Keeping diabetes in check isn’t easy. Between checking blood sugar multiple times a day, keeping a detailed activity record, and logging food intake, staying healthy can be daunting.

But a recent advance in smart diabetes management—Ascensia’s CONTOUR NEXT ONE blood glucose meter and the CONTOUR DIABETES app—can give patients more clarity and control.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE is the latest product to spring from a multi-year collaboration between IDEO and Ascensia Diabetes Care (formerly Bayer Diabetes Care). In 2009, Ascensia and IDEO developed the award-winning CONTOUR USB blood glucose meter—the first meter to plug directly into a computer, providing patients and their doctors with instant access to blood sugar data and personal trend reports.

Buoyed by the success of the first collaboration, Ascensia asked IDEO to help design a next-generation diabetes management system (and the company’s first internet-connected device).

To help reduce the stigma of checking blood sugar in public, IDEO designed the CONTOUR NEXT ONE to look and behave like today’s modern tech devices. The highly simplified, seamless system allows patients to upload blood glucose readings automatically to the app, which helps guide informed, real-time decisions. The meter’s red, green, or yellow smartLIGHT feature gives instant feedback about whether blood sugar levels are below, within, or above the target range.

Seeing contextual data, which includes physical activity logs and photos of meals, paired with recent and historic blood sugar levels, nudges patients toward healthier lifestyle choices and better control of their condition.

For doctors, the accuracy and quantity of the data combined with the app’s easy-to-read pattern views invites more comprehensive, actionable conversations with patients.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE hit shelves in Europe in 2016 and is now available in the U.S. Ascensia is poised to develop more products enabled by rich, personalized data to help people with diabetes live longer, healthier lives.

What if we could use the sky to provide alternative solutions to these problems, creating more space for living and transportation? What exciting future awaits us?

At JAXA’s Aeronautical Technology Directorate (ATD), researchers are conducting research and development on aviation science and technology for the future. They are working to affect positive impact through research like noise reduction of airframe and an integrated aircraft operation management system for disaster relief and crisis management.

Normally, JAXA begins their projects by examining the needs of the aircraft industry or comparing themselves against global technology standards. This approach often leads to ideas that are merely an extension of the current technology. JAXA needed a new approach in order to create radical ideas and real change.

The key question was: What solutions would emerge from prioritizing people’s needs over the most advanced technological possibility—taking a human-centered approach to tackling the most pressing societal challenges?

JAXA ATD voluntary partnered with IDEO to attempt to answer this question, identifying new research areas by envisioning people’s needs in the near future. Together, JAXA and IDEO developed four scenarios of future societies.

The scenarios do not necessarily focus on technologies. Rather, the focus is on telling stories that help readers put themselves in the shoes of the four personas. At the same time, the team worked with industrial designers to illustrate convincing demonstrations of the vehicles and machines of the future.

JAXA’s team embraces the belief that “technologies developed at JAXA should incorporate emotional aspects to blend seamlessly into people’s lives.” Driven by this philosophy, the visual design of the four scenarios used a friendly illustration style intended to be approachable and understandable for people of all ages.

In order to develop human-centered concepts from scratch, the IDEO and JAXA team first undertook research and inspiration-gathering. They skydived, observed cities from above, brainstormed with students from the department of architecture at Waseda University. They interviewed airline employees, a former Judo world champion, skyscraper lovers, a business producer who focuses on new working styles. Throughout the research phase, the team explored the possibilities of the sky as a “living space,” not just a place for transportation.

The team was surprised and excited when they learned from a former fighter pilot that old cockpit designs were inspired by the Japanese tea room, highlighting a historic precedent for taking inspiration from real life to inform new technology designs.

The team synthesized their research and developed several concepts, each informed by a different social issue or pressing concern. Each issue was brought to life through a fictional personal narrative.

How might we relieve city congestion and pollution using the sky, while still keeping it clean and blue? Floating public lights, a skyway that regulates air traffic, camouflaged planes that keep the sky blue—concepts introduced in this scenario were the closest to the technologies already being researched at JAXA ATD. They show us how the sky could become an infrastructure that supports our daily lives. Meet Ayame, a girl from Gunma prefecture, ready to begin her college life in Osaka.

