Over more than a century of leadership in the food and beverage industry, The J.M Smucker Company has expanded its range of products to maintain its relevance and address market demand. Today, the company leads numerous categories, with beloved products like Jif, Milk-Bone, and Folgers, which are the top choices of millions of Americans. By growing and diversifying their brands over the decades, Smucker has successfully weathered major shifts in consumer habits and technology. Today, though, CPG companies are experiencing unprecedented disruption, and leaders at Smucker understand that the escalating pace of change will require more than just new products.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement at The J.M. Smucker Company recognized the need to identify new market opportunities and establish practices that put innovation and growth at the heart of their business. And he saw the potential to bring those goals to life through his relationship with IDEO.

WATCH: Balancing innovation and efficiency through design has helped Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement at The J.M. Smucker Company, brave the unfamiliar, transform organizations, and ultimately bring game-changing ideas to market faster.

Geoff has stewarded a close partnership with IDEO for over a decade and throughout roles at numerous organizations. Together, Geoff and IDEO have worked on 25 projects, beginning while Geoff was VP of Marketing at Big Heart Pet Brands, and continuing on throughout his career at The J.M. Smucker Company. By working with IDEO to adopt a design thinking approach, Geoff has enabled collaboration across teams and empowered his organizations to find new ways of working that result in measurable business impact. For The J.M. Smucker Company, the partnership has brought creativity and human-centered design to the forefront of its operations, strengthening its ability to bring new products and brands to market and create a pipeline of growth.

WATCH: The J.M. Smucker Company has shifted to embrace growth and innovation as a mindset throughout the organization to bring more consistency to the innovation process.

Looking to the past to creatively connect with the future

As an example of this, Geoff and The J.M. Smucker Company suggested to IDEO that they explore how Folgers, America’s leading at-home coffee brand, might resonate more deeply with a millennial audience. Design research revealed that the mindset of today’s millennial coffee drinkers aligned with Folgers entrepreneurial brand roots. The teams collaborated to create a new concept: a brand called 1850 and an end-to-end, go-to-market product experience, including packaging, retail, and merchandise. 1850 hit shelves in 2018 and has since been reported by IRI Advantage as the top launch in the Coffee Category for 2019.

Frankly, I don’t think innovation gets any easier. You just get a little more comfortable with the discomfort, and that’s when the work starts to get consistently better.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President, Growth & Consumer Engagement, The J.M. Smucker Company

Creating an innovation pipeline that’s inspired by consumers’ needs

With 1850 underway, Geoff and The J.M. Smucker Company continued to invest in human-centered design to drive new offerings. The next collaboration with IDEO explored how Jif, the iconic peanut butter brand, could extend beyond the jar and become more readily accessible and appealing to busy parents who want to feel confident about the snacks they give their kids.

The design team was moved by the challenges that parents face: They want the best for their kids, but struggle to choose between what’s wholesome and what’s convenient on a daily basis. The ideal foods are filling, nutritious, and energizing, but often take more time to prepare and aren’t backpack or carpool-friendly. On the other hand, more convenient options tend to be full of empty carbs. Based on this insight, IDEO and Jif decided to tackle the snack-time parenting struggle. The IDEO and Jif teams worked side-by-side to prototype multiple product ideas and formats and tested them with on-the-go families to ultimately create Power Ups.

Available at over 200 retailers worldwide and online at Amazon, Jif Power Ups make wholesome, delicious grab-and-go snacking possible for kids and parents alike, across products ranging from Soft Baked Bars to Creamy Clusters, which are filled with peanut butter and rolled in whole grain oats. All are made with peanuts as the first ingredient and contain no high fructose corn syrup. Since going to market in 2018, Jif Power Ups has been named the top innovation launch in the Snack Bars category by IRI Market Advantage.

Design thinking underpins everything we do.

Geoff Tanner, Senior Vice President & Corporate Officer, Growth & Consumer Engagement, The J.M. Smucker Company

WATCH: The J.M. Smucker Company is on a transformational journey, committed to three pillars of growth: Lead in the best categories, build brands consumers love, and be everywhere.

The J.M. Smucker Company has experienced accelerated growth and speed to market by testing bold new ideas and evolving the role of innovation at the company. Design thinking and consumer empathy have permeated the organization’s new product development process, making it easier to uncover sharp, human-centered insights that lead to thoughtful and uniquely differentiated brands in a competitive, ever-shifting, and overcrowded industry. The work has fueled Geoff’s vision to inspire a culture of innovation at the company so that it can move at the speed of consumers and remain a best-in-class family of brands for future generations.

