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

Blockchain is a relatively new technology that will soon replace the underlying structure for a lot of the applications and services we use today, including systems for managing our finances, tracking our health, and determining how we connect, transact, and communicate with each other.

So, while it’s tempting to write off blockchains as something to leave to the coders, the potential human impact is too big to ignore. There will be user experiences, communications, and other completely new elements that will need to be carefully designed.

At IDEO CoLab, we explore the potential of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and the Distributed Web by building prototypes in quarterly sprints. A crucial part of our mission is considering human-centered values in the process of building for the future—creating things the world actually needs, not just more technology.

Here are three reasons why designers need to start thinking about blockchain technology today:

1. It’s bigger than just cryptocurrency

Many people are familiar with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. (And for those who aren’t, here’s a quick video that explains the basics.) Blockchain is the technology that forms the underlying structure for these digital currencies, and gives them the unique qualities that make them different from conventional lucre like the US Dollar. That structure includes the ability to exchange funds directly with anybody, anywhere in the world, without the need for an intermediary like PayPal, Visa, or Citibank.

But what most people don’t understand yet is that blockchain technology is about so much more than digital coins. At its essence, a blockchain is a new type of digital ledger which records information in a publicly-verified, traceable way across a decentralized network of devices. What this means is information for, say, an app isn’t just stored on a privately-owned server somewhere—it’s stored across multiple devices that communicate with each other to verify user activity, rather than referencing one central authority, like a Wells Fargo or Google.

Blockchains offer a new way of tracking information, and their applications are broad. Not only are they expected to pervade the financial industry, they’re also being integrated into global shipping, parts tracking, digital identity, healthcare, and other systems. In fact, it’s hard to think of an industry that relies on technology that wouldn’t benefit from using a blockchain.

With a potential to reach millions—even billions!—of people, designers need to start thinking about how they can use their skills to improve the user experience for all of the products and services that will be built on top of this new infrastructure.

2. It will change how humans interact with one another

Blockchain isn’t just a technology, it’s also a state of mind. Well, okay, that might just be the Californian in me talking, but all exaggeration and hype aside, blockchains are going to have a big impact on our culture too.

We’ll come to expect new things from our relationships with other people and parties, based on how blockchains manage our digital interactions. Mirroring the open, accessible code structure, people will expect the companies they do business with are open and accessible as well.

Consumers will demand more information about the goods and services they purchase. Companies will be held to a higher standard of data security.

Trust will become perhaps the most important design element in any system.

Imagine a world where all interactions are more egalitarian, transparent, and traceable—what would that look like? How might we design for this new world view?

(Check out this talk from CoLab’s Gavin McDermott to learn more about the 10 key landmarks of the decentralized web movement.)

3. Technology needs design more than ever

Our world is changing at lightspeed. As new technologies and tools are released daily, it’s easy to get caught up in the rapid pace without stopping to think about the human impact of what we’re creating.

We have a tendency to think of code and algorithms as neutral tools, but they’re not. Technology is neither good nor bad, it's how we apply it that matters. Everything we create has a human imprint on it—our assumptions, hopes, and fears are built into the systems we design (the bias in algorithms has been getting a lot of ink lately).

That’s why, moving forward, we’re going to need a group of people that advocate for the human experience—and human rights—as we develop these technologies. Especially right now, as emerging technologies like blockchain begin to take form, it’s important for designers to have a voice in that process from the very beginning.

How do you envision the designer's role evolving alongside blockchain developers? Let us know on Twitter or Instagram #blockchaindesign

Looking for ways to get started designing for blockchains? Check out this list of quick prototyping tools for emerging technologies from IDEO CoLab.

Blockchain. You’ve heard the word. Perhaps you’ve invested in a digital currency or two. But do you really know what the technology is and why it matters? It all sounds deeply technical—and it is. But it's important to understand this new tool, as it will have a big impact on our lives—radically altering how we live, work, and play.

