Money works differently in communities traditionally excluded from formal banking, which makes designing products that really serve their needs a very different kind of challenge. People who live in the last mile often prefer cash because it’s physical. They can see it, touch it, and access it at any time.

While digital money offers many benefits, such as securely sending money over long distances and accessing new forms of credit, many don’t trust it because the places where they can access digital currency have often been too far away.

In 2017, over 500 million adults lived more than three miles from a financial access point in eight emerging markets studied by the Gates Foundation. This may not sound like much of a barrier, but for those living in the last mile, it means having to close their shops, lose a day of earnings, arrange family care, and pay for travel, which can be time-consuming and difficult, especially during rainy seasons. For low-income people, the inaccessibility of financial services has been a deal-breaker for adopting digital money. On the flip side, banks, telecoms, and other companies struggled to reach these customers because their products were not inclusively designed for them, and their distribution models failed to scale in rural areas.

Amid these myriad challenges, IDEO and the Gates Foundation saw an opportunity to introduce innovative ways to provide access to digital financial services even in the most remote areas of the world. And to make bold new bets: Could we design new digital experiences centered around the financial needs of people in the last mile? What would happen if we mobilized hundreds of actors to develop new ways to address financial access at the last mile? What if we took the most exciting financial innovations that worked in East Africa and piloted them in South Asia—and vice versa?

Working with more than 70 partners, including local startups, corporations, including Google, Unilever, Telenor, Standard Chartered, and BNI, as well as IDEO.org’s Women & Money program, LMM adopted a collaborative, ecosystem approach to drive and scale new digital financial products and systems.

A few of the life-changing innovations launched by LMM and its partners include:

• Finja’s intuitive small-business app that helps micro-merchants in Pakistan access flexible, interest-avoiding Islamic credit  to order products from fast-moving consumer goods companies like Unilever. Finja now serves 45,000 merchants and reaches 10.2 million customers.
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• Accessing government benefits can be a challenge, especially when it’s through a mobile phone, so IDEO helped Indian startup Haqdarshak develop a robust digital experience for its 52,000 community agents to facilitate access for low-income people. The agent network—70 percent of whom are women—now serves more than 7.6 million families and has unlocked $2.2 billion in social benefits for those who need it most.
  ‍
• Making micro-credit nearly instantaneous was a solution that startup Kuunda offered to financial agents in Tanzania. IDEO helped adapt the product to deliver working capital for merchants in Pakistan. Today, Kuunda continues to grow across markets in Africa, totaling 6.1 million active users and distributing $1.1 billion in loans globally.   

While the LMM program officially concluded in 2024, lessons, tools, and case studies from the program are accessible on IDEO’s Financial Futures website. Those looking to catalyze equity and inclusion in digital financial services for the last mile can consult LMM’s Financial Confidence Playbook, the open-source Digital Confidence Toolkit (created in collaboration with Google), or the Gender Evaluation Framework, among other helpful resources.

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Over 1.3 billion people worldwide in poor and rural areas are excluded from formal financial services, including savings accounts, credit lines, and insurance, making it harder for them to move out of poverty.

34M

underserved users reached by 100+ new financial products, pilots, and prototypes

70+ LMM partners

including Google, Unilever, Grab, Standard Chartered, Cargill, Airtel, Celo Foundation, and BNI

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Multinational CPGs excel at creating popular, mass-market products for large countries. When they enter smaller countries like Peru, they often parachute their brands onto store shelves and skip consumer product testing altogether, largely relying on brand recognition to drive sales. This oversight presented Alicorp and IDEO with an opportunity: flip the script and invite young Peruvian women to work together with them to create a new hair care brand from scratch. Over the course of a four-year transformational journey, IDEO worked closely with Alicorp, adopting a “learn by doing” approach to foster a culture of innovation, launch a new brand, and drive growth for the company through consumer-centric design.

The collaboration began with an inspirational trip 10,000 miles away to Seoul, South Korea, the epicenter of global beauty trends. To expand their thinking, the Alicorp/IDEO team received K-Pop glow-ups and explored other cutting-edge beauty experiences. They were inspired by the Korean market’s unwavering focus on meeting the particular hair care and skin needs of Korean women.

Back in Peru, the team conducted multiple rounds of in-depth interviews with young women, teenagers, beauty influencers, and experts across the country. They learned about their beauty goals, personal care routines, and “mixto” hair texture. They heard about women’s struggles with regional weather—the Andean region’s extreme dryness versus Lima’s humidity and the city’s hard water. The research revealed that Peruvian women wanted natural products that worked hard, wouldn’t harm their hair, and celebrated what made them unique. They wanted a brand that spoke to them honestly and authentically. That represented and empowered them. That didn’t overpromise, underdeliver, or hold up European and American beauty ideals that didn't resonate with Latin American women like the multinationals did.

