All moms want to give their babies the best start in life, and for many, that means nourishing their babies with breastmilk. However, breast pumping is often inconvenient and uncomfortable. Tethered to the wall, undressed, and surrounded by cords and dangling bottles, most mothers who pump are interacting with technology that hasn’t fundamentally changed in more than 25 years.

Passionate about solving this challenge, the startup Willow set out to completely re-imagine the breast pumping experience. The team at Willow envisioned a “dream pump” that would deliver what moms want most: mobility and discretion.

The Willow team approached IDEO to be a close partner in bringing their product to life. As a cross-disciplinary team of researchers, industrial designers, and mechanical engineers, IDEO, Willow, and Function Engineering worked together seamlessly to identify mothers’ unmet needs and resolve engineering complexities with a simple and elegant design.

The resulting product, Willow, is the first all-in-one, wearable breast pump that cuts the cords, ditches the mess of bottles, and fits easily inside a bra. Mobile, discreet, and hands-free, Willow allows women to achieve their breastfeeding goals without pressing pause on their own lives.

The final design of Willow was informed by research and in-person interviews with dozens of mothers, ranging from first-time to experienced pumpers. Insights about their personal routines, challenges, and workarounds guided the design team as they built more than 60 physical prototypes to understand how Willow could best fit into mothers’ lives. Learnings from those prototypes helped the team to define the size, shape, color, and materials of Willow, as well as each step in the pumping process.

One key design element that emerged from this iterative process was the simplicity of Willow’s architecture, which makes the pump easy to use, assemble, and clean. The pump contains just a few basic parts that snap together, and only two parts that need to be cleaned (both are dishwasher-safe).

Considering how personal the breast pumping experience is, the team aimed to help the pump feel less like a stark, mechanical device and more like a considered, modern, and personal accessory—a goal ultimately achieved through the pump’s colors, texture, and finish.

Because of Willow, mothers no longer need to plan their lives around pumping—it can happen anywhere, at anytime. Willow gives moms back their time and freedom and gives them choice; now moms can play with an older child, work, or enjoy precious relaxation time at home. With Willow, pumping breastmilk finally fits seamlessly into women’s active everyday lives.

More than 50 million people worldwide suffer from schizophrenia, yet only half receive psychiatric treatment. When they do, it usually involves medication and one-on-one therapy to treat the most visible symptoms, including hallucinations and paranoia. But the disease can also cause debilitating symptoms that medication can’t easily treat, such as social anxiety and isolation, lack of motivation, and memory deficits.

For people living with these symptoms, what might seem like simple activities—socializing, spending time outdoors, exercising—can sometimes feel overwhelming. And if patients aren’t given effective care, they can become even more isolated, and their physical health and quality of life suffer. They’re far more likely to let the rest of their treatment regimen slip, skipping medication or therapy sessions.

To help address these challenges, a digital health research group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) approached IDEO with an idea to supplement the longstanding medication-and-therapy model with a tool to alleviate hard-to-treat symptoms, and more importantly, improve patients’ quality of life. It would require identifying unmet needs among patients and determining which kinds of interactions could have the greatest impact on young people with mental illness.

The outcome of that collaboration is PRIME, or Personalized Real-time Intervention for Motivational Enhancement, a digital platform that empowers young people with schizophrenia with the tools, motivation, and community of support they need to achieve their goals.

The simplicity of PRIME belies its deep functionality. The easy-to-use mobile app helps patients stay motivated to stick with behaviors that boost their health, social skills, and productivity, and it provides motivational coaching from trusted professionals and social connections with other patients.

How It Works

The PRIME app lets users set daily goals based on their particular needs. There are more than 500 small challenges to try—from inviting a friend to play basketball to spending time with a family member—and users can see their progress tracked through incremental successes over time.

Whenever users need help, trained motivational coaches are on hand to provide cognitive behavioral therapy coaching, encourage patients to achieve their goals (and to push beyond their comfort zones), and support their interactions with other users.

Tapping into its vibrant social network to help patients feel less isolated, PRIME prompts users to snap photos of happy moments, highlight important events in their lives, and share challenges they’re proud to have accomplished. Unlike Facebook, which can be overwhelming for some patients with schizophrenia, PRIME is a closed community where users can talk freely about their challenges with others who are just like them.

