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.

When I started at IDEO six years ago, I had no idea what a systems designer was—only that I was one. Now, six years later, I have an answer, but I’m still perfecting the great-aunt-approved dinner table pitch.

The secret? It’s actually something you probably learned in your grade school language arts class: a good analogy.

If you’ve got approximately 10 minutes, I can tell you what I’ve learned about what I now proudly call my job—and how I’ve learned to explain it.

Systems and automobiles

An iPhone, the human body, buildings, cities, organizations, economies, the universe—all of those things count as systems, even though one can fit in your pocket and one is infinite. So what makes them all systems?

In a series of excellent lectures, Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking, uses a simple analogy to explain systems: an automobile.

As Ackoff explains, a car needs to carry you from point A to point B. No individual part of a car can move you on its own—not the wheel, the axle, the seat, or the engine. But a car can. And if you take a car apart, you no longer have a car: you simply have the pieces, because “a system is not the sum of the behavior of its parts; it’s the product of their interactions.” That’s as true for a computer as it is for the universe—or any other system.

Systems design and architecture

Ackoff, a professor at Wharton Business School, criticized managers for focusing on business silos (marketing, operations, finance). He urged them to take a wider systems view—to think about the interactions that create the whole.

I couldn’t agree more. But if that’s systems thinking, what is systems design? What’s the difference?

Ackoff heralded one profession for understanding systems best: architecture. Architects begin with the needs of the client—bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom—but they don’t stop there. It wouldn’t make sense to design the rooms separately; they need certain adjacencies and sizes.

Importantly, Ackoff explains, the architect “will never modify the house to improve the quality of the room, unless the quality of the house is simultaneously improved.” To take this analogy a step further, think about it this way: you wouldn’t make the kitchen bigger if it meant getting rid of the bathroom. That would be a weird house.

Ahhh, so you're an architect?

Not exactly, although it’s no coincidence that I used to be a designer at an architecture firm. I think of myself as a “human-centered systems designer,” but that wouldn’t be the clearest thing to have on a business card.

IDEO is known for human-centered design, a process that takes inspiration from the needs and aspirations of people, most often end users. Human-centered systems design also starts with people, but requires looking at all the diverse stakeholders within a system—not just end users.

Let’s dive into another analogy: a school. If you’re designing a school, students are the end user. But the needs of teachers, parents, and administrators are equally important. For example, a few years ago we wanted to create a way for schools to change their culture. Since culture is intangible, it can’t be designed in and of itself. But you can design spaces, schedules, processes, roles, rituals, and incentives—tangible “levers for change” that help create culture. We zeroed in on the needs of school leaders, and developed School Retool, a professional development program that empowers principals to evolve their school culture.

When you’re designing a system with a lot of moving pieces, it’s hard to know where to start, and very easy to get lost in the “What if’s?” Design needs constraints, and focusing on human needs provides them.

But why human-centered systems design?

Let’s return to my man Russell Ackoff. He writes, “No problem ever exists in complete isolation. Every problem interacts with every other problem and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems.” Ackoff even coined a term for systems of problems—he called them “messes.”

Indeed, our biggest problems—in education, health care, criminal justice, government—are systems challenges. And surprise: These are all human systems. When the parts of a system are made up of people, complexity is exponentially high because human feelings and needs are unpredictable and constantly changing. Despite good intentions, these important societal systems can be some of the least human-centered experiences we encounter today.

None of these problems can be solved in isolation, but it’s also easy to get a headache just thinking about tackling them.

Our most complex systems need human-centeredness the most. As a systems designer, I specialize in zooming in and out. I’m constantly jumping back and forth between the big picture and the details. I work with teams to bring the best of all disciplines together to design individual elements that form an integrated, cohesive experience for end-users. I ask questions like, “How might the environment support the new behaviors we’re trying to create? How might digital tools enable a new mindset?” I create intentional interactions between parts.

As the holidays creep closer and closer, I no longer dread the questions about work and career that come along with the appetizers. I finally have something my family is more likely to understand, thanks to the powerful and beloved literary device known as the analogy. Getting to this point feels like learning how to ride a bike—you pedal hard, gather speed, and finally crest the hill.

And if nothing else, I’ll just send all my family members a link to this piece. Hi, mom and dad!

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Fall has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and you know what that means: cool weather, warm cider, and sitting around the holiday dinner table with my extended family, trying to explain to them what I do for a living as a systems designer.

In the not-too-distant future, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease could be equipped with a sensor that monitors their medication and inhaler use and prevents acute events. People suffering from clinical depression could be prescribed an app-based therapeutic program in place of a drug.