Armed with these insights, the Alicorp/IDEO team developed tangible brand prototypes for women to respond to during successive rounds of user research, including in a beauty pop-up store in Lima. The team shared various bottle types, ingredient mixtures, and brand positioning options. Should the new brand’s personality be an outspoken feminist or a gal pal? Au naturel or sophisticated? The iterative feedback cycles informed everything from brand strategy and ingredient recommendations to product line-up, brand and product naming, launch strategy, and digital activations.

The final design, Amarás (“you will love”), is a personal care line that centers the needs and aspirations of Peruvian women. Hitting shelves in 2022, its shampoos and conditioners feature local, bio-diverse ingredients, including mangoes, macadamia nuts, and goldenberries, that help address the specific hair texture needs of women in LATAM and the climate realities of the Andean region. The brand’s launch campaign included TV and print ads featuring Peruvian models from every region as well as commissioned murals celebrating local beauty by artists across Peru. Most notably, the unapologetically authentic Peruvian hair care brand became a TikTok sensation, garnering over seven million organic views and more than 300 viral videos from enthusiastic new fans.

Three months after its launch, Amarás seized a 7.5 percent share of the personal care aisle—a remarkable goal it had set for year three.Since then, Alicorp has continued to expand its creative capabilities, designing personal care products tailored to the cultural and beauty needs of Latin American consumers.

Alicorp launched numerous successful brand extensions across its food and home care categories, but was unable to crack the $340M USD hair care product market in its home country of Peru.

7.5%

Amarás’ share of the Peruvian hair care market 3 months after launch—a goal Alicorp had set for year 3

7M+ organic views and 300+ organic fan videos

created on TikTok during Amarás’  launch campaign

Thirty years ago, China-based Jack Technology started as a home sewing machine manufacturer. A decade ago, the innovative global leader began investing in robotics and exploring AI, a decision that positioned it well to address today’s urgent need for smarter manufacturing solutions.

Believing that a new, strategically positioned sub-brand could draw in larger, more premium global manufacturing customers, Jack Technology and IDEO set out to understand their needs. IDEO began by visiting more than a dozen garment factories across China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, conducting in-depth interviews with factory managers, industrial engineers, pattern-making leaders, and frontline workers. It soon became clear: the apparel manufacturing industry is at a critical juncture. The way apparel manufacturers navigate the promises of intelligent technology—while addressing deep-rooted structural issues like labor shortages and working conditions—will shape the industry's development for years to come.

For premium clothing brands, garment factory compliance and worker well-being are priorities when selecting production partners, so many owners proudly showcased their improvement efforts. They discussed investing in quieter machines and air conditioning, enhancing lighting, adding greenery, and implementing no-overtime policies. Amid rows of identical sewing stations, the IDEO team noticed small human gestures, such as a small vase of flowers. As one operator said, “I just want to uplift myself during work.”

The research helped IDEO identify a core opportunity for differentiation. Create human-centered products and services that further enhance working conditions in large apparel factories, strengthen their ability to attract and retain talent, and drive the industry toward a more sustainable future. Through multiple rounds of co-creation with the Jack Technology team and key apparel-sector stakeholders, a clear brand direction for Aitu began to take shape: “Smart Machines, Uplifting People.”

Guided by this human-centered ethos, IDEO helped build a comprehensive brand system for Aitu. The idea of “uplifting people” and showcasing garment workers’ professionalism and skill is expressed throughout all brand communications, the industrial design of its smart sewing machines, and the interaction and industrial design of a humanoid sewing robot.

In the eyes of factory workers, this is the new work experience Aitu brings to life. Compared with traditional bulky industrial machinery, the clean lines and soft edges of Aitu’s new AI-powered sewing machines feel more like the professional office tools found in bright, organized workplaces. Concave surfaces and soft materials diffuse glare from overhead lighting, reducing eye strain, while clear interaction logic and icon-based visuals accommodate operators with varying levels of skill and education. AI technology, seamlessly embedded in the machine’s core functions, automatically adjusts parameters for different fabrics and tasks, allowing operators to achieve high-precision results with less effort. A soft halo-like light glows whenever the AI-assisted function is active, fostering users’ trust in both the technology and the AI-powered sewing machine as a whole. When hundreds or thousands of Aitu machines are arranged together in a factory, the overall effect is a modern, professional, and high-end work environment.

