Since its founding over a century ago, Tokyo College of Music (TCM) has trained countless world-class musicians. Despite its well-established reputation, however, the school was feeling a pressing need to reconsider its role in order to remain relevant in a changing world.

The college had plans to build a second campus in Daikanyama, a prominent area of Tokyo known for being a hotbed for new global trends. Taking advantage of this opportunity, TCM leaders asked IDEO to help them develop a new concept for the school, and to redesign the learning experience while preserving a focus on classical music.

To kick off the research phases of the project, IDEO designers interviewed TCM students, and traveled to London, New York, and Boston visiting educational institutions, music schools, and arts facilities.

The team observed that students at music colleges outside of Japan were giving serious consideration to their career plans at an early stage in their studies, acquiring a variety of skills and mindsets through a well-rounded education. By contrast, TCM students were focused on learning and performing classical music, but tended not to have a clear image of future career opportunities.

IDEO proposed four specific directions for TCM’s new campus, based on an overarching theme of “culture, fields, and people collaborating across boundaries.” The first aim was to foster a business mindset and entrepreneurial spirit among the students that surpassed their classical music training. Next was to increase opportunities for actual performances, collaborations with professionals outside the school, and joint projects. The third aim was to position the college as a platform that would encourage the spontaneous creation of communities within and outside the school. The final aim was to develop students who were digitally savvy and fluent in new technologies, enabling them to continue evolving in response to developments in the real world. These goals are reflected in the various spaces of the school, as well as in the design of the experiences that occur in those spaces.

The most symbolic of these spaces is the Creative Lab. Originally intended as a library, the space now functions as a platform where people from within and outside the school community can collaborate and generate innovative ideas. The open layout, which encloses a cafeteria for students and faculty, can be altered depending on programming needs. The Creative Lab provides a venue not only for live performances in which the students can polish their improvisational skills, but for holding workshops and other events on topics such as cultural exchange, business, and new technologies.

New furniture and objects were carefully selected to inspire spontaneous encounters and conversation between students from different departments and staff, creating a flow of activity.

Even the landings on the staircases, which tend to be dead space, were designed with this concept in mind. One student commented that the space facilitates meeting new people and creates “opportunities for deeper interaction with students from other departments.” This intentional, open design has transformed the space into a hub within the school and the local community.

Through the new environment and educational opportunities at TCM's Daikanyama campus, students now have stronger opportunities to apply their creative talents in numerous fields worldwide, creating impact informed by the various perspectives, skills, and relationships they have developed at TCM.

Georgia is among the most populous states in the American South. It’s a place with a storied past and promising future—on the rise economically, and continuing its powerful cultural impact on music, TV, cuisine, and tourism. Over 10.4 million people call Georgia home, and nearly all of these people will at some point navigate the state’s websites for securing everyday services. Ideally, this online platform would provide unifying and accessible government resources for everyone, whether they’re renewing their vehicle registration, seeking a fishing license, or looking up tax law updates.

Georgia’s Office of Digital Services (DSGA), part of the Georgia Technology Authority, was challenged with designing a platform to modernize the collective and individual online presence of 80+ state agencies, many of which used visually disconnected formats and color palettes that could leave the public feeling confused. DSGA recognized that they could provide more efficient and higher quality service to the public if they simplified the language, designed the site from the user's point of view, and created a more cohesive look and feel across agencies.

IDEO worked with the DSGA to identify the priorities of Georgia residents who use the various agency websites. On a road trip from Savannah to Atlanta, with stops in Macon and Dublin, the IDEO team immersed themselves in the rich culture of Georgia, connecting with social workers, low-income residents, state agency leadership and civic organizations to learn how Georgia’s digital properties could better address their disparate needs.

The design research underscored that there isn’t just one Georgia—it’s a tapestry of people, geographies and political orientations. Yet several common themes emerged, including:

Georgians want their government to “give it to them straight.” On the redesigned Georgia.gov platform, the people of Georgia can easily search popular topics to get the information they need. This includes learning how to apply for food stamps, renewing a business license, or simply finding out the location of a local office in their area. If a user has remaining questions, they can connect directly with a real human for further assistance, balancing direct information with warmth and a personal touch. User feedback on the site provides the opportunity for continuous design improvement.

Georgians want to take pride in the legacy and the future of their state. IDEO developed an entirely new design system with new navigational elements, fonts, and a color palette inspired by Georgia’s landscapes, all of which can be modified for individual agencies while remaining consistent with the state brand.

