For the socially-conscious, investing can be a tricky proposition. The same people who wish to vote with their wallets may find that their options for investment funds and 401K plans are rife with companies that violate causes they believe in. So far, there have been few options in the marketplace that give consumers the opportunity to put their money in financial products that not only cut out environmental and social offenders, but actually contribute to the well-being of the environment and society.

Dave Fanger, a financial professional, was determined to design a solution. He approached IDEO to help create a startup venture for socially-conscious investors. Pacific Life, a Fortune 500 financial services company and Fanger’s employer at the time, offered the resources to develop and launch the idea. The online impact investment platform gave consumers the opportunity to invest in high-growth industries that are addressing global, environmental, and social challenges. Swell rigorously screened companies for both impact and performance, so consumers could be confident that their investments were in line with their values.

A holistic approach

Embedded as core team members, IDEO designers worked alongside Swell’s founder to shape the company. In just one year, they went from an initial concept and prototype to an SEC-registered investment adviser with a fully developed business model, a digital platform with initial investors, and well-defined branding that set the look and feel of the values-driven company. The IDEO team helped to hire the initial team of employees, working to ensure that the fintech startup would have the creative talent it needed to operate post-launch, as well as a defined culture that would help it grow.

A new investment platform

From the outset, it was important for the team to build an innovative, digitally-fluent, and customer-centered platform to make it easy for investors to back causes they care about. Working in close collaboration with software development partner Carbon Five, Swell and IDEO committed to act nimbly, take risks, move fast, and ditch decks for prototypes. Understanding the motivations of the investor—their values and what drives their investment decisions—was key, so the team leveraged IDEO’s network to form a consumer council, which helped to quickly iterate and refine prototypes throughout the duration of the product development process. Having that core group involved every step of the way made it easy for the team to keep consumers at the center of the design and validate key decisions quickly.

Swell offered consumers portfolios of companies that work to solve some of today's biggest challenges. The six impact portfolios offered were: green tech, renewable energy, zero waste, clean water, healthy living, and disease eradication.

As of June 2019, Swell had attracted over 15,000 investors⁠—more than half under the age of 34⁠—and $35 million AUM. Nearly 40 percent of investors were making investments on a recurring basis.

Learning to code isn’t just about knowing symbols and syntax—it can help unlock kids’ imagination by inspiring them to build new things and interact with everyday objects through discovery and play.

With that in mind, Google Creative Lab came to IDEO to help with user experience and product design on their new coding tool for children. The result of the collaboration, Project Bloks, is a simple and interactive experience that teaches kids how to code using physical blocks. This establishes a new paradigm for learning computer science: it takes a language typically only understood through screens and keyboards, and makes it tangible.

Project Bloks was also designed as an open hardware platform, enabling developers and educators to build tangible programming applications that are innovative, educational and fun.

Kid-centered design

From the very beginning, how kids physically play and learn were at the center of the project. Designers quickly iterated using sketches, foam core, paper, Play-Doh, and 3D-printed models to see how slight changes informed children’s experiences. Understanding what deepened kids’ engagement, increased their curiosity and changed their behaviors drove the language, taxonomy, architecture, and physical form of Bloks.

Because play and physical building is an important way in which many kids develop skills, designers began with a set of blocks and sought to help them discover coding through tangible objects. Each block was given a specific function and shape, guiding kids to arrange, combine, and rearrange the blocks to create commands and control things like robots or speakers in the real world. Children could also create block patterns together by physically building on each other’s ideas.

An inside look at the design process. Video by Google.

Designing for early learners also forced the team to rethink how a new language could be taught. An early version of the blocks was based on how programmers typically code, from top to bottom. However, the team quickly realized that the orientation had to be driven by the child’s natural instincts. Given young children are just learning to read from left to right, designers observed that the switch in directions was too confusing and changed the arrangement of Bloks commands to go left-right in addition to top-bottom.

