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.

At IDEO, we like to breathe new life into the mundane with design. In an effort to shape a new paradigm of meeting-dom, here are some of our best resources on making your next conference-room gathering stand out—in a good way.

1. When you want to kick things off with a bang

Stretch! Sketch! Dance! Build in a few minutes for a new opening exercise and you’ll have a team that’s fully present and ready to get down to business.

READ: 6 Ways to Kick Off Creative Meetings

2. When you have a mixed bag of introverts and extroverts

An IDEOer once called the San Francisco space an “extroverted office full of introverts.” If you have a team of folks all across that spectrum, these exercises will strike a balance between team-together-time and solitude.

READ: 5 Brainstorming Exercises for Introverts

3. When you want people to really get to know each other

Whether bringing together a brand new team or sitting down with old colleagues, a jam-packed room can make for an overwhelming and impersonal experience. Ditch the canned icebreakers and try one of these instead—any of these exercises will help reveal your group’s commonalities.

READ: 5 Exercises for Breaking Down Barriers

4. When morale needs a boost

Do any of your meetings have a jingle? Didn’t think so. Reset your whole meeting philosophy with some out-of-the-box tips.

READ: How to Design a Meeting That Doesn’t Suck

‍

Meetings. Maybe you’re in one right now. (Are you paying attention?) Maybe you have one in ten minutes. (Are you prepared?) We know them well—and we know they’re not usually the highlight of your day. In fact, they can be quite the opposite.

A GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) is a type of AI that pits two neural networks against each other, each one training the other to improve its ability. Unlike other types of AI, GANs don’t just recognize objects—they can create them. GANs borrow a feature from biology and pit two competing neural networks against each other. One network, the “generator,” produces synthetic images, while another network, the “discriminator,” tries to guess whether the images are synthetic or real. The discriminator learns from both synthetic and real images, getting better over time. As it improves, it challenges the generator to produce ever more realistic synthetic images.

During a bite-sized sabbatical from my day job at IDEO CoLab, I dove head first into building and exploring the visual potential of GANs. I learned a lot about the differences between how humans and computers see the world, and how an AI’s output is shaped by the data we provide it. As designers, it’s important for us to understand the limitations of emerging technologies likes GANs—or else we risk creating products that harm, rather than help, humans. Here’s what I created, and what I learned. (Want to learn how to set up your own GAN? Read more here.)

1. Choosing a dataset

GANs can generate convincing fake pictures of almost anything—faces, cats, and even anime characters. How do they do it? It all depends on the dataset. GANs need to be fed a large set of images (think tens of thousands or more) so they can learn patterns. For example, GANs that produce faces learn that they tend to be roughly round, have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, and possibly hair on top. They learn pixel-level patterns, too—the textures that make up skin, eyes, and hair.

The trick with GANs is finding sets of images large enough and diverse enough for a network to pick out patterns. There are plenty out there—like CelebA (hundreds of thousands of celebrity faces) or LSUN (images of scenes like rooms and buildings)—but these are all meant for this kind of research, and training with them tends to illustrate how successful GANs can be.I wanted to do the opposite. What if we try to stretch GANs to their limit, so that we can get a better understanding of how they work? In this case, we’re using images from The Simpsons.

2. Training the GAN

Once I had my dataset of images from the show, it was time to train the GAN. For those familiar with machine learning, read my step-by-step process here. For everyone else, here’s the gist of it: I installed an open-sourced machine learning software called TensorFlow on my computer, which I souped up with a hefty graphics card originally bought for virtual reality and gaming. I then used a series of tools to reformat and resize images from my Simpsons dataset.

I trained the network overnight (sometimes over multiple days) and saved examples of images created by the generator network. The video below documents the learning process of the generator. With time, the images began look more and more like the actual Simpsons.

Scrub through the video to see the network’s progress. At 1:10 (about 13 hours of training), the first outlines of Simpsons eyes appear. At 2:00 (about 23 hours), the color scheme becomes noticeably brighter and figures start to emerge. At 3:00 (about 34 hours), there is less variation as shapes start to solidify and the networks reach some stabilization on what is classified as “real.” At 5:00 (about 57 hours) and beyond, the shapes start to vaguely resemble Simpsons characters, though the result is still too psychedelic and abstract for us to truly classify the images as real Simpsons frames.

