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.

Like most organizations, we’re reckoning with how COVID-19 will change how we do business. And as we do, we’re learning a lot from our community—our colleagues living and working under complex, difficult circumstances; our clients whose businesses depend on global transportation; and the people we design for and with on a daily basis.

"Constraints can breed a lot of innovation,” says Charles Hayes, a managing director of IDEO’s studios in Asia. “As designers, how do we design our way through this?"

Here are a few tips based on what we’re learning:

1. Create a virtual meeting survival kit

How many tabs do you have open right now? We equate multiple screens with fractured attention. But just because a meeting is being conducted virtually doesn’t mean it can’t be designed for presence. An IDEO team recently had to find an alternative way to run a 20-person workshop for a foundation in Seattle. They asked themselves: How might we still approximate the level of engagement of an in-person meeting? Better still: how might we make sure this virtual workshop delivers on our client’s needs—focus, alignment, and a set of actionable next steps—while keeping things interesting?

Before the meeting, the team mailed a virtual workshop survival kit, complete with “sleeping bags” for cell phones, mini-whiteboards for people to prototype ideas, and physical takeaways to help the presentation resonate off-screen.

Over the course of the meeting, participants excitedly unwrapped items one by one. It was a way for the IDEO team to show up in the room when they couldn’t actually show up in the room.

2. Design rituals around tools

There are thousands of tools to facilitate remote collaboration—video conferencing! brainstorming tools! task-management software!—but perhaps more important than the specific tool are the processes teams put in place around them. After all, a tool is only as good as its ability to deliver on what the team needs.

Take video conferencing, for example. A reliable video chat box can be a Swiss Army knife to combat the woes of remote collaboration. But spending an entire day jumping from one serious video chat to another is a recipe for bleary eyes. IDEO teams around the world have been running experiments in how video conferencing can be a tool to build culture and connectedness in addition to getting work done.

For one, teams have been continuously changing their virtual video backgrounds—everything from a football game to a family vacation photo—to spark discussion and keep meetings fresh. Regular rituals like daily meditation or morning coffee chats have been ported over to video. And teams are using creative warmups—like a 10-second dance break or a quick show-and-tell of an artifact from the home office—to kick-off meetings.

3. Empower local communities

When travel is off the table, IDEOers have had to find alternative ways to learn from the communities for whom they’re designing. One approach that has become particularly relevant in the wake of COVID-19 is Equity Centered Community Design (ECCD). ECCD is a process of designing with—as opposed to designing for—a community.

For example, IDEO recently worked on a project to design a new lifelong learning program for the city of South Bend, Indiana. Rather than rely on traveling to South Bend to conduct research, the IDEO team hired local “community connectors” and a researcher in South Bend to conduct interviews, share prototypes, and co-design with the IDEO team remotely. Now that many cities are sheltering in place, even local communities will have to work remotely. That makes it all the more important to enlist those with hyperlocal context and lines of sight, ensuring there is sensitivity and flexibility around immediate needs. By designing themselves out of the room, the IDEO team received a level of honest feedback they may not have been privy to if they’d been physically present. This method isn’t new, but as movement becomes constrained, it’s even more important to engage local networks to be the eyes and ears on the ground.

4. When you can't do, learn

How long have you been putting off learning that skill? Cleaning up that code base? Building that website? When one door closes, listen for the creak of another opening. Travel constraints can be an opportunity to take a deep breath, hunker down, and try something new. Across IDEO, designers have been using these extenuating circumstances as an opportunity to gather digitally and learn. “We have experimented with a number of things,” says Brian Chien, a director in our Shanghai studio. “Some worked well, and some definitely didn’t.”

Whether it’s prototyping a remote brainstorm, trying out a new tool, or building something by hand, the disruption of your normal routine can be an opportunity to learn something. And if you already have the skills, teach! Designers in our Tokyo office are webcasting tutorials for young design students, sharing skills with those who aren’t able to attend an in-person workshop. What if, when it’s inadvisable to move from place to place, organizations took what they’re saving in travel expenses and invested it into L&D?

At IDEO, we will always believe in the alchemy of creative minds bouncing off one another in a shared space. But COVID-19 has pushed us to get even more comfortable with digital. And while we know necessity is the mother of invention, we still have much to learn—especially from other companies who have been at the forefront of remote collaboration for years.

Of this we’re certain, says Arlin Tao, a senior director in our Shanghai studio: virus aside, remote collaboration is the way of the future. “I think the only thing that most people agree on is when things go back to normal, it's not going to be the normal that we were used to before.”

