see inside the throat on a video monitor, and therefore more easily and quickly intubate and perform the exam.

To create a groundbreaking device, the team observed over a dozen laryngoscopies, bronchoscopies, and intubations. They noticed that many anesthesiologists relied on fixed equipment during the procedures. For example, some had grown accustomed to looking over their shoulder—away from the patient—to view the monitor.

During interviews, physicians and residents expressed difficulties with the current technology, sharing that the small screens aren’t conducive to team viewing or student instruction, and they must often use a separate computer to record patient notes. Others reported frustrating workflows, needing to constantly divert their attention and move their hands between the patient, prep tray, monitor, sterile bin, and disposal bin. These inconveniences and inefficiencies are not only cumbersome, but can increase the risk of infection and fatality.

The team relied on these insights to start designing a next-generation product. Through sketching, storyboarding, and building in real-time alongside doctors and clinic staff, designers quickly teased out additional findings and validated concepts.

This work led to the creation of the GlideScope Core: an all-in-one, portable product system that supports both video laryngoscopies and bronchoscopies. The base of the device—a wheeled cart—has built-in storage units for tools and a disposal bin, offering more mobility and accessibility for medical professionals.

The product’s tagline, “see more, do more,” points to the improvements made to the video system, including a large 10- or 15-inch high-definition touch screen monitor. Displayed images can be enlarged and rotated 180 degrees for improved visualization, team viewing, resident training, and classroom demonstration. To help doctors keep both the patient and monitor in their line of sight, the detachable screen can be secured to an adjustable arm that can be positioned directly over the patient. Additionally, the monitor’s patient annotation feature gives staff access to more of what they need in one device.

The product has been especially valuable for providers and patients during the coronavirus pandemic, when it’s imperative for doctors to keep their distance from patients’ mouths and noses. The GlideScope Core’s movable, detachable, and large, high-definition monitor makes it easier to take this precaution and intubate more quickly. This usefulness is reflected in the 5-fold increase in cart-based device orders for Verathon. While most providers typically order anywhere from 1 to 20 devices for airway procedures, one hospital system requested 600 GlideScope Core systems to meet current intubation demands.

Through modern technology and a focus on human needs, the GlideScope Core supports improved patient outcomes and creates a more seamless operating experience for medical professionals. The product underlines the key but often overlooked fact that often, in order to ensure the healthcare industry is patient-centered, medical device manufacturers and hospitals must also focus on improving the experience of providers.

Healthcare is notoriously difficult to change. Rules and regulations present complex barriers; health practitioners and organizations often have entrenched ways of working; and lives are literally on the line. Despite these significant barriers, the leaders at Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH) boldly committed to improving patient care through a new approach.

NWH is a community teaching medical center in Newton, Massachusetts. Because of its proximity to Boston—a city known for world-class healthcare institutions—NWH needed to differentiate itself. The hospital's new president, Dr. Michael R. Jaff, reached out to IDEO for help: "I knew that providing an unparalleled patient experience would set us apart from our competitors." But, Dr. Jaff’s particular approach was unique. He and Dr. Jodi Larson, Chief Quality and Experience Offer (CQXO), saw an opportunity to drive better patient outcomes through cultural and organizational change.

"You cannot learn any more than when you get to listen to your potential patients say why they would never walk into your place." —Dr. Michael R. Jaff

IDEO partnered with NWH for a year of work together, kicked off by defining the vision for NWH and ramping up to in-hospital prototyping and the launch of several new initiatives. A pilot project with the Women's Imaging Center (WIC) focused on solving departmental and employee challenges to provide a better experience for women getting mammograms.

Fueled by this potential, the WIC team redesigned key work processes and created a set of experience principles that inspired new service prototypes. Guided by principles like "Express mutual gratitude" and "Honor every voice," the WIC team tested ways for patients to acknowledge outstanding caregivers and created tools to gather better feedback from patients and adjust quickly. The experience of designing better services inspired the WIC staff to become ambassadors for the power of design thinking across other departments inside NWH and they continue to build on the work through new prototypes and experiments.