A distillation of the original Georgia seal adds authority, and new icons anchor the site’s menus and bring more clarity to the search function. The platform was designed to be Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 AA compliant, providing clear and accessible page content that adheres to federal laws and international web standards. To instill trust in Georgia’s online presence, each page also has a header that indicates it’s an official Georgia State website and outlines the uniform features constituents can use to identify this.

With improved navigation and easy-to-access prioritized content, Georgia.gov is a much more efficient platform for addressing requests from citizens. The site projects a happy-to-help, citizen-centered approach that aims to empower all Georgians so that they feel confident, informed, and prepared.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes, almost 10% of the population. The vast majority of these diagnoses are type 2, which is commonly treated through a combination of medicine, diet, and exercise. Today, one of the major barriers to better outcomes is access to trusted information. As little as 15 percent of people with diabetes receive adequate education from their healthcare providers on managing their disease and making recommended lifestyle changes.

Ascensia Diabetes Care, a global healthcare company, has been a leader in diabetes treatment for over 70 years, known primarily for producing blood glucose meters. IDEO has worked with Ascensia for more than a decade, helping develop and design their CONTOUR NEXT ONE meter in 2016. In 2017, Ascensia engaged IDEO with a new goal of moving the company beyond physical devices. Ascensia envisioned a first-of-its-kind approach to educating and monitoring diabetes patients. In partnership with IDEO, they wanted to build a comprehensive solution—one that would not simply take glucose readings and document food intake, but would consider all factors that impact a person's health.

Through deep collaboration, Ascensia and IDEO built a powerful app-based service. The project began with a strategic vision for the experience and ended with the delivery of an all-encompassing health offering, including training of providers, packaging, app design, content creation, and visual design.

The patient experience married data and tracking, real-life mentorship, and personalized content. When a patient signed up, they were paired with a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) who created a tailored program based on their needs and linked them to relevant articles on topics like cooking, mental wellbeing, and sexual health. The IDEO team led the charge in hiring and training guides, crafting the educational content, and even designing the content management hub.

The data engine behind the app is another one of the program's stand-out qualities. The app pulled data from multiple data sources—exercise bands and glucose meters—to provide constant feedback, track progress, and continually refine the experience. To generate empathy, as well as build the app's initial data set, IDEO's data scientists tested the product on themselves. One designer wore a wrist full of exercise monitors around the office and tracked her blood sugar after every meal.

The app-based service was tested with 60 people and demonstrated remarkable early results. Only two participants failed to complete the study—a stunning success rate when adherence to therapy for chronic illnesses in developed countries averages around 50%. Additionally, participants reported drastic improvements in both physical and mental health. One recently widowed 70-year-old woman emerged from depression, returned to swimming, and started having regular blood sugar readings.

The project required Ascensia to embrace new ways of working internally, adopt a broader view of their offering, and ultimately expand the way they serve people with diabetes.

When Mr. Gordon told his fifth grade students they were taking a field trip on a bus, many of them envisioned the city bus that they ride each day to school. But when they saw the Verizon Explorer Lab pull into the school parking lot, they realized a unique experience awaited them. Painted in bright colors, this bus promised something very different from their daily commute.

“Climb aboard, explorers!” says the Lead Explorer. The students walk through the bus’ sliding doors and inside, where instead of rows of seats, they find a sleek research lab. Suddenly, the lights dim. The bus makes a rumbling noise as though it’s about to lift off. And on a large screen, a vision of Earth from space appears. The students listen and point as the video narrator briefs them on NASA’s ongoing search for life in space.

Science education isn’t always this fun. Some kids have a chance to learn through interactive games, immersive experiences, or engaging field trips; but many lack access to rich educational experiences in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As a result, they can be less likely to pursue careers in STEM, though many future jobs will demand mastery of these subjects. This not only impacts a student’s potential and future, but reduces the diversity and number of qualified STEM job applicants.

In under-resourced schools, students are often limited to the scarce tools available for STEM learning in their classrooms. Many kids rarely have a chance to leave their neighborhoods. For these kids, mobile learning experiences that come to their school offer unparalleled exposure to cutting-edge, technologically advanced, and—most importantly—inspiring gateways into these critical academic subjects.

As part of its focus on digital inclusion, Verizon partnered with IDEO to share the excitement of STEM learning with middle schoolers. To facilitate access and discovery of STEM, the team designed a learning experience that takes place on a coach bus and can be scaled to reach kids across the nation.

