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.

1. HIT UP YOUR LOCAL FLOWER MART

Go to where your neighborhood florists get their flowers. Arrive early and look for things which will give you bang for your buck such as large bundles of greens which can be trimmed and pulled apart, put into vases, laid on tables as runners or even piled around candles. Buy a smaller quantity of more expensive branches which have colored buds or leaves and use them as accents. Stay away from live flowers which need water and you can set up your table and other decor starting on Wednesday.

2. STRING LIGHTS AREN'T JUST FOR WINTER HOLIDAYS

Place small fairy lights in mason jars, string them around your mantel flanked with pumpkins and bay leaves, and even add to the walls of your bathrooms. Warm glowing lights go a long way to make your space feel celebratory.

3. USE INEXPENSIVE BUTCHER PAPER AS A TABLE RUNNER

For fun, you can stamp the paper with festive images or sayings. Leave a glass jar of colored pencils or crayons on the table and watch your guests color, draw and let their creative confidence shine. Butcher paper over a white table cloth looks more refined, or you can use just the paper as your entire table covering for a more rustic look.

4. HOLD A PIE CONTEST

Everyone loves a little friendly competition. And pie. They love pie! Why not combine both and off load some of the baking? Invite a few outside friends to act as “judges” and whip up some awards like these cute Le Creuset pie birds to up the ante.

5. SET UP A BAR OUTSIDE THE KITCHEN

Setting up a designated spot for the bar is a big plus to keep people out of the kitchen while you are cooking or serving, but don't forget to have wine and water on the table where people are seated for dinner. This allows your guests to have that toasty communal feel even if you aren't serving family style.

6. DESIGN SOMETHING THAT ALL YOUR GUESTS CONTRIBUTE TO

Have everyone write an "I am thankful for ____" card and hang them from a clothespin on twine (shown above), or put a Polaroid camera and a bowl of thumbtacks on a stool let people create a photo wall. A communal craft or experience brings people together (even when their politics don't).

7. SET UP A PHOTO BOOTH

Our resident photographer, Nico, invited us all to pay a visit to his "fish locker" on the way out to get our portraits taken. But you don't need a professional setup to create great snapshots. Simply mount an iPhone on a tripod, reserve a wall, and fill a box with a stash of fall props like turkey hats, a cornucopia, giant utensils, a plastic drumstick, and maybe a bonnet (yes, there's a pilgrim costume category on Amazon).

8. INVITE A T.REX TO DINNER

Our Chicago Managing Directors gave the studio’s traditional Thanksgiving toast wearing an inflatable dinosaur costume. You don’t have to go to such Mesozoic extremes, but it never hurts to throw some random, unexpected sumpin’ sumpin’ in the mix to make an event extra memorable—and Instagrammable.

How do we throw a Thanksgiving dinner for 400 employees and their families? Very carefully. My team, who focus on our collective experience in the IDEO San Francisco office, plans all of the logistics and details for the night and then execute fast and furiously. As with most event production, it’s part creative exercise, part leap of faith. Hosting your own feast of gratitude this year? Go ahead, steal these ideas.

As it happened, our trip coincided with Simca’s annual cocktail party, a magnificent affair. Surrounded by strange people speaking a strange language, I focused on eating. I had my hands and my mouth full, which is why I didn’t notice when an unspeakably tall older woman joined me at the sprawling buffet. Reaching across the table to pluck a wrinkly black olive from a dish, she looked down at me kindly and said, Bon soir. It was Julia Child.

It wasn’t until after college that Julia and Simca came back into my life. My mom gave me their cookbooks as a graduation present. Living on my own for the first time, I was starting to learn how to cook—mostly to impress girls. I would peruse their books for recipe ideas and would make regular calls to my mom to explain the “why” behind a recipe. We’d talk endlessly about converting from fresh to dry herbs, how to beat egg whites into stiff white peaks, and how to make pie dough, especially for apple pie.

Growing up, my mom’s apple pies were identical year to year. They were massive, doubled-crusted affairs stuffed with at least four pounds of Granny Smith apples. And that’s exactly how I made my apple pies, too—at first.