Next, IDEO partnered with NWH’s ambulatory surgery group. They took an analogous research trip to Boston’s Logan airport to see with fresh eyes how other high-touch customer service organizations provide customer value in a complex setting. Insights from the trip were applied through live prototyping of several new experiences inside the hospital, including a pre-surgery visit summary and pre-operation care carts.

Analogous research helped us realize that we can learn from other industries and incorporate some (cool) best practices if we allow ourselves to get over the ‘that would never work in the hospital’ mentality. - Dr. Jodi Larson

One of the most impactful prototypes was Care Modes, a tool to empower the NWH care teams to tailor their approach and interaction with patients based on the patients’ unique needs, beyond simply their clinical requirements. Four distinct approaches were identified for engaging a patient before surgery—Explain, Partner, Embrace, and Encourage. The Care Mode is determined based on the provider's understanding of a patient's degree of self-advocacy and their confidence that surgery is the best solution to their issue.

Historically, care providers have been trained to deliver consistent care above all else. However, Care Modes powerfully acknowledge that patients respond differently to different types of care. The Care Modes empower the team—from surgeon to nurse to anesthesiologist—with a clear framework for how to interact with and provide care for patients so they feel most comfortable. Based on the prototype's success with patients and impact on the staff culture, NWH has incorporated Care Modes into EPIC, the hospital's electronic medical record.

The importance of being patient-centered has been central to the healthcare conversation over the past thirty years; but new explorations reveal that there’s far more potential for innovation and improvement when the provider experience is considered in tandem with the patient’s. Each enables the other, and design for both together yields stronger solutions and better outcomes. IDEO's work with NWH demonstrates this vital shift in user-centered healthcare—one can't design services and experiences for patients without designing for their providers’ culture as well. When these go hand-in-hand, meaningful institutional change in healthcare is more than possible.

The mission of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) is to inspire children to achieve their full potential in the fields of science, technology, medicine, and engineering. Leaders at MSI realized they needed to drive day-to-day operations and maintain historic exhibits while focusing on where to go next. To prepare for its next decade, MSI worked with IDEO to create a new business focus to support the museum’s aspirations for the future. The plan would allow MSI to respond to the demands of the marketplace and raise the funds to get there.

At the beginning of the project, MSI laid out its priorities: improve equity of access, enhance the museum experience, and create a more innovative culture. To dive into each of these areas, IDEO conducted immersive research with families, teachers, donors, and staff.

IDEO brought together 60-plus donors, board members, and staff members to engage in a design thinking exercise to unpack and address the tensions that come with choosing a new strategic trajectory. Instead of having a standard ballot vote, the IDEO team encouraged participants to get up and vote with their feet, helping the group of stakeholders physically align on the museum’s new direction.

At the end of the research and prototyping phases, MSI and IDEO developed a vision called Provoking Minds, Inspiring Futures, creating six detailed design briefs to equip MSI teams to bring initiatives forward. The briefs laid out everything from recommending a new Department of Next, dedicated to ensuring that the future is at the heart of everything the MSI does, to MSI Runway, a place for experimental, small-scale, and limited-run exhibits. The ideas were brought to life with an interactive exhibit, built quickly with everyday materials like plywood and circuit boards, to demonstrate that creating an inspiring vision of the future doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor.

The team also focused on insights that highlighted accessibility issues some families brought up early in the design process—travel across the city via public transportation can be lengthy, and the cost of admission to special exhibits could be prohibitive. To address these concerns, IDEO came up with the Mission Accessible brief: Inspired by casino buses, MSI bus stop signs would be posted in various low-income neighborhoods, signaling a way to take kids and families to the museum for free.