The team set out to transform the bus into the Verizon Explorer Lab: a futuristic research lab that transports kids to new environments, from outer space to under the sea. As part of the larger Verizon Innovative Learning program, the Verizon Explorer Lab offers delightful and rigorous content that meets national science standards.

A multidisciplinary team comprised of designers across interaction, communication, environments, games, and software partnered with Verizon to bring the Verizon Explorer Lab to life.

To keep the student at the center of the experience, the team designed alongside kids. Their gravitation toward play, interaction, and technology inspired the digital game that students play onboard the bus. When developing the game’s narrative, the designers turned to popular kids’ books and movies. What began as a card game prototype eventually became a 360-degree video and virtual reality expedition to Mars—complete with a custom musical score—that introduces middle schoolers to engineering basics.

After stepping through the bus doors and taking a tour of the solar system, Mr. Gordon’s students receive an emergency call from NASA: They must rescue the missing Curiosity rover, which is dedicated to collecting evidence of life on Mars. Eager to save Curiosity, the students become immersed in the adventure at hand. And through the adventure, they become immersed in science.

Students use tablets to design their own Mars rover. Each rover appears on a large screen and traverses the planet’s extreme terrain. The goal is to collect data that suggests life on Mars, including ice deposits, photos, and more. Students iterate on their rover’s design—wheels, power sources, and sensors—to test if it can stand up against dust storms and craters. The team consulted a NASA planetary scientist to ensure accuracy, as well as educators to establish cohesion with classroom curricula.

During the game, students are encouraged to compare designs and learn from each other: One rover may be able to travel long distances and take various photos, while another can carry large quantities of ice and sediment samples but can’t go far because of its size. At the end of the mission, the group finds Curiosity and sends all of the evidence they’ve collectively gathered back to NASA to aid the search for life beyond Earth. Before departing the bus, students watch an animated video that explains various jobs in STEM and encourages kids to pursue one of these careers.

The Verizon Explorer Lab teaches students the engineering design loop, the value of collaboration and teamwork, and what a career in STEM might look like. The mission to Mars game is just one of many potential STEM learning opportunities for students and integrated, customizable learning modules for teachers.

Since launch, the Verizon Explorer Lab has traveled to various parts of the United States and reached thousands of kids. It continues to be managed by Learning Undefeated, Verizon’s nonprofit partner. By designing for and with students, it’s possible to create educational experiences that facilitate meaningful learning and genuine fun. The Verizon Explorer Lab represents progress towards a more inclusive future for employers and the STEM field.

Some of these you may know, but others may surprise you. These six hard and soft skills are not just things to look for in a data science hire, but are also things to cultivate in yourself to prepare for a successful and fulfilling career in data science. We made this list to help identify ideal students for our data science bootcamp, people who will make great students and great hires.

1. Statistical thinking

Data scientists are professionals who turn data into information, so statistical know-how is at the forefront of our toolkit. Knowing your algorithms and how and when to apply them is arguably the central task to a data scientist's work. However, to do this well can be an art and a science.

A good data scientist can model any data he is given and implement a toolbox full of algorithms to make statistically-informed predictions and recommendations. A great data scientist can smell something 'fishy' in the results she gets, senses that he needs to ask the client or stakeholder a few more questions before retreating to the code cave, and can make the difference between a game-changing insight and an expensive blind hunch.

Cultivating statistical thinking: Quantitative thinking sinks in the fastest when it is relevant to you. At Datascope, we keep our statistical thinking sharp by calling each other out on our bold claims, sometimes making friendly bets, and figuring out how to resolve it with statistics. For example, here’s one you can try on your friends: how many wikipedia articles contain the word “the”? All of them? Nearly all of them? We put the over-under at 90%, wrote a script to calculate the wikipedia document frequency of the word “the”, and shocked ourselves to find out the word “the” only appears in 85% of wikipedia articles.

2. Technical acumen

Data scientists write code and work with teams to produce tools, pipelines, packages, modules, features, dashboards, websites, and more. We write code on the back end and the front end. We do structured and unstructured. We sift through unfamiliar formats and legacy code, and "roll our own" tools when we can't find the solution we need.

A great data scientist has a hacker's spirit. Technical flexibility is as important as experience, because in this field the gold standards change with an alarming rate. Data scientists work together, love open source, and share our knowledge and experience to make sure that we can move at the speed of demand. If your data scientist is a quick study, you've made a sound investment beyond the current trend cycle.