How might we make travel feel easy for people of all ages, no matter how far they need to go? While the researchers at JAXA ATD are working to improve the mobility of aircraft, like reducing air friction or increasing the engine efficiency of aircraft, this scenario explored how people could travel door-to-door through the sky with or without aircraft. A day-in-the-life of Naoto, a 72-year-old man who commutes twice a month from Tottori to Tokyo for medical checkups.

How might we leverage the sky as a resource for reusable energy and economic growth? One of the criteria of JAXA’s R&D activities is to improve the environment. While JAXA has been focusing on “protecting” the environment, this scenario focused on “creating” new environments. A day-in-the-life of Toshi, who runs a “sky-to-table” farming business.

How might we help people live with peace of mind, even during a disaster? JAXA’s disaster relief technologies have been extremely valuable in countries like Japan, which frequently suffers from natural disasters. In this scenario, we approached the problem from victims’ point of view while exploiting the potential of a network of aircrafts and other flying objects. Here's the story of Yuri, a victim of an earthquake in Tokyo who reunites with her family after evacuating to the sky.

The purpose of the project website is not to present answers, but to introduce new directions towards an exciting future. By presenting JAXA ATD’s vision through these four scenarios, the team invited people from all industries and of all ages to participate in co-creating the future.

Just like movies, cartoons, and novels from childhood stimulate the imagination, this project aims to spark new conversation and vision for a radically different, positive future.

By illustrating and communicating a more human-centered future to a wider audience, Japan’s top aeronautical technology development agency may already be changing the future of the sky for the better.

The speed and scale of change in our world are unprecedented. As more people relocate to cities, our lives are impacted by urbanization problems such as pollution, congestion, depopulation of rural areas, resource, and energy deficiencies.

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For factory operators, a smart valve is a game-changer. It gathers data on how smoothly the system is running and feeds it to an app, making it easier to troubleshoot from anywhere. And when things get overheated, it can automatically shut down the machinery, avoiding a meltdown.

Georg Fischer (GF), the Swiss-based, B2B industrial manufacturer collaborated with IDEO to design that valve, along with a system that adds value for generations of engineers to come.

And there were some surprises along the way. When the team set out to interview customers, they learned a lot about their real needs. “We showed a customer a sacrificial concept of a smart valve and asked, what do you think about this?” says Laura Barrabia, GF’s Head of Corporate Design Thinking. “The customer answered, we don’t want your valve to be smart, we want to be smart. If GF is providing a smart valve, where is my value?”

For GF Piping Systems, these insights helped shape initial prototypes and guided the direction of the design to something that would tie parts together into smart systems and more efficient industrial facilities—a competitive advantage.

Yves Serra, GF’s CEO, recognized early on that his company needed to strengthen its customer-centricity and digital capacity, so he approached IDEO to begin shifting GF’s culture from engineering-led and procedural to customer-focused, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and flexible. That kicked off a decade-long relationship that would help GF take a design-based approach.

Learn what it means to move from being technology-driven to being truly customer-centric.

To help GF identify clients’ pain points and address them with new digital offers, IDEO proposed three “lighthouse” projects, one for each of GF’s divisions: Piping Systems, Casting Solutions, and Machining Solutions. Lighthouse projects (also called “Beacons”) are proofs of concept that light the way for an organization and help it shift its way of working.

For example, GF Machining Solutions built a prototype for an application that uses real-time data to help customers identify and fix problems in the machines, laying the foundation for truly predictive maintenance. Making data streams more transparent for customers also simplified life for the GF service engineers, who keep the machines running.

Learn how Georg Fischer is moving from hardware offerings to digital solutions.

For GF Piping Systems, the design team developed the GF Digital Line, a set of products, apps, dashboards, and other services that help customers plan, install, and maintain water and chemical piping systems. GF teams went back to customers to test several prototypes and gather feedback on the Digital Line and make sure it addressed current and future needs. They also built internal capabilities to support product development, laying the groundwork for future innovation.

Lastly, IDEO helped GF Casting Solutions escape the “commodity trap” of competing with foreign automotive suppliers. To better understand the pressures car manufacturers face, the design team explored the development cycles of two car manufacturers. They learned how challenging it is to implement solutions to reduce vehicle weight—essential for cutting fuel consumption. As an expert in aluminum die casting, GF was well positioned to help manufacturers meet that challenge, not just with quality parts, but also with digital engineering to deliver cutting-edge lightweight casting solutions, which are harder to replicate.

