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.

I’ve always been a self-taught coder, so a few months back, I decided I’d get a jump on AR by playing around with 3D coding. What better way to figure it out than to create 3D dancing avatars of my friends so I can host virtual dance parties? (The idea may have been inspired by some of my previous work.)

So I went around asking my colleagues if I could 3D-scan them. I know what you’re thinking: How did I get anyone to agree to this? When I asked people to be scanned, they were so excited to "be 3D" they didn't even ask what I was going to do with the scans.

Left: IDEO CTO Tom Eich IRL. Right: Tom's 3D model mid-groove.

Once I got the scans, I "rigged" them—meaning, I gave them bones. Once they had bones, I could assign motion capture dance data to them that I pulled using 3D software. Finally, I loaded them into my code, which I had written with the help of countless tutorials on three.js, an API for 3D graphics. I created a desktop, AR, and VR version so that people could experience the dance party in the reality of their choosing. (3D assets in motion are surprisingly easy to transition between realities.)

The IDDDEO New York dance floor.

Tom Eich dancing in AR.

When participants saw their avatars in motion, they were definitely confused; for many, it was their first time seeing themselves in 3D. Being able to rotate a camera 360 degrees to see yourself from every angle is just not possible in reality, especially when you’re in motion. Most people immediately pointed out all the color/modeling imperfections in their 3D likenesses that resulted from my use of (what is clearly) an off-the-shelf 3D scanner.

Once the studio saw their coworkers’ 3D models dancing, everyone wanted an invite to the dance party. My fellow tinkerer Danny DeRuntz even brought the party to IDEO Cambridge, where he had long lines of people waiting to be scanned in.

The IDDDEO Cambridge dance floor.

My next endeavor will be creating an audio-visual beat machine that lets anyone sample and manipulate YouTube clips using my own pseudo format, AZZ. (Here’s a demo for the curious.) In the meantime, I’ll be fine-tuning the 3D dance code in hopes of eventually bringing this experience to real life parties in NYC. Sadly, elegant and portable 3D body scanning does not yet appear to be a thing. Hopefully soon?

Check out the dance floor and create your own party here.

Want to follow the project? I’ll be posting updates on my Instagram.

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As an interaction designer, I’m always testing my limits and teaching myself new technologies. And whenever possible, I like to use those new tricks to make people smile. My projects often have no purpose other than giving me an excuse to play on the computer. But I’ve found that combining my passion for the absurd with my passion for learning new tools can lead to glorious outcomes.

As designers who have worked on multiple preparedness and relief projects, we start by understanding why people choose not to prepare, then identify ways to make resilience easier.

Just like buying life insurance, or saving for a rainy day, a future emergency is an abstraction that’s hard to connect to our day-to-day priorities. And unlike seeing everyone else’s trash cans line the curb once a week, preparedness doesn’t have any visible prompts to encourage all of us to get with the program.

Symbols of participation can be powerful change agents, and we know that something as simple as filling out a checklist or talking about a plan can make the abstract tangible.

So what can you do today, for tomorrow?

Break down the process into bite-sized tasks, attach them to a concrete timetable, and connect with the people around you. By building strong connections with your community and taking the time to create a plan, you’ll be more equipped when the big one hits (whatever the big one might be.)

Here are a few simple steps to get you started—collaboratively—in just a week. Share this with your family, your roommate, your colleagues, or your book club.

Now: Follow Local Alerts

Make sure you know what’s going on around you. Follow local emergency alerts from the Fire Department and/or your local Department of Emergency Management on the social media platform you use most (Twitter, Facebook, NextDoor, etc.).

Tomorrow: Copy Your Documents

Scan and store a copy of your important documents. Take a photo of or scan your driver’s license, passport, lease/ownership documents, social security card, and other important documents. Save them (somewhere safe) in the cloud.

This weekend: Gather Your Stuff

Start assembling an emergency kit. Print out a of essentials, useful stuff, and personal items to get started. You’ll be surprised at how much you already have—it’s just a matter of getting it all in one place. And when it comes to supplies, a good rule of thumb is to have enough for three days.

Next week: Make a Plan

Make an emergency plan with your people. Have friends or family over for dinner and hatch it together. It’s like giving a spare key to a neighbor. Do it once, and hopefully, you'll never need to use it.

