Only 20 percent of American homes are protected by security systems, and most of these systems are installed after a break-in. ‍

Home security veteran SimpliSafe hoped to convince the other 80 percent of home-dwellers to invest in preventative technology so the break-in never happens. The company approached IDEO to refresh and simplify the look and feel of its connected products to reach this wider audience and help them feel safe.

Interviews with potential customers revealed insights that informed the new design. Families told the researchers that existing security systems are expensive, bulky, and hard to install and use. Instead, systems should be unobtrusive, but responsive to your needs. They should react appropriately in emergencies, while also protecting your privacy.

Responding to those requests, IDEO overhauled the design and interaction of more than a dozen SimpliSafe products, including a wireless, touch-to-wake keypad; easy to install sensors; and a smart home base that acts as the brains of the system. Additionally, IDEO designed SimpliSafe's first step outside of the home—a video doorbell that can be used in tandem with the namesake home security system or on its own. Making the system enjoyable and intuitive to use means families are more likely to use it consistently—and correctly.

The team developed a consistent design language across SimpliSafe’s physical products, user interface, and digital presence. That clear visual language lets you know what each component does right out of the box; for example, the glass break sensor looks like a human eardrum that might actually hear a window shattering. The design also reduced the size of entry sensors by four times, while improving their range and battery life. Tapered backs and swept-front surfaces for all of these sensors help them blend into your home. The new system’s clean, understated appearance instills confidence without stoking fear of what could happen.

SimpliSafe’s keypad and base station guide you through setting up the system with voice feedback, while gentle LED lights and sound cues let you know at a glance that the system is armed correctly and you’re in safe hands. The system is also equipped with multiple layers of backup, so you don’t have to worry if the power or Internet goes down.

And the system responds intelligently, tailoring the way it reacts to match different scenarios. For instance, it sends a gentle reminder if a window is left open but a police response if a window is broken in. The design team also incorporated a first-of-its-kind privacy shutter on the system’s security camera so families can opt out of being recorded at home.

SimpliSafe launched its redesigned security system in early 2018, replacing the company’s two previous generations of products at the same price point. Already, the revamped system has cut the number of support calls from new customers.

In June 2018, venture fund and private equity firm Hellman & Friedman acquired SimpliSafe in a deal that valued the company at about $1 billion.

With a record number of applicants, stiff competition for top students, and a desire to make classes more diverse, college admissions teams are feeling the strain. Bowdoin College in Maine, one of the top liberal arts schools in the U.S., received more applications for the class of 2022 than for any other in its 224-year history.

Whitney Soule, Bowdoin’s Dean of Admissions and Student Aid, saw her staff at risk of burning out. On the advice of Bowdoin’s president, Clayton Rose, she invited IDEO to embed at the college and help design a new way of working. The IDEO team studied Bowdoin’s workflow and zeroed in on the application process as an area ripe for redesign.

By observing how Bowdoin counselors read applications, IDEO learned what drove their decisions. Mindful of how their choices could impact young people’s lives, counselors prioritized a meticulous reading of each application. But this thorough approach meant they often engaged in redundant work or delayed making final decisions.

IDEO designers translated their insights into a book for staff, featuring watercolor portraits of the admissions team and a clear articulation of their values—from integrity to inclusion. The book was IDEO’s promise that introducing a new reading process wouldn’t mean sacrificing Bowdoin’s personal touch.

Then, the designers and counselors ran A/B tests using real applications from past years, unwinding long-held beliefs about how they “should” be read. Soule and her team experimented by adjusting timelines and other factors that determine when and how applications move from a first read to a second read to a committee discussion.

Soule gave her team explicit permission to toss their typical playbook. Seeing their own process with fresh eyes, counselors realized they could be more confident in their expertise and tweak their workflow to meet changing demands.

A/B testing proved that some variables had little effect on the team’s final admissions decisions. With that in mind, IDEO redesigned the reading process and included a system called “magic sort,” which helps parse groups of applications based on a new set of counselor assessments in order to route each to its next round of reviews more efficiently.

The IDEO-Bowdoin team put the revised technique to work right away, processing 300 new applications from the annual QuestBridge program for low-income students. Counselors found they were able to make equally valid decisions while cutting the amount of overlapping work they faced by 40 percent, compared to years past.