3. Making sense of the output

The GAN manages to generate very Simpsons-esque images, but they’re definitely not going to fool the human eye. What’s going on? GANs (and any neural network or machine learning method, for that matter) only learn patterns that are in the training data. As humans, we have a deep and complex understanding of what people and objects should look like, including Simpsons characters and scenes in the show. The GAN, however, doesn’t bring any preexisting knowledge. It has to learn everything from the raw pixel values of the images it sees, and more complex patterns take more examples to learn.

In this case, the GAN easily learns the color palette of The Simpsons and its simple, flat illustration style, and starts to learn the features of each character. With enough training data, it may learn more complex patterns, like complete images of characters, or which characters show up in which settings (like the Simpson family at home, or Mr. Burns at the power plant).

What’s it all mean?

The varied and strange outputs of these networks are a succinct example of both the promise and risks of building products, services, or systems with machine learning inside. They’re seemingly magical, learning from patterns in data without being told what to look for, but they’re also limited by that data. Imagine you came into this world yesterday and had to make sense of it all just from still frames of The Simpsons—how would that inform your thinking?

Biases in training data, intended or not, will be reflected in the output of the network, which, if embedded into a product or service, can codify the bias at an unprecedented scale. As designers, we are uniquely positioned to help with this problem. As Kate Crawford, cofounder of the AI Now Institute has said, the problem is neither a specifically social nor technical problem: It’s a socio-technical problem. Designers have a responsibility to understand the unique role data plays in machine learning, so that we can create networks that equitably serve human needs.

Learn more about training GANs on IDEO Labs. Special thanks to CoLab’s Adam Lukasik for his help wrangling GANs for this post.

Pop quiz: What the heck is a GAN? You might not have heard the term, but you’ve likely seen one in action. From generating images of fake celebrities, to creating training data for self-driving cars, and even recreating suggestive (and weird) nude portraits, GANs are everywhere these days. But what exactly is this bleeding-edge technology, and what can we do with it?

In one sentence, who are you?

I am Vince Kadlubek, CEO and cofounder of Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am a momentum artist. I have dedicated my life to the study and sculpting of momentum, which primarily entails finding authentic, collaborative understandings and influences with the brilliant people around me.

What does a typical work session look like?

I'm usually dealing with these questions: What is the brightest vision? How do we articulate that vision? What steps are necessary for the most effective articulations? Work sessions are meetings or checking email. Those are the two kinds of work sessions I have these days. Sometimes I get to have creative work sessions, which are really just big meetings with beer and Indian food.

When it came to building something like the House of Eternal Return, we imagined, then found scrap armature materials, started producing structure and skin, utilized a bunch of air drying sculpting medium, and started turning large amounts of the exhibit into plaster forms. Lots of stuff was sculpted around the armature produced by the architects and general contractors, using more standard finish practices like painting.

3 favorite possessions?

Oh gosh. Together, “favorite” and “possession” are kinda an oxymoron for me. All I can think about are non-physical things like my memory, my spirit, and my compassion.

How do you get over creative block?

Collaborate with someone who is not stuck in a creative block.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

The last item on my to-do list was to donate money to Beto O'Rourke. But as for work, my last to-do item was to send our SVP of art direction a copy of a PowerPoint that she can use in an upcoming presentation.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Um... well, warm. And I also see a massive network of interconnected spatial computing, photo-realistic artificial intelligences, the liveable internet, monumental creator tools that result in instant manifestation—essentially, we will have transitioned into the 5th dimension.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Chilling poolside in the Oia Village in Santorini, Greece with a bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 1998 and three of my closest friends.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Young Thug, constantly. It is actually a problem. I have a hard time getting excited for any other musician. And I have recently fallen for food and cocktails, so Grant Achatz from Alinea in Chicago is on my mind a lot. LeBron James is creating a reality that is mind-blowing and way beyond basketball; the world is wrapped in his storytelling. And finally, I am a huge coaster guy and what RMC is doing in the coaster world is unbelievable—Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point has completely flipped the script.

Vince Kadlubek is a visionary. He leans into tension, ruffles feathers, and has spent more than a decade constructing new worlds with the art collective Meow Wolf. In 2016, they transformed an abandoned 20,000-square-foot bowling alley into the House of Eternal Return—an immersive experience full of creativity and curiosities—drawing more than a million people to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a dose of childlike wonder. Now their sights are set on two new activations in Las Vegas and Denver, as they aim to create the modern-day Disneyland. As an immersive experience designer, I’ve been personally inspired by Meow Wolf and the big-thinking and resourcefulness of Vince, the collective's CEO. I was stoked to chat with him about his inspiration and aspirations for the future.