Working closely with Aitu’s robotics team, IDEO’s final design challenge was to bring a human-machine collaboration to life through a full-scale AI robot, AI10. The robot has an elegant, biomimetic silhouette. Its fabric-like outer finish features design elements commonly found in garment making, such as cutting and stitching lines, giving the robot the approachable look and the feel of a skilled tailor companion who can assist with simple, repetitive tasks. When AI10 is in operation, a circular light ring gently pulses at the sides of the robot’s ears as well as on the paired sewing machine’s display screen, clearly signaling the robot’s activity to its human co-workers.

In September 2025, Jack Technology debuted its new Aitu brand, along with its first AI sewing machine and a humanoid robot prototype, at a launch event at Shanghai Tower and at the China International Sewing Machine & Accessories Show. IFA Berlin, Europe’s largest trade show for consumer electronics, honored Aitu with a Gold Award for AI Product Innovation for seamlessly integrating AI technology and industrial design. Jack Technology’s humanoid robot is expected to go into full-scale production in 2026.

Before AI, the apparel manufacturing industry had experienced little fundamental change since the invention of the lockstitch sewing machine nearly two centuries ago.

2025 Gold Award for AI Product Innovation

from IFA, the world’s largest home and consumer tech event

Alicorp has direct operations in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile, manages export operations in more than 30 countries, and oversees over 150 brands. While its AlaCena sauces are ubiquitous in South America, the brand’s North American market primarily consisted of purchases made via Amazon by Peruvians living abroad. To help the CPG giant expand meaningfully and sustainably onto US grocery shelves—and achieve its ambitious $50 million retail sales goal in five years—Alicorp and IDEO collaborated on multiple projects over a two-year period. The partnership began in early 2020 with consumer research and product strategy, ultimately leading to the development of initial product branding, positioning for launch, and an in-market pilot in late 2021.

‍‍Through a combination of large-scale digital surveys and in-depth, in-person and remote research interviews, IDEO discovered that AlaCena’s Tari and Uchucuta’s hot sauce recipes resonated the most with US consumers. Made from native Aji Amarillo and Rocoto chili peppers ground using a traditional Andean “batán” technique, consumers appreciated their complex flavors and enjoyed how they enhanced, not overpowered, everyday foods like burgers and fries. The sauces’ authentic Peruvian culinary roots were also a key differentiator. In addition to consumers, IDEO consulted with industry experts—including executives from large-scale grocery chains and chief merchants of leading big-box stores—to explore retail and marketing trends and identify potential innovation partners for Alicorp in the US.

Based on the research, IDEO recommended a few changes to ensure a successful launch: Lead with the Tari brand, which was the most memorable and easiest to pronounce, and position it as an “everything sauce.” Change the packaging from a large plastic pouch to a smaller squeeze bottle to better align with consumers’ expectations and stand out on the inside of refrigerator doors. Adjust the product formulation to appeal to mainstream consumers looking for cleaner labels. And visually celebrate Tari’s Peruvian roots through bright colors, traditional textiles, and a llama, an animal closely associated with the Andes Mountains. In addition to these recommendations, IDEO provided a comprehensive go-to-market retail strategy that included potential US regions for launch, retail brokers, distributors, manufacturers, and R&D and pilot retail lab partners, as well as job descriptions for a new North American-based sales team.

While Alicorp worked on reformulation and packaging strategies, IDEO refined Tari’s initial branding strategy. Steeped in Peruvian aesthetics, the brand’s new look and feel featured a vibrant color palette, geometric patterns, and—of course—a friendly llama icon, which could also be found on all in-store point-of-sale items IDEO designed for Tari's pilot launch in late 2021.

The successful 12-week in-market pilot in Tom Thumb grocery stores gave Alicorp the confidence to have its in-house design team make the brand even bolder and more eye catching, and to launch two flavors, Amarillo Pepper and Rocoto Pepper, on Amazon and in over 50 retail stores in late 2024.

Since then, the popular sauces consistently rank among the top 50 percent of the fastest-selling products on US shelves, with 80 percent of sales revenue representing new business. In 2025, Tari expanded its offerings with three additional flavors: Zesty Verde, Tropical Kick, and Smoky Heat. Today, Tari is in transit to 3,000 major grocery stores, including Wegmans, Meijer, Central Market, and The Fresh Market, as well as available for purchase on Amazon.

Alicorp had a vision to expand its beloved and delicious hot sauces to the US market, but needed help fine-tuning the brand and product for an American audience.