Fast forward a decade. I was living in Bucktown, a neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side, with my now wife and our two young daughters. (The “cooking to impress girls” thing worked.) We were hosting our first Thanksgiving. I had discovered a new way of forming an apple pie by folding over the edges of the pastry to keep the apples in. When I presented it to our guests I said, “Now I can make an apple pie even if I don’t have a pie plate!” After recovering from laughter, they insisted I enter the Bucktown Apple Pie Contest. I thought it was the wine talking. But in 2011, and dozens of family-pleasing pies later, I thought, “Why not?”

The Bucktown Apple Pie Contest is the largest apple pie contest in the country. It’s held at the Holstein Park Field House and features local pastry celebrities like the owners of Hoosier Mama Pie Company and Tipsy Cakes who judge over 150 eager entries.

The two Field House gyms were filled with tables loaded down with pies. In the auditorium, a honky tonk band belted out tunes. I fought my way through the crowd and quickly scanned the list on the door with the semi-finalists. Not me. Oh! But, there's a list of finalists! Also, not me. Merde.

I felt like a loser. (Technically, I was a loser.) "Those were great pies," I thought. "My best possible pies..." Or were they?

When the 2012 contest rolled around, I was determined to make the Best. Goddamn. Pie. Period. It was time to break my recipe down.

I dug deep into my primary sources. Simca was an intuitive cook, confident in her methods. She was always trying new things, whereas Julia was more concerned about perfecting. She tested and re-tested her recipes, trying and tracking different techniques. I needed both Simca’s confidence to change my recipe and Julia’s discipline to learn. And I needed a hotline to my mom who has cooked everything under the sun.

After consulting with my mom, I said, “Screw the vegetarians!” and went back to lard. The crust got richer and flakier. I suspected my mom’s Granny Smith’s, while tried and true, weren’t artisanal enough, so I tried Northern Spy and Cox’s Red Pippin, which has a great name but dissolves in cooking. A pastry-chef friend recommended combining Fuji and Granny Smith apples, a thrill because it combined my favorite eating and cooking apples.

I went “off-recipe” and doubled the sugar in the pastry. Too sweet on its own perhaps, but not when paired with the tart apples and lemon of the pie. The contest demanded a double-crust, but I thought lattice tops were mundane, so my wife researched alternatives, which led to me devising a method of cutting apple-leaf shapes with a mezzaluna and trying three different knives before hitting on the perfect leaf-veining technique. When the dough leaves browned unevenly, a friend suggested glazing them individually before assembling. I taught my daughters how to peel apples in one strip and even experimented with prettier ways to core the apples

My wife described my obsession as the pursuit of the Platonic Ideal of Apple Pie.

I made pies every week for the month before the contest. While I was crazily dissecting the look, taste, and mouth feel of my pies, my family was blissfully happy. After all, every Sunday, they got pie.

The day of the contest came. It was a Sunday in October, threatening rain. I put two pies in a basket and headed to the Holstein Park Fieldhouse. The place was a madhouse. The two gyms were filled with tables loaded down with pies. In the auditorium, a honky tonk band belted out tunes.

After the judging, I fought my way through the crowd and quickly scanned the list on the door with the semi-finalists. My name was nowhere in sight. “Really?!? After all that?!?” I thought. But wait! My pies were on the Finalists’ table, and while there were some delicious looking entries, my breath caught when I noticed more of MY pie had been eaten by the judges than any of the others.

Suddenly, the honky tonk band stopped playing and they began the announcements. My eyes scanned the big board with gloriously gaudy ribbons. The judges started to announce the winners. I stood still, unable to speak or move. They announced third place… Then second place… And then… Time stopped and I heard my name coming over the loud speakers. I stumbled up on stage and a judge pinned a blue ribbon with a little silver pie on it on my shirt.

There was noise and camera flashes and my girls were jumping up and down. There was even a TV crew with giant cameras and flood lights. Still shaking with excitement, I stumbled into the thick crowd. A young woman came up to me and asked: “Butter or lard?!” “Both,” I whispered, and she gasped with delight.

My family and I floated downstairs and across the park to our car giggling and hugging and talking about pie. The first person I called on our way home was my mom. She was so happy and proud. “Which recipe did you use?” she asked.