The digital therapeutics global market is estimated at $1.8 billion today, but predicted to reach $7.1 billion by 2025. Much of the growth is predicted to come through investment from traditional pharma, but there are several new players emerging from the tech and start-up worlds as well with the hopes of evolving into a digital therapeutic. Omada Health, which creates behavior change programs for managing chronic disease, makes its hundreds of thousands of patients feel seen and heard with personal coaching. Click Therapeutics develops software to support smoking cessation and address major depressive disorder in adults. The meditation app Headspace has convinced more than a million people to integrate meditation into their daily lives, with proven wellness benefits.

Companies like these are revealing transformative new approaches to helping patients tackle the thorny challenges at the core of chronic disease, mental health disorders, and a growing number of other diagnoses—and in the process, they’re creating and growing thriving markets where none existed before.

Might these digital products, one day soon, be prescribed by a physician who is concerned about her patients’ heart disease, diabetes, or weight? If Tesla released software that clinically validated reductions in car accidents, even for the most dangerous drivers, would that qualify as a digital therapeutic? We are just beginning to imagine and design the future of this industry.

But these products still face the age-old challenge: how to get people to actually use them. If patients don’t love and trust the experience enough to sustain engagement over long periods, many of these therapies—and products—will fail.

Any new approach needs to begin with the needs of real people, and to follow those needs toward products that are not only desirable, but also have viable business models behind them. Here are our four big takeaways drawn from IDEO’s experience working in this field, designing digital therapeutics that engage patients—and the market.

Put down the competitive landscape report

Innovations in science and health tend to be incremental, but by looking to other industries, it’s possible to identify opportunities for more radical change. Studying analogous experiences—services, products, and other offerings that deliver something tangentially related but not exactly the same—will clarify what kinds of experiences give patients a sense of meaning, delight and value.

A partner of ours in the biotech industry recently launched its first digital therapeutic, focused on helping patients manage diabetes. In piloting the experience, we encountered a big challenge: Patients were struggling to connect the at-home testing device to the bluetooth on their phones. Without it, the experience fell apart.

Instead of buying all of our competitors’ devices to look at their solutions, we brainstormed a list of organizations that were particularly good at helping people with a set of complex instructions—IKEA, ballroom dance instructors, piano teachers, NASA-to-spacecraft communications specialists, and others. We discovered that LEGO had made its first bluetooth-connected toy and—master of instruction that it is—had created instructions to guide even little kids through a simple series of steps. Inspired by LEGO, the team created a new set of instructions. Once they were integrated into the patient onboarding experience, nearly every patient was able to connect their medical device to their phones.

Prioritize the patient

It can be easy to fall into the trap of addressing the needs of payers and providers above the patients’. After all, if a digital therapeutic isn’t reimbursable, the underlying business may not be successful; and if a physician doesn’t know it well enough to prescribe it, a company can’t increase market share. These are critical pieces of the puzzle, but they need to come after the foundational concern of any new digital health venture: fitting your therapy into patients’ lives.

During early stages of design, we rely on user research to inspire countless possibilities, and revisit our insights when we need to refine (or flip) our ideas. User research informs the business model, helps define the path to market, and may also lead to other product features.

What does this look like in practice? Consider the digital mental health company Headspace. Headspace was designed to teach people the fundamentals of meditation, engaging them in an experience that might encourage practice and adherence over time. Initially, Headspace played with incentives like badges and friendly social competition, but it slowly came to understand that the most profound motivation was mental health itself. The company prompted meditators to remember why they meditate, and asked them who in their lives would be better off because they meditated. This consistent call for reflection and awareness led to higher overall engagement.

Headspace’s popularity has catapulted the company to $100M in annual revenue and more than a million subscribers. Once the company designed an experience that people loved, subscribers embraced the product and took it upon themselves to host Facebook groups, meet-ups, and events. Headspace then opened up partnerships within the formal health industry, adapting to the needs and requirements of providers, payers, and regulators. Today, Headspace is a benefit offered to employees of over 350 large companies worldwide, and providers and health systems across the globe offer it to their patients. If you design an effective product that patients love, players in the health system have incentive to offer access.

Design with and for your most extreme, hard-to-engage patients

Designing for extreme users illuminates the wide range of people who might use a product. In IDEO’s earlier days, we saw this most clearly when we designed physical products like ice cream scoopers and pizza slicers for older adults, people with arthritis, and children with limited motor skills. We ended up creating something those populations could use, but in doing so, we developed a universally easier user experience. The product design outshone its competitors and became a top consumer choice.