3,000

major US grocers, including Wegmans and Meijer, have signed on to sell Tari hot sauces

80%

of Tari’s sales revenue represents new business, a significant expansion of the overall category

Ranked in the top 50%

of the fastest-selling products on US grocery shelves

That was a key message we took from our time at the second annual TED AI conference, hosted in our own backyard of San Francisco. Two days full of panel sessions, robot demos, and classic TED Talks had us considering the nature of time, the power of language, and transcending human cognitive limitations. The biggest theme: The urgency for bringing human centered-design to AI is only getting stronger.

Here are five key takeaways from our time on the ground.

1. Beware the black box

The black box approach to AI’s foundational models are the root cause of issues around ownership, copyright, credit—and in the case of certain industries like healthcare—exclusion of entire userbases.

Not knowing what the training data was, where it came from, or who it originally belonged to, means that:

1. We’re not able to give credit or reimbursement to the original creators of that data.
2. There are unknowable but impending legal ramifications from a copyright perspective.
3. Healthcare professionals are unable to use models such as ChatGPT, because without being able to verify or validate the training data, they’re unable to confidently (or even legally) use the answers the models provide.

Already, though, some companies are pioneering more transparent and more widely-usable data sets and model developers. HOPPR, for example, is building the first multimodal AI foundation model for medical imaging and radiology, while the non-profit Fairly Trained is based on the belief that that many consumers and companies “would prefer to work with generative AI companies who train on data provided with the consent of its creators.”

The concept of designing for transparency is reflective of a lot of research we have done in the past with users and data. Our 2019 work with Mozilla exploring more ethical and user-centered solutions to the Surveillance Economy highlighted the pitfalls of data collection, and the opportunities for tech companies to build value by handling user data in more human-centered ways. Combine that with our blockchain work at IDEO CoLab, and there are lots of interesting spaces to explore and draw inspiration from—including individual and collective control, consent, and value generation.

2. Consider the human consequences

A lot of industry specialists are focused on the near-future of the technology, as opposed to the mid-term opportunities and AI’s long-term effects on humanity. Some speakers were concerned that we're spending too much time worrying about what the technology will do for us, while others think we're too concerned about what it will do to us. There was a lot of focus (for better or worse) on the productivity benefits, but relatively few people were thinking about the consequences for humans.

Eugenia Kuyda, founder and CEO of Replika, noted that we should “stop designing for productivity, and start designing for joy,” which is a lovely provocation. We don’t need to forsake one for the other, but designing for joyous experiences can make productivity far more desirable. Our work with Ethiqly around integrating AI and writing exercises in schools focused not on the power of the technology or how many more essays kids could write, but on making the process of getting your creativity on to paper more joyful and rewarding, and focusing on the relationship between teacher and student.

There were also several conversations around the idea that technology will free up time for us to spend with our families instead of working. As romantic as this sounds, it’s not realistic. Organizations will simply reduce headcount, and then increase the other workloads for employees. Articles like this one from the BBC hint at a workforce feeling more burnt out due to AI implementation, showing a glimpse of the human consequences we should be designing for at the application layer.

3. Embrace quality over quantity

Several people spoke about the exponential growth of investment in computing power for large language models (LLMs). Currently, 70 cents of every dollar invested in AI models goes into crunching the data.

As an alternative to this massive use of resources, several speakers brought up the concept of small language models. SLMs are literally smaller models, trained on just 1 billion tokens. (LLMs can require upwards of 1 trillion tokens.) These SLMs can be created with a fraction of the time and energy, and offer great specific utility. Consider the example of the telecom call center. Its model doesn’t need to be exposed to the nuances of Shakespearean sonnets; it just needs to know the words and phrases needed to operate a call center, so you can spend less time, money, and energy on creating your model.

With the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars we’re spending to train LLMs, how much are we willing—or is financially feasible—to spend on models? If we continue down this path, the financial / physical / electrical requirements are going to become unsustainable. One panelist mentioned that “we should be feeding the machine the right information vs. all the information.”

The potential futures for more intentional and nimble SLMs seems much more approachable and both financially and ethically feasible.

4. Spoken language is irreplaceable

One of our favorite speakers was Jessica Coon, the linguist who consulted on the movie Arrival. She argued that human language is rich, nuanced, and endowed with the histories of our cultures. An input text box attached to a keyboard populated with Roman characters is never going to be able to express a fraction of it.

Rikin Gandhi, the co-founder of Digital Green, a company using AI to provide agricultural information and guidance, spoke about the company’s work with farmers in rural India, where illiteracy and nuanced local dialects and translations make-text based offers unviable. But AI models’ abilities to understand spoken language, locational context, and nuances of a given agroecology and a given time of the year means those farmers can interact through images, video, and spoken word.

This perspective shines a spotlight on the potential for more diverse and inclusive design principles, and our spoken language is a key part of that future.