And I thought back to that warm August night in France, when I first met Simca and Julia, and all the subsequent hours pouring over their recipes. My pursuit of the Platonic Ideal of Apple Pie felt serious, but somehow new, which Simca would approve of. While my relentless testing of techniques was something Julia would have liked.

And then I remembered all the beautiful food my mom made for our family and her patient instructions over the phone as I slowly learned how to cook for myself.

And in that moment I felt like I had arrived. “Which recipe did you use?” my mother asked again.

“My own,” I said, smiling.

Murphy MacDonald’s Award-Winning Rustic Apple Pie Recipe

Crust

1½ c unbleached all-purpose flour
½ c unbleached cake flour
¼ t salt
4T sugar
6 oz butter (lightly salted), chilled, and diced
2 oz lard, chilled
½ c ice water

1. Place dry ingredients and diced butter in a food processor bowl fitted with the steel knife. Pulse 5-6 times to break up the butter.
2. Add the lard, turn on the machine, immediately and steadily pour in the ice water, and turn off the machine. Pulse 2-3 times. The dough should look like small lumps. Do not run the machine so long that the dough masses on the blade.
3. Turn the mostly crumb dough onto a lightly floured surface and press it into a single mass. For the final blending, use the heel of your hand to smear egg-sized clumps of the dough crumbs together. Work through the dough until all crumbs are combined.
4. Divide the dough into two unequal portions, approximately 3:2. Form the dough into discs, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate up to 3 hours or overnight.

Filling

2 lb apples, mix of Fuji and Granny Smith
1T lemon juice
¼ c sugar
2 oz butter
1/8 t cinnamon
pinch nutmeg

1. Peel, core, and slice the apples ~¼”+ thick.
2. Toss apples, lemon, and sugar together.
3. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat, add the apples, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. After 5 minutes, add the cinnamon and nutmeg and stir to combine.
4. After 10 minutes, remove from heat and let rest.

Assembly

Glaze made by beating droplets of water into 1 egg white

1. Preheat the oven to 375˚ F.
2. Remove the smaller of the two pastry discs and roll out to 1/8” thickness.
3. Using a mezzaluna or other round-blade knife, cut the dough into 16-24 apple leaves (elongated football shapes) and set them on a wax-paper lined baking sheet.
4. Use the back of a paring knife blade to score veins into the leaves. Refrigerate the leaves while you prepare the glaze and roll out the bottom crust.
5. Roll out the larger of the two pastry discs to 1/8” thickness, about 12” diameter or more. Use a pizza cutter to trim and clean up the edge of the rolled-out pastry. Transfer the round to a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.
6. Remove the leaves from the fridge and brush them with the egg white glaze.
7. Spoon the apples (and caramel-y sauce) onto the pastry round, heaping them up to leave a 2” border all around the edge of the pastry.
8. Turn up the edge of the pastry all around, lightly pinching folds together to enclose the apples.
9. Beginning in the center, arrange leaves radiating out to cover the top surface of the apples.
10. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake for 35 minutes.

Serve warm if possible, with vanilla ice cream.

Recipe copyright 2013 Murphy MacDonald.

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I distinctly remember when my obsession with food began. It was August 1984 and I was 14. My family and I were traveling across Europe. In France, we stopped in Provence to visit my mom’s friend, Simone Beck, also known as Simca. Simca had written Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Julia Child.

I took this picture in Lima, Perú. A delivery guy used the cardboard to protect his motorcycle from the rain while picking up orders in the store.

Lima is often gray and cloudy: the locals refer to this weather as “panza de burro" — the "underbelly of the donkey.” However it doesn’t actually rain much. The lack of rain is something of a joke (for example, there’s a theatre play called "Nunca llueve en Lima” — “It never rains in Lima"). So the need to cover your possessions from rain is one that only comes up infrequently.

The owner of this motorcycle was able to improvize, in part because the attitude towards trash is somewhat different. In the West, discarded objects tend to be hidden away and inaccessible. Here, there are more shades of gray: trash is more available and may find more utility before it's discarded for the last time.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions thoughtless acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire the invention of new products, services, and experiences.

Here’s how we went from a hacked-together prototype to a popular game.