It’s a Thursday afternoon in Oakland, California. A line of lunchtime diners snakes out the door of dosa by DOSA. Upon entering, eaters are greeted by the smell of tangy dosa—a large paper-thin crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and lentils—and sweet, spicy chai. Turquoise chairs pop against a floor-to-ceiling mural by Oakland artist Namita Kapoor that transports diners to Chandni Chowk, one of the busiest markets in Old Delhi, as if enjoying their food at a local vendor.

In 2003, Emily and Anjan Mitra spent their honeymoon in India, savoring the street food of Anjan’s childhood in Mumbai (often still called Bombay). After returning to San Francisco, they found themselves longing for those distinctive flavors and dishes. Realizing that most Bay Area diners had never seen nor tasted these foods, Emily and Anjan founded DOSA, an upscale, full-service restaurant that introduced the Bay Area to Southern Indian cuisine. Locals came to try the unique, plant-forward dishes, and left with satisfied bellies and a broader understanding of Indian culture.

The entrepreneurs envisioned a brand extension of DOSA: a counter-service restaurant that could scale nationally. The hospitality venture, called dosa by DOSA, would offer healthful Indian street food made from local and seasonal ingredients. Emily and Anjan also set out to expand their existing product line-up—including cold lassi beverages, simmering sauces, and grab-and-go-meals—to national grocers and retailers and needed launch-ready packaging that was convenient, eye-catching, and environmentally-friendly. The new expression would enable consumers to experience dosa by DOSA and Southern India in a variety of forms and places. Emily and Anjan partnered with IDEO to establish a cohesive and consistent brand experience, from the restaurant and to-go meals to retail stores and mobile delivery.

In close partnership with the founders, their staff, Feldman Architecture and MPADA, IDEO set out to bring dosa by DOSA to life and help it scale through brand, environment, and experience design. This included creating everything from the logo and packaging to the menu and operations strategy, with each element tying back to the founders’ vision of sharing Indian heritage and traditions through cuisine.

The group began by seeking cultural inspiration for dosa by DOSA’s brand identity system—the logo, colors, values, fonts, and messaging—to guide future designs. They were inspired by Indian truck drivers who decorate their trucks with garlands, signs, or flags that engage other drivers or bring luck. The dosa by DOSA logo design and its wood-cut typeface are inspired by the dimensionality of this homespun art form, while the vibrant, eclectic colors reflect the streets and textures of urban Mumbai.

The goal of opening people’s minds to Indian cooking and culture extends to the packaging, which meets customers’ needs and playfully educates them. The food containers—made from recycled and compostable material—feature brightly patterned labels reminiscent of the trucks. Some have built-in compartments suited to multiple dipping chutneys, making it convenient to sample a variety of Indian flavors. Paper tray covers resembling Mumbai newspapers offer eating tips like “Be civilized. Eat with your hands,” encouraging diners to experience an Indian custom.

The vibrant brand comes to life across an array of packaging, including cold cups printed with the phrase “thanda thanda pani”—meaning “cold cold water”—which comes from a popular Indian parody of the Vanilla Ice song "Ice Ice Baby."

To design the diner experience and restaurant environment in a way that invites curiosity about the culture and cuisine, the team started with diners: They identified key moments in their experience like entering, waiting in line, and paying. The floor plan, furniture, lighting, signage, and menu were designed around these touchpoints. For example, while customers wait in line, they can watch dosa being prepared, as if they’re eager and hungry travelers awaiting street food.

The dosa by DOSA menu includes distinctive items like coconut kale mung bean salad and hot masala chai made with caramelized milk—the way Anjan’s mother prepared it. To help the restaurant scale, the team created a preliminary furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E) budget, 3D renderings of the space, and an operations strategy for the founders and their employees.

The dosa by DOSA flagship launched in January 2018 in Oakland, California. The IDEO brand guidelines have enabled the dosa by DOSA team to independently and easily shepherd new product lines to market, including salads, wraps, curry bowls, samosas, and simmer sauces. The brand’s packaged food launched in over 200 natural food stores in 24 months—including over 100 Whole Foods locations—as well as online retailers and delivery services like Good Eggs and Caviar. These items and the restaurant have helped Emily and Anjan realize their vision of bringing the flavor and spirit of Southern Indian cuisine to new communities around the world.

In recent years, due to shifts in Japan’s demographics, the food industry has faced challenges such as a decrease in market size and a shrinking number of producers. As a result, social impact opportunities abound in this field.