Click above to hear our audio story, or listen on SoundCloud.

To measure the efficacy of PRIME, UCSF and IDEO combined traditional metrics, such as Patient Health Questionnaire scores and time spent in the app, with new metrics evaluating patients’ quality of life. For example, they studied the pictures of things that made users happy before and while using the app, and measured the frequency, depth, and quality of patients’ social interactions in the app based on word choice and punctuation.

Learnings from these human-centered metrics helped the team iterate further on PRIME’s design, so that the platform would generate even higher levels of engagement and stronger improvements in patients’ motivation and social functioning. In this 2016 peer-reviewed, clinical study, 80 percent of patients with schizophrenia achieved their daily goals, and users logged into the app an average of 4.5 times a week, far more than the expected rate of once a week.

PRIME has also made an impact on patients and their families on a personal level. The mother of one research participant was thrilled with the results. She told IDEO, “I wish you could have witnessed my daughter’s first response to seeing the faces and profiles on her phone. She looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Everyone looks normal. Everyone looks like people you see every day.’ It was as if she looked into a mirror that reflected possibility and hope.”

Human-Centered Design

The PRIME platform is an example of how the human-centered design process can lead to first-of-its-kind innovations in the field of mental health care. PRIME designers conducted comprehensive interviews that led to a deep understanding of patients as whole people, not just conditions or sets of symptoms.

For Dr. Danielle Schlosser, lead researcher on the PRIME project at UCSF, collaborating with IDEO and applying design thinking to her research on mental health was illuminating. "[It] showed us that in order to engage our users, we needed to provide a safe and supportive community that directly catered to their needs. The insights we gained enabled us to create an experience that inspires patients to improve their quality of life by emphasizing their strengths. Working with IDEO helped us make powerful, creative leaps in our process, and build a digital health platform that’s already deeply impacting patients’ lives.”

The success of PRIME in treating schizophrenia has led to additional federal research funding, and the platform is now being expanded to treat a wider range of mental health conditions.

For example, in this recent, peer-reviewed study, PRIME helped patients with moderately severe depression experience a 50 percent reduction in symptoms, with a noticeable difference in just two weeks—far faster than the average of four to six weeks it takes for traditional medication and therapy to yield improvements. By the end of the depression study, 90 percent of participants said they had achieved their treatment goals, such as to “become happier” or to “feel less lonely.”

Numerous patients with schizophrenia and depression have already benefitted from PRIME’s unique offering, and the team is exploring ways to commercialize and scale PRIME to reach more people with mental health conditions.

New Yorkers are a tough lot, but damaging coastal storms will continue to test their resilience. More than 400,000 people live within the city’s floodplain and are at physical and economic risk. In the face of both natural and manmade challenges—from superstorms to confusing insurance regulations—many New Yorkers are not aware of their flood risk, or even that they should be thinking about it at all.

The Center for NYC Neighborhoods‚ a nonprofit that champions affordable homeownership for middle- and working-class families and communities, engaged IDEO to create a resource that could help New Yorkers keep their homes and finances safe. Launched in September 2016 with funding from New York State's Governor's Office of Storm Recovery, FloodHelpNY is an expansive platform that dismantles the complexity surrounding flood insurance and gives homeowners clear and simple guidance for assessing their flood risk and taking action toward resiliency.

Facing the complexities of insurance policy, shifting flood regulations, climate change, and citizen engagement, the design team began by engaging two vastly different groups of New Yorkers—those who had been battered by past storms and those not yet affected. Homeowners in the first camp were angry and frustrated by a system that had let them down after Superstorm Sandy. Homeowners in the second camp were simply unaware of their risk and had little idea of what might happen. The right design solution needed to encourage both groups to take action and learn about flood risk and insurance regulations, while also addressing divergent levels of need and preparedness.

To co-design solutions with homeowners, IDEO set up pop-up stations at neighborhood meetings in Canarsie, Red Hook, and Gerritsen Beach, and had flood-affected residents create paper prototypes of the resources they wanted in place the next time a storm hit. The team learned how residents contextualized their individual risk, which information they prioritized, and how their frustration could inform a better outcome. In Lower Manhattan, where residents are less aware of flood risk, the team set up a pop-up station with virtual reality viewers that simulated water rushing into the surrounding streets, a visceral wake up call that got them talking about flood recovery.