By the end of these lighthouse projects, GF had rolled out a global design thinking training program that had touched more than 1000 employees. After the training, employees throughout the organization adopted a new way of working and became passionate ambassadors. The enthusiasm spread from the R&D department to HR to finance and many other departments.

Today, GF has permanent design thinking and digital teams to continue this work. All three divisions aim to launch the first releases of their lighthouse projects by early 2019. And with every project, GF’s business—and solutions—get smarter about how to meet the needs of a fast changing world.

IHG’s ambition is to grow in service of its guests around the world. IHG’s Atlanta-based team had identified a major opportunity for hotels in the midscale space—a market segment known for its inconsistency.

Alongside colleagues at London-based forpeople, IDEO was invited to help IHG shepherd that business opportunity into a human one, by asking how IHG might reimagine the everyday travel experience for people relying on this category of hotel. What kind of offer might resonate equally with guests and with the owner/operators who’d need to buy into a new brand and bring it to life?

IDEO began by talking to travelers to better understand their lives, values, and needs—travelers who spend one or two nights on the road a few times every year; travelers who regularly take short trips to small cities or away from city centers; and travelers who live on the road, moving from hotel to hotel. These included court stenographers, medical technicians, consultants, conference-goers, and more.

Early research insights evolved into two distinct concepts for a new hotel brand, which were built out into two full-scale physical prototypes at IHG’s design center in Atlanta. Over three weeks, IDEO and its IHG partners led potential guests and hotel owners through each model, gathering their feedback on new formats for breakfast offerings, service details, booking experiences, and overall tone.

The investment in prototyping paid off with surprising and actionable insights. Despite wide variation in occupation and income, these guests are sophisticated and self-reliant; they know what’s out there, and they know what’s reasonable to expect. In fact, many describe a syndrome IDEO dubbed “anticipation anxiety:” the sense of dread that comes from not knowing whether a lower-priced hotel is going to be clean or safe, or provide a bed that enables restful sleep. Many have so little confidence in the cleanliness of hotels in this price range that they travel with their own packs of wet wipes.

IDEO, along with the IHG team, recognized these behaviors as an unanswered cry in the market. The purpose of the new brand crystallized around extinguishing that anxiety and rewarding guests with something much better. avid hotels exceeds its competition by doubling down on quality in just a few select areas: an extraordinary mattress; rigorously high standards of cleanliness; a focused, high-quality, grab-and-go breakfast and coffee experience; and an overall tone of warmth and straightforwardness.

These guests made clear that for trips like this, they aren’t interested in bells and whistles, or communication that isn’t frank or to the point. That led to an insight that upends an industry truism: for these guests—and there are many of them—choosing a hotel is rarely only about the price of the room. avid guests can often afford to stay in a more expensive place for a honeymoon or a vacation or a trip with friends; they’ll spend more when they need more. But for functional stays of one or two nights, it just feels wasteful. It goes against their values and their principles.

IHG and IDEO heard a clear call for a sense of focus and affordability—but never at the expense of quality. Guests should be able to access a simple booking process, rooms designed for sound sleep, and a quality breakfast, all at a fair price. And hotel owners ought to be able to deliver that experience with confidence and consistency, at costs that build a compelling case for their own business.

That’s what avid hotels is designed to deliver, every single time. Early traveler reviews have been exceedingly positive and have noted specifically the unique differentiating offers avid brings to the market.

Within a year of partnering with IDEO, IHG had issued 150 avid hotels licenses to franchisees in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and announced a development deal for 15 avid hotel locations in Germany over the next five years—a scale of success that came at unprecedented speed for the industry. The collaborative, inclusive design process is now serving as a model for how to develop robust, guest-centered hospitality brands that deliver where it matters for people.

Since 2008, when I officially started making music under the name Crunchybird, I’ve learned a fair amount about recording and playing. One of the biggest lessons has been how awfully lonely being a one-man band can be—not just socially, but creatively. There's no pushing and pulling, no building on each other's ideas.

So I asked myself: How could I pull in some of my friends from around the globe to make music with me?

I’ve always loved the concept of Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist parlor game where someone starts a drawing and passes it on to others to continue. The final artwork is always unexpected, occasionally horrifying, and unavoidably original. Could we pull off a musical version? I was curious to see where it could go, so I threw the challenge to a motley crew of musically-minded colleagues around the world.