5. Discover a new impetus for responsible design

We also heard from Pratyusha Sharma, a leading researcher and member of Project Ceti, who shed light on how we might be able to leverage generative AI to understand the unsolved mysteries of the ecological world.
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Sperm whales communicate through clicks, or codas. While researchers for decades have understood that this is the primary communication pattern by which this social species coordinated, it had been impossible to untangle the spoken language and what it meant. Sharma spoke about a novel use of generative AI—using a generative adversarial network, or GAN, to surface both the alphabetic principle and deeper understanding of coda meanings. With this technology, not only could we hear the sperm whales’ communication—we can understand what it means and predict from their communications what they might do next, whether that’s diving for food or coordinating childcare.

As AI tools become more and more powerful in helping us understand the language of the world around us, the impetus for responsible design will become clearer and clearer. If we can start to interpret the language plants, animals and earth use to communicate, how can they not be a stakeholder in everything we design?

Curious how human-centered design could help you make more desirable AI products? We’d love to chat.

We need to start pulling the human signals from the technological noise, and weaving them together.

A good purpose statement articulates a passion to boldly make an impact. It can differentiate you from competitors, grounding your work in deeper meaning. It can serve as a beacon to draw like-minded individuals to your company—as consumers or employees. And it can align and motivate leaders, guiding strategic choices.

To do all that, a good purpose has to make you FEEL something.

But too often in crafting a purpose statement, marketing and business jargon sneaks in, adding extra bloat. Or conversely, the language gets watered down to the point where it doesn’t mean anything anymore. The emotional gets sacrificed for the intellectual.

If you feel yourself or your team starting to slip into the weeds—or floating too high above the clouds—here are three ways to re-inspire and re-calibrate your thinking around purpose.

1. Get out of your own head: Collect love letters.

‍If you’re feeling lost at where to even begin, start with some on-the-ground research. Approach employees, end users, stakeholders—whoever interacts with your brand or company—and ask them to write a love letter to your organization, talking about what they’re most proud of, or what they appreciate most.

How we’ve used it: Last year, we were working with the team at Dartmouth Library to develop its strategy, starting with a clear articulation of its purpose. As part of a series of co-design workshops with faculty, staff, and students, we asked participants to write a letter to their library: What did they treasure most? How did it make them feel? While the stories we gathered covered a broad range—encompassing everything from intellectual exploration to belonging—they revealed the deep connections people had with their library, an attachment that was central to both its purpose and strategy.

2. Push past “what” and “how” to uncover your “why.”

‍If you’re feeling like your purpose is stuck in details and logistics, try the classic Golden Circle from Simon Sinek. Draw three concentric circles: the biggest should be WHAT you do; the next, HOW you do it; and the center WHY you do it. Brainstorm your answers to each and put them in the appropriate sphere. Focus on what landed in your center circle—your whys start to articulate your purpose.

How we’ve used it: The Boston Society for Architecture reached out to us to help the organization shift from being program-driven to being impact-driven. In a series of collaborative workshops, we had stakeholders list all the practical and emotional benefits for member architects, partners, community leaders, and students. Together, the team mapped these examples on the Golden Circle, setting aside functional positioning statements to focus on elevating the why—the emotional purpose that the organization could rally around.

3. Fast forward to the future to ground purpose in greater context.

‍If you’re struggling to make your purpose feel more aspirational and evergreen, consider taking an imaginative journey five, 10, or 15 years into the future. Spend a few minutes generating as many future signals as possible: What are things you observe in your industry, your customers, or your organization today that might indicate bigger trends over time? How might you evolve your purpose to stay relevant amid these changes?

How we’ve used it: In the earliest days of the pandemic, we were working with a large consumer electronics company to design a bold new strategy for the organization. To kick off the work, we spent a couple of hours with the core team generating signals. Even though we had no idea what the impacts of the pandemic would ultimately be, we were looking to uncover and better understand trends that were already starting to emerge in the world around us. These explorations into themes like hybrid work, climate resilience, equity (and more!) helped us paint a picture of the future that gave us a context for defining a purpose that could fit the company for years to come.

Articulating a bold and inspirational purpose is hard. It requires creativity, empathy, and constant iteration. And in the swirl of “are we there yet?” it can be easy to sacrifice the emotion, chopping the “feeling” in favor of generic language that—if said with enough oomph—sounds smart enough. But it’s not worth it.

Finding the right “why” can help give your purpose the power it needs to inspire leaders and employees to work in service of something greater. And when you bring it to life, a great purpose can signal your company’s core ethos to consumers, acting like a beacon to those who seek what you have to offer.

For organizations and brands, discovering purpose always starts with a question: “Why do you exist, beyond profit?”