In the world of digital therapeutics, this approach might entail designing for patients with limited experience using digital technology, or focusing on patients living with multiple chronic conditions, or with profound barriers to accessing care. These patients can help shape a more equitable and inclusive therapeutic experience.

One of our most challenging digital therapeutic projects involved creating an app-based experience to combat depression. To engage with potential users, we traveled to the rural Rocky Mountains to an isolated community where we met Dan, a cowboy and rancher living 40 miles away from his closest neighbor. Dan had struggled with depression for most of his adult life. On a good day, it was hard for him to get out of bed. On a hard day, he struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Before talking to Dan, we considered all of the technological features that could encourage adherence, like enabling offline access and fast download speed in low-bandwidth contexts. But through talking to Dan, it became clear that the tactical challenges weren’t the biggest problem to solve. Even in more populated areas, depression itself can be isolating. Dan helped us co-design a digital tool that even he would be willing to come back to, day after day. One of the key features a digital therapeutic could offer would be connection to others—in real life—and a chance not only to receive help, but to give it. Informed by Dan’s story, we designed an experience that could connect people living with depression to each other and engage them as supporters, mentors, and advocates.

Launch a thousand prototypes

One of the biggest challenges facing health innovation today is the belief that you need to have a solution before you really grasp what people want and how they want it. That’s how the industry is constructed. You would never write a grant proposal without telling the funder exactly what you will deliver, nor allocate budget at a pharmaceutical company without a detailed plan and anticipated ROI.

For digital therapeutics, those constraints are blown wide open. Our task is to come up with as many ideas as we can and test what will actually stick. Prototypes pave the way to a solid, working product, and patient input on prototypes can be used in countless safe, thoughtful ways.

Recently, we worked on a digital therapeutic that helps people manage the tremors associated with motor disabilities such as Parkinson’s Disease. Instead of the typical treatment, which solely relies on an oral medication known to have serious side effects, we were tasked with working on a software and hardware system that delivers targeted electric pulses to the part of the brain that calms tremors. We began with a long list of open questions about what patients living with Parkinson’s would find acceptable, usable, and engaging.

When we went into the field to interview patients, we quickly realized that they had no idea what it might be like to rely every day on a digital device that’s crucial to their health. They were curious about the inner workings of the therapy, and asked questions about the technical, logistical, and philosophical implications.

Our first prototypes included a dozen hats, headbands, or pillows that a patient might wear to charge the implanted device. We also prototyped many digital interactions, from Alexa add-ons to iPhone apps, that might guide them to administer digital medication. To take advantage of bio-monitoring data, we created numerous dashboards, exports, and communication portals that might help patients, providers, and caretakers make sense of what was happening neurologically.

A lot of those ideas were failures, but the things we learned were priceless. For example, it turns out that despite the growing number of retirees on Alexa, many of our patients didn’t trust a voice-controlled app with a task this important. It also turns out that the headgear a person needed to wear could easily make them feel embarrassed, unattractive, or emasculated. One of the most important discoveries was that faster charging is not better, if slower charging meant you could fold laundry, watch your favorite TV show, or weed the garden at the same time. At the end of the day, we designed a hundred prototypes before we landed on the key value propositions, features, and usability standards that would shape the experience.

Tying it all together

Breakthrough products and experiences like Click Therapeutics and Headspace all align with the framework outlined above. But to be clear: They aren’t successful because they have a silver bullet for engagement or the best theory of behavioral economics. They are market-movers because they focused on their users and designed their products around what they found. That led to creating something people love, and success quickly followed. It’s a formula you can apply to creating your own digital therapeutics—or any product you want users to love enough to use in their daily lives.

Illustrations by Nien-Ken Alec Lu.

The next era of digital health has arrived, and it’s booming.

But in practice, when we’re making something genuinely new, we often don’t have data to begin with, nor do we even know what kind of data we will need. We’re staring at a blank canvas, so the only way to dive in is to listen, observe, and sketch.

Making ideas real didn’t just mean collecting biometrics about patients and displaying the data in a smart way. It was much more important to use data to help experts and patients build and maintain a relationship, track progress, adjust course, and figure out next steps. These elements are all an integral part of how the service operates. And in the process, I came away with a few principles for data scientists to keep in mind when using data as a medium for design.

1. Be part of research

We needed to know what experts ask their patients to help support them in their journey to self-management, and what is reasonable to ask patients for. Is it fair to ask somebody who mainly eats at restaurants to accurately track the micronutrients of everything they eat? Probably not.