The rules were simple: Start something and pass it to someone else, somewhere else. That person spends a day adding to it, then sends the track to the next collaborator. And so on. We called the project "Exquisite Chords."

I learned a lot from the process. Before I walk you through the track my friends and I built together, here are some design principles to get you going.

3 tips for creative collaboration

1. Start small and let go. When you collaborate with others, it’s tempting to set up a very detailed structure with a lot of constraints. For this project, it was fun to start with something more basic and give people the room to interpret it and shape it their own way. Don’t overthink it. Just let everyone throw something into the mix.
2. Make each other successful. It can be really cool to see how participants take each other's work and improve on it. It's the musical version of the classic improv response "Yes, And…" Take what’s awesome and make it more awesome.
3. Guide the vision. Creative collaboration can be terrifying. You have no clue how something will turn out, and it can be a disaster—the phrase "too many creatives in the kitchen” comes to mind. But as the leader, you have the opportunity to influence the end result. It’s important to respect people’s contributions, but to also know when to take the wheel and shape the outcome.

Exquisite Chords, step by step

Here's how our musical experiment started: One night, while sitting on the couch on our tiny apartment in Tokyo, with my wife and kid sleeping in the next room, I recorded a one-bar bass line over a simple beat on my Mac. What you’ll hear is an insomniac trying to make some sound very quietly:

I tossed the track over to my friend George Joseph, a communications designer at IDEO San Francisco, and an actual musician. He laid down some sweet, dynamic goodness atop my track in just a couple of minutes because he is, as noted above, an actual bassist. He also recorded an awesome vocal take. The lyrics are still a mystery to me:

George then shared the track with our friend Simon Heather, a business designer at IDEO New York, who we had heard has some shreddy chops on the electric guitar. It was true:

Simon passed the ball to Nick Dupey, a design director at IDEO Cambridge. Nick has a toddler named Julian Rose, who he recorded making toddler sounds:

Nick punted it to merry Munich, where design directors Franz Blach and Trent Huon took the whole affair to another level. Franz busted out a cornucopia of manipulated acoustic guitar sounds. He then arranged the pieces into a more dramatic song structure—verse, chorus, bridge, and outro included:

Trent added a touch of madness, crooning about the changing of the seasons on top of the new arrangement, improving the melody George had created:

And then it went back to San Francisco, where interaction designer Zubin Pastakia tacked on some angelic synths to round out the crescendoing finale:

Once the track was back in my hands in Japan, I realized the bass line that started it all would work better on the piano, so I re-recorded the melody and added a few parts to fill in the new arrangement. The piano complemented Franz’s acoustic guitar, which unfurled into a nice little wandering outro that could probably go on to be another song.

Finally, I worked with my producer friend Hamacide (a.k.a. Yusuke Hama) here in Tokyo to help tuck everything in, smooth it out, and make some final mixing and mastering adjustments to bring it all up to the next level.

Here's the final track, “Leaving Light”:

Our first collaboration as Exquisite Chords was indeed unexpected (and not too horrifying, I hope). What started as quiet plucking on a sleepless Tokyo night had blossomed into a trip-hop adventure for eight people from five cities in three countries. We never spoke to one another—it all happened over email and Dropbox.

It may not be perfect, or even be for everyone, but it's ours.

Want to join our digital jam sesh? Download the tracks above, add your own layer of sound, and tag your new mix with #ExquisiteChords.

I’m not a trained musician. But music is my favorite way to carve things out creatively. That is to say, I tinker with instruments to make noises that sound good together until I am smiling a lot. I'm not spitting out perfect tracks, but I'm having fun.

1. Keep a steady rhythm with ideal line lengths

The length of a line determines how much distance the reader’s eyes must cover to read it from left to right. Long line lengths make the text seem never-ending. Short line lengths make the reading experience erratic, and can cause the reader to miss important words. An ideal line length is 66 characters (including letters and spaces). For one column of text, aim for 45–75 characters per line; for two columns of text, 40–50 characters per line.

2. Use the right kind of dash

Dashes, such as hyphens, vary in length depending on the typeface.

The em dash (—) is a long dash, the length of the uppercase “M.” It can be used as an alternate for commas, parentheses, or colons, and is an incredibly versatile way to create emphasis in your writing. When used in multiples, the em dash also indicates missing portions of a word (s——t).