When Japanese software company NJC (Nippon Jimuki Co. Ltd.) approached IDEO seeking to identify new business opportunities that would build on the company’s core strengths, the food and agriculture industry rose up as a promising area of focus.

NJC is a well-established software company that has spent over 50 years helping to build backend business systems for small to medium enterprises. NJC works across healthcare, retail, and food and beverage, computerizing core processes to support and improve operations.

In partnership with IDEO, NJC explored its strengths and potential as an organization, as well as the ideas and visions of the employees, and emerged with the goal of using their capabilities to address large-scale issues facing regional farmers.

During research across Japan, local growers described challenges with multi-layered supply chains and analog systems, which led to “overwork for minimal profit,” as well as a gap between supply and demand. Because agricultural wholesalers lacked clear information in advance on the status of crops or the volume to be harvested, they struggled to negotiate with buyers, which led to wasted food On the other hand, the farmers who grow the crops are engaged in manual labor, and do not always have the energy to focus on business aspects such as efficiency or the pursuit of increased profitability, which leads to a diminished interest in farming among young people.

One question that emerged through research was why agricultural producers weren’t utilizing IT. This evolved into “How can profitability be improved for all stakeholders?” and, “How might we create a system that will provide useful data without creating a burden for either farmers or agricultural wholesalers?”

The result was fudoloop.

fudoloop is an app that enables farmers and wholesalers to conduct business more profitably by bringing transparency to the fluctuating produce market. Through fudoloop, wholesalers receive information from farmers a day in advance, and can coordinate the various requests of buyers, such as order size, production location and other special requests. As a result, wholesalers can function as “community managers,” doing business with both producers and buyers at a more appropriate price point.

NJC aims for fudoloop to be the first step in a cycle that brings value to all stakeholders, from farmers to wholesalers, retailers and even customers, by redefining the “middleman” role of produce wholesalers.

The population of Tokyo’s metropolitan area is twice as big as New York, and the daily influx of workers from the suburbs increases that number sixfold. Congestion on trains traveling through the center of Tokyo during commuting hours is said to reach somewhere close to 200 percent of the trains’ capacity.

East Japan Railway Company (known as JR East) is the world’s largest railway company by revenue, operating 12,000 trains daily and serving 6.4 billion passengers per year.

In March 2014, JR East leveraged their extensive operations and passenger data to publish a consumer app that provided train location information, congestion status, air conditioning temperature, and wayfinding tools.

The app was downloaded more than 3.8 million times; however, its features and usability proved unsatisfactory to users. In an attempt to be comprehensive in addressing passenger needs, the app was weighed down with data and worked sluggishly. Competitors’ apps were named above JR East in customer satisfaction surveys, highlighting the company’s need to address the tool’s usability.

JR East’s Technical Division approached IDEO to help design an attractive and consistent user-centered experience through its digital ecosystem. With a team of interaction designers, they launched a project to create a new version of their app.

During the research phase, the IDEO team observed passengers’ behaviors and decision-making processes and noticed that people were using several apps at once to get more personalized and complete information.

The team created a set of paper-based prototypes to test how users would react to various functionalities. Surprisingly, users ranked versions with limited functionalities higher than those with a broad range of features.

This insight informed a new prototype that enabled a customized user experience based on traveler needs. Wayfinding proved to be the most frequently selected feature, so the new app was designed around helping passenger navigate during their trips.

Although JR East had traditionally outsourced their app development, IDEO encouraged them to organize their own internal team. In cooperation with Pivotal—a frequent IDEO partner familiar with human-centered approaches—the internal team was trained in agile development and built the new app themselves. A prototype was released in November 2017 as “Go! by Train.” It was so successful in the market that the earlier JR East app was replaced entirely with the content of the new design.

JR East's internal development team was recognized by the company for their exceptional output, and will be integral to the company's human-centered digital transformation going forward.

In the design world, the practice of critique relies on a universal language learned in art school. Students routinely pin their work up on a wall, and offer feedback in the same way that was modeled for them. From industrial to graphic design, students learn a shared form of expression that allows them to engage with each others’ work and make suggestions for how it could be better.

Perhaps leaning back, stroking one’s chin, and groupthinking creative work is like dancing about architecture, but at least in art school, everyone knows the steps to the dance.