Cross these four things off your list, and we’ll all be better off when the next wildfire or bomb cyclone hits.

This winter, wildfires raged across California. The air has been heavy with smoke and thick with the power of Mother Nature. And the Left Coast isn’t the only place to be hit by a natural disaster recently (Hello Eastern Seaboard, Houston, Puerto Rico, Florida). As climate change accelerates, getting prepared is on all of our minds.

I took this picture at the beach festival in Chiba, Japan. Sudden rain is hard to avoid in the Japanese summer. When it started pouring at the beach, a man covered himself with the tarp he had been sitting on. After about five minutes, a bunch of people joined him under the tarp, which had been turned into an improvised umbrella. I loved that the man helped his fellow festival-goers escape the rain without a second thought.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

Then one year I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and was quite taken by this line: “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”

Huh, I thought.

The next January, I made a resolution to "Run every day." To exercise daily, I had to change my mindset. I couldn’t be too hard on myself — if there were only 10 minutes, then a 10 minute run had to be okay. In other words, I had to be a bit of a slacker.

It worked!

Building a small daily habit was way easier than a big sometimes habit. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like magic. I fell off the wagon several times, but each time I managed to get back on. Since the goal was doable, if I missed a day or two, I didn’t have to break the ice when I resumed. It worked, and the habit stuck!

Next, I tried a New Year’s Resolution for writing. Previously, I’d only bothered writing if I had at least 90 minutes of uninterrupted time (which is pretty rare). Using my new slacker method, I resolved to "Write every day, even just 10 minutes."

Again, it was easier to stay in rhythm, and the habit stuck. (Although I had to get a little creative to stay focused.)

I even tried this approach with meditating, which always seemed like The Hardest Thing In The World. To make it a daily habit, I downgraded my expectations. I didn’t wake up early. I didn’t meditate for 60 minutes. I didn’t force myself to sit in silence on a zen pillow.

Instead (nerd alert!) I just used Headspace every day, on the bus or even while I was falling asleep. And I decided that even 10 minutes of meditation “counted.” The habit stuck.

Sometimes the magic doesn’t work. Sometimes I’ll keep the same resolution two or three years in a row before it sticks. (This year I’ll finally stretch my hamstrings!) Still, for me, getting even 50% of my resolutions to stick is pretty good.

So take it for what it’s worth. But if you’ve been frustrated with resolutions in the past, consider applying my Unscientific 5-Step Recipe:

1. Dial it back

Don’t be too ambitious. Like, do you really want to run a marathon? I mean, you’ve seen people at the end of marathons, right? They look pretty tired.

Seriously though, we have a culture of intense expectations, and many of us are too hard on ourselves. It’s okay to dial back your goal and make it more doable. Resolving to read 500 books is admirable… but resolving to make (or maintain) a daily reading habit is also great.

2. Make it very specific

My “Exercise more” resolution is a prime example of way-too-vague. “Run every day” is better, “Run around the park in the morning” is better still. Best of all would be something like “Exercise every day, ideally running in the morning, but other forms of exercise and other times of day are also cool.” You get the idea.

3. Add the magic words "for at least 10 minutes every day"

If you decide 10 minutes a day is enough to count, you’ll find it way easier to do it every day. And if you do it every day, it’s way easier to keep the habit.

4. Do it every day for a month

Don't think about al 365 days at once. If you make it through January (or any 30 consecutive days), there's a pretty good chance the habit will stick for the year. If you don't believe me, ask Jerry Seinfeld.

5. Be nice to yourself if you miss a day or two

Just start again. In fact, if you miss a day or two but get right back on it, you don’t even have to count it as breaking your 30-day streak. I hereby grant you permission!

Who knows, your small habit might set the foundation for bigger things. But don’t worry about it in January. Be kind to yourself as you maintain the rhythm, and let the good things happen. They will.

Now go write yourself a nice doable resolution. Good luck, fellow slacker—you got this!

To learn more about Jake's methods subscribe to his newsletter here.

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My New Year’s Resolutions used to fail every time.

For example, I set a resolution to “Exercise more.” I vaguely imagined running marathons and wearing headbands. Then in January, I took two or three long runs and forgot about the resolution. It was sorta like that every year.

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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.