During the project, the IDEO team identified some low-hanging fruit, like rethinking ticketing and improving the student field trip experience, and helped the museum create cross-functional innovation teams to apply design thinking skills towards solving those challenges. They researched, brainstormed, and pushed forward new concepts, meeting weekly to share and build on ideas. At the end of the four week period, each team prototyped their ideas—new outdoor programming, software tools for visiting tour groups—and pitched them to each other.

In 2019, two years after the conclusion of the project, the collaboration paid off. With its new strategic plan and additional resources, the museum has renewed its commitment to serving youth, and MSI’s team, including donors, are aligned on a collective vision of the future. MSI raised more funds than in any previous year, including the single largest gift in its history—$125 million, nearly half of its $380 million fundraising goal—that will help ensure the years ahead.

If it was that easy, we wouldn't have the problems we do. But there is one standout case study of a renewable system that can go on endlessly and at any scale: the forest.

The nutrients created through photosynthesis are interoperable. Anyone in the system can use them. An underground mycorrhizal network connects individual plants so they can transfer water, nitrogen, and carbon based on the needs of the system. The big trees feed the little trees knowing those little trees are going to be big trees one day, and what's most important is the overall health of the system. It’s generous and collaborative and ingenious. It’s a circular economy.

Those principles that nature uses to create abundance can be hugely guiding for us. No one wants to be told we're heading toward a place where we will have less. And less is not IDEO’s vision—abundance is. But it’s a different definition of abundance, one that’s the outcome of a truly circular economy where the whole system is healthy, regenerative, and sustainable, where we’re not just exchanging value all the time, we’re building value.

Circular Design + Sustainability | IDEO

Data point after data point make clear that solutions are needed now. IDEO has long been working to surface some of those fixes, and through that process, our approach and view on how design can and should be part of the climate solution have crystallized. This marks our first piece in a series on climate, our chance to share how IDEO is thinking about and actively working on this challenge.

Since IDEO’s start we have seen the power that comes with having design in your toolkit across all industries. Design enables the development of purpose and strategy, can bring both like-minded and disparate partners together, and is proactive to change coming down the line. Its human-centered nature, tangibility, penchant for prototyping, and optimism allow it to cut through big, abstract challenges—exactly what we are staring down right now. The change that is required is a dramatic one: We need to move as a society into a state where we start living within our planetary boundaries. Circular design can help get us there by making the circular economy vision real.

The role of circular design

There are models for living in harmony with nature, and models that extract as much as possible from it. The problem is that many of our policies, governments, businesses, and lives have been based on that extractive model. We’ve long operated under a linear system: you pull resources, you sell, you consume, you dispose. Value ends. Waste is built into the system. Circular design is the antidote. You're designing with a continuous loop in mind, with the idea that value doesn't have to end. We don't extract as much from the Earth. We keep the products we use in the system.

For businesses, the circular economy is fundamentally about adopting a different kind of operating brain—one that doesn't focus on profit at all costs but instead looks at different ways in which we can create and share value. What if, instead of making money at the point that you sell something, you make it when you buy something or when you repurpose it? What if we give more weight to the people and communities who've been doing this for a long time, resurface what has been designed out by the dominant model, and find new pathways forward together?

But we still see a lot of businesses taking incremental steps towards sustainability. We'll cut a little bit of plastic off our packaging. The mindset is let’s make things less bad. That’s a model that deals with consequences rather than redesigning upstream. We aspire to be part of deeper, more foundational change. At its most successful, circular design can lead to creating a system of abundance because resources are regenerated and remain within the system. It’s a system that is not designed to be less than but greater than, and IDEO is actively working on moving us toward that greater-than future.

How we get there

Embedding circular design into your business requires transformation, which is something we as humans and organizations tend to fear. One way to circumvent that fear is to maintain a people-centric view. Who are the people within your company at this very moment who you can motivate and activate to start working toward climate solutions? IDEO helps companies and organizations take the first step by simply showing them they already have resources who can start to unlock gnarly problems like climate change, but we do so with empathy—acknowledging the pressures at hand and any current limits to their capabilities.

