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.
  ‍
• 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

Like a gawky teen who acts like a kid but resembles an adult, many Internet-born organizations find, a few years in, that their mode of operation no longer matches their growing size. The acceptable norms of a small startup—like decision-making around a shared kitchen table—actually prevent these companies from continuing to innovate once they’ve scaled. As a result, they begin to plateau and become susceptible to disruption and competition.

Often, companies in this teen stage seek guidance in areas they've neglected during their initial growth spurt. As one CEO recently shared, she needed help “jumping the S-curve.” The following three principles can enable digitally-native companies to keep thriving and achieve sustainability—in other words, help the skinny kid fill out and establish the traits needed to become a grown-up.

Rethink team structures and incentives

When startups consist of just a few people in a room, there’s no separation between disciplines: An engineer sits next to the head of sales, who sits across from a project manager and shares a file cabinet with a designer. But as the company scales, teams often become siloed into discrete functions. When disparate groups are responsible for specific parts of the customer experience, it becomes fragmented.

In a project IDEO led with an online retail startup that had fallen into this trap, we noticed that the front-end engineers and UX designers—who were responsible for the website search interface—rarely communicated with the back-end engineers and data analysts. Because of this, the front-end team designed user search experiences that weren’t even feasible from a back-end point of view. In addition to this being a massive waste of time and effort, it represented a misalignment between teams working at the same company, on the same product, and serving the same customer. If internal teams are disconnected, the customer experience will inevitably be disconnected as well.

For organizations struggling with this, there’s an opportunity to reorganize teams around moments along the customer journey (account creation, browse or search, checkout, and so on), rather than function. Eventually, that misaligned company created an interdisciplinary search team that included designers, data analysts, account managers, customer success associates, and others. This resulted in a more consistent and functional search experience for users, which in turn led to more people finding, and ultimately buying, products on their site.

The customer experience needs to guide not only team organization, but also incentives. In early start-ups, individuals and teams are rewarded for speed and execution: The quicker features are released, the better. But this mindset only reinforces the tendency for teams to evolve into myopic silos, unable to grasp the holistic experience beyond their discrete function.

When reorganizing their teams around the customer journey, that online retail startup established new incentives and shared success metrics that encouraged the newly-formed groups to work together and focus on the customer experience, rather than speed and quantity. The new interdisciplinary search team’s incentives were tied to a customers’ success in finding the item they were looking for on the website or app.

Dig deeper into data

Internet-born startups tend to have an abundance of engineers who are experts at collecting and leveraging data. They relentlessly A/B test the product and often immediately take action based on the results: If button A is generating more clicks than button B, it’s best to go with the former.

This is where teenage companies take a wrong turn. Engineering teams rely on their same tried-and-true data and analysis methods used when they were chasing the next round of funding. But now that the company has matured and needs to become profitable, it must change its habits to match this new stage of growth. Continuing to blindly A/B test without considering the implications leads to over-optimizing their current product features. This results in feature bloat and prevents innovation beyond a hallmark product or technology.

Instead of reinforcing old habits, it’s useful for startups to ask why something is occuring—why is this button outperforming the other? Many teams skip this question. As a comparison, during qualitative research, we ask target customers open-ended questions to learn why they think, feel, or behave in a certain way. For example, a shopper may share that they prefer organic produce. But learning why—perhaps due to climate concern or wanting the best for their kids—unlocks the potential to understand how an online grocery delivery startup could innovate.

Rather than merely pushing organic strawberries on the homepage or building an “organic” product filter, the company can use this valuable knowledge to grow beyond their primary offering. They can consider questions like: Do environmental activists or health-conscious parents represent new or existing customer segments? How might we meaningfully shift our product or create a new one to serve them? The key is to follow data collection and A/B testing with qualitative research aimed at understanding why. Engineers will need to push beyond their comfort zone to ask these questions. Companies may also consider bringing qualitative research specialists onto engineering teams to help build this capacity.

For Internet-born startups, data can’t be only an optimization tool. It’s also a catalyst for deeper qualitative understanding and continuous innovation.

Embrace a new mode of leadership

When founders are used to working alongside engineers and designers, they often hesitate or struggle to step into the level of leadership required to run a company with hundreds of employees. The skills that enable someone to build a company are not always the same as those required to lead a mature and rapidly growing organization.