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Less than a month after launch, FEMA began promoting FloodHelpNY as a key resource for building flood resilience. The platform helps all New Yorkers learn what flood zone they’re in, or will be in, how that affects their insurance rates, and what steps they can take to mitigate their risk. It features a first-of-its-kind flood insurance rate calculator that can help homeowners get a rough idea of the costs they could face as insurance prices go up. It is also the main conduit to apply for the Home Resiliency Audit, a New York State-funded program that equips at-risk homeowners with vital documentation valued at over $800 that confirms their actual elevation and insurance costs—all with the personalized assistance of an engineer and housing counselor team. In the coming months, FloodHelpNY will expand further to offer homeowners free backflow valves that reduce the chance of sewers backing up during flooding, as well as access to more existing benefits for resiliency.

The New York City floodplain, which is expected to grow as tides continue to rise, threatens neighborhoods that are among New York’s oldest and most historic. The people who live there make the city work: teachers, police officers, subway operators. Many of these homeowners will watch their flood insurance premiums surge, year over year. It’s a troubling future, but one that FloodHelpNY is designed to help New Yorkers face, by guiding them toward greater resilience and assuring them that they aren’t alone.

Athletes looking to score big on game day could hit the gym, but they’d probably be better off hitting the sheets instead, according to Rise Science, a sleep analytics startup. Harnessing the latest sleep science, Rise helps players significantly improve reaction time and decrease false starts, lapses, and injuries, among other benefits.

While attending Northwestern University, the co-founders of Rise Science created a simple sleep app and light-touch coaching service, which they prototyped on the school’s Big Ten football team with positive results. They came to IDEO to optimize their customer experience and scale the business, and joined IDEO’s Startup in Residence program.

While observing coaches and players using Rise, IDEO saw the opportunity to better integrate the digital and hardware experiences and design a more robust, intuitive, and service-heavy on-boarding experience during the first few weeks using the system, when breaking old habits and incorporating new ones are most challenging.

At the end of the residence program, Rise left IDEO with a rebranded and optimized sleep training system. Here’s how it works: Players and coaches receive a short, in-person introduction to sleep coaching by a Rise employee. Players who opt in to the service receive a sleep-training kit that includes the Rise Coaching App; adaptive sleep plans tailored to their chronotype, age, game schedule, and training load; a part-human, part-machine sleep coach that continuously supports each player, monitors progress, and gives timely feedback; in-context education that provides daily and weekly sleep insights; and products like UV glasses, sleep mask, and bed sensor. In just a week of using Rise’s full sleep program, 97 percent of players report getting 54 more restorative minutes of sleep per night.

Recently, Rise Science added the Chicago Bulls, Miami Dolphins, and the University of West Virginia to their sleep-training roster, enhancing their performance, one good night’s sleep at a time.

“Coming into IDEO, we knew our service was letting customers down. When we left, we had the blueprint for the next version of Rise. We were able to solve and optimize sleep at a much larger scale,” said Jeff Kahn, co-founder and CEO of Rise Science.

Here are just a few of our resolutions for 2018:

1. I want to start using my calendar to evaluate whether or not I’m spending my energy on my priorities. All too often, calendars get hijacked by old habits, process without purpose, and trying to please others. I want to start holding myself accountable. —Scott Belsky, founder of Behance

2. My resolutions this year are the same as they were last year: to use the complexity and swirl in the world as a source of inspiration, not just frustration. To look for light, joy, and optimism. To trust the inherent good in people. To be part of the renaissance that always follows the revolution. I’m keen for design to step up to the plate and take on topics such as inclusion, tolerance, equality, and masculinity. 2018 is a year of making change, not just wishing for it to happen. —Paul Bennett, Chief Creative Officer, IDEO

3. I plan to do more design with my kids. My four-year-old is a self-proclaimed artist who draws in every spare minute; my two-year-old is beginning to spend more than one minute on art at a time. I want get both of them involved in coming up with their own "design challenges" and to surround both of them with the materials and space to get inspired. —Sally Madsen, IDEO