We were joking about how Aaron's last name is pretty similar to Furby, the interactive Gremlin look-a-like toy from the late 90s. Someone suggested it would be funny if we modified a Furby so that instead of speaking Furbish (I think that's what people call the language Furbys speak?), it would repeat phrases in Aaron's voice. At first, it was just a joke, but then I mentioned I had a couple Furbys at home I'd been meaning to hack…

What’s a Furby?

For the unfamiliar, Furby was a coveted toy when it hit the market in 1998. Seriously. More than 40 million of the hamster-esque creature were sold in its first three years of production. Kids fell in love with it because of its child-like nature and the fact that it required feeding, nurturing, and constant attention. It also only spoke Furbish out of the box, developing an English vocabulary over time as kids talked to it.

Because the Furby was one of the first widely-marketed toy robots, it also appealed to the hacking community. In the early years, there were some news stories about whether the microphone inside Furby was listening in on private conversations, but thankfully, Furby does not use the microphone to record audio. Because of the ruckus over the microphone, there is a wealth of information on the internet about how to properly deconstruct a Furby, and how the Furby's insides function.

How I did it

The first step was to take Furby apart. Unfortunately, due to Furby's realistic personality, the process of deconstructing the Furby felt more like field dressing an animal. I had to delicately skin the toy so that I would be able to resurrect it later.

Once the Furby was dissembled I put together a vice to clamp down its skeleton; it almost looked like I was torturing it until it would talk...and in a way, I kind of was. With the Furby in place, I was able to access its inner circuitry and check out its voice box. After some initial probing, I turned back to the internet again and was able to find a full schematic of Furby’s insides, which meant I no longer had to guess and check what each part was used for and how they were connected. I could also disconnect the voice box.

After some reading, I decided that the best option for triggering voice playback would be to use the motors. Furby always moves and talks at the same time, so any time the motors are working, he should be talking. If I used any of its switches (belly, mouth/tongue, gyroscope, etc.) as an audio trigger, I would miss Furby’s unprovoked audio actions, the ones it does without user input. (Sometimes the Furby will start singing or fall asleep on its own.) Those actions are triggered internally, and I didn't have the time or resources to begin understanding how a Furby's brain works.

To build the the audio playback, I used a circuit board I created a few years ago that's a variation of Adafruit's wav/ogg audio fx board. My audio playback board is very similar, but it also includes the necessary circuitry for charging a connected lithium-ion battery. With this addition (and a voltage booster), I was able to power the Furby from a rechargeable source, rather than four AA batteries.

Now that most of the individual pieces were developed, it was time to play Dr. Frankenstein and connect the parts together to give Franken-Furby life.

I used the newly vacant battery holder space to store the Furby’s new guts...err circuitry. This was an ideal location because there were already holes to run new wiring up to the Furby’s body. I added a wire to break out the motor trigger line for monitoring. I was able to monitor the motor with a basic analog comparator (LM311), and use the output to trigger audio playback. I then amplified the audio output with a class D amp, before connecting to the Furby’s speaker with two more wires.

Last, but not least, I added a few clips of Aaron speaking at various events to the audio playback board. We may or may not have have played around with loading some more inappropriate vocals (i.e. creepy laughing and other Halloween-themed sounds) first for kicks, but things got a little too creepy, so that didn’t last long.

The result

We presented the Franken-Furby to Aaron at his goodbye party, and it was a hit! Unfortunately, because it was a goodbye gift, it's no longer possible to work on that Furby anymore. But I’m game to hack more Furbys. My next goal is to create a new version, perhaps integrating all the circuitry onto a single circuit board, and hopefully dig a little deeper into understanding how Furbys operate.

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Our Chicago office has a tradition of giving silly but relevant goodbye gifts to departing colleagues. The goal is to make their exit a little more light-hearted for everyone, as well as give our erstwhile colleagues a sort of inside joke to take with them. When a friend and colleague of mine, Aaron Ferber, was leaving to pursue another passion in St. Louis, we started ginning up ideas for his send-off.