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It's not uncommon for IDEOers to make house calls. Friendly, in-person conversations are one of our most cherished tools—that kind of design research helps us learn what people collect and eat and carry in their backpacks. Social interactions fuel the insights we use to do our design work. What happens, then, when social interaction is not good for us?

While we tied, she shared the story of leaving her corporate career in design to pursue a year diving deep into the world of knots, teaching herself a new knot every single day. With explorations traversing the historical and functional—from gathering inspiration from sailor’s knots to the future-forward and abstract—her knots have become massive installations, offering an alternative translation for structures like the circuit board and New York City subway system. I left her session deeply inspired by the simple power of dedicating ourselves to daily acts of making and craft—let’s all try it.

In one sentence, who are you?

I make sculpture and installations that elevate the vernacular and inspire awe and understanding; in the context of knots, I work at the intersection of function, design, history, and aesthetics to illuminate what’s most fascinating about knots: the journey of the line.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I developed fluency in the language of knots—and found my artist voice in the process—by learning one new knot every day of the calendar year in 2016 (which was 366 total knots because of the leap year).

How do you get over creative block?

You know, I never have creative block. I have a list as long as my arm of investigations I’m dying to explore and large installation concepts that are awaiting a home.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

I’m currently hiring, so today I'm posting a listing for a studio manager position, ordering custom-made cordage for a hotel project in the Maldives, and later on, I'm heading to Gensler San Francisco for the opening reception for a show I’m having there.

What’s your dream installation site?

An airport. I’m obsessed with the notion of the journey of the line, which is evident in my work. The rich metaphors that arise from journeying and traveling are particularly well suited to airports.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

I really want to see my work in an airport... and then a TED Talk.

What’s the weirdest or coolest knot you’ve learned? Why?

The five-strand star knot. During my Year of Knots, I tried for over an hour to learn it, only to end up frustrated and in tears. It's complex and the old-timely sailors knotting books were cryptic. But then I mastered it, and now it is my favorite knot to make.

What are you most curious about right now?

People often call me a "fiber artist," but I don’t restrict myself in that way. I’m interested in the journey of the line. So while it’s wonderful to render a line in rope, because rope allows for creating shapes in space without weight, almost anything can be a line. I’m curious about exploring other materials—glass, tubing, metal, and more. I’m still looking for the project that will want me to tie knots out of ethernet cable.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Always and forever: artist Janet Echelman, who makes sculpture on the scale of city blocks that respond to wind, weather, and light. I met and befriended her last year and we spent a day in Paris looking at art. Janet is lovely and her art absolutely takes my breath away. She has a permanent installation in Terminal 2 at the San Francisco Airport that is so beautiful, when I have a flight to catch, I will go to the airport early just to gaze at it. Endless respect to Janet Echelman.

Learn more about Windy's craft in her book, The Year of Knots.

I was feeling a bit sleepy at a design conference this past spring when, upon entering the auditorium for the next talk, I was handed a simple length of rope. My ears perked up with anticipation and curiosity. Enter Windy Chien: ingenious fiber artist who would coach the entire room of conference-goers in learning how to tie a donut knot (it’s adorable and makes for an amazing necklace).

By looking to the neighborhood pub down the block, it was easy to see that if they wanted to keep customers around longer, they needed to have a similarly linger-worthy offering. It seemed to be working.

In an age when boundaries between sectors are blurring, traditional businesses need fresh approaches that keep them relevant, even as the tech titans add capabilities that could eclipse the old guard. When leaders are willing to look beyond their own industry for inspiration and ideas, they often gain a competitive advantage.

The financial services industry is a perfect candidate for this kind of approach. Money is changing in radical ways, and along with shifting regulatory environments at home and abroad, we increasingly find new players entering the financial space. It often seems like the future of financial services is being designed outside the domain of the industry giants, which begs the question: Are traditional financial firms equipped, at present, to satisfy customer needs? People want convenience and access, security, privacy, social features, comfort, experiences, and a range of incentives—many of which are more readily supplied by a digital platform than a stately bank. But some traditional players are taking a new tack.

When the first Capital One Café opened in late 2015, the bank was attempting to address these very concerns. Millennials, having come of age around the 2008 financial crisis, harbored a well-documented distrust of traditional banking and felt turned off by the branch experience, so Capital One attempted to reinvent the bank branch in the image of a coffee shop and coworking space—again, looking outside their industry for inspiration. “Customers are over the corporate thing,” a bank representative said. It’s hard to imagine someone would choose to enjoy their coffee inside a bank if other café options are available, yet by most measures Capital One’s experiment has been a success, offering a more welcoming and attractive experience than speaking to a teller through bulletproof glass. By innovating on the experience, Capital One has entered retail banking in a novel way.