4. One of my goals is to bring new technologies to the forefront of the social impact work we're doing at IDEO.org. With short design sprints, it’s hard to bring new, wild inspiration into the solutions we create, but I'm trying to adopt this perspective as much as possible. For example, I have an idea to use blockchain and mobile money to create a credit-rating system in countries where unbanked people struggle to apply for loans. —Angie Fu, IDEO.org

5. In 2018, I will continue doing "fewer things better." One way that shows up for me is reducing social media. I placed all my social apps in a folder titled "AM/PM" on the last screen of my phone. Unless it's work related, I stick to opening the folder only in the morning or evening. Additionally, I moved the iBooks app to the front screen, so whenever I get the itch to tap, I'll distract myself with a book instead of a blog. —Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder and CPO, Airbnb

6. My New Year’s resolution from four years ago was to post a sketch on my Tumblr for every day of the year, and it’s continued. It’s the only resolution I’ve ever kept. I’m doing it again this year, by hook or crook! —Lisa Brown, illustrator

7. I'm getting close to finishing my fifth sketchbook. I've done 57 full-page illustrations so far! I would love to make it into a coffee table art book through a Kickstarter next year. I also want to get back into 3D work in my free time (woodworking, sculpting, etc.). I find that making things in my free time fuels work in other areas of my life and helps boost and maintain my creative energy. —Felicia Chiao, IDEO

8. I'm working on allowing the entire design process to yield reward, joy, and satisfaction, rather than just the end result. This is necessary when working on major house projects with a finish line dangling from an impossibly long stick that seems too far away to reach. I can spend the next year (or three) wishing it were done, or enjoy the process as much as possible and suffer less. —Sally Sosa, IDEO

9. My New Year's resolution is to focus on women as users of design. The #MeToo movement has shown that women experience so many things in common, but don't have a voice or community of support during difficult professional moments. I care so much about advancing this cause, and yet I realize that in my work as a business designer I almost never think about users’ genders; instead, I think about their physical, emotional, and psychological needs.

I believe women are worthy of being addressed as a user group (with the understanding that there’s a ton of nuance within such a huge population). For 2018, let's look for all the ways women are not seen or heard and give them a better, more equal stage through design. —Kerry O’Connor, IDEO

10. I’ve been making a conscious effort to travel to at least three new cities or countries throughout the year. (This year’s cities: Malaga in Spain, Lisbon and Peniche in Portugal, and Trieste in Italy.) This resolution helps me step out of my comfort zone by removing any bearings I have and forcing me to look at simple things, such as getting around town, eating, and exercising, through the lens of the place I find myself in.

Just sitting in a cafe in the town square gives me interesting insights into a local culture and can easily trigger a new way of thinking about a problem I’m currently mulling over. Don’t just travel—explore. —Irene Novicelli, IDEO

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The start of a new year offers us the chance to both reflect on the past and look ahead to a more fulfilling, generous, and hopeful future. What are your aspirations for the next trip around the Sun? We asked our designers and some of their creative friends, including the founders of Behance and Airbnb.

Why?

Modern UX design software is incredibly powerful. We can iterate and refine faster than ever, and conceivably go from wireframes to polish within hours. But it’s also a largely solo experience, and promotes iterative design rather than starting with a clean slate with each new artboard. I come from an industrial design background, where sketching is taught as a professional skill, and I’ve seen this skillset help move designs, teams, and clients forward countless times.

Most of the benefit is in group dynamics—if someone can put pen to paper and make an idea tangible in the moment, the group can have an informed opinion, react, and iterate on the fly. The alternative of hopping on a computer and coming back to the group in five or 20 minute often isn’t appropriate—it’s slower, and not everyone can contribute.

Here are five scenarios where you should skip Sketch in favor of felt-tip markers:

1. When there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

You’re in a group workshop talking through design decisions and the conversation is starting to go around in circles. The first thought that comes to my mind is, Can we create something, so that people can react to it and inform the discussion? That something could be acting out a scenario, or building something physical, but often it’s simply a set of sketches of various options. It’s also a low barrier to entry, so anyone can pitch in or respond.

2. When your users need more guidance.

You’re out in the field and talking to users. You’ve just shown them a prototype and it’s not working for the user. Sketch out another solution and gauge their reaction. (I’m a big believer in designing on-the-fly during research.)