In the modern world of design work, that’s no longer the case. I joined IDEO more than 10 years ago. Since then, the number of disciplines we practice have mushroomed from around 10 to 33. Our backgrounds vary wildly, as do our outputs—from artifacts to interventions, micro to macro, processes to systems. And we’re not the only ones working this way. Multidisciplinary teams are more and more common across industries, and each discipline or practice brings its own jargon—and methods of critique.

In other words, the language barriers teams have to deal with are increasing.

So, how does a data designer critique a teammate’s copywriting? How does a graphic designer articulate her intuition about business design? How does a multidisciplinary team find a universal language to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a proposed solution?

These questions sent me and a few coworkers off on a assignment. We set out to create a shared vocabulary for critique that would be broad enough to serve the challenges of today. We started by asking: What qualities do we most associate with creative excellence in our work? And, how might critique help ensure our solutions have the desired impact? We came up with an initial prototype, and tested it with teams in the wild.

That experiment illuminated a few things:

• Different disciplines do use different language for talking about their work
• What good looks like is about both process and outcome
• Designers are hungry for this conversation

So, we continued to test the vocabulary. The list diverged and converged until we landed on a set of seven key words, knowing that each is but a doorway into a world of meaning with many interpretations.

1. Beauty
2. Brains
3. Bravery
4. Destiny
5. Heart
6. Magic
7. Mastery

(You can download the cards here.)

The qualities are intentionally open-ended so that all designers (err, all humans) can relate, and so that they can be interpreted in ways that are appropriate in a given context.

The vocabulary was immediately valuable, helping designers move beyond binary sentiments of what is “working” and “not working,” to a more honest and nuanced discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

Imagine a critique that goes something like this:

Lauren (Software designer): How are you feeling about the content?

Jason (Writer): A little bored.

Lauren: Well, it’s a dry subject.

Jason: But people are people. If I’m bored writing it, they’ll be bored reading it.

Lauren: True. But if you’ve nailed the technical aspects maybe we can play a little...what do you think it needs?

Jason: Heart...maybe some Bravery...

Feels a little like dancing, right?

And that is just a snippet. The vocabulary provides an entry point into deep craft critiques that go well beyond aesthetics, or anything we can pin on a wall. As one coworker remarked to me, “We started thinking about beauty in relationship to an org chart—how it could be graceful and smart.”

The shared language is also useful outside of a design team.

Team member: We use this vocabulary to make sure our work is as bold, innovative, and effective as possible. How do you think your organization might respond to these prompts?

CMO: We are all about data...so that sounds like rigor. Teams are paralyzed until they have all the data. I don’t expect that will change over the course of this project, but I would love for you to help us see the value of beauty and bravery.

With a shared language, we are able to not only name our tendencies (as this CMO did), but identify strengths and weaknesses across the seven qualities, both specific to each discipline’s contribution, and as a whole. This builds empathy and understanding for individual efforts on a team, and creates agreements for how to further develop the work.

In our New York studio, we have been using the vocabulary as a way to reflect on our entire portfolio. As a community of intense New Yorkers, we had assumed that rigor and brains would surface. But as we critiqued our work from 2017, we realized that the work that embodied magic and heart in equal parts was what catalyzed clients and made us most proud.

Realizations like this brought up some compelling questions:

How do we embrace magic and heart in our business development process?

What does the resonance of magic and heart say about New York (and the world) today?

How do we want to stretch and grow in 2018?

In just over a year, the critique vocabulary has helped us reach a new level of discourse and awareness. It has pushed us in new ways, as individuals, teams, and a community. It has opened up new conversations with our clients, and given them language to more deeply engage in our work together.

And this is just the beginning.

Vocabulary is never fixed. It is a living organism that will evolve with time. We hope you will take this critique vocabulary and make it your own.

As we face increasingly complex design challenges, and creative, multidisciplinary teams are called upon to solve them, rigorous critique will be essential.

We can only hope it feels like dancing.

Shout out to IDEO Cambridge, Chicago, and New York for collaboration on these cards. Download the cards here.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. The adage has been used in countless ways since the early 1900s, and it’s still the best way I know to describe the challenge of critiquing creative work. What it means to me is, we’re using the wrong language, but it’s all we have.

For Rina, these tiny pointillist masterpieces are about more than just a side project. “Because I have a fast-paced, collaborative job, I love having an environment that allows me to slow down and reflect,” she says.

Years after she and I worked together—back when she was an associate art director at Wired—a friend took me to see her show in a Brooklyn coffee shop. Though the concept was simple, the work was incredibly engaging. I caught up with Rina to learn more about her art, her process, and how “_leafiness_” (her handle on Instagram) helps her meditate and stay creative.