From there, you can begin to build awareness and understanding around what circularity means in the context of your organization and your leadership. What are the possibilities? What might change and how? What’s the first move that you can test? By doing that, you take a staggering question and start breaking it down into addressable parts.

It’s something we’ve done with the overwhelming question of how to end our dependence on single-use plastic bags. The planet uses one trillion of them annually despite their average use of just 13 minutes and lifespan of 400+ years. As the innovation partner of the Beyond the Bag Challenge we are working with major retailers, environmental organizations, start-ups, and individuals to prototype reimagined ways to easily and conveniently transport goods as plastic bags have done.

It’s an optimistic view: that there absolutely are answers that we can bring to life when the questions are global ones and the scope is hard to comprehend. We’re comfortable navigating in contexts with a high level of uncertainty and ambiguity and providing people with the creative confidence to come on that journey.

This optimistic view is a lens that is common in playful conditions. The curious and adventurous attitude that children possess is one that easily lends itself to engaging with complexity, as is needed now, rather than running away from it. While play can sound or feel frivolous in the context of the big questions we are facing and the large ecosystem of players, it’s a valuable design and collaboration tool. When we are immersed in playful conditions, barriers begin to lower, trust begins to build, and we become less adversarial and more cooperative. Play allows us to set aside our assumptions and engage with our imaginations. It allows us to imagine a future that does not yet exist.

And when it comes to that future view, a company’s individual climate concerns are almost never siloed, and that means they can’t be solved in isolation. Our bird's eye view across many different industries also has us putting a premium on collaboration. Our answer is to bring together coalitions of people, multiple stakeholders across the ecosystem who may not have collaborated together before but really should in order to design circular solutions for the future.

With the Circular Economy of Food CoLab, for instance, we work together to explore challenges the food system is facing with companies that include Danone, Kroger and Electrolux, as well as many experts and NGOs and foundations and others who are working on making a better food system. Together we are driving towards making some big systemic changes that address the big systemic questions that cannot be solved by any one organization, like how might we make circular behaviors the default in home kitchens? How might we leverage corporate procurement to mainstream regenerative agriculture? How might we increase biodiversity by encouraging a generation of new supply chains?

We envision moonshots and bold ideas, and we use the design process to break them down into actionable steps. We build to learn, to see, to think. Using design sprints, for example, we can make faster, more informed decisions with lower investment. In iterative loops, we test solutions in context, giving people tangible prototypes to use, so we can understand what's working and refine what's not.

The way forward

Humans never set out to design a climate crisis, but we did. We designed linear, extractive systems that have created the conditions that we are all facing right now. Can design have a positive impact? Absolutely, and that's what gives us hope.

Our process of design thinking has for decades helped us connect deeply with consumers and translate those insights directly into opportunities. But the scale and scope of this problem goes far beyond just individuals. We’re applying the same depth of human-centered design to the industries ranging from food to mobility to consumer products and retail, using the same processes to understand the needs, desires, and constraints of everyone from farmers to boardrooms.

That allows us to see the intervention points with the highest potential—because while acknowledging just how complex and urgent this challenge is, we believe design’s ability to get tangible quickly, to hold both individual needs and the big picture at once, is what’s needed to change the system.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. A circular economy or a sustainable economy isn't just going to happen. We've got to make it. That's what drives us.

—A collaborative piece by global IDEO

‍

In the midst of our climate crisis there’s a desire for certainty. Show me a case study where a corporation has solved this. The thing is, they haven’t.

Alight, a non-profit that provides humanitarian assistance to people on the move, made the introduction to help us learn more about the refugee experience.

After the Russian invasion, Yulia’s family traveled to her parents’ home just outside the capital. But upon learning that friends had been killed while driving nearby, she decided the family needed to leave Ukraine.