It’s critical to understand people’s real needs in their context to understand what data is meaningful and feasible to collect. Qualitative field research is key in the process of developing empathy for those we design for and for getting a feel for what life challenges might get into the way of data collection. Understanding when we can collect data—and when we can’t—provides valuable information.

2. Sketch by hand and share

Informed by research and armed with crayons, we created a variety of data visuals aimed at tracking patient progress in various aspects of their day-to-day lives—basically, sketches of the features that might be helpful. Drawing is much faster than writing code. We made the visuals a prominent part of the project room to serve as a catalyst for brainstorming and discussion with other members of the team who aren’t data scientists. We explored trends of activity and sleep over time, and played around with visual ways to track mood and to inform people of healthier food options without asking them to count calories and micronutrients.

This approach allowed us to make significant progress in two ways. One, showing our sketches to experts allowed us to narrow down which metrics were useful, and to start tracking down potential data sources. Sketching in crayon versus writing in code also helps us fail faster and narrow in on the right questions to ask.

And two, sharing our sketches with the broader team, which included designers from a broad spectrum of disciplines (communication, interaction, research, software, business), made our work more transparent and helped us establish a common language. It also sparked conversations, inspiring us and helping us to gather further feedback.

3. Gather up and agree on all your data

Once we identified useful visuals, algorithms, and interfaces, we began hunting for the data that could fill them in and move us to higher fidelity prototypes. In our case, data included the client’s historical data, simulated data, and team data. We simulated data about meals and snacks and plugged it into publicly available nutritional APIs. This exercise allowed us to identify the types of data that might be suitable as input for these APIs.

We also bought a bunch of trackers for the team to explore ways we might keep tabs on activity, which showed us where a tracker might go wrong (moving your arm in a circle might count as a step, when in actuality you’re not taking a step at all) and narrowed down the types of data that are meaningful to collect (for example, movement vs. steps). By diving in with our own data, we were able to fill our communcation, interaction, and software designers in on how we would approach collecting patient info.

4. Look to the future

As we were exploring data solutions for the various components of this service, we had to keep in mind that design and development take time and resources. For example, tracking micronutrients via nutritional APIs relies heavily on the assumption that patients are willing—or will even remember—to share their meals. In reality, we didn’t know what patients were willing to share about the foods they eat, nor did we know what food-related information experts need to track a patient's progress.

Redirecting the team’s effort to a lower-fidelity solution to track these behaviors (say, allowing patients to share a food journal) can save a lot of time and effort while still informing the future development of the service.

As a data scientist, starting with people and crayons rather than data and a keyboard felt uncomfortable at first, but it made the process of identifying what’s important and doable much more efficient. Making data science a visual part of the project space also helped the data scientists on the team become co-designers from the very beginning—meaning that we could contribute a lot more to the project. Hopefully, the tips above will empower you to do the same.

A big thank you to Mike Stringer for his help shaping this piece.

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You might think the first thing data scientists do on a project is grab a bucket of data and run with it. And for good reason—that’s how many data scientists write about projects after the fact.

In business, new models and offers are further constrained by the need to satisfy current stakeholders and follow market trends. So how can you break free of present-day realities to envision a genuinely novel future?

In other words: Design can move us beyond the imagination-traps of our own experience to uncover truly new possibilities.

When I founded IDEO’s CoLab four years ago, one of our goals was to find new ways to catalyze visionary business leaders and to activate new models by assembling diverse perspectives from across industries. We frequently employ design fiction exercises with our partners to open up more exploratory approaches to tough problems—particularly the ever-changing nature and role of technology. The process helps connect the dots between an aspirational vision of the future and a business approach that can make that vision a reality.

How to apply design fiction to your business

The futures that we imagine are based on a few catalytic data or trends—“inevitables”—that serve as foundational elements of a future vision. By anchoring on these inevitable factors, we can then imagine the implications that ripple across a business, industry, or society. For example, five or 10 years ago, one might have assumed that smartphone ubiquity was inevitable and started to imagine the implications (good and bad) of everyone in the world having access to a super computer, the internet, a camera, and more. By extending from what’s already true to what might soon be true, it becomes possible to exert some agency in the way you move forward, even when you can’t know exactly what’s ahead.

The late Bill Moggridge (an IDEO founder who came up with the concept of a folding laptop) referred to this as “preferred futures.” In this view, rather than viewing the future as something that happens to you and can’t be controlled, you adopt the mindset that you can influence what happens, asking, “What future do we want to create? And how do we reverse engineer the pathway to get there?”