But where is “here” exactly? Here is a tense political environment amidst a divisive battle over “woke” values. It’s a challenging business climate with companies deprioritizing DEIB budgets and sometimes removing entire teams. It’s a design community questioning when and where to push on inclusive practices, in service of moving all of us forward.

Even amidst these hurdles, many of us are still seeking a world where our commercial systems reinforce the world we want to live in. That’s our “there.” To those who believe, the path to more inclusive design practices is not some cherry-on-top afterthought; it’s an imperative facet of our evolving global culture. And for some designers, it’s why we wake up and go to work every day.

Responsible design (or inclusive design, ethical design, or even respectful design, as design leader Dr. Dori Tunstall has dubbed it) has been an emerging focus of design for decades, most often helmed by BIPOC and marginalized folks at design-led organizations. At IDEO, it’s been a movement most recently organized by the Inclusive Design Collective (IDC), a fast-growing crew that meets regularly to discuss design, interrogate our processes, and consider the potential consequences of our work, socially and environmentally.

The IDC has been experimenting with design tools and resources to use throughout the design thinking process (many of these interventions build on tools and best practices from across the worlds of design, engineering, and business). Most of the tools we’ve developed and adopted make space in the project journey to question privilege, power dynamics, biases, and access—all to unlock better outcomes for people and the planet.

Meanwhile, we can feel business shifting. Not all decisions are being driven by profit and shareholder value anymore. We see in our research and in our client work that commerce is becoming more values- and responsibility-driven choice-making. (And in many cases, it’s already there.) Here are five reasons we believe centering inclusive practices in design is the way things are going:

1. Inclusive design is at the heart of global scaling

Capitalism is built on a premise of continual growth. Increasingly, businesses are looking globally to find that growth—but doing so requires that we design thoughtfully and inclusively for consumers and producers in those new markets. For decades now, emerging markets have produced goods for the world, leading to a wave of consumerism. The internet accelerated this change in consumption and exacerbated a trade imbalance that does not serve the needs of people in emerging markets.

But now, we're seeing a shift, especially as historically marginalized countries are experiencing population and economic gains that far outpace the rate of change in other markets. Companies have begun trying to sell products and services to people in emerging markets, delivering to an entirely new set of customers with different values, systems, cultures, needs, and motivations. The businesses that will win—as always—are the ones that deeply understand their customers and how the products they deliver meet those customers’ needs. That means the businesses that will win will be the ones who design alongside them.

We’ve seen this firsthand. Our Last Mile Money program, funded by the Gates Foundation, was a great use case for responsible design. Our work focused on helping companies launch more inclusive products and greater financial access in emerging markets at what is called “the last mile”—underserved women, people in rural areas, and others facing barriers like literacy and internet access. Even companies that were committed to designing for underrepresented users were facing a challenge: Products were often designed with urban, tech-savvy, mostly-male users in mind. Despite pouring money into marketing, promotions, and rebrands, new users weren't adopting their wares. To unlock real growth, these companies needed to expand far beyond their existing users.

In response to these challenges, IDEO developed tools like Designing for Digital Confidence, the Gender Evaluation Framework, and the Financial Confidence Playbook. We centered underserved users throughout the design process, constantly going back to them for feedback to help product teams understand a range of barriers that have kept many people from using and benefiting from digital products. We listened and then took action, redesigning and improving products for needs that have often been ignored.

In India, major e-commerce platform FlipKart (owned by Walmart) redesigned its app to be more intuitive for first-time internet users, helping them serve hundreds of millions of customers. In Kenya, a startup called Leja streamlined its product’s onboarding experience for female small-business owners, leading to 30 percent more sign-ups, and more than quintupling transaction growth. We're seeing many more companies integrate responsible design into how they operate, not just because it’s the right thing to do—but because their own future growth depends on it.

2.  Gen Z won’t mess with anything that’s not inclusive—no cap

‍The number of Gen Z workers—those born between 1997 and 2012—is projected to grow to 51 million by 2030 (overtaking Boomers, who had long reigned as the largest generation of full-time workers, from the late 1970s-2011). Gen Zers are digital natives who grew up in the era of rapid technology development, possess a unique set of skills and perspectives, and are the most diverse generation of our time. Gen Z's strong sense of social awareness and values-driven choice-making guides everything they do. It now has begun to guide business. Companies are shifting their calculus—lack of inclusivity means fewer customers. And businesses who don’t heed this may go the way of Crystal Pepsi.

