For 6-year-old Dave Jr., a long line at Disneyland triggered a massive meltdown. His parents were concerned and a little embarrassed, but not surprised; Dave Jr. struggled to keep his emotions in check.

Hoping to help, Dave Jr.'s uncle, entrepreneur Craig Lund, joined forces with researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, along with a video game designer who had worked on Quick Hit and NBA 2K. Together, they set out to design something that could teach coping skills to kids like Dave Jr. who need to manage “big emotions,” as well as children suffering from anxiety, ADHD, and other behavior issues, which are on the rise.

Their collaboration resulted in a video game called Mightier and a startup called Neuromotion Labs—a 10-person team of psychologists, game designers, and engineers who embedded at IDEO Cambridge for a one-month sprint to improve the game and get ready for launch.

To play Neuromotion's game, kids are first taught simple, calming breathing exercises. During gameplay, kids wear heart-rate monitors on a wrist or arm that detect spikes caused by stress or anger; as their heart rates go up, the game's difficulty increases. Kids have opportunities to pause and try deep breathing to counter the ramped up challenge. As it turns out, "gamifying" restraint builds strong incentives for kids to take charge of their emotions—they have to if they want to win.

Already activated around boosting mental and emotional health, IDEO's design team worked side-by-side with Neuromotion to study how parents and children experience Mightier. From home visits to group interviews to a summer camp-style design session with kid players, live feedback fueled the next iteration of the gaming platform and better product-market fit.

IDEO helped Neuromotion hone the visual design and mechanics of Mightier and expand it's suite of games. The team observed that the Mightier program was more successful the more involved parents of players became, which revealed a need for additional resources for adults. So they created new supports, including a more detailed orientation and a personalized coaching service for parents staffed by trained therapists.

But can a video game actually help kids cope? Early peer-reviewed studies showed that playing Mightier reduced outbursts by 62 percent, oppositional behaviors by 40 percent, and parental stress by 19 percent. After 12 weeks of using Mightier, a survey of kids and parents showed that 96 percent of parents saw positive behavior changes in their children, while 92 percent of kids learned new coping skills.

Shortly after the design sprint, Neuromotion secured its next round of funding and officially launched Mightier’s array of “bioresponsive games.” The games have already been played more than a million times, and Neuromotion has measured more than a 100 million heartbeats. Mightier games are helping kids and families across the country.

What about Dave Jr.? Recently, his sister told Lund she "accidentally" bumped Dave Jr.’s bike off a pier and into the ocean. She was expecting an outburst of anger, but after eight months of playing Mightier, Dave Jr. stayed cool. His uncle couldn’t be prouder.

Many of us have let vegetables wither in the crisper drawer, or thrown out a child’s half-eaten restaurant meal, but the sheer scale of food waste around the globe is hard to grasp. According to the United Nations, about a third of the food the world produces every year—1.3 billion tons—is lost during production or tossed by consumers, with North Americans throwing out the most food per capita. The average American wastes enough food each month to feed another person for 19 days.

IDEO received a series of grants from The Rockefeller Foundation to find solutions, given the power of IDEO’s human-centered design approach to address systemic challenges. Through a number of projects with The Rockefeller Foundation and other organizations, IDEO designers from across the U.S. devised novel ways to tackle food waste.

For IDEO’s first initiative, designers tapped into the enthusiasm of the broader creative community, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, the City of San Francisco’s Department of Environment, the Closed Loop Foundation, ReFED, and other groups. In the summer of 2016, OpenIDEO—IDEO’s open innovation practice—launched the Food Waste Challenge, asking how people might curtail waste by rethinking our relationship with food. Between June and October, more than 20,000 people from 113 countries took part in the challenge, tracking their personal waste and brainstorming solutions.

Challenge participants submitted more than 450 ideas. A team of food industry experts helped select the 12 top proposals, which included software to help people buy food collectively from wholesalers and a service that delivers extra meals from corporate events to those in need. Ultimately, the Closed Loop Foundation chose to award Full Cycle Bioplastics a $50,000 grant to scale up its idea to convert inedible food and paper waste into a fully compostable alternative to oil-based plastic.