During a meeting with a digitally-native healthcare startup, the founder asked for a pause so he could weigh in on new illustration icons. By this point, the company had 200 employees and the founder had hired over a dozen senior leaders with deep experience managing teams and scaling mid-sized startups. But because of this CEO’s tendency to do the work (which he embraced when the startup was 10 people) rather than delegate the work, he wasn’t empowering this new talent do their jobs. Letting go, trusting others, and delegating can be particularly difficult and humbling for founders of companies in this adolescent period. But it’s essential to make these shifts for the startup to flourish.

This same founder also shared that communicating the company’s vision and big decisions to employees felt like more of a challenge than it used to. When an organization can fit inside a conference room, leaders have a simpler time with this: Small startup teams are often made up of generalists with an “all hands on deck” mindset. But with hundreds of specialists on board, CEOs must translate their strategy to multiple teams with differing expertise.

Each quarter, the founder began holding meetings with each team in addition to town halls with the entire company. Rethinking one’s communication strategy at this adolescent stage can create more of an opportunity for understanding, connection, and inspiration. This transition also reflects a new level of maturity for a leader.

Digitally-native startups initially grow and succeed due to a certain set of conditions: They’re technologically innovative, data-driven, and have leaders who can inspire early hires and investors and build from the ground up. But when these startups scale, those core conditions no longer do the trick. Evolving from a rambunctious, scrappy teen to a promising adult requires a new willingness to centralize around the customer experience, think before acting, and reach a higher level of leadership.

Special thanks to Mike Stringer, Jill Levinsohn, and Deb de Vries for their contribution to this article.

Visuals by Kate Bingaman-Burt

Startups enjoy a reputation as the bright young things of the business world. They’re digitally fluent, small enough to be nimble, and new enough to be free of legacy baggage. Yet many successful startups face a rude awakening if they make it past infancy and scale to hundreds of employees. While success is exciting, puberty is awkward. These principles can help.

Now, almost seven years and two babies later, all four of us are still in the same space. I accidentally gave birth to our second child on the apartment floor—a life-changing moment that only took up about twelve square feet. Eric calmly delivered her, while speaking to the paramedics, and our two-year-old stood in the corner.

So, our apartment has served many different purposes. With each additional human, black shirt, pair of boots, friendship, painting, plant, and piece of furniture we have had to really evaluate what stays in the apartment and what must go.

I’ve devoured all the decluttering blogs, books, documentaries, and conversations. I’ve tried a lot of the methodologies, and written “get rid of everything” on my weekend to-do list for more than seven years—and failed. But over the years, I’ve built a framework for making decisions about what to bring into my life—and our space—based on what matters most to me and to us.

I’m not sure that this is the final version of my criteria for what stays and goes, but I’m trying it out—a true IDEO prototype. I would like to think that these five principles could apply to whatever life you have—whether you have a huge space with three closets, a tiny room with no closet, or you actually live in a closet, like my daughters do.

1. Relationships

Relationships are what matter most to me. I value people. I love having them over to celebrate, I love feeding them, letting them stay overnight, hearing their stories, letting them shower, and taking meals to them. We built a Murphy bed for my husband and me to give us more space, but, mostly, so that we can have people over to talk and eat together, and develop those relationships that mean so much to us. We also built bunk bed cribs in the closet (bedroom) so that the girls would learn to share. Instead of being a constraint, I think of our tiny space as a way to share happiness, motivate us to resolve conflict more quickly, and cry and be sad—together.

2. Cleanliness

Cleanliness isn’t just about Pine-Sol and bleach—it’s also about reducing visual clutter. White walls, curated with colorful artwork and flooded with natural light, feel clean and visually calm. With a human baby for a Swiffer, I am also particularly aware of accumulating dust. And although it would be more convenient, I find it difficult to give up my duties to a cleaning person because of my high standards and weird obsession with fresh grout and shiny floors. And so, cleaning and reducing visual clutter are a family affair filled with songs, dance breaks, snacks, and high fives.

3. Long-term vs. short-term

For me, investing in things that will be with me for the long term is a balance between using my money better and producing less waste. In the short term, I will reuse something that I already have, like a hand me down click-on kid booster seat, even though I don’t like the way it looks or the exact function of it. (My kids will eventually be able to sit in a regular chair unassisted, right?) To help manage the amount of waste we produce, we also have the super luxury of curbside compost, recycling, and garbage and we have communities that will happily use things that we no longer can.

4. Aesthetics

When one thing is out of place in a small space, everything looks like chaos. To create order and balance, you need a bit of white space to breathe, and nice things to look at. To give us more storage we installed cabinets high up on the wall, out of our line of sight. We hang our laundry bags on a dowel in our front closet, hiding dirty laundry and freeing up the floor space that a laundry hamper would take up. We often rotate the refrigerator artwork to keep things interesting and curated. We make our home a place filled with things that we’re proud to talk about, look at, and live with.