The final outcome of Project Bloks was an interactive coding kit comprised of three key parts - pucks, baseboards and a brainboard. The puck is a critical component that controls a command, whether it’s an on/off switch or the ability to move in a particular direction. It’s the piece that enables children to move from words to the world of graphics and play. The puck is easy to produce and can take an unlimited range of forms and functions, enabling the Bloks system to scale.

The baseboard reads the puck’s instruction and is activated when a puck is placed on top. The brainboard provides the power and connectivity. When hooked up to a baseboard or a chain of baseboards, the brainboard sends the instructions—turn left, jump, get louder—to a connected object, like a rocket or a speaker.

The boards can be rearranged, sequenced, and packaged however kids like, opening up a vast realm of possibilities. Children can code anything from a toy robot drawing a shape on a piece of paper, to a sensor turning on a fan when the temperature gets too high.

Enabling innovation for education

Beyond a tangible coding kit, what makes Bloks unique is that it’s an open platform. Educators, developers, and designers can build on it to accelerate new ways of teaching and exploring tangible programming. The platform can fit into various curriculums around the world. The pucks can take on different shapes and graphics. The material used can be fabricated by 3D printing.

The Bloks platform is a new vernacular that allows kids to interact with the language of code in a way that’s less prescriptive and more open-form, like a sandbox. And the more kids play with Bloks, the more opportunities they discover for what they can create with a little bit of code.

For students who are the first in their families to pursue higher education, navigating college can often feel like navigating a foreign country. Challenges like not having enough money or poor access to support services can make graduating an insurmountable hurdle. In fact, only 55% of these students in the United States end up completing their degrees.

To help change this statistic, IDEO partnered with Beyond 12, an organization that provides personalized, virtual coaching to first-generation college students to help them learn how to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and much more. The challenge was to scale Beyond 12’s successful coaching model using technology in order to benefit as many students as possible.

In 2014, IDEO designed the MyCoach app, with the goal of helping students take ownership of their education and feel in control of their future. After the early version of the app was named as a finalist in the prestigious Robin Hood Foundation College Success Prize, Beyond 12 piloted the product with 3,500 college students across the US. Following the pilot, Beyond 12 and IDEO went back to work, using the resulting insights and data to design the next evolution of MyCoach.

First and foremost, IDEO sought to develop a more flexible model for Beyond 12 to enable scalability of the offering. As some students need more support than others, a blended business model was envisioned to recognize the spectrum of students’ needs. Engaging in-app content forms a supportive layer that helps students get organized, stay on track, and learn the skills they need to stay in college, while students who need more hands-on assistance can connect directly with coaches. An invisible data layer works behind the scenes to assess student risk and dynamically tailor student support throughout the school year.

Once the app’s model was solidified, creating a user experience that compels students to use it became essential to its efficacy. Growing up with technology has reshaped how many students engage with the world, and tools like Snapchat have set a new dynamic for participation. Youth today are the masters of their own digital worlds, fluidly jumping between conversations, engaging with stimulating content and contributing their own perspectives. As a result, MyCoach needed to speak students’ language and to create content that was authentically youthful and effective in order to be effective. By drawing inspiration from popular social sites, digital experiences and games, the team designed a user experience that keeps pace with a digitally native state of mind.

IDEO Designer, Isabela Sá explains the approach that led to MyCoach’s design and content strategy, “We created an app that makes no distinction between content and utility. We borrowed the content-first approach of social apps like Snapchat and Instagram and used it to teach students the skills and strategies they need to graduate. With that, the digital experience became more human. The intricate system that we had designed to power the whole thing was hidden below the surface. For students, the app was just the means to learn how to help themselves and get in touch with a coach when they needed one.”

Development is underway for the next version of MyCoach, which will allow Beyond 12 to scale its offering to reach exponentially more students in need.

Coca-Cola is one of the world's most iconic brands. More than 5,000 people work at its global headquarters in Atlanta.