The answer is yes, of course. And when companies don’t fix themselves, we feel it in our products and services. The company has designed something—often a digital thing—that fails to give us what we need, and we walk away cursing the air, wondering if the leaders of the company have ever used the service themselves.

But making things that work for humans isn’t easy. We change every five minutes. How can organizations be confident that what works today will work tomorrow? It’s a lot easier to just slap on a Band-Aid and hope it won’t rip off with the first sudden move.

There are vastly different perspectives out there about how to make change happen and stick, and we’re curious about them all, so this fall, we invited five friends who’ve led major transformation projects at their companies to IDEO’s London studio and for an open conversation.

Here are the top 5 takeaways from our Make Change event:

1. Be a curious leader

“The problem I see in a lot of organizations is they have a lot of great tools but the top leaders don’t use them. If you’re not prepared to do what you’re asking everyone else to do, then why should you expect them to? If you want to understand what’s broken in your company, try entering your own expenses.”

—Mike Bracken (Public Digital), the guy who led digital transformation for the UK government (GDS), a model that’s been replicated in Canada, Argentina, Peru, Australia and the U.S. (and he has a letter from Obama to prove it).

If Mike had one piece of advice for making change happen, it would be this: “Go and sit next to a user when they’re using your service or product. I make sure to do six hours of that every month.”

2. Question accepted behaviors

“If you’re in a self-contained moment as an organization, I’d highly recommend that you build an innovation team that sits on the side and role models something really weird and strange, questioning the accepted behaviors. Having a constant dialogue and exchange with other perspectives is what makes companies competitive. But not a team that sits in the ivory tower. Our innovation team has reinvented itself three times in three years according to what the business needs."

—Anne Pascual, VP of Design at Zalando, Europe’s leading online fashion platform, which delivers to 24 million customers and grew its revenue to around €4.5 billion last year.

Anne's advice? “Think big. We tend to be obsessed with the details, but there’s much bigger opportunities out there.”

3. Don't build an innovation lab

“Innovation is far too important to be outsourced. I’m not a believer in gluing an innovation lab onto the side of your organization. If your culture is not innovative, that’s not going to sustain. You’ve got to fix your culture first if you want to be in this for the long term. It’s got to be everyone’s job when they wake up in the morning. And you then have to create the air cover as a leader for that to happen, which is all about creating a no-blame culture. You can’t innovate as fast as we do without sometimes screwing up. We do it regularly, and when we do, we try to learn from it, but we know it just goes with the territory of being a disruptor.”

—Paul Clarke, Chief Technology Officer at Ocado. After a deal with Kruger in May, Ocado’s market cap blew past Marks & Spencer's—a sign of the tectonic shift happening in retail.

Paul's advice would be this: “Tell the truth about what's broken.”

4. Be a DJ

“A good leader is like a DJ—they play the music that makes people move, but they should accept that people will move in different ways and what’s important is that you move to the same rhythm and move forward.”

—Beatriz Lara Bartolomé, former Chief Innovation Officer of BBVA, and EMEA Advisor Director of Globant, a digitally-native technology services company.

To make change happen, Beatriz would advise you to “ask your teams what they think should be improved.”

5. Launch beacon projects

“Launching a product to market in a short period of time is the best organizational change program—you’re going to learn the most about how the company behaves. We call these projects that have a change agenda 'beacons.' Select them for their ability to help you build a new muscle. If you’re not building a new muscle with every project, you’re wasting an opportunity to learn.”

—Luis Cilimingras, IDEO partner and managing director of our London studio. He leads digital transformation and change projects, including starting an innovation studio called La Victoria Lab that creates new products, services, and experiences for Peru’s emerging middle class.

Luis's best advice: “Keep seeking out inspiration. It’s your job to be inspired.”

‍

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the event.

‍

People are always looking for ways to improve themselves. But what about companies? Companies are just collections of people, so it makes sense that they’d build up all kinds of bad habits over time. Shouldn’t our organizations be on a self-improvement regimen, continuously trying to fix what’s broken?

‍

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.