In one sentence, who are you?

An art director, artist, and nature lover.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I was lucky to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York with amazing mentors and teachers.

In my free time, I paint leaves, though that happened by accident. I live in Park Slope, where the leaves are really beautiful in the fall. I started picking them up on walks, and I happened to have some oil-based pens from a glass project I had done. I got inspired by the shapes of the leaves, and started using the pens—it just happened without me even thinking that much about it. I find it extremely soothing. Many people work together to figure out what goes on a magazine page. It requires a lot of communication, understanding, and clarity. But with this, there’s no one else to weigh in. It’s my yoga.

3 favorite possessions?

1. Black and white photographs of my family in Russia, where I was born. I moved here with them from Moscow when I was 18.
2. Jewelry from my grandma that I never wear but always keep.
3. A collection of handmade paper that I haven’t found a project for yet.

What does a typical work session look like?

I usually get the idea for what I want to do with a leaf in the morning, then do the repetitive work in the evening. Most of the time, I don’t listen to music, but if I do, I listen to meditation music. Otherwise, I end up analyzing the music instead of focusing on what I’m doing. It’s important to be fully in control of your process. It really teaches me to make decisions and be confident in them.

How do you get over creative block?

Fortunately with leaves, I haven't encountered creative blocks yet. It really puts me in a different state, and helps quiet my mind when I make decisions.

What was the last item on your to do list?

Go to the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium. I want to learn different techniques for collection and preservation.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I hope that technology will get better at allowing us to manage and do things faster and easier, but I also hope that in the process of getting there, we can maintain the environment that we need to live.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

I want to live in Italy and speak Italian. The language is so beautiful.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

My crush right now is the artist Sheila Hicks. The thing I absolutely love about her is that she’s still inspired and creating art at the age of 83. No matter how small or large her work—big, sculptural balls of wool fiber, or something tiny—it has this amazing impact. She’s so fluid in expressing any possible emotion. It’s so important to have that in your life, especially over such a long period. To me, she is the luckiest person on earth.

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By day, Rina Kushnir works with illustrators and designs layouts for the New Yorker. But on her own time, she paints leaves she collects in her Brooklyn neighborhood, meticulously studying their patterns and adding dots of oil paint, punched holes, and patterns.

I had some time to kill so I asked a few questions. He neatly tied his theory to aliens, a league of physicists, and a deal with China. Crazy, you might say, but research suggests that the majority of us believe in at least one conspiracy theory.

We’re living in a tornado of misinformation, conspiracies, and fake news. But instead of simply lamenting that fact as you continue scrolling through your feed, let’s learn from it.

As a designer who works to help school systems become more innovative, it’s my job to help spread good ideas. Why not borrow from the sticky, sharable methods behind conspiracy theories to get some good ideas out into the world?

After chatting with my friend at the auto shop, I took a long look at what makes conspiracy theories so compelling and came up with a list of five practices we can nab to spread good. (Know Rogers’ Attributes of Innovations that spread? Conspiracies fit right in!)

1. Start with something recognizable

Memorable conspiracies begin with something familiar—an entrenched belief or a curious phenomena.

The “chemtrails” conspiracy, for example, says that planes leave behind biological agents with lasting effects on the population. People saw white lines in the wake of airplanes in the sky and wondered about it. From this, a new belief was formed.

There’s a lesson here for getting new ideas to take off! Try introducing new concepts through existing beliefs, habits or built-in systems. When we talk about design thinking with educators, for example, we often note that prototyping is just like doing a lesson twice in the same day, but differently. This helps educators reconcile a new practice with an old one.

2. Address a common pain point

Most conspiracies offer up a scapegoat.

It’s common to blame Big Pharma, for example, for withholding cures to diseases for profit.

Blaming large groups of people for complex problems isn’t a good habit. But, when sharing good ideas, we can change the script on scapegoats by proposing a partner to help solve a problem. Leaders in the civil rights movement, for example, helped to spur a broader conversation about women’s liberation—both movements were helped by the other.

3. Let people dream

Some of my favorite conspiracies allow farfetched wishes to come true. Tupac and Elvis, they’re still alive! These conspiracies are rooted in desire. To help new ideas take off, connect them with people’s wildest dreams.

4. Create iconography to build identity

When we see alien iconography out in the world, it gives us a sense—true or not—of how widespread belief in alien life may be. In Roswell, New Mexico, you can pick up all kinds of little green man kitsch—T-shirts with slogans like ALIENS ARE ALIVE and bug-eyed masks at the International UFO Museum. We’re much more likely to believe something when we think lots of other people do, too.