Adult males are required to stay back and defend the country, so Yulia said goodbye to her husband and father and headed toward the Polish border with no destination in mind beyond “out.” She had very few friends to assist her; everyone she knew was in the same situation. At the Medyka border crossing, Yulia, her mother, and her children stood in line through the night to gain entry, then boarded a bus to a hotel in Krakow. It was there that she learned about Alight.

*name changed to protect privacy

Address the Human Need

Alight has spent 40 years working with displaced people, from distributing food relief during the Somali famine to building emergency shelters for Burundian refugees in Rwanda. Since February, the organization has been in Ukraine and neighboring Poland, where millions fleeing the war have headed.

Within weeks of being on the ground at the border, it became clear to Alight that refugees were encountering a lack of credible guidance on housing in Poland. Alight quickly partnered with Airbnb, which was offering Ukrainians free housing for up to 30 days.

Alight’s Housing Guides—easily identified by their vibrant yellow vests—assisted with bookings. But it was a person-to-person effort, done at the border crossing, at train stations, and in conversations over text and social media. Alight knew it had to greatly scale its ability to get Ukrainians into safe and free accommodations—they needed a tool that could be accessible in varied and rapidly changing contexts. And they wanted to make sure that tool was designed to be useful from day one. “The goal was to learn what Ukrainians needed from the moment of arrival at the border to when they settled in stable housing,” says IDEO Design Director Karen Hentschel.

As an organization that has long applied human-centered design to emergency situations, Alight knew that amidst chaos and uncertainty, designers are able to zoom out, spot underlying human needs, and work quickly to prototype, test, and iterate a solution with the intended audience. Alight worked with our teams at IDEO and IDEO.org to make that happen.

Move Fast and Fix Things

Alight knew that Yulia and her family represented thousands urgently in need of housing and support services. Because we work in IDEO’s Munich studio, we were able to deploy to Poland within days, and IDEO.org designed the initial digital tool within weeks.

Once on the ground in Krakow, IDEO’s Alex Eaton, Tilo Krueger, and David Sjunnesson shadowed Alight’s guides—Ukrainians who had undergone the same journey as the people they were helping and now served as experts in the field. Observing them as outsiders allowed us to spot patterns.

“Alight is very focused on the person in front of them. We were able to take a step back, look at the journey, and see how Alight could support in more places,” says Sjunnesson. "One big part of that was creating a journey map of the first 30 days that identified moments of indecision and decision.”

Build Trust

In an emergency, people need more than food and shelter. They need to feel safe. The border is replete with resources, but not all are trustworthy or reliable.

And Alight isn’t a household name, so establishing trust in the organization and its resources was key. We knew that replacing text-based communications with a professional looking, resource-rich digital portal would help.

Thoughtful curation was also key. “You don’t want to have a million different options, you want to have three good ones,” says Sjunnesson. The design team found that information overload compounded people’s sense of overwhelm and recommended that Alight recruit additional guides to travel across Poland to gather data on housing, schools, workplaces, and job boards that the organization could vouch for.

Design for Clarity and Compassion

The digital prototype, which was refined over a six week period, initially featured three cities where Alight had a presence, could provide support, and could guarantee safety and a quality experience. But the way that information was delivered was equally important, says Alight Engagement Guide Leah Combs. The organization hoped for “a softness and a gentleness and a simplicity of navigation, a place where people could land and feel immediately comfortable.”

The resource was also designed to be nimble, with Alight able to make updates to the site within minutes. “The urgency of a humanitarian crisis lends itself to a design process anchored in rapid prototyping and continuous iteration,” says IDEO.org CEO Shauna Carey. “But it’s not just about making something that works well—a human-centered approach helps ensure we’re creating a product that is also responsive to the emotional context of the situation."