The en dash (–) is half the length of the upper case “M”—shorter than the em dash, but longer than the hyphen. It is used to separate a range or span of numbers, and is sometimes used to connect a prefix to a proper noun.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Em dash (—): shift + option + hyphen
En dash (–): option + hyphen

3. Don't put hyphenation in auto-drive

In the digital age, we often take hyphenation for granted, opting to use the “auto-hyphenate” setting, but there are some best practices to keep in mind when typesetting with hyphens.

If you are breaking a word between two lines, keep at least two characters in the first line and at least three characters on the second line. Try not to hyphenate consecutive lines. To “un-break” a word between lines, use a soft return (shift + return) at the beginning of the word to force it onto the second line.

4. Know the difference between smart quotes and prime marks

Prime marks ( ' ), also known as straight quotes or dumb quotes, are often accidentally used in place of smart quotes ( ‘ ), also known as curly quotes. Prime marks are a remnant of the typewriter, which only had prime marks to save space on the keyboard. So what’s the difference? Prime marks are used for units of measure (feet, inches, seconds, and minutes); smart quotes are used to indicate something someone has said.

Keyboard shortcuts
Left single quote ( ‘ ): option + ]
Right single quote ( ’ ): shift + option + ]
Left double quote ( “ ): option + [
Right double quote ( ” ): shift + option + [

5. Maintain a strong vertical axis

Hanging text, or outdenting, means moving typographic elements into the left margin. You do this to create a consistent vertical axis along the left end of the text. Quotes, bullets, and dashes do not take up as much visual space as a letter, so a list or quote that has not been hung, or outdented, can sometimes be mistaken for a new paragraph and cause unintended breaks in the reading rhythm.

6. Be on the lookout for widows and orphans

Try to avoid widows and orphans in your text. Widows and orphans are one or two words at the end of a sentence that are pushed to a new column or page; widows are at the end of a column, orphans are at the top of a page. They create very short lines and gaping holes of white space that can be visually disruptive for the reader. Maintain the flow of each sentence by using a soft return to eliminate stray words.

7. Track out all-caps text and use all-caps sparingly

When designing fonts, typographers must determine the amount of space around each letter so that letters of different sizes appear evenly spaced. The spacing around uppercase letters is often a little tighter, so that they can sit closer to the lowercase letters in a mixed-case word. When you typeset a word in all-caps, the letters will appear very close together. Remedy this by tracking out, or letter-spacing, all-caps words by about 10% of the point size height. For more details and examples on tracking (and how it’s different from kerning), take a look at Ellen Lupton’s book Thinking with Type, also available digitally here.

If your writing uses a lot of acronyms, consider selecting a typeface with a small caps font. Small caps are all-caps fonts designed within a typeface so that each letterform is only slightly taller than a lowercase letter. Small caps are automatically letter-spaced, and should not need any additional tracking.

Hungry for more on typesetting? Below are a couple of my favorite tried-and-true typesetting references:

A Type Primer by John Kane

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Practical Typography by Matthew Butterick

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Typography can be expressive, informational, or abstract. But sometimes it just wants to be invisible, allowing the content to take center stage. In this first installment of our Type Talks series—where IDEO designers nerd out about all things typographical—we offer tips for seamless, sexy typesetting (that you hardly notice).

In one sentence, who are you?

I'm a nomadic filmmaker.

How did you learn to do it?

I travel the world and make short films about the places I visit. While I did go to film school, I'd say I learned most of my skills on the road, by trial and error.

WATCH: Hong Kong Strong. A film about the madness and beauty of this seemingly impossible city in the days leading up to Chinese New Year.

What are your three favorite possessions?

1. Good boots

2. My phone with Google Maps

3. My camera gimbal

What does a typical work session look like for you?

Shooting for about 12 hours a day, in the thick of a crazy festival in a foreign country. Then spending another 12 hours editing the footage and hiding from society.

WATCH: Nomads of Mongolia. Training eagles to hunt, herding yaks, and racing camels are just a few of the daily activities of the nomadic Kazakh people.

How do you get over creative block?

Travel to a new place.