The late Harvard academic Clayton Christensen developed the concept of “jobs to be done,” arguing that customers have a need to get a job done, rather than a need to acquire a specific product or service. It’s a slight but important turn of the dial from the traditional way of thinking. Here’s how legendary economist Theodore Levitt described the idea back in 1969: “Last year 1 million quarter-inch drills were sold, not because people wanted quarter-inch drills but because they wanted quarter-inch holes. People don’t buy products; they buy the expectation of benefits.” To advance the argument a step, perhaps what the customer needs isn’t a one-inch hole but the ability to hang a picture. Maybe an adhesive hook would do the job better than a drill.

Innovation is often driven by the urgent need to solve a problem. In 1922, a group of army officers observed that returning soldiers, who hadn’t driven cars while on active duty, had a hard time getting auto insurance. The officers formed the United Services Automobile Association to provide insurance to military members and their close family. Later USAA expanded to offer a wider range of services including banking, investment, and other types of insurance. Since their members were often scattered geographically—sometimes on the other side of the globe—USAA pioneered mobile banking, initially by phone and mail and later online. Even today, with almost 13 million members, USAA has only one full-service bank branch, located in San Antonio.

This company, which was founded to offer auto insurance to service members, is now regarded as a shining example in the banking world of loyalty and customer satisfaction. Several of my clients who work at major retail banks have admitted to me in private that they still do their personal banking at USAA because they so admire the firm’s customer service. From that original need in 1922, USAA created a new service model that has lasted nearly a century.

Many of today’s most inspiring models for innovation are scattered globally. The European Union’s Open Banking efforts have created fertile conditions for EU mobile-first banks such as N26, Starling Bank, and Monzo. These firms score off the charts in customer satisfaction rankings, above even USAA’s benchmark. In the EU, mobile-first banks have grown through a mix of purpose and convenience, the human-centered design of their interactions and offers, and a supportive regulatory environment.

Alipay in China—which has a staggering 900 million users—is a smartphone wallet app that has revolutionized mobile payments, including the development of “Smile and Pay,” facial recognition technology that allows consumers to pay for goods without even carrying their mobile device. Alibaba has aggressive plans for global expansion of Alipay, all but guaranteeing that domestic US firms will come into direct competition with the Chinese juggernaut.

In many African countries, citizens have so little faith in their nations’ financial stability and fiat currency that a new kind of money has emerged: prepaid mobile phone minutes. People pay for a broad range of goods and services—from procuring groceries to settling their electric bills—by transferring mobile phone minutes. Kenya’s most ubiquitous service, with more than 30 million users, is m-pesa, launched by the country’s top mobile phone companies, Vodafone and Safaricom. Who would have thought that mobile phone companies would emerge as the central disruptors in Africa’s financial services sector, disintermediating the banks?

The financial world has been slower to innovate than, say, the technology world, for a few key reasons. First, financial firms haven’t been forced to innovate at the same pace; second, regulation has disincentivized competition; third, most radical thinkers are no longer drawn to the financial services, as the center of action has moved to Silicon Valley.

Millennials comprise the largest population in our workforce, and three-quarters of them say they’d prefer a financial offering from a large technology company over one from a traditional financial services firm. And the tech world is responding. The Apple Card recently launched in an effort to redesign the credit card and disrupt the status quo. PayPal and Venmo, beyond their use as payment services, essentially function as savings accounts for many customers who store money in the app. And millennials aren’t the only focus of this evolution: A handful of new firms, such as EverSafe, have introduced new products that help the elderly population manage their bills and protect against financial exploitation.

Money is always changing—the way it moves, the shape of it, and how we store it. Financial services firms need not only to keep pace, they need to be leaders of innovation. New solutions could come from unexpected places, so it’s critical to take a global perspective, benchmark beyond industry peers, and consider the experience of the people providing and receiving services. Building the next 100-year financial services firm will depend on doing all of these.

Illustration by Emil Wikström

The bike shop in my neighborhood recently started serving beer. They keep a keg on ice in the back room, and customers can sip pints as they browse the bicycles, gear, and hardware. I was curious what was behind the move, so I asked the owners. They told me they’d been trying to figure out how to get customers to spend more time in the store, and hopefully to make a purchase, so they decided to take a page from another industry’s book.

We asked IDEOers across a diverse range of locations, teams, and roles—even ones that aren’t typically thought of as creative—to share the best creative advice they’ve ever received and how it’s impacted their work. We hope you find their responses as inspiring as we do.