Idea Seed

Our initial inspiration for the game came from “The Matrix.” There’s a scene in the beginning of the movie where the hero, Neo, gets a call from a mysterious stranger. “They're coming for you, Neo, and I don't know what they're going to do.” It’s Morpheus, who warns Neo that there are dangerous agents who are hunting him down. He then gives Neo directions to help him escape.

Our game works the same way. Player one runs around in a 3D VR maze, and player two sees a map and types out instructions for player one to follow. By making the communication of asymmetric experiences our key game mechanic, people can enjoy the experience together. This is important because VR is an immersive medium, but it can be socially isolating.

Refining the Game

Since each of the players sees a different screen (one in 3D and one in 2D), we tried my best to play to the strengths of each medium. VR is great at immersive and suspenseful experiences, so the VR player is the player of action, sneaking around to get treasure and running like hell to escape from enemy agents. A screen is great at showing flat data, and the player who sees it has access to a keyboard. So the hacker player sees a very detailed map and types to control everything.

Cooperation is critical to this game. We designed it be impossible to win by yourself—unless you cheat by looking at both screens. The VR player determines where the game goes, but there are agents around the corner that only the hacker can see, as well as hidden trap doors and lasers. On the screen below, the VR player is blocked by a door. But there’s a password that they can give the hacker player to unlock it.

There’s also a mechanic for the VR player to scan enemies and gather “bits,” the diamond-looking things, which are used to purchase bonus abilities like freezing or blinding enemies. This spices things up, so they have more agency in the game.

Design Tools

Part of designing something well is also designing how you work. With a team of four, we didn’t have the time to carefully craft every aspect of the game. So Mark, the developer, and I made a modular level building kit in Unity that allows people to build a level in just a few minutes. Everyone on the team could pitch in to create VR content. We’re in the process of preparing these tools for Steam Workshop, a website that allows developers to release game creation tools to the greater gaming community.

Our art pipeline got pretty crazy. I made the 2D assets in Illustrator so that I could avoid fussing with the resolution. For 3D assets, I made pixel sketches in Photoshop, turned them into 3D voxel art using Qubicle, played with the textures in Maya, and transferred models to Unity using Picavoxel. Finally, I set up prefabs in Unity so that I could easily swap the art in and out. The process allowed me to quickly pump out consistent and professional art, and instantly test it out in VR—a huge help for a solo artist.

Key Tips for Would-Be VR Designers
This process wasn’t always easy. Here are some important things to keep in mind as you work on your own games.

1. VR is not 2D. Or even 3D. I’ve done a ton of 2D and 3D design before, but VR is nothing like it. I had to develop entirely new design processes, and it was critical to test the game over and over again inside VR to get things just right.
2. Details matter, even for a baseline experience. If 2D UI just a little bit off, it looks funny. Misplace VR UI and people throw up. Getting everything right—from careful sizing of the environment to UI placement to 3D audio cues—is critical.
3. Offer alternative control schemes. This was a tough lesson. When we initially launched, we had a firestorm of complaints because we only had the default control scheme. We had to scramble to create a snap turn comfort mode and a teleportation mode.
4. Test in VR. Some of our biggest missteps happened because we had ideas that we didn’t test quickly enough.I foolishly made the controls more complicated than they needed to be. Since players have VR headsets covering their eyes, we had to constantly remind them about controller locations because they couldn’t see them.
5. Allow the audience to engage. VR can become an amazing social experience when you let your players share the game.

Launching the Game
We’re pretty thrilled with we managed to put together. Here’s a quick video to show what it feels like in action.

In June, we finally launched the game on the Oculus Store and Steam. Over the past 5 months, we’ve sold more than 2300 units. We’re the fourth highest ranked game on the Oculus store. Give it a try—I’d love to hear what you think.

Try it on Steam / Try it on Oculus

Around the time Oculus Rift completed its Kickstarter, I brought my virtual reality headset to a weekend hackathon called the Global Game Jam. Over 48 hours, my team and I built a game prototype where one player navigates his way through a maze, while a second player types instructions to him. The prototype was pretty simple—thrown together in 48 hours, after all—but people had a blast playing it. So a few friends and I decided to build it into something bigger. Over the past three years, we’ve worked nights and weekends to create Black Hat Cooperative, a multiplayer stealth game. We just launched this June on Oculus and Steam, and today our game is one of the highest rated experiences on the Oculus Store.

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.