Impact

The site gave Alight the ability to scale beyond time and place. Alightguides.org logged roughly 150,000 views within the first month. With its added reach, Alight provided 25,555 days of safe housing through Airbnb. Ukrainians now have access to Alight in moments when its expertise and assistance might otherwise be invisible: in an apartment, on a bus, or in any of the many moments prior to their arrival at the border.

Aside from tangible support, the tool offers something Yulia told us she desperately needed: The peace that comes from knowing where one’s family is going to sleep that night.

Support Alight's humanitarian efforts here.

—This article was written in collaboration with IDEO Europe, Alight, ideo.org, and our partners.

We met Yulia*, a Ukrainian mother in her 40s, at our hotel in Krakow. She had fled from Kyiv with her teenage daughter and toddler and was eager to tell us her story.

Design thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit—taking a human-centered approach to translating ideas into tangible strategies and offerings. Design thinking accelerates innovation, helping create better solutions for the challenges facing business and society.

ExperiencePoint, in collaboration with IDEO, created the simulation game ExperienceInnovation to provide a direct experience with design thinking. Teams compete to solve a realistic and complex challenge while engaging with the terms, techniques, and thought patterns of successful innovators.

Built for designers and non-designers alike, ExperienceInnovation creates an energizing, practical, and relevant learning experience that supports tangible business objectives using leading-edge technology. The workshop is optimized for a half- or full-day experience and is available as an in-class exercise, or online for remote teams. To date, over 15,000 people from a variety of companies and industries have completed ExperienceInnovation experience.

Learn more about ExperienceInnovation.

ExperienceInnovation is a workshop in innovation, giving teams meaningful experience with design thinking.

「プロトタイピング力」とは、大きく分けて２つある。それは、その課題を解決する上での「WHAT（何を作るべきか）」と「HOW（どう作るか）」である。この２つを両方使いこなし、自ら解決策を試作できるようになった時、自己効力感（Self Efficacy）が「ぶち上がる」のである。そんな自己効力感のマインドセットについて書かれているのがクリエイティブ・コンフィデンス日本語版ではクリエイティブ・マインドセット)だ。クリエイティブ・コンフィデンスに満ちた個人はどのような課題に直面しようと、自らの創造力とモノづくりの技術で何らかの解決策を提供できると確信し嬉々としてアクションを起こすことができる。それこそがデザインの持つ力であり、これからの時代に不可欠な能力だ。

理系も文系も、言い訳のできない時代

これまで数多くの中学、高校、大学でデザイン思考を教えてきた中で一つ問題に感じるのは、多くの学校で「WHAT」と「HOW」を分けて考えてしまっていることである。文系の学校の場合「WHAT」の議論には熱を入れるが、文系だからという言い訳をしてなかなか「HOW」に触れようとしない。理系や工学系の場合は、「HOW」のトレーニングは積むが「WHAT」は別の誰かの仕事と考えている。しかし、ECサイトを誰もが数分で立ち上げることができ、アプリだってスプレッドシート一つでノーコードで作れて、どんなノウハウもYoutubeを通して無料で学べる昨今において、理系だ文系だ、はもはや言い訳にはならない。思いついたアイディアを、誰かに作ってもらうのを待つのではなく、自らの手でプロトタイプするマインドセット、それこそが現代の教育の目指すべき姿だ。

そのために必要なのは、なるべく早い段階から、小さい成功体験を積み上げることだ。最初からSDGsのような巨大な社会課題に挑むのではなく、まずは目の前にいるたった一人の誰かのために「最高の贈り物を届ける」だけ。そのくらいライトな捉え方でデザインを行うことが大切である。成城大学のキャリアセンターから「デザイン思考をベースとした授業をやってもらえないか」というお誘いを頂いたのは、そんなことを考えている最中だった。