Working with IDEO challenged us to change the way we work together—and we learned a new method of problem solving that we continue to use. We are better equipped to elicit creativity, then channel it into the practical implementation of new solutions. It’s been transformative!

WHITNEY SOULE, DEAN OF ADMISSIONS AND STUDENT AID, BOWDOIN COLLEGE

The new reading method let staff cope with a growing volume of applications, while balancing the need to evaluate individual students with the need to think holistically about the makeup of Bowdoin’s student body. Counselors adapted the technique to the rest of the year’s admissions cycle, including early-decision, regular decision, and transfer applications.

To extend what her team learned to other departments, Soule has led several design thinking workshops across campus. Her success as a leader has mirrored the growth of her team and the college; by empowering staff with new tools and the freedom to experiment, Soule and Bowdoin are leading by example in the evolving world of higher education.

For half a century, Swarovski has crafted iconic chandeliers dripping with the brand’s signature crystals. With the rise of new interface technology, the company came to IDEO for help to design the chandelier of the future.

IDEO designers set out to create beautiful, emotional experiences by layering technology onto Swarovski’s lighting offerings. Whether it’s setting the tone for a sophisticated retail experience, creating subtle ambiance at a romantic dinner for two, or providing true quality light to read a book, the team considered how a chandelier can enrich personal moments throughout the day.

Swarovski and IDEO assembled a multidisciplinary group, including industrial and UX designers, brand experts, and engineers to quickly vet, build, test, and refine their ideas.

Designers from IDEO and Swarovski worked together to completely reimagine the crystal chandelier.

Together, the team designed a new tech-infused chandelier and family of other light fixtures. At first glance, the chandelier resembles a simple, sleek metal disc. But when you turn it on and peer inside, an endless number of crystals swirl far into the distance—an Infinite Aura.

The Infinite Aura collection also includes pendant and wall lights. The team developed a mobile app that proactively modifies light settings based on the time of day, and also lets users customize their experience—including adjusting brightness and color to set a personal mood, or “Aura.”

Unlike most fixtures, Infinite Aura doesn’t just give off ambient light; families can also benefit from high-quality functional light, directed downward to help them focus on a task or diffused upward and downward to create a subtle ambiance. In a similar way, the chandelier can expertly illuminate a library, hotel lobby, or concert hall.

The new lighting line adds greater functionality and emotional resonance to today’s smart buildings, while retaining Swarovski’s timeless elegance. Infinite Aura debuted in Frankfurt, Germany in March and will be available internationally in fall 2018.

More than half of Americans don’t have the cash to cover a $400 emergency expense like a car repair or trip to the hospital. Taking that reality to heart, American Family Insurance, a Fortune 500 company that offers auto, home, business, and life insurance, was seeking a way to make an impact by helping people earn and protect—not just insure—the things they value.

American Family approached IDEO with an ambitious goal: to innovate in a way that would help working families—many of them existing American Family customers—who need a financial cushion in case of the unexpected. This new mission fell in line with American Family’s overall orientation toward increased social responsibility, including committing to a liveable wage for all employees, helping with student loans, and providing college scholarships and tuition reimbursement for employees’ children.

In early discussions, American Family thought people might need budgeting tools, but from the very first research interview, a different urgent need emerged: people needed a way to shore up their savings enough to protect against unforeseen needs. This same story came from numerous places. In Tennessee, the IDEO design team sat in the kitchen of a working single mom of four, who explained how her lifestyle was built around her extremely constrained budget. She couldn’t afford childcare, so she’d organized her home to allow her 11-year-old to watch the younger kids: partitioned snacks, timers on the TV, chore charts on the fridge. She managed her budget meticulously, it was clear, and she didn’t need new financial tools. What she really needed, she said, was extra income cushions so a surprise expense like a doctor’s visit or stretch investment like a kid’s basketball uniform wouldn't derail her plans. Like many of the people the team visited across the country, she didn't want to take on debt; she wanted extra work and the dignity and peace of mind that comes with it.

Could we, the team wondered, offer people who already have jobs the extra hours and income they need in a way that reduces, rather than exacerbates, the stress they already face? Would employers get on board?