WATCH: Tokyo Roar. Tokyo saturates the senses. This is my impression of the city's many personalities.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I see a mix of environmental catastrophe and remarkable human innovation. As the seas rise, we'll meet the challenge with ingenuity and eventually become fully sustainable, because it's the only way to survive.

Who are you (creative) crushing on lately?

Tokyo-born filmmaker Hiro Murai.

Getting the energy of a place on film is not an easy thing to do. Especially a transient place like Hong Kong. The city is both familiar and foreign to me. I was born there, and though I moved away at age 12, work has brought back many times over the years. On one of these trips, I was introduced to Brandon Li’s short film Hong Kong Strong (chosen by Vimeo as one of the best of staff picks in May 2016). In swooping, panoramic shots, it puts the beautiful madness of urban life and ordinary people on display. As a designer, I was instantly taken by Li's approach, as we, too, set about taking snapshots of daily life for inspiration. In this installment of Creative Crushes, I caught up with Brandon to find out more about his work.

At some point, though, we come to accept that screwing up is a key part of the creative process. Think about how kids play: They don’t think, they just do. And if the whole contraption comes crashing to the floor, they laugh at the mess and start over. (Or throw a fit, but hey, they’re learning about emotion, too!) Point is, when you embrace setbacks and don’t let them cripple you, you’re more likely to get across the finish line.

Maybe we should stop talking about failure and call our botched projects “experiments." And let’s take a cue from Edison and crowd as many experiments into 24 hours as we can. Here are eight ways to fail your way forward.

1. Keep it basic

Don’t start by trying to find a fully developed solution to a problem. Keep fidelity low at first to allow others to see the possibility in the idea, not the flaws. The higher the polish, the more likely you’ll get the wrong kind of feedback.

2. Design impossible tasks

Such as: How might we create a new color? How might we live forever? Moonshoot thinking frees us from limiting ourselves, helping us produce a bunch of wild ideas. None of them will be right, but they’ll rev the engine of our imagination.

3. Don’t assume your final format

What are you making? Will you be hand sketching? Wireframing? Sculpting out of modeling clay? Drafting a written piece? Even when our end goal is to end up on screen, it is often helpful to start in a different medium—and maybe a tactile one.

4. Set a goal for failure

Follow this advice from 100 Days of Rejection by Jian Jiang: “We will fail at least 30 times before we figure out the right solution.” Lowering the stakes and making a solution less precious makes it easier to generate a bounty of ideas to build from.

5. "This is a bad idea, but…"

Every time you throw out an idea, start with, “This is a bad idea, but what if…” That helps you practice non-attachment and prepare for the reality that most of your ideas won’t stick.

6. The Shame Gong

Every time someone makes a mistake or fails, hit the gong and have the team whisper "shame" in unison. It actually lowers the barrier for admitting to failure and makes for more honest, less bullshitty brainstorms. It also lightens the mood when you’re struggling with a particularly tough challenge or client. Plus: Ringing a gong is just fun. Missed a line item from the plan? Shame. Couldn't guess the grape of the wine at happy hour? Shame!

7. The mis-name game

Walk around the room and loudly, courageously, and boldly point at objects and yell out the wrong name for them. Do this for three to four minutes. Then pause and debrief. What was that like? Why was it difficult? There is a stubborn voice in your head telling you what is wrong, infeasible, impractical, too risky. The exercise reminds us that there’s a voice enforcing our fear of failure that can overpower our ability to take creative risks. Our job is to learn how to quiet that voice at the right moments to break out of the expected.

8. Worst experience ever

Design the WORST _blank_ experience ever (airplane/shopping/dining/laundry) and really encourage people to visualize it. Then use that to design the best version using an insight you learned from the worst. So, if the worst dining experience involved a waiter who would not leave you alone on a romantic date, what does that say about the key elements that make or break a date?

One final note for aspiring leaders: Don’t be afraid to talk about past failures and what you learned from them. Admitting failure will help your team gracefully shut down initiatives that aren’t working and move on to the next thing. Now get out there and gong.

Thanks to Tom Kelley, Kenneth Robertsen, Neil Stevenson, Olivia Vagelos, Eri Sugiura, and Sally Madsen for contributing to the piece.

“The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.” —Thomas Edison

Most projects start with confidence. We’re going to crush this! Then come the mistakes. We squirm. We become riddled with self-doubt. Suddenly the prospect of success seems like a dim light bulb.

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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.