It sounds pretty heady—perhaps something to be left to experts—but the process of creating design fiction is actually accessible to most people by following a four-step process. This exercise is inspired by an activity from a class at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business called “Designing the Future” that I taught alongside two IDEO business designers, Becca Carroll and Sandeep Pahuja.

1. Pick an industry and describe its role in the consumer’s life

Let’s take insurance as an example. Insurance is a safety net for when something bad happens. But insurance customers don’t simply want protection—they also want to understand and manage risk, find the most agreeable policy to ensure support when they need it, and trust that their claims will be processed and paid. These criteria are often referred to as the “jobs to be done”—in short, they are the things the consumer has “hired” the product to do.

2. Write a story about the future, free from today’s constraints

If you focus on the “jobs to be done” (and don't get caught thinking about existing insurance companies and how they operate), you can begin to imagine new ways to do those jobs for customers with the help of new technologies and other shifts (behavioral, regulatory, etc.) we believe will be relevant in the future.

For example, if we take the job of understanding risk, there’s a story to be told about machine learning and the explosion of sensor data, which will allow us to create more sophisticated risk models. More sophisticated risk models could lead to a more personalized approach to assessing risk and ultimately the ability to provide more relevant products to customers. In this future, perhaps insurance companies shift from being the safety net after something happens to proactive behavior change coaches who help protect you before something happens.

When writing a story about the future, we continually ask, “What future do we want to create?” This helps us focus on the ultimate goal of creating value for people and preventing harmful consequences, not just creating new technical capabilities and hoping for the best. In this case, we answer it by imagining how the experience of insurance might take on an entirely new form and function when enabled by the tools of the near future.

3. Back out to the assumptions that would make this future real

Taking this vision of the future as possible, we can work backwards to uncover the assumptions need to be in place to support it coming to be. Our go-to provocation is inspired by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel: What would have to be true to make this future a reality?

Asking what has to be true is a powerful tool to help you optimistically articulate the key assumptions implied by your story and connect them to your current offers and potential path forward. It’s easy to come up with a long list of reasons why something won’t work, and this often leads to risk aversion and incremental thinking. By surfacing the criteria for success you can pragmatically assess how realistic these assumptions are and design experiments or milestones to demonstrate if you’re on track. Invite your colleagues to get imaginative alongside you and uncover even more ideas.

Elon Musk famously published his master plan (and then a second) for Tesla that stepped through five key assumptions that would allow Tesla to move the automotive industry towards an electric future. These included making electric vehicles high performance and cool—a shift from the pervasive negative view of EVs’ aesthetics and functionality; and changing the notion that these cars are too expensive for average consumers, riding the scale/cost curve to reduce the price and range of vehicles, and making them more accessible to the mass market.

4. Prototype

So now you know what would have to be true. Are those things possible? Rather than speculate and debate, prototyping is your way to find out. Begin with scrappy, low-fidelity prototypes to test your assumptions and continually iterate forward, incorporating your learnings into higher-fidelity prototypes. Getting really clear on these key assumptions enables you to take an evidence-based approach to making investment decisions in risky innovation projects.

As quickly as possible, you’ll want to test your assumptions in the market. This is another sticky point where risk aversion and desire to jump to scale can grind progress to a halt. Designing in-market experiments that are right-sized and laser focused on testing key assumptions is an organizational skill that is difficult to cultivate. Successful startups often are forced to be quite scrappy in the market and increasingly, larger companies are building these capabilities. The founders of Airbnb famously tested their idea out by renting out air mattresses in their apartment during a conference. Established companies are getting into the act too, LEGO, Coca-Cola and General Electric have all market tested new products on crowdfunding site Indiegogo.

It’s unlikely that there’s only one viable solution to get to any preferred future—there are many avenues that may get you there and thus it’s important to diversify and have a number of bets. Many entrepreneurs will tell you that their current business is not exactly like their original business idea. Often, it’s pretty far from it. That’s because the steps required to go from idea to reality involve a lot of prototyping, experimentation, and openness to change along the way. Whether you work in the field of innovation, you’re an entrepreneur with a startup, or you have an idea for a business that you’re ready to explore, using the principles of design fiction and cross-organizational collaboration can help.

Hear more on design fiction and cross-organizational collaboration in this episode of IDEO U's Creative Confidence podcast.

Illustration by Mark Conlan.

There’s no such thing as a truly original idea, or so the saying goes. Even the most imaginative inventors and artists are limited by the boundaries of their own experience, and every fresh idea is derivative of something that came before.

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.

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