5. Health and wellness

We all need space to be together and to be apart, space to retreat to and be quiet, space to move around and dance, or space to exercise or meditate. The place where you live can’t always serve all of those purposes. Creating cozy, soft places to read, moving furniture to the perimeter to make room to dance and run in circles, and hanging out in the shower just one minute longer to clear your thoughts have all helped us be a healthier family. And when it feels like everything is breaking down, we buckle the girls in the stroller and go outside. The outdoors have become our extended living room, allowing us to spread out our arms a little wider and play.

We won’t be in our tiny home forever; two growing children mean that one day our apartment will actually be too small. But we—and you—can take this methodology we’ve created wherever we go.

When you think about your own space, remember to consider the things that matter most to you, and the things that work for you. Take pride in your home and make it your own sanctuary. Learn to see the possibility in your space and in your life.

In the meantime, we’ll be thriving in our 400 square feet. If you’d like to drop by, we’d love to feed you.

It all started in 2011, with eight weeks of apartment searching, a lot of flirting with landlords, a couple of rejections (because “couples always break up in studio spaces”), and an eventual win—four hundred square feet for my husband Eric and me.

As more of our interactions with healthcare become mediated by screens, the need to design human-centric systems only increases. Digital interfaces can empower people to take control of their own health, but these systems can also amplify the sterile interactions for which the industry is all too well known.

In order for “making healthcare more human” to be more than a marketing slogan, it’s important for designers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders to keep in mind the humans they serve—especially when designing digital products. Below are five principles we use at IDEO to keep human needs at the center of everything we do.

1. Meet users where they are

Human-centered design means designing for a user’s whole life context: income, employment, food preferences, and emotions. We must also consider the expectations, learned behaviors, and technological capabilities each user brings to the table when thinking about his or her health.

At IDEO, we always try to map out the full user journey. And because that user is human, they might not always be consistent in the way they interact with the digital product or tool. For example, in the course of designing a connected blood glucose meter, we observed that many people with diabetes don’t test their glucose levels on a regimented schedule. Why? Life gets in the way.

But because certified diabetes educators (CDEs) need as accurate information as possible, they ask patients to test as regularly as possible for the two weeks leading up to an appointment. This is where designers can play a role: Because digital tools live in people’s pockets and homes, we can tailor solutions to the individual to a greater degree than is possible in the in-person clinical care environment. By observing how patients use workarounds to integrate products into their routines, we can design solutions that work within the context of their lives. It’s only by meeting users where they are that we can inspire meaningful behavior change over time.

2. Create “give-get” loops

Imagine you’re introduced to a digital product or service by a healthcare provider during a routine clinical visit. You may choose to search for the accompanying app and download it from the App Store. You’d then go through an onboarding process, create a username and password, and decide whether to accept push notifications. You may also be asked to share sensitive health information or consent for the application to access it.

All of these steps have happened before you gained any tangible value from the product or service. In the absence of clear benefit to users, it’s not uncommon to lose many at this early stage.

One way we address early user drop-off is with a “give-get” loop. This could be as simple as asking a user to enter their dietary restrictions in exchange for tailored suggestions about nutrition, or asking for an address to provide hyper-local recommendations. Ultimately, good user experience design incorporates that data to complete a cycle of action that benefits the user. When we’re able to create conditions for purposeful data gathering, we can then recognize patterns and help users discover insights that they could act upon by introducing and initiating new behaviors.

At the same time, we need to be mindful of the role we might be creating for ourselves as recipients and holders of sensitive information. That’s why we’re careful to only collect the “minimally viable data” required to create the intended user experience.

3. Design for relationships

User experience design for managing chronic disease needs to rely on more than software and technology. The relationship between the primary user and their network of care providers and community members has significant bearing on the success of the product. The user experience is part of a larger service ecosystem and must consider how the nodes in that system interact.

Today, pharmaceutical companies often use digital tools to drive adherence—to make sure that patients take their medication at the right times and in the right ways. But digital solutions can go beyond adherence: they can—and should—support holistic care beyond acute or immediate medical needs.

When digital experiences and interactions can help patients live healthier lives, they become tools for delivering better health outcomes overall, beyond any specific condition. Further, the burgeoning field of digital therapeutics is turning out digital health products that themselves stand as effective, proven interventions to treat physical, mental, and behavioral conditions.