Cultivating technical acumen: Write code, every day if possible. Learn about the tools you want to use, but don’t just read about them, try them. Follow a tutorial. Change it and see what happens. Break it. Check out someone’s projects that are written in a language you don’t know. If you read about a new tool or service that interests you, start by just making a “hello, world”. Work in small bites.

3. Multi-modal communication skills

When the analysis is finished running, most of the time the results aren't pretty. That's not to say they are unhelpful, but they are often trapped in opaque readouts, or in plots that are sensical to the expert's eye but hieroglyphics to the rest of the team and stakeholders. Algorithmic output has to be interpreted and communicated to make the leap out of the data science team and into the hands of the rest of the company to be put to service in alignment with their usefulness.

A great data scientist can contextualize and translate a problem and its solution to interested parties of wildly varying backgrounds using common ground, metaphor, skillful listening, and storytelling. This includes the written communication that goes into a statement of work or a report, visual communication for clear and intuitive plots and visualization, and spoken communication for presentations, project specifications, check-in meetings, and iterative design. If your data scientist can stop a meeting when it's clear that not everyone is on the same page, draw a sketch on the whiteboard and elicit consensus from a diverse team, you have a deeply valuable person on your team.

Cultivating multi-modal communication: Practice writing and talking about your technical projects to “normal” people. Edit yourself down to the important parts. Learning to edit yourself is key. Practice visual communication with “crayon wireframes”—we use these all the time, and they help us to think visually and iterate quickly. Sketches are also a great way to gut check if everyone is on the same page. If the words you’re saying seem to match each other, but the pictures don’t jive, you may have nipped some future problems in the bud.

4. Curiosity

So your data scientist is a technical and statistical whiz who can explain a Markov chain to a supermarket checker. What else separates the elite? The first of our trio of invaluable soft skills is curiosity. Many who are drawn to data science find most alluring the opportunity to work on a constant stream of new and challenging puzzles. They are people who have been asking "why" and "how" since their mouths could form the words.

A good data scientist will take a request, implement it, and deliver the prediction or analysis with confidence. A great data scientist will come back asking for access to more data, or to interview users, or to try something new in the next iteration, because something he did triggered that curious itch. Curious data scientists might have a disdain for machine learning competitions because they can't access all of the levers and choice points to ask questions and dig deeper. Masters of curiosity are quick to question their own assumptions.

Cultivating curiosity: Are there stupid questions? Actually, probably… yes. But who cares? In our experience they are largely indistinguishable from really great questions that no one has bothered to ask yet. So we don’t discriminate, and we ask many many questions that may or may not be stupid. Ask enough stupid questions and eventually you’ll land on something brilliant. Seek out people different than you to talk through ideas. Let your mind wander. Raise your hand and ask questions. And never assume that the experts see everything that you do -- don’t ignore that inner voice when it’s telling you something isn’t adding up. You might ask a stupid question (and learn), or you might ask a brilliant one (and discover).

5. Creativity

Creativity goes far beyond the obvious applications in communication and project design. Of course, a data scientist who can create an attractive and easy-to-grasp report or visual out of results that would take a couple of master's degrees to fully understand is a skill with enormous returns. Creativity provides the fuel for skillful communication, and that is not a hard sell.

Beyond aesthetics and communication, however, the best data scientists are creative problem solvers and have a peculiar relationship with the word "no." Your data scientist really wants to include those user-level data sets in the algorithm, but they are locked down in another silo within the company? She figures out a way to model their effects from the population statistics, or she generates a simulated report using dummy data to convince the c-suite that building a bridge between departments is well worth the risk or effort. The client wants to know how much foot traffic their potential new outlets will see, next Friday, and those data don't exist or aren't available? He uses publicly available transit data to build informed estimates and proposes a small and inexpensive sample-gathering project to build a turnstile-count-to-total-pedestrians conversion heuristic.

Great data scientists get annoyed by “no,” so annoyed that they find a way to get around it, over it, or through it, or they back up and take another path altogether. Design constraints are infuriating and intoxicating. A data scientist who says "no," followed quickly by "wait, hold on… let me think," just might be a great creative thinker.

Cultivating creativity: When you have an idea, do it, and let go of judgment. Foster an environment that invites questioning, thinking outside the box, and a “yes, but” conversational atmosphere. Creativity is ingrained in culture: give people around you the safety to “fail,” without judgement or criticism, and they’ll likely grant you the same. When you’re surrounded by people thinking and working creatively, you’ll find your own creativity flourishing, too.