Trust your unique perspective

Coming to IDEO as someone who wasn't from a "creative" background (large emphasis on the quotes there), I had a ton of concern about how I would show up on teams with people who were so fluent in the things that seemed to be what IDEO was "really about"—the creative stuff.

Early in my time here, I was on a walk with another organizational designer, mid-existential crisis when she said to me, "Your job is to be thinking about what no one else in the room is thinking about." She helped me see that I didn't have to immediately have every answer or every iota of expertise; I just needed to be using my lens on the world to make our collective design richer.

IDEO touts its cross-functional team structure, and I am a true believer in that element of our work. Unlocking my creative process has been so much about believing in the value of what I bring to the table and understanding its unique contribution to what we are all building together.

– Natalie Osterweil, Senior Organizational Designer, Cambridge

Schedule time for creativity

Martin Bone (an IDEO design director circa 2008) once told me about how he organized his schedule to carve out large blocks of time for doing deep design work of his own. Each week, he would make a long calendar appointment (often an entire day) to be his design time, and would decline any meetings or calls during it. This allowed him to get to a deeper level of work that only a non-distracted state could achieve.

Paul Graham calls this contrast in methods of working maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule. He points out that even a short meeting scheduled in the middle of the day is enough to disrupt or demotivate deep craft or thinking work. In order to maintain my own personal craft alongside other work responsibilities, I've found it effective to put similar calendar blocks on my calendar and to completely disconnect from email, phone, and Slack during these times. This focus also takes discipline beyond a calendar event, but with practice, it can really lead to better work and growth as a craft-oriented designer, even as management responsibilities increase.

– Gian Pangaro, Creative Director, IDEO CoLab, Cambridge

Disconnect from your ego

I’m an executor. I like to get shit done and make an impact. That’s how I think many of my friends, family, and colleagues would categorize me—and I agree! When I came into IDEO, creativity wasn’t a value of mine, nor did I see myself as a creative person. When it came to brainstorming ideas, to me it was all about having the best idea, and having the best idea meant it was feasible, viable, and could have an impact right away.

I learned quickly I was wrong. Virginia Martinez, our Talent Director in San Francisco, helped me when I was having a hard time engaging with IDEO’s brainstorming process. Instead of trying to show my competency through my ideas, she told me, "To get to great ideas, you need to have lots of ideas as a group. And the best idea is not always the most realistic or easy to implement. The fun and crazy ideas can be just as good to drive teams to think more creatively."

Something so simple never occurred to me! I realized that I was attaching my ego to my ideas, that my ideas and my input reflected my competency—but no one else was looking at it with that lens. I realized the diversity of ideas that led to so many possibilities was creativity—something I never saw as an important part of our Learning and Development work, which I'm focused on. That also helped me feel more excited and comfortable in brainstorms because I was walking in with an open mind rather than ready to prove my point.

It has changed my approach to the work, my approach to how I design programs, and my approach to collaboration.

– Jen Casimiro, Talent Lead, San Francisco

Stop and smell the roses

My mom has always told me to take the time to smell the roses. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized how lucky I was to have a parent who taught me at a young age that it wasn't always about getting to the end of the race first. Enjoying the journey was just as important.

"Smelling the roses" has taught me to pause and take in my surroundings, being inspired by the seemingly mundane artifacts that I might otherwise have missed—curiously shaped gum stuck on the sidewalk, fine wood grain patterns in furniture, and the intriguing strangers I pass on the street. Each elicits ideas for new stories, inventions, or adventures. If I ever feel stuck or need inspiration, I know I just have to pause and take a look around me.

– Michelle Lee, Play Lab Portfolio Director, Palo Alto

Make your work visual

The best creative advice I ever received came from Mike Stringer at the beginning of my first project at IDEO. This was when IDEO's data science discipline was still young; I was navigating the challenge of working with designers of other disciplines.

Mike came to my project space and told me to "put stuff on boards and share." While this might be something natural for any other designer, some data scientists are very attached to their laptop, scripts, and simulations. In more traditional data science positions, I normally wouldn’t put data science on boards (the most I shared in my previous job was a decision tree on a whiteboard).

Mike suggested I make my work visible to the rest of the team to make data science more transparent, spark curiosity in my team, and start new conversations. I created a variety of hand-sketched data visuals and made them a prominent part of the project space to serve as a catalyst for brainstorming and discussion. Sharing my sketches with a variety of designers from a broad spectrum of disciplines (interaction, research, software, business, and more) made my work more transparent and helped establish a common language, allowing data science to grow organically within the team. I now make that approach part of my work style, and I share it with other data scientists whenever I see the opportunity.