Back in 2010, Coca-Cola found itself at a major crossroads. As the company grew, it became clear that in order to stay competitive, any kind of campus renovation would have to take into account a vision of the future of how people work at Coca-Cola. Before the company hired architects, they came to IDEO to help design this important part of their 2020 vision strategy; ultimately the redesign would change the way the company works, plays, and profits.

Imagery courtesy of Coca-Cola, Gensler, and IDEO

But to-do lists aren’t all bad. To-do lists let me capture things so I don’t stress out over having to hold it all in my brain. To-do lists let me see everything in one place. They’re a necessary evil.

So as much as I dislike to-do lists, I need to have one. There are a billion to-do list apps and methods out there, and I think I’ve tried 900 million of them. My favorite was David Allen’s paper-based Getting Things Done. But I constantly fell off the wagon. When I organized my tasks with GTD, I was damn organized—but every time the system fell apart, I not only lost sight of the big picture, I felt guilty, too.

So after a lot of ups and downs, I started doing my own simplified, imperfect thing. I’ve been using my system for a while now, and figured I might share it in case it’s useful to others. Yes, I know, another to-do list system! But you clicked on this story, so maybe you need one.

I call my system the “Burner List”

I’ll explain the name in a sec, but FYI, it has nothing to do with Burning Man. Basically it’s a simple-as-hell to-do list designed to force me to prioritize.

The Burner List is not perfect. It won’t keep track of every detail, or help you juggle a million projects. But that’s exactly the point. The Burner List is intentionally limited—and therefore focused. Here’s how to make one:

1. MAKE TWO TALL COLUMNS

You can fold the paper, draw a line down the middle, or just eyeball it. Precision is unimportant. What is important is the metaphor you’ve just created: Left = front burner. Right = back burner.

2. PUT YOUR MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT ON THE FRONT BURNER

You are allowed to have one and only one project on the front burner. Not two, not three — just one. In the top left-hand corner, write the name of your most important project and underline it. Then list the to-dos for your top project — any task you can do in the next few days to move it forward.

3. LEAVE SOME COUNTER SPACE

Leave the rest of the first column empty. The Burner List is not intended to make an efficient use of the damned paper surface area — it’s intended to make good use of your time and energy! The blank space gives you room to add more tasks for the top project, but, just as important, extra visual space makes it easier to focus on the important stuff.

4. PUT YOUR SECOND MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT ON THE BACK BURNER

In the top of the right-hand column, write the name of your second most important project and underline it, then write related to-dos underneath.

5. MAKE A KITCHEN SINK

Finally, about halfway down the right-hand column, list any miscellaneous tasks that you need to do but don’t fit with project 1 or project 2. It doesn’t matter if they’re part of project 3 or 4, they just get chucked into the kitchen sink with everything else. Yes, this goes counter to all organizational and productivity advice — but by constraining the space and attention you give to other stuff, you'll help yourself spend your time well.

Now get cooking

Imagine there was a chef standing to the left of your page. He’ll naturally focus most of his attention on the front burner. He’s aware of the back burner, and sometimes he stirs a pot or flips a pancake back there, but the front burner is where the action is.

The Burner List is intentionally limited. It won’t have room for everything. You’ll have to let go of things that aren’t as important.

The Burner List is also disposable. It gets stale fast as you cross off finished to-dos. I “burn” through my list every few days and then recreate it, over and over. This act of recreation is important, because I always discard some unfinished tasks that no longer matter, and I reconsider what belongs on the front burner right now. Sometimes it’ll be a work project, sometimes it’ll be a personal project—over time, I’ve realized that it’s okay and natural for the spotlight to shift. What’s important is there can only be one most important project a time.

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

Man, I hate to-do lists. Checking off finished tasks feels good, but the glow of accomplishment masks an ugly truth: Most to-dos are just reactions to other people’s priorities, not mine. And no matter how many tasks I finish, I’m never done — more to-dos are always waiting to take their place. To-do lists just perpetuate the feeling of “unfinishedness” that dogs modern life.