DESIGN THINKING LABという6週間の実験

「DESIGN THINKING LAB―モノづくりを通して、世界の見方を変えるー」というタイトルの元に実施することとなった6週間の授業では、「どのようにして、コロナ対策下のキャンパスライフをより一層楽しくできるだろうか?」をテーマに約20人の有志の学生たちに課題を発見し、解決策を考え、プロトタイプを作り、それを学内で実装してもらった。デザイン思考のいわゆる5つのステップのようなビジネスライクなフォーマットでは学生たちはすぐにそっぽを向いてしまうため、あくまでも「たった一人の同級生のための最高の贈り物」を作るための6週間であることを強調した。

その結果、僕がこれまで行ってきた数々の授業の中でも格別に素晴らしいアウトプットが文系の学生たちの手から次々と作り出されていった。中でも、食堂の券売機の見づらさに嫌気が刺したとある3年生の学生が、より見やすいデザインのラベルを作り勝手に券売機に貼り付けた結果、食堂スタッフに大ウケし、成城大学の公式のインスタグラムアカウントにも取り上げられ、公式運用されたケースには度肝を抜かれた。これこそが、本当の意味での課題の発見および解決能力であり、小さくも大きな成功体験なのである。

言葉の議論に逃げない、プロトタイプは現場に持っていく

今回の6週間の授業を設計する上で特に意識したことは2つある。まず一つは、言葉の議論に逃げないことである。大企業の役員であろうと、メーカーのエンジニアであろうと、大学生であろうと、得てしてヒトは抽象的な言葉の議論が大好きな生き物である。脳内で妄想を膨らませてるときは楽しいし、言葉の定義の議論などは夜な夜な続いてしまう。しかし、具体的な解決策を実装しよう、という時には、決して言葉に逃げてはいけない。描いて、作って、見せて、頭の中にふわふわしたイメージに残酷なほどに具体的な形を授けないといけないのである。これを習慣付けるトレーニングを積んだ人は、世界中どこに行っても必ず事を成すことができる。

もう一つ意識したのは、作成したプロトタイプを、少し無茶をしてでもゲリラ的に現場に実装してみる、ということである。せっかくプロトタイプを作っても、それが机の上に置いてあっては無価値だ。券売機の例のように、正規のルートで許可をとらなくても勝手にやってしまうことで、却って早く受け入れられることは往々にしてある。今回の授業では、他にもゴミ箱の見つけづらさを解消するためにゴミ箱アイコンを各所に貼り付けてみたり、殺風景な部室棟の至るところに可愛いキャラクターのイラストを張り巡らしたり等というアウトプットがあった。IDEOではマントラのように「Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness （許可をもらうな、許しを乞え）」というが、大学生であっても少し背中を押せば意気揚々とそれをやってのけた。（当然、裏で大学の事務局の方々のサポートは沢山あったのだと思い、最後まで献身的にサポートしてくださった姿勢には頭が上がらない。）

もちろん、今回の授業のやり方が完成形だとは全く思っていないし、6週間という期間が十分だったとも思っていない。ましてや、今年の5月に経済産業省が出した「未来人材ビジョン」レポートにあるように、こうした探究的な授業には我々のような企業がどんどん参画していくべきにも関わらず、現段階では企業側の水準にあった予算を学校側が捻出できている訳でもない。まだまだ課題はあるが、それでも、たったの6週間でも、美大生でなくても、デザインというツールを通して学生たちのクリエイティブ・コンフィデンスを（少しは）ぶち上げることができたという事実は、これからの教育のあり方の一つの取っ掛かりを作れたと思う。

僕たちの日常は問題にあふれている。悪化する国際情勢から、数日前に僕のウェットスーツに突如空いた穴まで、事の大小問わず、問題ばかりである。そういった問題を、自らの手で解決していく志と技能を育むことが、本来の教育の目的であると思う。現に、多くの教育機関のビジョンステートメントには、課題の発見および解決能力の育成という趣旨が多種多様な文言で書かれている。しかし、実際に率先して課題解決に向けて動く人材になるために欠かせないと思うスキルが一つある。それは、「プロトタイピング力」である。

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.