Thankfully, we have smarter tech tools than ever to help us spin through these cycles at a sprint. In a recent Quora Session hosted by IDEO U, we reached out to the entire IDEO community to ask what design research technology and other trends they're excited about. Here’s what we heard:

1. Going rogue

Influenced by Jan Chipchase and The Field Study Handbook, the “pop-up studio” model for doing design research in challenging, less-explored environments is finding success. Chipchase describes a pop-up studio as “a live/work space optimized for teams working toward a shared goal ... highly suited to international research, design, and innovation projects that require speedy immersion.” He talks more about the pop-up studio model in this Co.Design piece (and excerpt from The Field Study Handbook), “How To Do Great Design Research Anywhere On Earth.”

2. Smart sensors

Though some smart sensors are still in the early stages, looking at how sensors (from FitBits to smart moodmetric rings) can help inform our understanding of users' experiences. Projects like MIT's Dermal Abyss look into a future of smart, sensing tattoos.

3. Changes in data + privacy

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP) taking effect in May 2018, design researchers in the EU and beyond will have to address changes to data privacy in a human-centered way, both in how we design our research, and in terms of how we explain it to participants. Understanding what that looks like in practice is important, so we published a little yellow book of Design Research Ethics.

4. Testing concepts in virtual + mixed reality

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are uniquely experiential and portable, allowing you to visualize complex ideas and measure user engagement in new ways. You can fully immerse users in an experience, get their reaction, and help them co-design (or redesign) an environment or experience on the spot using mixed reality prototypes. And now ARkits allow you to fully transplant a VR experiment with optical calibration—which allows you to retain the spatial boundaries and physics of a VR-created space anywhere on your phone. It’s pretty incredible.

5. Working alongside data science + machine learning

Most of us at IDEO predict that data science will complement and enhance a deeper understanding of qualitative research. By expanding our reach into data science, we’ll be able to understand how our designs are being used during live prototyping and piloting. Rather than relying exclusively on self-reported behaviors and stories, we’ll be able to collect actual interaction data.

But perhaps more interestingly, we’ll also be well-positioned to understand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how a new artifact is causing a ripple in the ecosystem in which it was placed. As we strive to create disproportionate impact in the world, we’ll now have insight into what’s successful, and what’s impeding success. By introducing new areas of expertise into design research—legal design, policy design, infrastructure design, organizational design, behavioral economics, urban planning, macroeconomics, and more—we can begin to shift some of the fundamental underpinnings that can cause negative and adverse outcomes at individual, group, organizational, and societal levels.

6. Neuroscience x design research

One of our design researchers who studied cognitive neuroscience notes that there is a major connection between the brain and design—and a lot that we still don't know about that connection. This Quartz article discusses how neuroscience can help us create more effective human-centered cities. “Technology has now reached the stage where we can translate decades of neuroscience and psychological research from the lab into the city,” says neuroscientist Dr. Hugo Spiers of University College London. Now when we test prototypes, we can measure behavior, cognition, emotional reactions, physiological markers, and brain activity. Here are a couple more articles on the subject, from Forbes and The Leading Strand.

7. Digital forensics x design research

As technology becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, understanding how we live our digital lives—and the digital trail we leave as we go—will help unlock insights into new behavior.

8. Ethics in the age of artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) changes interaction and design in a way that's dynamic and incredibly complex. Because of its scale, adoption speed, and widespread human impact, it's important that someone raise a hand and ask the question, "Even though we can create this, should we?" Not all AI models are transparent and design researchers will increasingly become the voice in the room questioning its development. This isn't any different than what we do now, but it's more important in the age of AI.

This content originally appeared in a Quora Session hosted by IDEO on November 1, 2017. Special thanks to Ovetta Sampson, Dan Perkel, Michael Chapman, Samantha Miller, Rebecca Wint, Alana Murao, Mike Peng, Geoff Schwarten, Erin Bogar, Saige Perry, and Katie Clark for their contributions!

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Understanding the human challenge we're designing for is as much about inspiration as it is about information. Design research now happens in quick loops—gathering insights, building rapid prototypes, and getting feedback—rather than in a long and rigorous discovery phase.

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We have become accustomed to relating to these interfaces, and increasingly they are able to relate to us—taking in the world around them, talking to their users, and even inferring our emotions from how our faces change shape. I call this layer an Affective User Interface (AUI), a term borrowed from the field of Affective Computing.