1. Embrace Randomness

On my 20-minute walk to work, I'll use chance to determine my route. "Don't walk" sign? Cross the other way. See a dog? Walk on that side of the street. Does the time of day end with an odd number? Make a right. I won't walk the wrong way, of course, but I'll use random cues to make myself choose different paths so I'm forced to notice new things along the way.

I also use my commute to connect with strangers in small but meaningful ways. I make sure to give a warm, real "hello" to bus drivers—no earbuds, please! Compliment well-dressed people on their style choices. Flirt with outgoing dogs to get their owners to smile. Thank people cleaning the streets for keeping things tidy for the rest of us. Little things like this make a city feel more like a small town. —Annette Ferrara, IDEO Chicago

2. Ride with Strangers

I'm new to the San Francisco Bay Area and I'm finding the "casual carpool" here a total novelty. It's essentially organized hitchhiking. You arrive at the designated carpool stop and wait your turn as two to three people at a time hop into strangers’ cars. The incentive for drivers is being able to use the HOV lane, which requires a minimum of three passengers and can shave 30 minutes off your commute.

There are very strict, unwritten rules for casual carpool: You don't make conversation unless the driver initiates, you don't eat or wear too much perfume, and you absolutely don’t take phone calls. The default radio station is NPR. You offer the driver a dollar at the end of the ride for gas.

At first, I thought it was so weird that people don’t talk, but now I like the quiet ride. Every now and then, I'll jump into a car and we’ll have conversation for 20 minutes as we cross the Bay Bridge. I like this too; connecting with strangers on my way to work is a great way to start the day.

If there isn’t a casual carpooling option in your city, look into organizing one for yourself. —Maria Scileppi, IDEO San Francisco

3. Spin with Your Inner DJ

One era of music that’s splendid fun is early ’90s—rave, jungle, techno, happy hardcore, etc. Much of this music was written using software called a "tracker." With trackers, you can enter notes using a standard computer keyboard.

Fast forward to modern times, and I find that a new tracker has been developed—RENOISE—that works the same way as trackers of old, but with modern-day functionality. Well, I had to have a go on that.

I installed it on my work laptop and now spend my journey home lost in the sounds of chopped Amen breaks, 808 and 909 hits, and rude-boy vocals. There's a lot to learn in terms of production techniques, sound design, and arrangements.

I start a new track each trip; these are my "train tracks." I find a great deal of enjoyment in seeing where they end up after the hour-long ride, but then I'm happy to abandon them. There's always tomorrow. —Iain Smyth, IDEO London

4. Unplug and Observe

I walk 10 minutes to the ferry building, take a 15-minute ferry ride across the river, and then walk 25 minutes to the office. I used to fill all that time listening to podcasts, checking email, surfing Facebook, or otherwise trying to get a head start on my day—which meant I'd developed a bad habit of looking at my phone while walking.

One day, I decided to end the habit for safety's sake. With my phone now tucked away during my commute, that time is spent letting my mind wander, observing my surroundings, and pondering the day ahead. The result is that I feel more prepared for my day mentally and energetically. I’m less frazzled and magically seem to have more down time. —Anna Silverstein, IDEO New York

5. Work Your Muscles, Free Your Mind

I bike to work because it's an easy way to build in regular exercise without having to carve out special time. It's a 30-minute ride each way.

I often have lightbulb moments and am able to connect the dots around things happening at work or in my personal life. There's something about the intense focus of weaving through traffic while letting thoughts percolate in the background that works for me.

For example, earlier this year, a large education company in India reached out to IDEO to talk about collaborating. On our call, it didn’t seem like a great opportunity for partnership, but then on my evening commute home, the dots connected.

I called the company back the next day to propose a program that would bring together the strengths of both our organizations (IDEO U's curriculum expertise and the partner company’s established marketing and distribution channels) to provide a great executive education experience for the Indian market. —Danoosh Kapadia, IDEO San Francisco

6. Get in the Right Headspace

I walk eight minutes to the 2nd Avenue subway and then take a 16-minute ride to Canal Street. I've been meditating every day for a few years, and this year I decided to listen to guided meditations on my commute.