6. Grit

In all of the characteristics and skills above, we've talked about technologies that appear, demand attention, and fade faster than songs on the top forty, messy data that should but don't quite fit into the model the client had in mind, dead ends, wrong turns, roadblocks, and red tape, teams full of mixed agendas and personalities; budgets, deadlines, clients, teams, and contractors; and the unicorn-magician-programmer-statistician who is supposed to bring it all together. Those who survive have a healthy inner store of grit.

All of these challenges and roadblocks could drive a reasonable person to an unplanned leave of absence. Grit is that inner drive that pulls us over obstacles, recasts setbacks as design constraints, propels us through fear of failure, keeps us walking through actual failure, helps us to resist the impulse to take things personally, and brushes that dirt off our shoulders. When grit is working, we’re less competitive so we can encourage and learn from each other. We get the taste for tackling the new and the unknown.

Cultivating grit: Let go of perfectionism. We encourage ourselves to think of quick and dirty ways we can resolve problems or test solutions. We share our early efforts and listen to the feedback we get. Keep in mind that every expert has to start as a beginner, and a beginner trying to masquerade as an expert fools no one but himself. Don’t be afraid to let your warts show—what seems like a weakness, handled properly, is a powerful tool for leadership and growth.

What does it take to be a great data scientist? We thought long and hard about this while we were designing a data science bootcamp for Metis.

Read the article online at Harvard Business Review.

Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process.

~Tim Brown

Want to dive deeper? Learn more about design thinking with IDEO U.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, IDEO CEO Tim Brown shows how thinking like a designer can transform the way we develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.

“While I had done a good deal of research and was familiar with evidence-based design in an academic setting, I had little knowledge about design-related career paths,” she explains, a scenario she sees as typical for a lot of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) students. “I think there are only certain paths presented to you as viable,” she says, “which is unfortunate because I think a lot of the systems and things that need redesigning disproportionally affect people of color.” And yet less than three years later, the public health and sociology major would find herself working on an IDEO design-research team.

She got there viaColor by Design (CxD), RepresentEd’s newest fellowship designed for BIPOC in partnership with IDEO. The first cohort of design-research fellows will finish the program in June, and the experience has been groundbreaking: for IDEO and, we think, for the fellows, fewer than five of whom came to the fellowship with any previous design experience. That’s, well, by design.

“The program is about increasing access to design—not just to IDEO but the design industry as a whole,” says RepresentED CEO and founder Rashida Hanif. “CxD has served as a proof of concept that someone can go from zero design knowledge to designer and bring value from day one.”

After completing a three-month part-time professional training course that ran from September through November 2021, the 14 fellows have been integrated as full members of the IDEO community during their six-month fellowship. They’ve been working alongside IDEO employees on key client projects, among them engagements with a major tech company, projects around access to abortion, and the reimagining of the student experience at colleges like NYU.

They’re a month away from wrapping up, and IDEO had planned to keep the ball rolling by launching the application process for the next round of fellows this month. But we’ve decided to take a beat and will be postponing the next cohort until 2023. It’s not hesitation, it’s preparation. Together with RepresentED, we have a shared eagerness to keep growing and expanding, but that’s paired with a shared commitment to scale the program in a thoughtful way.

So many rich learnings have emerged since September. Rather than try to synthesize them and make adjustments in real time, we want to spend more time with our questions and give ourselves space to put our insights to work.

One of the biggest ones is that the fellows only participated in design research. We want to expand and scale CxD to other disciplines—perhaps communications design and experience design—and other divisions of IDEO have made it clear that they’d love to welcome fellows of their own. The opportunity is there, but it’ll take some additional work to put the pieces in place.

We’d also like to finesse the bootcamp aspect, the three months of training that precede the paid, full-time fellowship. As it stands, the bootcamp is largely focused on design thinking as a whole, with modules about design research, methodology, etc. We realized some of our fellows need deeper design research support, and we’d like to get ahead of that earlier in the bootcamp.

Getting the foundation right is important, and we are glad to be able to provide it. One fellow in this cohort was a freelance graphic designer who worked as a bartender. He told me CxD has changed the trajectory of his career and his life—and that’s a real gain for the industry. The fellows may not have deep design backgrounds, but they bring rich and varied experience to the table. Another worked as a doula and felt ready for a career change. Yet another worked on the White House’s National Economic Council. Others did content marketing for international fragrance companies, spearheaded community initiatives to inspire change, and co-founded creative agencies.