The short answer was yes. Today’s businesses depend on on-demand work, including seasonal warehouse and retail shifts. Typically, companies look to temp agencies whose model is built on staffing with the goal of permanent placement. Moonrise enables companies to tap into a workforce that's already employed, allowing them the benefits of passive recruiting (reliability, consistency), but for short term work.

Knowing innovation was the path to growth, American Family took a chance by embracing a radically new brief: Create a service to help families living on the edge bridge the gap between the size of their paychecks and the size of their dreams. The result was a new business venture called Moonrise.

When customers told us that having an easy way to earn extra money could improve their lives, we were compelled to pursue a solution. Moonrise is a business with a human-centered mission. We’re proud it’s part of our American Family.

Jack Salzwedel, Chairman & CEO, American Family Insurance

The Moonrise platform lets workers sign up for shifts with partner organizations through a simple text message interface, and get paid as soon as their shifts are done. Employers who sign up to partner with Moonrise can list open shifts on the platform.

“Moonrisers” are W-2 employees of Moonrise, not contractors, so they don’t have to pay self-employment taxes. They also get personalized business and comment cards to take to job sites, making their interactions with employers feel more professional. In this way, Moonrise helps workers not only build a buffer against unexpected bills, but also explore new positions and fields—and perhaps even land new full-time work with Moonrise partners.

To test the program in real time, IDEO and American Family assembled 11 Moonrisers, six employers, and a team of designers and programmers to work out kinks in the platform. During a one-week live pilot in Wisconsin, Moonrisers finished a combined 28 work shifts, earning an average of $121 each, while IDEO designers worked behind the scenes to keep the process running smoothly.

Based on the success of the pilot, American Family created a new startup company called Moonrise, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of American Family. Moonrise launched to the public in the Chicago area in 2018, with plans for an eventual nationwide rollout. Moonrise signed Enterprise Rent-A-Car as its first employer and actively matches workers in Chicago with shifts, while continuing to build more corporate partnerships.

Since launching in 2018, over 7,000 people have applied to become Moonrisers, more than 7,000 shifts have been fulfilled, and over $500,000 has been put into the pockets of hardworking Moonrisers. Additionally, Moonrise will be expanding into 3 additional states in 2019.

IDEO and American Family Insurance interviewed customers of The General—a division of American Family—about how they budget to make ends meet. In this conversation, customer Chandra told designers how $62 could be the difference between breaking down and breaking even for her family.

It’s not always easy for established companies to innovate, especially outside their core business. But innovation is a high priority for American Family. Creating an employee -centered startup like Moonrise solves an urgent problem and distinguishes them from their competition. Together, American Family and IDEO identified a pressing human need and built a program from the ground up to meet it.

Eltono coincidently was on our inspiration mood board so we knew we must connect. At the same time our studio was revisiting work by an artist-nun named Corita Kent. We found her work and process deeply inspiring to our culture.

There's a backstory worthy of telling here: In 1971, Boston Gas Company commissioned Kent to paint a mural on a gas tank in her new hometown of Boston.

The work, known as Rainbow Swash, is a simple commentary on the nature of painting and minimalist joy, a six-color combover on the bald head of a stout roadside tank.

Kent was an unlikely candidate. For nearly two decades, as a nun in the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in Los Angeles, she had pushed the edges of acceptability as an artist, teacher, and activist.

Her work, now recognized in the Pop canon alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, challenged cultural norms by reappropriating common packaging and advertising slogans and setting them alongside passages from the Bible, pop music, and classic literature.

As counterculture gained momentum, and Kent used her art to advocate for justice and peace, her profile grew and her messages sharpened. Eventually her protest was too much for the Church to handle, and they mutually separated, leading Kent to make a move to Boston and continue her art.

But something changed in 1970. While her activism persisted, a new body of work arrived, with simple brushstrokes and appeals to love each other.

It was this moment that, 15 years later, culminated in her iconic USPS Love stamp, and also led to the commission from the Boston Gas Company.

Today’s headlines are a 1960s deja vu: culture wars, social injustice, sexual harassment, mass shootings, covert ops, media corruption, political failure. It’s easy to draw parallels to Kent’s day, and to find artistic expressions in response (Shepard Fairey comes to mind). But I’ve personally wondered how Kent made the shift to rainbows and love, and I mean that with no irony.