At the conclusion of the Food Waste Challenge, OpenIDEO launched the Food Waste Alliance, a platform for participants and experts to stay engaged with the most promising ideas and innovators. The alliance helped entrepreneurs share resources, prototype new concepts, secure funding, hire staff, and form partnerships. OpenIDEO invited hundreds to join the alliance, and 92 percent of members told IDEO they made progress in their work as a result. One member company, RISE, received funding from another participant who discovered RISE through the alliance. This investment let RISE prototype its concept for milling spent grain from beer brewing into flour for baked goods and ultimately join the prestigious Food-X accelerator.

The Rockefeller Foundation also supported IDEO’s work with City Harvest, a New York organization that collects 160,000 pounds of unused food each day and delivers it to soup kitchens and food pantries. City Harvest wanted to understand the habits of local families who visit food banks in an effort to ensure all the food the group distributes gets eaten. To get a peek into these families’ kitchens, in January 2017, IDEO researchers conducted observations and interviews across New York City’s five boroughs. Pantry customers cooked for the researchers, giving them an inside look at how the families engaged with the food they had available and what food meant to each of them: tradition, stability, even adventure. Based on insights from pantry visitors, IDEO made recommendations for City Harvest, including community-run cooking classes and a way for families to request specific foods or reserve pick-up times by text message. IDEO also created three video vignettes to help build even greater empathy between City Harvest and the people it serves.

In spring 2017, capping IDEO’s work with The Rockefeller Foundation, the organizations teamed up with World Wildlife Fund and Hyatt hotels in Florida, New York, and New Jersey to rethink all-you-can-eat buffets. IDEO studied diners and staff at Hyatt buffets and found that employees—from event planners to kitchen staff—each add a cushion of extra food to cover their bases, while guests overfill their plates to avoid missing out. In the end, diners eat just half the food organizers serve, while the rest goes to waste. This and other data-driven insights gleaned about diners’ habits led to subtle substitutions, including smaller plates of meats and cheeses that can be ordered from servers and individual pastries rather than whole cakes. These alternatives have not only built on Hyatt’s existing food waste management strategies, but have also helped reduce buffet costs at Hyatt Regency Orlando and continued to receive support from guests.

The problem of food waste is too enormous to ignore. Wasted food means squandered resources, lost money, and ultimately, hungry people—more than 15 million in the United States alone. Designers and innovators from coast to coast have helped find solutions to the crisis that fulfill a variety of needs, from preserving produce sent to food pantries to keeping plastic packaging out of the oceans. The Rockefeller Foundation and other IDEO partners are leveraging powerful design techniques to pave the way for a waste-free future.

In 2017, IDEO acquired longtime partner Datascope and integrated the company’s data scientists and engineers. Datascope team members aren’t just passionate data scientists; they’re human-centered designers who happen to work with data, as illustrated by successful collaborations like this one:

In today’s job market, there’s no such thing as being "done" with your education. This is particularly true in the fields of data science, machine learning, and AI, where significant advances are made on a monthly basis. To meet this need for more in-depth training, Metis—part of Kaplan—wanted to create a comprehensive data science program for students from all backgrounds. Metis asked Datascope to design the curriculum from scratch, drawing on the company’s deep expertise in the field.

Datascope spoke with practitioners across industries to identify the key skill sets that make them successful: a grasp of design; fluency with data management, coding, and algorithms; and effective communication with coworkers and the wider world. The team crafted a 12-week bootcamp that develops these specific abilities.

In order to prepare students for the work world, the bootcamp is structured less like a class and more like a company, where students are “hired” as data scientists—with projects to complete—starting on day one.

Students collaborate on group projects and presentations in a way that mirrors real workflows, and practice pair programming to learn from one another. Using techniques drawn from design, students are invited to refine their project briefs and continually reevaluate their approach.