4. Don’t be limited by the boundaries of “the device”

When IDEO began working with Bayer Diabetes (now Ascensia Diabetes Care) in 2006, people with diabetes were able to access their own blood glucose data either by logging it themselves or by showing the meter to their doctor. The Contour USB opened up new opportunities for design, enabling people to plug the meter into a personal computer and transfer all readings to a single document. Once the Contour USB launched, the next design challenge was to make it simpler and less expensive. We honed in on a feature: the color screen.

While a color screen might seem like a great new opportunity to present rich information, it was only used for displaying simple data, like meal markers, dates, and times. From a human-centered design perspective, it made more sense to eliminate the color screen and use users’ smartphones or computers instead. The meter’s color screen was adding unnecessary cost without contributing enough benefit in return.

By focusing on the outcome rather than the solution, we were able to spot our own blindspot. Just because an intervention can be solved with technology doesn’t mean it always has to be.

5. Inspire the organization to evolve

As a rule, creating digital products and services will create the need for new capabilities and processes inside the organizations that deliver them. Digital user experiences are living systems, and they require organizational investment and structures ready to support near-constant change. As soon as we’re “done” designing a digital experience, a software operating system might change, a new data privacy law might pass, or a content partner could change their rules of engagement, any of which would require additional refinement.

Today, many companies that deliver global offerings at scale work in silos that are each oriented around different targets and metrics. There are several examples where organizations are directly addressing this challenge through new experimental ways of working. Whether through a corporate innovation lab, internal incubator, or entirely separate venture, carving out a portion of the business enables efficient experimentation without detracting from core business objectives. Then, once proof-of-concepts have been successful, learnings can be incorporated into the rest of the organization.

Even within the most nimble and flexible organizations, any digital product or service will need to continue to evolve and improve from day one. It’s like that old adage about buying a car: once you drive it off the lot, it immediately goes down in value. Once a digital solution is launched, it’s essential to start planning immediately for its next update. By listening to the needs of end users, it should be clear where to begin.

‍

From stepping into a doctor’s office to taking a daily vitamin, each interaction with the healthcare system was designed for and by a human—and yet the industry can often feel soulless.

CEOs like Tim Cook of Apple, Julie Sweet of Accenture North America, and Larry Fink of BlackRock joined together to declare that businesses must also focus on the ethical treatment of their employees, suppliers, and the environment. In other words, organizations must rethink their purpose—a reason for existing beyond making a profit.

But establishing purpose isn’t simple, particularly for parent companies that own a variety of businesses. Mergers and acquisitions can put the purposes of different enterprises at odds with one another when they find themselves under the same corporate umbrella. Individual employees create their own goals and motivations. But beyond the structural and financial ties across entities and employees within a corporation, there often is no consistent, unifying vision.

With so much complexity in a conglomerate organization, where do leaders begin to create a purpose that functions across many businesses? The solution lies in “nested purpose”—a layered approach that starts at the business level and ladders up to the parent level. Nested purpose builds unity among all employees and businesses, making everyone feel connected. We’ve seen it shift leaders’ mindsets from “running a business owned by a parent company” to “being part of a family of businesses that are stronger together.” Nested purpose has the power to inspire new individual behaviors that in turn catalyze global impact across a corporation.

Walt Disney Company, for example, defines their “why” within their mission statement, “To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.” This statement applies across nine subsidiaries, each with different audience engagement, content, and distribution. A tier down, ESPN, which is owned by Disney, describes their “why” as, “To serve the sports fan, anytime, anywhere.” This statement is more focused on the ESPN consumer and their habits, but it nests comfortably within Disney’s higher purpose, enabling the two to function in tandem toward their ultimate goal, and giving employees in the smaller section of the business a sense that they’re meaningfully connected to the parent corporation.

The following is a series of tools and exercises to help foster nested purpose, based on our experience working with a global corporation hoping to drive transformational change within their organization. Like the Business Roundtable executives, this particular CEO knew that developing purpose at the parent-company level would be both virtuous and strategic, but needed leaders from each of the businesses to be engaged, aligned, and inspired. In addition to engaging these executives, we included promising talent—from mid-level managers to vice presidents—in the work to define and activate parent-level purpose.

Begin by setting the wheels in motion

At the first session with the heads of the businesses and their employees, we introduced the Purpose Wheel: a tool designed to foster conversations about purpose. The Wheel helps teams envision the various ways the parent company might have impact in the world. Simultaneously, the Wheel builds the foundation for an eventual purpose statement. Before crafting the specifics and poetry of a purpose statement, leaders must first find common ground around the idea and how it’s nested throughout the company.