Maybe it comes down to this simple truth: Love wins. While Kent was popular in her time at Immaculate Heart, even landng on the cover of Newsweek, she didn’t achieve true household status until her 1980s USPS Love stamp. It’s the message we all needed, and it’s still the message we want today.

Eltono has done installations in more than 90 cities around the globe; each unique, but connected by a calculated joy. His work is made from randomly placed forms inspired by the architectural elements of the site. Though we had yet to meet, his work felt right—a cosmic alignment of our values. And once we did share ideas, we were stoked, except about one thing—color.

Eltono’s choices were exuberant and bright. Colors inspired by Mediterranean sun, French countrysides, and European sensibilities. They are radical for hidebound New England, an area known for its pilgrim stoicism, and not native to a region that is white and gray for five months of the year. We quietly fretted about what to do, how to discuss the issue with him. Then I was reminded of Kent. Of her joy in the face of adversity—love and rainbows. We didn’t change a thing.

In fact, we wore the colors—in the form of paint splatters on our faces—with pride! Eltono invited help not only from other muralists, but also from IDEO families and neighborhood kids. His colors greet each passerby’s smile with their own. Each defies the gray sky of the coming winter and the equally gray social climate.

When Boston Gas sold to Keyspan in 1992, the original tank was torn down. But, due to its popularity, Kent’s mural was immediately repainted on a accompanying tank.

Eltono’s art continues making the case for defiant joy, standing in solidarity just a few miles from Kent’s Rainbow Swash. In this season of anxiety and division, there is no greater protest than to stand proud and bright with joy and love.

*Deepest gratitude to the many that helped us make this possible: Geoff Hargadon and Gary Strack at Central Walls; Michael Monestine from the Central Square Business Association; Amanda Hill, Pedro Soto and Al Wilson from Beyond Walls; Jason Weeks from the City of Cambridge; our artist assistants Lena McCarthy, Brian Denahy, Laura Menucci, Meghana Srinivasan, and Julia Roth; the many at IDEO that helped coordinate, paint and photograph, especially Christina Abele, Tiffany Knight, and Dirk Ahlgrim; and the architecture and interiors teams at Hacin + Associates.

Earlier this year, we moved our Cambridge-based studio into a building in Central Square. We wanted to personalize our new home with some public art, but were uncertain about what final expression it should take, so we got started by slapping on a new coat of paint—transforming it from an oppressive gray brutalism to a welcoming white canvas. Then, a local connection, who shared our desire for more street art in Cambridge, suggested we look up Eltono.

So, in addition to designing the thing, I spend 50 percent of my time crafting the story of the thing—showing people how the interaction will influence new behaviors, new futures, new ways to live. The story has to be good enough for the user to picture the experience for themselves. Here’s a sneak peek at a typical day:

6:00 AM: Warming up at SoulCycle

It's not always easy rolling out of bed this early, but sweating my heart out on a stationary bike is my favorite way to start the day. To me, design is like a sport—you have to be intentional about the routines that you do everyday to help you be at your best mentally and physically. Spinning gets my brain revved up for the eight hours of creativity that lie ahead.

9:00 AM: 👋 Project Space!

“Fudgyolk” is my project team's code name (we always keep the client confidential), but it is also a fun identity. The name was inspired by a blended sous vide soft poached egg sauce we had at our first team dinner (here)—yum! Shoutout to my talented teammate Brooke Thyng who designed our team identity!

10:00 AM: Post-Synthesis Cleanup

Our project just completed the "synthesis" phase. What does that mean? About a week ago, we were in a room full of Post-Its with 10 more of these boards, moving ideas around, interpreting what they meant, and sharing our initial hypotheses as a team.

Synthesis helps us discover important themes and patterns that point to opportunities for design, and a story to share with our clients about the needs we uncovered. This process typically takes about a week and it's mind-bending work as you try to make sense of lots of data!

To celebrate a successful completion of this phase (and finally clean up our project space) we challenge each other to a race for who can strip their board the fastest. We try to design some fun into everything, even our chores! We're especially excited because post-synthesis we move into pixels—the interaction designers dream world.