Instead of a final exam, at the end of the course, students tackle five real-world, open-ended data science projects inspired by Datascope’s client work. One project involves using data from subway turnstiles to detect patterns in the volume of street traffic; another asks students to use data they scrape from the web to predict a movie’s box office profits using regression analysis.

After students complete the bootcamp, they receive an additional three months of career support, from mock interviews to site visits with potential employers. In addition to designing the curriculum, Datascope taught the first three student cohorts and helped Metis build its teaching team as it expanded the program from New York to San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. Metis now offers online courses, evening classes, and corporate trainings in data science.

If you’re going to take a data science bootcamp, it’s best to take one designed by data scientists.

You’re whizzing along on your bike, en route to a new restaurant for a client meeting. You reach an unfamiliar intersection; which way to go now?

Instead of dismounting and digging for a phone, you brush your hand along your jacket sleeve for directions, then double-tap the denim to re-start your music. Without taking your eyes off the road, you’ve taken care of the problem.

This intuitive interface for connected apparel began with Levi's, makers of durable workwear for 140 years, and Google, creators of forward-looking technology, which joined forces to fashion the first item of clothing with touch-sensitive, copper-core threads woven directly into the fabric. Once it was established that the first connected garment from the partnership would be a jacket within Levi’s Commuter line, with interaction on the sleeve, Google worked with IDEO, leaders in designing for human needs, to develop the gesture language of the jacket and industrial design of the technology within.

This is the first connected garment that helps us break free from devices. It seamlessly incorporates Jacquard by Google technology to perform digital tasks, such as navigation, communication, and music playing with a few swipes or taps on the sleeve.

Jacquard by Google—a platform that makes it possible to integrate touch and gesture interactivity into fabrics using conductive yarn and standard, industrial looms—was inspired by a curious twist of history. The Jacquard loom, invented in France in 1804, used punch cards to automate the process of weaving complex patterns into fabric. In the 1940s and ’50s, engineers employed a similar punch-card technique to program the first computers.

IDEO spent time on the project early on, collaborating with Google engineers and Levi’s clothiers on the jacket’s development, helping craft an experience that would make the intelligent threads intuitive to wearers.

Working alongside Google and Levi’s, IDEO’s work included:

• The industrial design of the electronics integrated into the snap tag and connector (the tag snaps onto the jacket’s cuff and connects to your phone via Bluetooth)
• A vocabulary of gestures on the cuff of the jacket that lets you interact with the jacket’s technology
• Early exploration of the basic design philosophy and conceptual design for the interaction model of a corresponding smartphone app that ties it all together (works with both iOS and Android phones)

The IDEO team’s first task was to validate what commuters of all stripes wanted from the garment, in addition to the work Levi’s did in researching with its consumers. In interviews, group exercises, and wear tests with urban cyclists and other workers on the go, the team learned that cyclists needed a way to stay connected, while still living in the moment. That meant being able to answer calls, hear text messages, get the next direction, and control their music without using a screen.

Levi’s, Google, and IDEO developed a language of movement for Jacquard-enabled fabric that feels familiar and human and builds on the ways people would naturally interact with a garment (a whole-hand brush along the sleeve, as opposed to a one-finger tap on a touch screen, for instance).

Then came the design and engineering of the snap tag on the jacket’s cuff, which gently notifies you of calls, texts, and other jacket interactions with light and vibration feedback. The flexible, lightweight strap incorporates the look and feel of a Levi’s jean button, while housing advanced electronics that capture touch data. The tag is removable, charges via USB connection, and works in conjunction with a mobile app that lets you configure settings for the garment, set notifications, and customize gestures and interactions.

The Levi’s Commuter Jacket with Jacquard by Google changes the game because it’s simply that—a jacket—with technology that adds new utility and value, allowing us to wear our everyday interactions on our sleeves.

The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google hit stores in October 2017.

IDEO and Google have a long history of collaboration. Learn more about our work on Google Bloks here.

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.