3. When you need to simplify a complex idea.

Your client/team member/boss is explaining a point, and you’re not sure you understand. Sketch it and find out—it’s the visual version of, What I’m hearing you say is… It’s also the literal meaning of getting on the same page.

4. When the experience depends on the context.

If you’re working on an app, it may be used in very specific scenarios. Sketch out a prototype to help your team understand the social context, the surrounding environment, attention demands, and the journey a user might go on.

5. When you're feeling stuck in a rut.

Sometimes the move from screen to paper might be all you need to figure out a new angle or solution. For me the feel of the pen, the smell of the ink, and the looseness of the design helps. It’s fast, it’s free flowing, and it’s time away from the screen, where you can annotate and re-do sections at will. I find doing so together with a team member solves many hard problems.

As designers, it can tempting to reach for the brand-new, shiny, powerful tools. But, sometimes, lo-fi really is the best way to go.

I carry an unlikely tool for an interaction designer: a set of felt tip markers. We all know most UX design today is done in Sketch and a handful of other programs, perhaps with a few Post-It scribbles to kick things off. I’m an avid Sketch user myself. But I won’t be giving up my markers anytime soon—I wouldn’t be as good a designer without them.

And while we're at it: The holidays are a time for gratitude, so from the entire Octopus team, a heartfelt thanks for stopping by. We can't wait to bring you more stories about the design of everyday life.

Help us help you! Got a burning question that you'd like an IDEO designer to answer in the new year? Hit me up via email (octopus@ideo.com) or Twitter.

Miss some of the posts on this list? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to stay up to date with The Octopus in 2018.

1. 19 Things We're Dying to Redesign

Call it an occupational hazard: IDEO designers are always thinking about how to make things better. Here are 19 projects we'd love to get our Sharpies on. Read the story!

2. 5 Exercises That Break Down Barriers

Walking into a room full of strangers can be daunting. Try these exercises to move beyond the small talk. Read the story!

3. 'Sprint' Author Jake Knapp Built You a New To-Do List

For many, to-do lists are a necessary evil. So Jake Knapp, IDEO Fellow and author of Sprint, built a new one that you'll actually want to use. Read the story!

4. 13 Ways to Make Your Workspace More Creative

Businesses are finally catching on: Cubicles are out. But what do we replace them with? IDEO designers share tips to supercharge your space for creativity. Read the story!

5. A Day in the Life of a Design Researcher

At IDEO, design researchers do more than just ask people questions. Follow one of our own through a day of field research in Tokyo. Read the story!

6. How to Design a Meeting That Doesn't Suck

We admit it: Meetings can end up feeling more like black holes in your calendar. But how do you design a meeting that truly inspires? Try these three tips. Read the story!

7. Why You Should Start Prototyping—Right Now

It's never too early to start prototyping. Learn how starting day one of a new project can inspire and excite your team. Read the story!

8. 3 Ways to Make Your OOO More Human

How might we take one of the most automated voices we still offer to the world—the email auto-responder—and make it more human? Read the story!

9. Why You Should Keep Making Stuff By Hand

In between tech projects at IDEO CoLab, Jacob Waites likes to turn off the computer and focus on using his hands—and you should, too. Read the story!

10. Smart Things That Will Save the World

Today's products were designed for the industrial era of browsing store aisles. If we want to create a more sustainable future, it's time to rethink that model. Read the story!

What a year! Inky the Octopus has wrapped her tentacles around some big topics, from creative meetings to sexy typography to blockchain to hip-hop. As we wave goodbye to 2017, we wanted to share Inky's greatest hits—the top 10 stories you read and shared most this year.

Here are a few of the many ways IDEOers want to help reinvigorate the modern workplace:

1. Increase employee feedback

Research in education shows that the best way to help students grow is to give them constant feedback on their performance. How can professionals be expected to grow if they only get feedback once every three, six, or twelve months?

Research by Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile shows that a sense of progress at work stokes joy, creativity, and engagement. How could we adjust our meetings, our daily routines, and our cultures to make feedback an everyday activity? How much more trust could we create and conflict could we resolve if we created safe ways to help one another grow? It seems pollyannaish to say it, but I’d love to redesign feedback mechanisms to make us all better at what we do. —Joe Brown, IDEO San Francisco

2. Rebrand maternity leave

I want to redesign maternity leave—the brand, the experience, and the expectations.

