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.

In one sentence who are you?

Artist from Bristol, UK, currently living in NYC.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I draw and paint every day. It is hard to pinpoint how I learned to draw, but I have been practicing since I was a young lad. I would always draw what was around me.

I have always been inspired by artists who draw with an energetic, loose line. Quentin Blake, Ralph Steadman, Chris Orr, Robert Weaver, and Linda Kitson were artists I looked up to.

As I got into my early teens, I really got immersed in depicting the urban environment. This was fueled by picture books that my dad would bring back from trips to the US. American cities didn’t look like UK ones.

I went to art college, but I largely stuck to my guns and just made the work that I wanted to make. To be honest, I’m making it up as I go along.

WATCH: IDEO San Francisco mural, 2017

3 favorite possessions?

My sketchbooks from the last 25 years and a giant Spitfire that I made and had hanging in my old studio.

What does a typical work session look like?

I am normally juggling three projects, so I try to split up the day and do a few hours on each.

I tend to do the large-scale work in my studio apartment, and then I have a desk in a shared studio where I do smaller jobs.

So I guess I work in two to three hour bursts, and then go do something else. Obviously, if there is a pressing deadline, that goes out the window. I do 12-plus hour sessions sometimes.

How do you get over creative block?

Go running, to the gym, or for a pint. Talk to a friend and then go out and draw something. Or just start something. Sometimes I think too much.

I also keep a small, pocket-sized sketchbook on my person, so that when I am traveling about the city I can draw people and things that catch my eye. It is a lovely way to see stuff. People spend so much time looking at their phones these days, they miss out on so many things that are happening in real life.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Warm.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

I’d like to watch a cricket test match in the Caribbean.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

I am looking at painters a lot these days. Here are a few: Peter Doig, Paul Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Jules de Balincourt, Enoc Perez, John Virtue, Edward Hopper, George Bellows…

I first discovered Patrick Vale's work while sourcing muralists for an installation in our entryway. I became entranced by the organized madness of his large-scale cityscapes—the attention to detail, consistency, and sheer patience they required to complete. Pat embedded himself in IDEO's San Francisco studio for more than a week—morning, noon, and night—to create an alternative map-view of San Francisco. I caught up with him to get the backstory.

As the person in charge of the overall employee experience for IDEO San Francisco, I should have known better. Neither my husband nor I have any experience running a coffee business. Had we known how hard it would be, we would have surely taken one look at the space and balked. Instead, we tore down walls, stood in line at the city building department, had our eyes opened wide, cried out in frustration, and in the process, learned a hell of a lot.

Thinking about starting a side business after hours? Here are 5 lessons we learned the hard way:

1. The laws won’t bend around your business

Turns out it’s staggeringly difficult to open a city-approved and permitted food establishment in a space where there hadn’t previously been one. The ADA laws (The Americans with Disabilities Act) are incredibly intricate. When IDEO opened a new office to house our growing business, I already understood the language the architect used to describe ADA issues we might face, and how bureaucratic and difficult the permit process might be.

2. Designing a great experience = problem solving

If you're starting a side biz, think hard about which learnings from your day job are transferable. Working in experience design, I already knew what it was like to be in a constant state of problem solving, failing quickly, and learning from it all. My relationship with the IDEO community and my commitment to giving them what they want—and to saying no when necessary—was paramount. I use my skills in thinking about space, how best to use it, and how to realize potential problems before they surface every day at Snow White.

3. Everything will go wrong

We installed an ice cream machine that failed almost immediately. (Who knew your ice cream machine won’t stay cold enough if your shop isn't air conditioned?) We’ve also dealt with the lack of a freezer or a proper ice machine, too little dry storage, and leaking sinks. When you're starting a new business, expect to be prototyping and problem solving around obstacles constantly.

4. Take breaks and rely on your community

We’ve learned when to say no and when to take a break. That has been essential to avoiding burnout. Expect to call in lots of favors and make sure you return those favors over time. We’ve made strong relationships with our community by asking them for favors when we need to, and giving back to them when we can.

5. Blind faith is your friend

Some lessons are less tactile, like how being fearless pays off in the end. It allows me to make quick changes without feeling paralyzed. We all let barriers get in the way. We come up with reasons why something won’t work. The blind faith we had when we decided to open the shop is in itself a lesson—and the most important one we learned. I've taken that lesson back to IDEO (and we certainly have better coffee in the office now too!).

A year later, the learning continues. We’re constantly trying new things to evolve our business. Stop by Snow White Coffee Bar for a latté some time and let our defiance inspire you to jump into something you think you can’t.

Last winter, while walking down a busy shop-lined street a block from our home in Oakland, my husband and I noticed a handwritten FOR LEASE sign posted in the window of a dirty dry cleaners. “This is such a great location, someone should put a coffee shop here!” we joked. But it was no joke—four months later, on April 20, 2016, we opened the doors to Snow White Coffee Bar.

Inspired by the New York Times’ piece on How to Fall in Love with Anyone, I reached out to my fellow IDEOers and asked about some of their favorite ways to break down barriers when meeting new people—especially in a group setting. They showered me with activity ideas.

Here are my top 5 favorite ways to break down barriers:

1. 3 Things in 3 Minutes

Everyone partners up with someone, ideally a person they don’t know well. Each pair has three minutes to discover three things they have in common that go beyond the obvious, like “We’re both in this room together,” or “We’re both wearing glasses.” After three minutes, everyone shares what they’ve learned with the group. Discoveries get pretty specific and have ranged from “We both have an adopted 11-year-old daughter from Guatemala” to “Our moms went to high school together in Detroit!”

2. Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Each person brings photos of their life (house, room, stuff, friends, etc.). The only rule is they can’t be in the images. When the group comes together, each person puts up their photos, and everyone has to guess whose life is whose. After each person is revealed, they have an opportunity to share a few components from their lives that are represented in the photographs.

3. Grouping Game

Create a series of categories that a group can use to organize themselves. They might be as simple as “cat person or dog person” or “Mac user or PC user,” or provide a bit more context about people’s background, such as “oldest, middle, youngest, or only child” or “religious or non-religious.” Once you have a handful of categories, call them out one-by-one, and have people form groups based on how they identify. For each round, have people ask one of the other questions of another group. By the end of the exercise, they will have been part of a dozen or so different “communities,” each comprised of a different set of people.

4. Acknowledgement Line

Have the group form two lines facing each other. Then, have them partner with the person they’re facing and take turns following these prompts (even if you know nothing about them):

• What do you want to know about this person? (Curiosity)
• What do you appreciate about this person? (Appreciation)
• What do you want to share about yourself with this person? (Acknowledgement)
• What can you contribute or give to this person? (Contribution)

5. Uniqueness Share

Each person takes turns sharing a fact about who they are or what they've done. If someone else in the room has done it before, then the person sharing needs to come up with another fact about themselves. So, if one person says, “I biked across the country,” and someone else says, “I’ve done that too!” then you would need find another fact, such as “I lived in Thailand.” Keep going until you find something that is truly unique about each person.

Any one of these exercises will help bring a feeling of common humanity into view. So, next time you enter a room full of strangers, save the cheesy icebreakers and admit that you’re a cat person instead.

Thanks to Mollie West Duffy, Neil Stevenson, Deirdre Cerminaro, Caryn Voskuil, and Heather Currier Hunt for their contributions.

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Walking into a room of strangers can feel daunting. Small talk is hard enough, and it’s even trickier to delve into deeper topics right off the bat. I chuckled when I found out that the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has a term for the realization that every person has a story as complex as yours. But how do you unlock those stories with someone you've just met?

Working in food and hospitality design, I’m always on the lookout for what's new in the space. So, the moment I heard about SingleThread, I booked a night for my husband and me as an anniversary gift.

I suppose it’s an occupational hazard that I couldn’t help but notice the thoughtfully considered details that give SingleThread its hospitality superpowers. We were swept off our feet personally, but I also walked away with design insights that I took back to work.

At IDEO, we look to extremes for inspiration—people, brands, or environments that exaggerate specific behaviors. When we designed a line of ergonomic kitchen tools, we prototyped with both sous chefs and with those suffering from arthritis. Edge cases reveal what is or is not working, helping us generate opportunities for innovation.

SingleThread is most certainly an edge case. The name says it all—their vision is highly crafted, and a thread of that vision is woven into every detail of the experience.

3 lessons SingleThread Farms taught me about designing modern hospitality:

1. Don't tell your brand story, weave it in

At some hotels, the brand or theme takes over everything. Sweden’s IceHotel, Japan’s Robot Hotels, Underwater, and Disney's Star Wars hotel might be fun once or twice, but they're less about a tailored guest experience, and more about their own story.

To say that SingleThread’s theme is “farm to table” would be a gross oversimplification. The larger purpose, as its creators Kyle and Katina Connaughton shared with us, is “to be an extension of our home.” That is demonstrated in every detail, from the open kitchen serving a kaiseki-inspired menu that changes with the micro-seasonal produce Katina has pulled out of the ground that day, to the guest rooms upstairs, where the mini-bar is replaced by a curated selection of gratuit handmade snacks and beverages.

About halfway into our 11-course dining journey, we were presented with a basket of mismatched sake cups and invited to “choose one that speaks to us.” That was a first.

2. Aim for personal, not personalized

Personalization, the longstanding holy grail of the hospitality industry, is being reframed in the sharing economy. Airbnb's “belong anywhere” message is made real by guided experiences that help guests feel at home in the local culture.

SingleThread builds in degrees of freedom that make the experience feel personal, not programmed: A towel hook thoughtfully placed just outside the shower door so you aren’t left to tiptoe across the floor, a wooden ladle atop a tray over the bath, pre-filled with soaking salts.

At a nightly pre-dinner meeting, the staff reviews guests’ bios and dietary requests so they can adjust the dining experience in a seamless, subtle way.

3. Put smart tech in a supporting role

Tech features in hospitality are growing fast. From Disney’s MagicBands to mobile check-in apps, hospitality providers are looking for new ways to meet guests’ needs.

SingleThread has mastered hidden tech, integrating just enough to create a highly sensual, human-centered experience that connects them more deeply with their guests.

Guests prepay through a reservation ticket system called Tock, so that any transactions that might take them out of the moment—tipping the bellhop, front desk check-in—are removed from the equation.

A front door camera helps to ensure you are greeted by name when you walk inside.

For keyless entry into your room, you’re invited to create your own passcode.

Each room is equipped with a Teforia tea system that calibrates the exact time, temperature, and amount of water needed to brew you the perfect cup.

These smart tech moments aren't show-stoppers. They're there to remove friction from the experience.

Though SingleThread Farms is a boutique hotel, it doesn’t take five stars, or dollar signs, to show guests you truly understand their needs. It was the small design moments that made our stay an experience I (and my marriage) will never forget.

Have your own outstanding hospitality experience to share? Share with me on Twitter @MeijaJ with the hashtag #HospitalitySuperpower.

Header image by Garrett Rowland.

Where would you like your breakfast served? Your room? The study? The roof? This was the kind of tough decision I faced during my stay at the SingleThread Farms, the highly anticipated inn and restaurant that opened in Healdsburg late last year. After the 90 minute trek from San Francisco, I was welcomed by name and guided to my room, where I tapped a code I’d made up for keyless entry. I never touched a credit card during my stay.

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.