The reality is that if not for a program like this, IDEO would have probably overlooked their applications. There are so many barriers to entry within the design industry, and Sasha puts it so well: “It’s not that the fellows don't have experience that would make us successful designers, but that what is seen as relevant experience is often so narrow.” RepresentED has an uncommon ability to take a wide view, which has in turn allowed us to welcome folks whose perspective is missing.

The design industry has long been a homogeneous one (IDEO is no exception, with a U.S. community that is still only 5 percent Black, less than 1 percent Indigenous, and less than 7 percent Hispanic/Latinx.) We needed to expand access, and RepresentED excels in recruiting non-traditional candidates and among communities of color.

“Our sweet spot is people who studied the social sciences and humanities, the ones always told, ‘What are you going to do with that major?’ The ones who are told they have to get a graduate degree, or go into academia,” says Rashida. “They often aren’t aware of how vast their options are and how to present their skills to the job market as viable candidates. English students are incredible writers. Anthropologists understand people and culture. Transfer students bring an amazing life context to the table. We teach them how to use human-centered design to their advantage.”

She thinks of these candidates in a striking and insightful way: “I often feel like we live in a society where we like to throw away the beautiful things. I see them as this collage of beauty. There’s more of that than there is of the status quo.”

And CxD is proving to be a viable way to shift that status quo. It has also shifted things in IDEO’s internal structure. The program touches so many different parts of IDEO—the marketing team; team building, which oversees project teaming and staffing; IDEO’s Research and Insights cohort; and IDEO U, IDEO’s online learning platform. In the process of building up the program we’re learning how to create more equitable structures and thinking about how we onboard employees differently, too.

The fellows very intentionally have a strong network of support. In addition to their interactions with the CxD leadership team, each is assigned a manager and a craft mentor as well as a steward, an IDEO designer who holds a non-evaluative role and creates a safe space for the fellow to take any challenges to. As Sasha puts it, “It helped with building creative confidence. The attitude is, ‘You’re supposed to be here, but if you have a question you know where to go.’”

As for Sasha, she spent 14 weeks on the IDEO design research team that partnered with a major baby retailer to reimagine the registry experience. “The video of a Zoom interview I led with a parent—the first interview I had led—was used continually throughout the project,” she recalls. “That always felt like a rewarding moment: being reminded that those were insights I helped to uncover and the affirmation it provided that I had done a good job.” She moves to a new project this week.

“I’ve developed confidence in myself as a designer. I’ve been equipped with this toolbelt of skills that will be useful no matter where I end up,” Orewa says of her experience. “Last week I had a call with someone who saw I was a part of CxD but had a background in public health and reached out on LinkedIn to ask questions. That makes me excited, that there are people like me who are learning that the opportunities are out there. It’s the ripple effect.”

The next CxD cohort will launch by the end of 2023. We will share updates as we get closer to the recruitment season. If you have any questions, please contact info@representedleadership.org.

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By the time Sasha Orewa graduated college in 2019, she had been exposed to plenty of things. Design research wasn’t one of them. Ditto UX, interaction design, or experience design.

What should a passenger’s experience feel like? How much space should be allocated to each passenger? What were the tradeoffs? The folks in marketing had one idea, while the folks in engineering had another. Spreadsheets were involved, but we weren’t making much progress.

Our project team didn’t have all of the answers either, but we thought of one way that we could help. We took over a section of our San Francisco studio and spent a week building a full-scale shell of a plane out of wood, foam core, and cardboard. Our intention was to create a dynamic space for physical and digital experimentation. We then invited our clients to host their next meeting inside the “plane.”

Once inside, the trade-offs were clearer. The team could picture what different seat configurations might feel like; they could move things around as they visualized various options. Prototyping revealed a level of granularity and specificity the team simply couldn’t access over Zoom or through conversation. What started out as a series of abstract questions suddenly became tangible.

When you work in the mobility space, the projects you work on are big—literally. It’s not just the size of a car, but the size of a train, an airport, even a city. While creating low-fidelity prototypes of products and systems of this magnitude might seem impossible, prototypes are a tried-and-true tool for learning about your customers and refining your product design. They are also equally valuable for learning, aligning, and collaborating as an organization. When it comes to larger-than-life challenges in the mobility space, here are three ways prototyping can help.