Maternity leave is viewed as a pause or a step back in a woman's career, but I experienced it as a time of greater perspective and personal growth. I largely credit my mom, who asked me before my leave, "What are you going to do with your sabbatical?" Rather than correct her, I embraced the idea that this was time for me, too. As a result, I’m coming out of it more energized and inspired to lead, which is better for me and for IDEO. —Ashlea Powell Sommer, IDEO New York

3. Rethink retirement

I'd love to redesign the way the financial system, employers, and society think about retirement. Most of us know that retirement in its traditional, as-seen-in-a-401k-brochure form is either undesirable or unfeasible.

Instead of continuing to think and talk about retirement as a phase of life, what if we thought about retirement and the money we set aside for it as a modality that we dip into and out of as we change careers, take care of loved ones, take time off to travel, or work part-time? Instead of worrying about building up our net worth in order to have enough, we could all focus on something much more enriching—designing creative ways to amplify our net freedom throughout life. —Hailey Brewer, IDEO New York

4. Explode the org chart

Organizations are comprised of relatively mobile individuals with multidimensional capabilities who are responding to constantly changing contexts. But the prevailing “boxes and lines” org charts tell the stories of specialized, formal, and static machines. They really don't reflect the fluid way people work today. Let’s redesign the org chart to represent the modern worker who wants to learn, grow, and flex new muscles. —Mathew Chow, IDEO San Francisco

5. Make company cultures transparent

Company cultures can be opaque from the outside, and yet anybody who has experienced a good vs. mediocre vs. bad culture can tell you that it makes all the difference. How might we help more people understand the cultures of the companies they’re joining?

I’ve resorted to asking for one day to one week with the company, working side-by-side, before making a decision to join, which helps a ton but is not always an option. Trial runs like these can also sometimes be discriminatory; for instance, Harvard Business School used to require all potential professors to spend a year teaching, but found that this policy accidentally discriminated against women, who had more trouble spending a year away from family than men. There must be better ways. —Wendy Lin, IDEO Palo Alto

6. Bring UX design to enterprise tools

The tools that so many people use everyday to get things done are ugly and unfriendly and make them miserable—particularly in B2B settings, where employees have to deal with systems that are outdated, painful, and frustrating. I’ve noticed this in particular during work IDEO has done with diplomats at the Department of State—brilliant minds who have to spend a substantial amount of their time dealing with these tools and figuring out workarounds to trick the software. —David Boardman, IDEO New York

7. Flip sales incentives

We know that when sales is about the push, instead of the pull, it can have disastrous long-term effects on customers, communities, and sometimes the business itself. Too many folks in sales and account management positions work in conditions that encourage transactional, short-term, and business-centric behaviors and outcomes.

How might we move all sales—particularly in industries where there's an information and confidence asymmetry between buyers and sellers—away from a “fee for service” model and toward a “fee for value” setup? —Hailey Brewer, IDEO New York

8. Create 21st-century unions

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures recently wrote what I thought was a provocative piece asking, “What is the union of today?” Especially with so many gig economy workers and the rise of freelancing in Gen Z, how do individuals balance the power of the large organizations that pay them?

There are a lot of both positive and negative opinions—all strong and politicized, it seems!—about unions, but I think taking a closer look at the fundamental goal of unions, which is to give labor an equal seat at the table, can open up new opportunities in today’s labor context, maybe with the help of blockchain and other emerging technologies. —Wendy Lin, IDEO Palo Alto

Want to rework the workplace with us? Contact Maggie Howekamp (mhowekamp@ideo.com) at IDEO’s San Francisco studio.

Our dream for the future of work that companies become more flexible, human-centered, and purpose-driven—in other words, better places to work. But rethinking accepted ways of doing business isn’t easy (BTW, we’ve got some help on hand if you’re interested in learning the tools of organizational change). Our designers have a long wish list and some ideas for how to get started: What if we could reframe maternity leave as a time for personal enrichment? Or make navigating enterprise software less miserable?

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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.