Spinning the Purpose Wheel, the group imagined what the parent company’s future might look like if their purpose was grounded in the following five underlined areas:

We exist to Enable Potential
This suggests a parent company creates impact by inspiring greater possibilities, such as Nike, whose products and services exist to motivate and empower athletes.

We exist to Reduce Friction
By simplifying and eliminating barriers, companies like Spotify make daily pleasures—like listening to music—more accessible and seamless for customers.

We exist to Foster Prosperity
Brands like Warby Parker, which donates a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair sold, creates impact by supporting the success of others.

We exist to Encourage Exploration
This suggests that a company’s purpose is to champion discovery. Adobe, for example, offers a creative suite of tools and services that people can use to design and explore.

We exist to Kindle Happiness
Zappos purpose is “to live and deliver WOW.” The retail company creates impact by inciting pure joy.

While spinning the wheel, we posed the following questions to encourage discussion: If we exist to [ insert one of the five areas ], how might that purpose ultimately show up in our individual workplaces and in the world? What would all of us—together—have to agree to start or stop doing in order for this parent-company purpose to be true?

The Wheel’s five areas are intentionally designed to be fluid. Phrases like “enable potential” and “encourage exploration” are similar yet different. Though Spotify’s purpose is grounded in reducing friction, the company’s purpose could also be rooted in kindling happiness for its millions of listeners. This kind of flexibility is especially useful when establishing shared purpose among diverse businesses, as it enables generative conversations and more opportunity for alignment.

The Purpose Wheel also opens teams’ eyes to new possibilities: If a parent company exists to foster prosperity, for example, what innovative ideas or growth opportunities might this foundation unlock for one of its business groups? Perhaps it’s tweaking the manufacturing process to be more environmentally-friendly, developing a more human-centered customer service strategy, or instituting a new parental leave benefit for employees.

Get tangible through storytelling

Once this groundwork was laid, we broke the executives and employees into small groups and asked each member to share stories about their business that made them proud or represented their workplace culture at its best—focusing on humans and experiences, not profit or performance.

One business head talked about an entry-level employee who works at one of the energy plants her business operates. During a shift, the worker put his job at risk by persistently questioning a supervisor’s recommendation. His willingness to push authority ended up preventing an accident at the plant, one that would have put both the business and worker safety at risk. A mid-level manager shared a story about his business providing the financial resources to send a customer’s son to engineering school. After graduation, the son returned to his village to help the community learn to irrigate crops and generate food for the local area.

When asked to boil these stories down into values, the groups landed on words like bravery, dedication, trust, protection, empowerment, and generosity. Articulating these values prompted even more storytelling: Other participants began considering and sharing stories from their own organizations. Eventually, they generated a collection of stories about a particular shared value from across the parent company.

Look to the future with optimism

While stories of the past help illuminate purpose-oriented practices already in play, considering the future encourages leaders to articulate hopes and dreams for the parent company. During another workshop, we gave the team blank front covers of magazines, ranging from WIRED to National Geographic. We asked them to reflect on the purpose statement and values they’d derived from the previous exercises to imagine how their company might show up on a magazine cover in the future. What image would appear? What would the headline say?

One participant proudly taped his National Geographic cover on the board. The headline read, “Plastics Now Completely Eliminated From the World’s Oceans.” Another’s cover said, “[Parent company’s CEO] Named Time’s Person of the Year.”

When creating purpose at the parent company level—or any level for that matter—it’s helpful for tools and exercises to toggle between the accessible (sharing real stories) and aspirational (spinning the Purpose Wheel and imagining the future). This ensures that the eventual purpose statement is ambitious and inspirational, but also relatable and within a business’ reach.

Collaborate to drive improvement and alignment

To ground the group back in the tangible, we guided them through a writing session, asking them to draft three potential purpose statements for the parent company, based on the structure established from the Purpose Wheel, the values derived from their favorite stories, and the visions captured on the magazine covers.

Each team presented their favorite to the larger group, then switched tables and left their favorite purpose statement for others to inherit, build on, and improve. At the end of the rotations, every participant had contributed to five strong purpose statement prototypes to continue refining and testing with teams.

Putting purpose into practice

Nested purpose isn’t simple. Done poorly, it can confuse, distract and compound already complicated dynamics at the parent company-level. But when carefully planned and designed with both leaders and their employees, nested purpose can invigorate an organization by clarifying roles and creating cohesion across industries and countries.

Written by Kristin Kelly and Nate Carter
Visuals by Louisa Liu

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Business Roundtable, a lobbying group composed of executives from some of America’s largest companies, recently released a statement arguing that today’s corporations must do more than simply drive shareholder value.

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.

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