Affective Computing is a field of computer science that develops technology that we might consider intelligent and emotionally aware. These new interfaces present a slew of opportunities and challenges, because as Dr. Cynthia Breazeal of the MIT Media Lab points out in her book Designing Sociable Robots, when a technology “behaves in a socially competent manner” our evolutionary hardwiring causes us to interact with it as if it were human.

And once we enter into that relationship, the personas we design for these bots affect our behavior, too. I’ve heard many people say that unassertive bots often bring out the worst in kids. When there are no social checks on rudeness—bots don’t tattle, after all—children tend to be more blunt, and can even become abusive.

That lack of assertiveness also affects adults. Reporter Leah Fessler researched how female-gendered bots respond to sexual harassment. It turns out that the assistants’ permissive personas can reinforce some disturbing stereotypes about women, and allow the user free reign to degrade them at will.

If bots can have a gender, I started to wonder whether they might also have a cultural or even racial identity. Considering the fact that these products allow us to choose between various accents, it would seem that designers have created nationalities for our bots.

I'm certainly not the first person to surface these issues. This New York Times piece by AI Now's Kate Crawford about "Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem" comes to mind. And there are many people here at IDEO who are thinking through what it means to be inclusive human-centered designers as we work on Augmented Intelligence projects.

To explore this further, I decided to conduct an experiment to surface the personality of these bots by interviewing them.

The key was to ask soft questions: Where are you from? How old are you? Do you have any kids? What do you look like? Even, Tell me a story.

These interactions were not actionable queries, and thus triggered purely conversational responses that revealed the “personality” that the bots’ creators had designed.

I recorded a video interview with each voice assistant and handed these over to a number of illustrators commissioned via the social gig site Fiverr. While a few of the artists had previous exposure to the bots, I was able to source English-speaking international artists in markets where Alexa and/or Siri were not available. Countries of origin included Indonesia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, the Philippines, and the U.S. For many of them, my videos were their first meaningful exposure.

Here are the images that came back:

Drawings representing Alexa and Siri based on video interviews I'd done by illustrators who had little to no previous exposure to the assistants.

Gender came through clearly, but I would also argue that none of the illustrations depict a person of color. Whether they were intentionally designed that way is not the issue. If users perceive the bots this way, what kind of cultural pressures are they carrying into the home?

It’s something I think about a lot as a first-generation American who has worked in and around tech throughout my career. On my father’s side, I’m the second U.S.-born family member, and on my mom’s side, I’m the first. I grew up in a diverse community, and the tapestry of cultures I experienced was simply normal, everyday life.

I was aware of code-switching pretty early on; many of my friends and family had their normal voice and their “professional” voice, and they chose which to use in different environments.

Looking back, I first learned about it when my mom gave a wedding speech.

My brother was shocked; he didn’t recognize the voice that he heard. I had to explain to him this was my mother’s work voice. Code switching isn’t inherently bad—we all do it to some degree—but if we’re to design Affective User Interfaces that are truly human-centered, then we must consider that for some, the switch requires more effort.

Inclusivity is not just an issue at the bleeding edge of tech. We’re seeing a growing body of evidence that those who speak outside of mainstream vernaculars have a harder time being properly recognized by affective systems.

This represents an accessibility challenge, but one that is resultant from a cultural rather than physical challenge. In a tech industry that is known to be monocultural, we must take steps to ensure our affective systems are not just designed to be useful to their creators, but inclusive of the full spectrum of people their products will serve.

Because ultimately what’s at stake is trust. Studies have shown that when brands lose trust, they lose customers.

As designers, it’s our job to expand the usability of our affective devices to ensure they serve the rich tapestry of people, cultures, and vernaculars they will encounter.

Beyond being good design, it’s good for business, because in our affective future the products that win will be the ones that users trust.

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Behind every interface, there's a designer. More like a team of them. And those designers have a lot to consider: What should Siri sound like? What kinds of things will people ask Alexa to do? How will users expect the Kuri robot to respond when they crack a joke?

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.