Meanwhile, external signals reflect a similar sentiment, like the rise in demand for environmental, social, and corporate governance-related investment (82 percent of Gen Z have exposure to ESG investments, and 40 percent say their investment decisions are driven by companies with purpose), or the way Gen Z has redefined consumption from ownership to access, show that they're demanding more from the companies, products, and technologies they adopt. Gen Zers hate labels, love “slow fashion,” and more than half of them identify as “not straight.” For them, DEIB needs to be built in, and authentic, and their loyalty will follow.

As many companies are scrambling to build AI products as quickly as possible, we took a different approach: working directly with Gen Zers to learn more about what they really want from AI. As we tested and prototyped product concepts, they sent us a clear message: They only want products that align with their values. Too many of us assumed that as digital natives, they would take to all-new tech like ducks to water; instead their preferences have many folks really considering the ethical and climate consequences of emerging technology.

3. In many sectors, responsible design won’t be a choice—it will be an obligation

‍‍We all know that businesses today are not nearly as motivated as they need to be to make the changes our planet will need. When we worked with H&M’s CEO at the time, the company had made aggressive sustainability goals, driven by their own aspirations for the business. However, they were also aligned with global regulations, calling for less plastic and less waste in manufacturing processes, and placed them ahead of the market in this transition by streamlining their supply chain, and cutting excess inventory, and producing less waste.

It’s too early for this latest AI growth spurt to have spurred much regulation—but it is coming. IDEO’s Emerging Tech Lab is putting ethics first and sees AI and climate at an intersection, ripe with opportunity for designing more responsibly—for the good of the world, but also because one day, companies simply won’t have a choice.

4. Consumer preferences are changing, and businesses that only care about shareholder growth may be penalized

‍Values-based consumption is not just having a moment—it has redefined consumption. More people are choosing to support companies that align with their values. In fact, in a McKinsey survey, 70 percent of Gen Z respondents said they try to purchase products from companies they consider ethical. Nielsen tells us that 75 percent of Millennials are so eco-conscious, they’ll change their buying habits to favor environmentally-friendly products.

Consider Patagonia. With an estimated value of about $3 billion dollars, and $1 billion in annual revenue, the outdoor company announced in 2022 that Mother Earth would be its only shareholder, and “every dollar that is not reinvested … will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.” Patagonia has made a name for itself with aggressive environmental goals, like completely eliminating virgin petroleum material in its products by 2025, and becoming net zero by 2040. Patagonia products aren’t cheap, yet sales have quadrupled over the past decade, and it has also expanded offerings into food. The company is a great example of how a brand can be very clear about what it stands for, and still find that people will pay for quality—even at a time when consumers are feeling the pain of inflation. Meanwhile, fast fashion, which offers customers lower quality goods at a much cheaper price point, has seen a steady decline in sales. If businesses continue to only value cost savings, they may learn: Cheap isn’t cheap when it loses you a customer.

‍5. Responsible design creates better products

‍We're big admirers of the healthtech startup Kasha, which has leaned into responsible design to unlock pent-up demand with healthtech. Founder Joanna Bichsel saw that millions of women lacked access to health products in Rwanda. So, Kasha listened to customers’ needs and pain points, and it designed a service that delivered tampons, contraceptives, and other women’s products in accessible and responsible ways. Kasha tapped into massive demand by offering unprecedented product choice, high quality, and perhaps most importantly, confidentiality to its customers, who are 65 percent low-income women. Kasha has seen 10 times revenue growth, and has now expanded to multiple markets across Africa. The woman-led startup isn’t stopping there: It’s adding pharmaceuticals, telehealth, and credit services—all to help women better access quality health care. Kasha learned that centering the unmet needs of the voices that are so often unheard was not just the path to more inclusivity, but also to create products specifically tailored for their customers, and succeed as a company.

The opportunities ahead

Whether it’s the values-based consumption habits of the next generation, new opportunities in growth markets, a coming wave of regulations in climate and Gen AI—Bob Dylan said it best—“the times, they are a-changin.”

Companies that plan for this future, this “there,” with value-loving consumers, more diverse needs, more access, more expansive geographies—will not only get “there,” they will reap the benefits, too. If you’re trying to make it through this tough, ever-changing market—inclusive design might be the best way to survive, and we’d love to help.

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(The figure for Patagonia's annual revenue has been updated for accuracy.)

We won’t get “there” by doing what got us “here.”

The question was a daily prompt, an experiment to help teams to have more candid conversations and increase their ability to collaborate with each other. Instead, an awkward silence followed.

The exercise was part of a partnership exploring the power of making with a global healthcare company. Together, we were designing for the organizational culture the company wants to have to achieve their strategic ambitions. This team’s role was to instill new ways of working for the whole company. They wrote the culture code. But they couldn’t quite articulate how they themselves were living it. Yet.