I typically choose from a selection of meditations by Sarah Blondin on the Insight Timer app. Most are about 10 minutes long. She has a wonderful voice, and I select based on my mood. Usually, I choose something to pick up, reaffirm, or inspire me. Sometimes she nearly brings me to tears, but usually she just helps me be more present.

Listening to guided meditations while commuting has made me more mindful of my surroundings, more compassionate toward my fellow commuters, and generally calmer. —Caitlin Fitzmaurice, IDEO.org, New York

Next time you find yourself staring into space on the way to work, try one of these techniques to reboot your commute.

‍

What were you doing at 8:30 this morning? If you’re like me, you were slogging through the least fun part of your day. The average employee spends nearly 53 minutes a day getting to and from work, but you don’t have to sit there feeling miserable. There are all sorts of creative ways to wring positivity out of your daily grind.

I asked IDEO designers and other creatives for their commuting best practices. Here are the top six:

With this in mind, we selected key interaction moments from our client's current product. Then we prototyped three distinct new directions—usability experiences we were excited to bring to their industry. These experiments, we hoped, would spark an early conversation that was less about “we need to do this” and more about “what if we do that?”

Kickoff day arrived and we shared the prototypes with the client.

Cue uncomfortable silence.

Then, finally, one of the executives exclaimed, “This is mind blowing! This could be the future of our product.” He was not applauding the user interface or visual style we used to illustrate our idea, but the essence of what the experience did for him. An excited conversation followed and he wanted to share his own design ideas.

It doesn't always go this way. Early prototyping entails plenty of risk, too. What if you've been blind to user needs? What if the client just doesn't see the magic?

Here are 4 steps you should consider when creating early prototypes:

1. Take advantage of your fresh perspective

Before diving into industry or product constraints, take a step back and imagine if there were no limits to what you could design. What would that look like?

2. Identify what excites you and the team

What personally inspires you to be on this project and how can that be translated into the experience? Don't over think it. Take one key interaction from the current experience and add something unexpected to it. This is an opportunity to test initial assumptions with a beginner’s mind and generate radically new ideas.

3. Translate your excitement into prototypes (with content your client understands)

Use your client's current product content as a starting point. Having something they can easily recognize and understand is a great way to bring them into a design conversation. Don't think about creating long flows at this early stage. Imagine your prototype as a teaser to a product that is about to come to life and focus on key interaction moments.

4. Highlight where your client sees design opportunities

Quick prototypes are a great way to tackle hopes and fears and learn, from a usability point of view, where your client sees design opportunities at a very early stage of the project—so you don't head off in the wrong direction.

And above all, remember: A sense of excitement and momentum shared by you and the client on the very first day gives your team an important confidence boost. It helps set expectations, and gets everyone inspired to push to a new level.

For a recent design project, we decided to try something new. We were tasked with rebuilding a product experience, but instead of starting with our usual process where we gather inspiration, we thought: What if we share a prototype we are really excited about with the client right away? Just jump in.

While beautiful textiles (and now prints!) are Block Shop’s most recognizable output, there’s a good deal more going on behind the scenes. The duo created Block Shop in partnership with a family of printers and dyers in Bagru, Rajasthan to keep the artistry and craft of Indian block printing alive. (They donate five percent of their profits each year to building and implementing community healthcare programs.) If their reverence for craft and respect for humanity isn’t enough to make you weak in the knees, this interview should do it.

In one sentence, who are you?

Hopie Stockman: Josephine March with an MBA.
Lily Stockman: Gertrude Bell on a camel after too much coffee.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

HS: I run Block Shop—a textile and design studio—with my sister, Lily. In reality, I work seven days a week, but five of them take place in our 11th floor downtown Los Angeles studio. I design everything from rugs to public murals to business strategy and Grand Central Market lunch orders for Block Shop.

We both went to grad school; I went for for business and Lily for painting. Rather than dividing our work rigidly between business and creative, we’ve found that it works best when we share responsibilities.