– Fra Valsecchi, Data Science Design Lead, Chicago

Pull a card

I regularly seek advice from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies card deck. They compiled it in the early 1970's to help overcome creative block in the studio. When you feel stuck, you draw a card and do whatever it says. For example, "Ask people to work against their better judgment," or "Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them," or "What would your closest friend do?" Often the advice is a bit unclear, but the vagueness prompts new ideas.

– Michael Hendrix, Global Director of Design, Cambridge

Embrace the Sharknado

A bad movie is better than an unfinished movie. As a filmmaker, there's this temptation to keep working on something or tweak it infinitely. However, there's a power in seeing something fully through, and then starting something else new that you can build and learn from. Also, it's so rare that your finished product is truly "bad." What would that even look like? Worst case scenario, you miss your mark but you learn something. Best case scenario, Sharknado.

– Sephora Woldu, Senior Leadership Coordinator, San Francisco

Accept your failures and iterate, iterate, iterate

The best creative advice I ever received was a good walloping. I was 28 and had landed an assignment from Alex Heard at the New York Times Magazine, an editor known for his unsparing red pen. I was to write a short piece about an alternative film festival. I interviewed the founders, thought up a clever lead, and submitted a draft. This is good, I thought. Funny.

The next day, Alex called and read the article back to me, word for word. "Are you kidding me?" he said. He was indignant. It was like I'd made him drink toilet water. When the call was over, I cursed myself and cried. I’d failed, and he’d dropped a grenade in my lap so I’d suffer no illusions that my work needed anything less than a good and brutal pulverizing. I called an editor friend, enlisting him to give me honest feedback. Then I sat down and rewrote the piece 103 times. When I finally ginned up the courage to send it in again, Alex called me immediately. "You did it,” he said. ”I'm proud of you. I’ll run it this Sunday."

Find someone who’ll give it to you straight, then iterate, iterate, iterate. Keep at it until your hand falls off. That's how I learned to write.

– Shoshana Berger, Senior Editorial Director, San Francisco

Remember ideas aren’t worth a single penny

"Ideas aren't worth a single penny." These are the words of wisdom that a colleague at my previous job gave me a couple of years back. He was the type of creative director that I only expected to find in fiction: almost always late to work, usually hungover, wore a Dumbledore style beard, and always ready to mutter out the most unexpected and astonishing ideas. When brainstorming, he would always kick-start the session with the most hilarious, intoxicating fantasy concept. He was known in the industry as the ultimate idea man.

That was why his advice struck me as a surprise. He told me that he would willingly give away any of his ideas for free, because that’s not what we’re being paid for as professionals—it’s the execution of the idea.

I look back to this whenever I find myself too attached to an idea, or when the team is stuck in a rabbit hole of conceptual debates, picking ideas apart one by one. Anyone can come up with the same idea sooner or later; our job is to not just come up with the idea, but to bring it to life, and that is what we should be proud of. That is where true impact lies.

– Daisuke “Dice” Yukita, Senior Interaction Designer, Tokyo

Focus on the story

The advice that still rings true to me today and on the path to become a designer is never lose focus of the story you want to tell. Every single experience, physical thing, or digital product you create is based on a sequence of decisions you make during the design process. It’s essential that every decision has a purpose—that’s how you get the most potential out of your design. A memorable, human story is the groundwork to purposeful design.

– Susanne Duswald, Industrial Designer, Munich

Invite others to the party

Several years ago, I ran into film director Frances Ford Coppola. Because we were both speakers at the same event, I managed to spend a few minutes alone with Coppola backstage, and one of the things he said that day has stuck with me ever since: "When you are working with creative people, you don't tell them what to do. You invite them to the party."

I have used his advice many times, including right now at D4V (Design for Ventures), IDEO's Tokyo-based venture capital firm. We invest in promising Japanese start-ups and then invite the design team here to "join the party," using creative tools to help the young companies thrive.

– Tom Kelley, IDEO Partner

Creativity often isn't the work of a single, solitary genius. In fact, it's usually when a set of diverse perspectives come together that we're able to see new possibilities for solving problems. That's why creative collaboration is crucial—and it's also why creative mentorship is so important. Sure, you can (and dare we say should) work through these 10 exercises from Creative Confidence to hone your individual chops, but creative mentorship is what allows us to push ourselves and our work forward. This got us thinking: What else could we learn about creativity from the people we work with every day? What have they learned from their mentors?

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.