11:00 AM: Analogous Inspiration

My team rocks out to our "Hair" after we've all had an indulgent blowout. Though seemingly unrelated to our health and wellness project, Dry Bar's ability to make people feel confident and at their best inspired us to integrate some of that experience into our own project's design solution.

Analogous inspiration is one of my favorite moments in a project. It allows you to design in a less cognitive, more intuitive and experiential way.

12:00 PM: Interaction Design Kraftwerks

Every Friday, the interaction design community gathers over lunch to build on our craft, and inspire one another. We call it Kraftwerks. Today, led by our Design Director, Tobias Toft, we're geeking out on making autonomous toothbrush-headed robots.

Interaction design is a very diverse community made up of visual designers, systems designers, motion designers, and software designers and these craft sessions give us a chance to teach each other new skills and evolve our digital fluency as a community.

1:00 PM: Gathering Inspiration for the Final Experience

Collaboration is so important across every phase of the design process. I like using Pinterest to engage everyone on the team to collectively gather inspiration and create alignment on a visual direction before we start making.

Here, we're collecting images for an exhibit we plan to build to display the key moments of our final app.

2:00 PM: Designing the Final App and Story

When it's time to design, I use two screens: One running Sketch to design the screens of our app, and one showing a Google Doc that provides a work-in-progress narrative. (Use your imagination—this work is confidential!)

We write user narratives that act as a framework for us to share the signature moments of the app. This produces a to-do list of screens we need to design. When we present the final app to the client, the story makes it feel less like a screen walkthrough and more like a compelling story that portrays how the app benefits the user's life.

3:00 PM: Photoshoot

When we're designing new experiences, stock image/video sites don't cut it, so we create them from scratch. Here's our B-roll where we're planning who will be playing the role of the user in our narrative, and sketches of what the scene will look like. We included confetti in one of our photos ;)

6:00 PM: Caltrain

I catch up on my jamz on my ride home from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Currently streaming SZA's Love Galore.

Finally home and ready for an interaction with my couch. Thanks for spending the day with me!

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When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, “I design things that make the invisible, visible.” Sounds super vague. Let me explain: While the role of an interaction designer is usually associated with building apps, websites, and VR environments, my role at IDEO also includes thinking about how to bring digital-physical interactions that have never before existed to life.

My mom and I have a lot in common. We think problem solving is fun. We love people watching. We both only wear black. But our most striking similarity is that we both ask questions for living. I am a design researcher, focused on helping organizations build innovation capabilities and evolve their culture, and my mom is a political journalist in Turkey. The influence of her profession on my personality has been enormous, and so much of the way that I work comes from watching her. Here are five design lessons she’s taught me.

1. Plan the research through role playing.

My mom's favorite way of understanding the truth and planning her story is to put herself in others' shoes and go through the experience herself. For instance, when covering a policy change affecting a local community, she wouldn't just interview people from her desk, she would spend days embedded in the neighborhood, waiting in the same lines, sitting in the same overcrowded offices, eating at the same spots. That immersion helped her connect the dots of how the policy was actually playing out on the ground, and allowed her to focus on the details that mattered most to the people living through it.

Walking in someone else's shoes before you even meet them can also inform how you plan your research. On a recent project, we needed to understand what physicians experience when they do rounds in clinical contexts, so we went speed dating. We captured the pain points of quickly talking to a lot of people at once and trying to remember the essence of the conversation. This experience helped us to focus on asking the right questions during our interviews with physicians.

2. Lean-in the right moment.

She was great at tracking the questions politicians refused to answer, keeping a running list of what they sidestepped, deflected, or went silent on. She always said you learn more from what politicians decide not to say than from what they actually do.

As designers, we prioritize empathy in our interviews, but my mom’s approach always inspired me to keep going to discover better insights. Finding eloquent (and ethical) ways of asking more about an uncomfortable topic might require a bit of pre-work—creating the right environment to make a person feel at ease, or sharing a bit about yourself. I once worked on a project about bathroom hygiene— one of the most intimate topics a stranger can talk to you about—and instead of asking people about their own behaviors, I talked to them about their roommates or friends. Turns out, people are way more comfortable talking about someone else's bathroom ritual.