Their trouble answering the question wasn’t a failure—this work is hard. And it requires changing ingrained behaviors every day. So together, we worked with the team to make culture change tangible through real-world experiments (not just decks and frameworks) that helped ignite new behaviors through actions, not words.

What does that mean, exactly? As Roger L. Martin, strategy advisor to some of the world’s most successful organizations, explains, “The truth about culture is that the only way you can change it is by changing the way individuals work with one another. If you can change that, then you will find the culture has changed.” Changing how individuals work takes more than words, or artifacts, or processes (although those things definitely have a role to play). It requires action. That’s where design comes in. And that’s where our team started, by making a series of cultural experiments.

The goal was to learn about how we can change people’s behaviors and enable them to work differently. We collaborated with key teams and people who identified themselves as culture ambassadors. Together, we created tools and activities that would inspire action, and teach us how to change culture in this specific environment, because every org is different.

Here are some of the experiments we used to ignite action.

Unblocking decisions and flex support styles with a card deck

The organization wanted to become “networked”— meaning people would work more autonomously, with high accountability and clear communication between teams and their leaders (rather than linear, siloed teams). But if communication is lacking, and accountability isn’t clear, decisions in a network are made by consensus, and people don’t feel empowered to take ownership and use their ingenuity to solve problems. So we created two sets of cards to prompt better conversations between people and their managers.

One set of cards focused on unblocking decisions, by sharing questions (Is there psychological safety within the team making decisions?) and assigning clear roles that defined the level of involvement people have in making different decisions. Is someone supposed to drive a decision, or simply consult on it?

The other set of cards helped people articulate the type of support they need from their managers in a given moment, like coaching vs. problem solving—facilitating more open conversation about the type of leadership they need to thrive. These cards empowered managers to better support their teams, while empowering teams to be clear about what they need to drive good outcomes. They also proved that specific structure and language could prompt desired behaviors at scale.

One participant shared that after an initial conversation where she told her boss she was looking for a coach, he helped her strategize to draw on her strengths to achieve her goals. And when she wanted to share her “value with a broader group outside of customer-facing work and my immediate team,” she felt empowered to put that into action, which “would've never happened if it weren't for the initial coaching.”

Implementing a daily ritual to prompt collective reflection and candor

One of the most critical behaviors for creating a collaborative culture is regular, honest feedback between people. Done well, it builds trust and psychological safety among teams, leading to better performance. In this organization, teams rarely found time and space to give or gather informal feedback on the way they work. When it was positioned as a mandatory, formal task, it could feel exhausting.

Intead, we wanted to prompt small, regular conversations about collaboration. So we created a fun reflective tool based on a spin-the-wheel format:, an online generator that surfaces topical questions (like the one at the beginning of this article) to prompt candid chats. The questions run the gamut from silly to serious, and taught us the importance of making something fun if you want teams to build it into their existing routines. Questions like, “When has a new perspective helped you make a decision recently?” encouraged people to feel safe in opening up and reflecting on their behavior as a group.

Over time, reflection moments became something teams looked forward to. The questions changed the narrative so that employees could surface issues without fear of consequence, and resolve issues before they became problems. As one participant told us, “The energy was palpable in our group. It got to five minutes before the end of the session, and they still wanted to talk. Everyone wanted to do it again. It’s turning into something wonderful that we needed.”

Introducing an action journal to increase leaders’ self awareness

Many leaders recognize the importance of regular reflection and feedback sessions, but competing priorities get in the way.

To address that need, we designed a personalized action journal that fit into leaders’ daily work flow. The goal was to learn whether a tool that prompts regular self-reflection will result in an increase in leaders' self-awareness, helping them identify how they want to grow, and prompting them to seek more support.

Through this simple experiment, we were able to learn that creating dedicated space and time for reflective practices not only boosts leaders’ confidence, it models the value of continual learning and growth for others. One participant told us, “I've found it a nice and simple way to reflect on the things I've been doing, and connect that back to conversations with my own manager.”

Each of these experiments made new behaviors tangible by giving form, fun, and structure to otherwise abstract concepts. They helped people experience the potential value of new ways of working for themselves, demonstrating their function, and connecting theoretical culture change concepts with day-to-day work.

Culture change at any scale requires more than words; it requires action and application in people’s everyday experiences. Making change tangible through experiments is the quickest way to surface stories, build belief, and gather the evidence to support change at scale. Not every organization is trying to solve the same problem, and the same experiments won’t work everywhere. But for every culture problem at every company, there are tangible ways to drive change.

In a recent meeting with a new client, we asked the team, “What smart risks have you or your team taken recently?”

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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.