5. Keep it simple

Lasting conspiracies are easily explained in a sentence or less.

The Moon landing hoax, for example, makes a clear and simple argument: Americans wanted to outpace the Russians in space exploration, so they faked the landing on the Moon. The details of how and why may be a wormhole, but the thesis is simple.

Likewise, when you want to share a new idea, make sure that its value is explained simply and unambiguously. The #neveragain movement managed to powerfully convey its message with a simple hashtag.

Conspiracy theories and fake news teach us a lot about how information spreads—and that can be useful as we try to spread good in the world. Here’s one last lesson: All of us believe in something that’s not entirely true. Our shared habit of believing things we want to be true—regardless of what they are—unites us.

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On a road trip up the coast of California, I ended up stuck at an auto repair shop with a man who had some interesting ideas. “The government has a zero-point energy machine that could end our reliance on fossil fuels,” he told me.

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From a very young age, we’re praised for knowing the right answer—and on the quick! But as designers, that’s almost never possible. Our job is to help create a future that is, by definition, uncertain; so we're forced to face ambiguity on every project. There are always times when we don’t know where to go next, don’t have an answer, or get stuck. So how do we deal? What are ways to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable?

Here are three things I’ve learned to help me remain calm in the face of uncertainty.

1. Plan to not know

Imagine you’re in a meeting, surrounded by important clients, when someone hits you with an unexpected hardball question. All heads turn to you, awaiting a brilliant response. You freeze up, your mouth goes dry. You know you should have an answer, but your mind goes blank.

Rather than going into a silent state of paralysis, take a breath and remember that you have an answer prepared for this very moment: “I don’t know yet.”

Obvious-sounding? Sure. Easy to own up to? Not so much.

I used to be afraid to say, “I don’t know yet,” because I thought I’d sound ill-equipped and uninformed. After all, our clients hire us to find answers, so to not have an answer when put on the spot can feel disconcerting.

But by allowing yourself to be vulnerable, you win trust. Owning the process makes you more credible as someone who’s calm and collected in the face of uncertainty. Because let’s be honest: No one has all the answers, not even the experts.

2. Shift from should to could

Let’s go back to the feeling in the meeting room when all eyes are on you and you feel like you should know what to do next (but don’t). You’re getting ready to go into panic mode.

Oh yes, I know the feeling well.

Ever since I was young, I felt the pressure to do things as they should be done. And that pressure has followed me through adulthood.

When I first started leading projects at IDEO, I often thought to myself:

“If I were smart enough, I should be able to impress the client with my answer.”

“If I were a great leader, I should know what to tell my team.”

“If I were talented enough, I should know exactly what to design next.”

Should, should, should. It’s the “shoulds” that block your way forward.

“Should” suggests that there is one way forward, which is a sure way to set yourself up for creative blackout — a high pressure situation where you must find the single, bright and shining solution. There is no one right answer.

So whenever I find myself questioning what should be, I remind myself to ask: what could be?

What could be is a springboard for generating new ideas, brainstorming options for what to do next. It takes me from a place of oppression to optimism.

By shifting my mindset from should to could, I no longer have to come up with a single, right answer; instead, I have endless options for moving forward.

3. Change the context

Even when you are not under pressure, anxiety around not knowing the answer can find a way to creep in.

There are many times I’ve found myself glued to the screen, on the third cup of coffee, hardly stopping for a bite to eat. No matter how hard I try, it feels like I’m doing nothing more than pushing pixels around a screen.

How to get unstuck?

I have to force myself to remember that if I’m not getting anywhere (as hard as it may be to pry myself away from the screen), I need to stop, change my context, and gather new inputs.

Stepping away from the screen and focusing on something else for a while can bring fresh perspective to the problem.

Go for a walk, tour an art gallery, seek out a new experience that takes you out of your comfort zone. Invite another designer to look at your work and offer feedback, revisit stories from your research. By stopping and taking a step back, you create more mental space for unexpected sparks of inspiration to slip through.

Sometimes the biggest barrier to finding a way through the darkness is the pressure we put on ourselves to have all the answers. To break through, make peace with the I don’t knows, the could bes, and take a step back in order to more confidently take a step forward.

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“Embrace Ambiguity.” It's a value we take very seriously here at IDEO. The phrase invites designers to go with the flow in the face of the unknown. On paper, the freedom sounds liberating. But in practice, navigating ambiguity can be downright stress-inducing.

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.