Prototyping breaks down barriers

Many established mobility companies have spent decades developing processes that have allowed them to build safe, high-quality products at scale. But those methods don’t always work when adapting to a rapidly shifting market. When it came time for our team to work with a leading automaker to rethink the future of the commercial van, we all knew it would demand new ways of working. Together with their team, we built a new collaboration space in the heart of their engineering building to shake people out of their usual workflow. The walls were covered with pictures of vans in action, quotes from potential users, and in-progress work. In the middle of the space sat “the rig,” a purposefully unfinished prototype van made from modular aluminum and hand-cut cardboard parts. This was far from the polished models of car shows.

Instead of putting this space under lock and key, the team put up posters throughout the engineering building inviting folks to join them. When that effort didn’t get much traction, a member of the team proposed an idea. He simply wedged the door open and posted a sign that declared: “open door policy.” The message was simple. We wanted people to build with us. And the people, and the ideas, followed.

Unfamiliar faces started to pop into the space and populate the prototype van with new mirrors, door handles, and smart sensors while other groups debated strategy across the room. What started with a single project space grew, eventually morphing into a dedicated innovation lab that is collaborating across the organization to tackle the future of mobility.

Prototyping challenges assumptions

Several years ago, IDEO worked with Toronto Pearson International Airport to revitalize the airport’s operations from the passenger experience to the baggage handling process. Baggage handling operations are particularly important, as they’re a key metric for measuring airport efficiency, service quality, and performance. They’re also very complicated. Baggage handling involves multiple organizations, thousands of contract workers, and even more suitcases, moving between planes and carousels all around the world.

As contractors, baggage handlers aren’t often brought into the process to help redesign operations. But their perspective is invaluable. So together, IDEO and Toronto Pearson decided to hold a “baggage olympics” for operations employees, passengers, and baggage handlers to test, build, and improve prototypes of early baggage handling ideas. They landed on a simple but effective solution: color-coded signs, clear iconography, and guidance on where baggage should be placed. Not only did the exercise streamline airport operations, but it also changed everyone’s idea of how different groups of people could work together and how operations should work in the future.

As Darin Juby, Director of Baggage Services, told IDEO: “The work to reimagine baggage handling taught us how to prototype and collaborate—it reprogrammed us with a new mindset and way of working. When the pandemic hit two years later, because we had laid the groundwork, we were able to pivot quickly and cost-effectively in the midst of an unforeseen crisis."

Prototyping reveals unexpected needs

Bringing in potential customers to test out prototypes is a pretty common practice among design teams. But often in the automotive space, users do not have a chance to interact with prototypes until much later in the design process. Even then, they are often restricted to testing out highly refined models in tightly controlled sessions.

It’s far more rare to bring parents and children into your design space and invite a range of stakeholders with different perspectives, hypotheses, and critical questions to watch them play in an early prototype firsthand. But that’s exactly what we did with our partners at one of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers.

While we had been talking about bringing people into the lab, it wasn’t until families were engaging with our designs that we realized just how eye-opening it was. In one session, we watched alongside marketing, design, strategy, and product development leaders as a family played a game in the front of the car. Halfway through the game, a child pulled her mom to the back for some one-on-one time, pretending they were looking out at stars.That seemingly simple interaction inspired our team.

The team renamed the prototype Stargazer, and it helped changed the conversation about these vehicles. Decision-makers for this vehicle portfolio were bringing an empathy for the lives of these users into meetings, and talking more about how to foster quality family time than vehicle features and functions. Seeing our prototype in action extended customer empathy and understanding beyond marketing execs, ensuring that teams across the multinational organization were considering user needs from the outset.

Prototyping unlocks possibilities

Throughout my work on mobility projects at IDEO, prototyping has been the best tool for shaking up entrenched thoughts about how teams should work together. It not only provides teams with an opportunity to test assumptions and generate radically new ideas, but it also helps spark alignment and build confidence across disparate stakeholders. In some projects, embracing prototyping has even led to the development of new ways of working and labs that live on far beyond the launch of a product.

For those tackling challenges within the mobility space, and are eager to experiment with prototyping, start small. Take over a conference room, invite different voices in, construct a cardboard model, and watch your organization transform.

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Late last year, we sat on a Zoom call with executives at an organization redefining commercial aviation. They had some critical decisions to make about their first commercial aircraft.

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.