A lot of our education happens in Jaipur, India. In 2010, Lily was living in there and apprenticing under master Indian miniature painter Ajay Sharma when she first met our printers. Since then, we've gone back to Jaipur twice to year to work with them on new designs and products. Everything we know about wood block printing we've learned on the ground while prototyping with our team, lending a hand in all aspects of the process, from dye-mixing to block registration on the fabric.

On the business side, the most valuable advice has all come from the (mostly) women running their own small and successful businesses here in LA. For example, our friend who runs a candle company helped us build our wholesale strategy. When we started out, we thought we wanted just a few huge department store-style accounts to streamline our operations and provide reliable cash flow. She helped us to understand the marketing power of wholesale: that smaller, well-aligned shops could be better storytellers and champions of our brand, and likely wouldn't discount as aggressively.

Another friend who has an independent furniture line shared invaluable advice on how to collaborate with large companies, emphasizing the importance of control over the design and fabrication process. Megaretailers actually need the cool factor of small, independent brands in order to be relevant. The question for small brands is whether the paycheck and promise of exposure is worth the potential chargebacks, brand dilution, and even customer alienation. For us, we've learned that it doesn't work unless we're making the products ourselves and have control over the storytelling.

What are your 3 favorite possessions?

HS:

1. Otto, our bearded mutt.
2. A painting of a rabbit that my great grandfather painted 60 years ago.
3. The Kishore Kumar Bollywood poster that my now-husband and I bought together at the Chor Bazaar in Mumbai, when we had only been dating a few months. It sort of signified that leap into a shared life—jointly owning things.

LS:

1. My baby Olympia.
2. My dog, who I bought from the pound for $85.
3. My gold bangle bracelets given to me by our surrogate grandmother, collected from her travels around the world.

What does a typical work session look like?

LS: On design days, we hide our laptops and put the screens away. No phones, no nothing! Out come the old art books on Anni Albers, Arp, Matisse, and Sheila Hicks. We put some Grateful Dead on, get the watercolors out, and swap sketches back and forth across the table. The result is so much better when we do it together. We’re always improving each other’s work. We try to design like this for two-to-three hours once a week, which is pitiful, but that’s the reality of running a small company; the actual drawing sessions take up only a small percentage of our time.

When it comes to our work, we have a simple design rule: Everything Block Shop touches must hold up as a holistic composition. That means it needs to have balance and a sense of quiet. My favorite painting teacher said, "You know a painting is done when it's quiet. Nothing on the canvas is yelling at you." And if it doesn’t look good hanging on the wall, then it doesn’t go into production.

How do you get over creative block?

HS: Take Otto for a walk past the old movie palaces in downtown L.A. to remember that inspiring design lives everywhere in architecture. On a recent prototyping trip to India, I started panicking that we’d exhausted all geometric patterns—THAT’S IT, WE’RE FINISHED! WE’VE USED EVERY ITERATION OF CIRCLES AND TRIANGLES! Then we went for a walk to get chai with our sketchbooks in hand, and boom! All sorts of ideas emerged from the marble latticework and archways in the old city. We simply needed to look.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

LS: Plan a Texas road trip starting in Marfa, where our friends run the El Cosmico.

How do you see the world in 2078?

HS: A degree or two warmer. Governed by data and manufactured by robots, with no boundaries between advertising, entertainment, and politics. Hopefully, I’ll be with the people who’ve returned to hands-on, empathy-based, slow living….off with my grandkids somewhere outside making pinch pots.

What's your number one bucket list item?

HS & LS: Design a boutique hotel.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

HS: Katja Blichfeld, co-creator of High Maintenance. (If you’re out there, hey.)

‍

There are creative crushes and then there are girl crushes. This qualifies as both—squared. Sisters Lily and Hopie Stockman are the founders of Block Shop, a textile company based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. I discovered Lily and Hopie a few years ago through an online web of women makers, and have been feverishly following their work ever since.

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.

‍

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.