3. If you can’t ask, experiment.

As a journalist in Turkey in the 1980s, my mom covered many presidential elections and other world-changing events. Though occasionally her young age was to her advantage, from time to time, she had to come up with her own hacks to get the information she needed. One of her favorite tricks was to ask herself: how would a completely different journalist cover this story? She'd pick someone with an opposite beat — a sports writer, a foreign correspondent, a food critic — and imagine their approach. Even if she didn't follow their approach, it forced her out of the obvious angle and almost always pointed her toward the story she actually needed to tell.

My colleagues Sean Hewens and Mat Chow did something equally creative. To understand the influential layers in a major international law firm, they created what they call The Blue Hat experiment. They picked a blue hat and brought it to the leaders of the law firm and asked, “What would you do to convince everyone in your organization to wear this blue hat?” Some said a raise. Others said a friendly competition. And some said, get the “cool” lawyers to do it first, then the others will follow. These answers helped the team figure out how influence actually happens at the firm, and shaped how they thought about rolling out a new change initiative.

4. Look outside the mainstream.

My mom would always push me to think in extremes. She always says, “To avoid ready-made answers, don’t talk to expected people. Talk to the extremes. Gather witnesses from all walks of life and listen to stories that others didn’t cover.”

At IDEO one of our biggest source of inspiration in design research is talking to extreme users, or what we sometimes call “super users.” Those who are at the edge of the bell curve of the challenge help us capture workarounds and interesting behaviors. For instance, when we are designing for change inside an organization, we don’t just talk to people in the C-suite; we also focus on people who recently joined or quit the organization, who might have a fresher take or more honest feedback.

5. Don’t just research the people, research the system.

One of the most important parts of being a journalist is understanding the ecosystem you’re reporting in. Otherwise, you can’t make sense of what you find. For my mom, that meant making sure she understood who all the power players were, and how the system worked before she started crafting her stories. This is also true in our design process.

At IDEO, we believe that if you want to create the conditions that change behavior, you have to have a deep understanding of the landscape you are in. When my colleague Divya Viswanathan and her team took on a project to help unify a massive, 20,000-employee generic medicine manufacturer with operations in 27 countries, they didn’t just focus on talking to executives; they talked to everyone. When they chatted with a worker on the shop floor of one of their factories, he read them a poem he had written for the founder of the company. This conversation helped the team realize how much people care about the company’s purpose, and it changed the course and outcome of their project.

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When I was a kid, my mom made up what she called “The Journalism Game” to keep me entertained while we were grocery shopping. She would give me a hypothetical scenario and ask me to think like a journalist, to tell her who I would talk to first to create the story.

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Before that happened, I spent a lot of time doodling my favorite characters—almost exclusively The Looney Tunes. My classmates and teachers liked my sketches. Some kids even paid me for them. I was good at it. But when the tremors started suddenly, after a series of unexplained episodes where I lost consciousness, I couldn’t make my simple lines simple anymore. Coloring was so hard and messy that pencil gray became my favorite color.

I dropped the pencil for more than a decade, did some clay work, played sports, and even started teaching Spanish. But when I got into the design school, I had to face up to challenge again. I ended up learning how to work with other media like 3-D modeling and animation to express my ideas. It was effective, but I still missed using the pen.

For me, nothing can really replace sketching. I learned during these years that drawing is not just a media; it is a way of thinking. So I embraced the shaking in my hands by thinking of every sketch I was doing as an idea, not a product. Just as every idea can be refined, so can every drawing. That was freeing. It meant that no matter how bad it was, over time, it could become something decent that expressed something. I start with my shaky sketch, and if I like it, I start adding shadows and details that are still shaky, but once it’s finished, it’s a single sketch; it is an idea.

One of the things I like to do when I’m traveling is to take the time to sketch the city I’m in. It’s an exercise for getting my tremor down; it helps me breathe slowly and focus on contemplating the moment, the people, the water, the sky, the birds, the glass. My shaky hands help me to draw silly lines in a fast enough way that I can capture the general picture. Then, it’s just a matter of letting my tremors go free until they become part of the landscape.

My hands shake. They literally shake. I’ve had a slight tremor since I was 12 years old, and it hasn’t been easy to adjust. For a while it was just too hard, and I stopped drawing altogether.

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.