Nauto, a startup in the automotive industry that’s building a system to help make driving safer and smarter, approached IDEO to collaborate on the design of their latest device. It includes a proprietary dual-camera system that can be directly installed in just about any vehicle to enable safety features. Through real-time data analysis, high-definition recording, and LTE connectivity, Nauto’s device records and analyzes activity inside and outside the car, and automatically uploads information to a smart cloud.

The device can detect if drivers are distracted based on their eye and head movements, risky maneuvers such as tailgating or swerving, and dangerous environmental conditions such as unexpected obstacles. In these scenarios, the product alerts the driver through audio feedback inside the vehicle.

Over time, the data collected by Nauto reveals bigger insights and trends in driving behavior, ranging from causes of collisions to patterns in driver distraction. These insights are stored in a secure cloud platform and made accessible to both drivers and fleet managers. Drivers can benefit from Nauto’s VERA score—personalized feedback based on their driving performance—and fleet managers can gain access to a complete picture of how each of their drivers are performing across locations. Through these data-driven insights, Nauto gives drivers and fleet managers the tools to stay safe on the road.

To help launch Nauto’s device, IDEO prototyped several iterations of the product’s housing, cabling, and ergonomics, resulting in a clean aesthetic and an easy installation process for users. The engineering team also prioritized materials that would protect against extreme temperatures and sunlight exposure. Most importantly, IDEO helped design a camera device that can be seamlessly integrated into almost any model of any vehicle, greatly expanding its potential in the market.

Nauto’s latest system began rolling out to commercial fleets and strategic OEM and Insurance partners in late 2016.

Photos by Nauto.

Most people are used to watching their favorite shows whenever and wherever they want these days. But 10 years ago, that wasn’t the case. Far ahead of the curve, HBO realized the potential for carving out its own audience, and created one of the first original on-demand offerings that allowed viewers to cut the cord from cable and satellite providers. HBO came to IDEO for help in navigating the future of its audience experience that would be distinguished from cable, and would put full control in the hands of the viewer.

With special emphasis on HBO’s Video On Demand offering, IDEO began early-phase research to explore people’s experience with the media brand and found that it centered largely on the viewing of HBO shows, the most critical part of the media experience. But other important media-related activities—learning about new shows, planning to watch new shows, creating the right viewing environment, saving and sharing viewing experiences—were either underserved or controlled by HBO’s cable and satellite partners. IDEO concluded that HBO’s challenge would be to develop a media service that holistically addressed the media consumer’s entire journey and allowed subscribers to experience HBO wherever and whenever they wanted.

To demonstrate the value of the entire media consumption journey, IDEO created a comprehensive product development and user experience vision. This vision was delivered in the form of an immersive environment, built on-site at HBO, which conveyed key customer values and behaviors and presented a roadmap for building the appropriate products and services. Included in this roadmap were future scenarios and tools that invited prototyping and exploration.

"The collaboration was foundational for us, serving as our guidepost for creating more personalized on-demand and online viewer experiences. This early work influenced what would become our streaming presence—from categorization to how the products rolled out—and ultimately led us to design the next generation of user-inspired products for a more highly engaged audience," said Bernadette Aulestia, Executive Vice President of Global Distribution at HBO.

In the 10 years since the original collaboration with IDEO, HBO has pioneered the path forward for media brands by setting the standard for a world-class array of content and accompanying viewer experience model.

While the designs of most cutting tools have evolved significantly over the years, multi-tools have remained largely the same. Recognizing this gap, SOG, an established leader in the specialty knife industry, collaborated with IDEO to identify new opportunities for innovation in the multi-tool space. The teams specifically aimed to expand SOG’s offerings into a more general lifestyle category and position them as adaptable tools for people’s everyday needs.

IDEO's research and industrial design work resulted in a family of four new multi-tools known as Baton. A sleek, black, minimal design ties together the complete set of tools, whose features vary to include bottle-openers, flashlights, scissors, pens, and pliers.

Each multi-tool’s range of capabilities, combined with its slim, compact structure that looks like a pen, makes it a travel-friendly companion for the office or the great outdoors. And its intuitive design makes it easy to use for anyone, regardless of their experience with multi-tools.

SOG’s new family of multi-tools launched in January 2017.

Every year, millions of students attend career colleges with hopes of landing jobs after graduation, but many end up unemployed and in debt, evidence of a significant disconnect between the goals of the students, educators, and institutions. Administrators are tasked with getting students in the door, but not getting them to graduation and students are focused on getting a degree to secure their future employment, while employers are looking for graduates who have professional skills beyond their new degrees.

In an effort to change this failing model, the ECMC Foundation engaged IDEO to help design a radical new vision for the future of career colleges. IDEO and the ECMC Foundation sought to develop a vision that could be used as a benchmark for the sector, showcasing a student-centered educational experience with a business model that aligns students, employers, and institutions as partners in advancement.

At the heart of the student experience is extended support along the learning journey, from path-finding and job placement to ongoing career support for alumni, helping students mindfully navigate their education from matriculation through employment.

A key insight on the employer side was the need to prioritize the parallel development of students’ soft skills—like collaboration and communication styles—and hard skills, ensuring graduates are not only properly trained in the unique skills of their chosen career path, but also prepared to adapt to professional environments.

Institutional accountability became a core factor in the vision, directly linking the college system’s success to the student experience: as job placement improves, so do the school’s earnings and future enrollment rates. The final result is a student-centered educational experience and business model that aligns students and schools as true partners in a better life.

Key elements of IDEO’s recommendations are being implemented as pilot projects at Zenith Education Group—a nonprofit provider of career school training, funded by the ECMC Foundation.

Many students have the motivation to pursue higher education, but are dealing with external pressures and realities that make completion challenging.

1. Pass the Baton: where stories are currency

At secondhand store Pass the Baton, recycled goods are nestled in carefully curated rows. But what's really for purchase are stories—one for every item. Pick something up and turn the price tag around. You’ll find a photo of the previous owner, along with a short anecdote about the experience of owning the item. Even in just a few sentences, these stories give me an instant connection to the product on-hand, making it more valuable than if it were displayed as a new item in an on-trend collection.

My experience at Pass the Baton reminded me that the currency of stories can be more valuable than the currency of yen. Reading the stories, I was surrounded by not just the things for sale, but the people who once owned them: their relationships, their hopes, their memories. It was a powerful experience and a good reminder to look beyond face value in evaluating the worth of things.

2. Ichiran Ramen: where senses are heightened

Where do you find the best ramen in Tokyo? For me, there’s one standout in the best-designed ramen-experience category: Ichiran. Out of the thousands of noodle shops in Japan, this one has choreographed the perfect environment to fully savor the flavors, tastes, and textures of ramen.

Ichiran is not a social affair: Each booth is designed for one person, and it’s filled with everything needed to savor the experience solo, including an individual water dispenser, chopsticks, and cups. Diners are served when a pair of hands emerge with the perfect bowl of ramen. The curtain closes, and then it’s just you, the bowl, and full-on sensory pleasure.

Ichiran is about the ramen and the ramen only. And what a bowl of ramen it is.

3. Ranking Ranqueen: Where the crowd decides

Here's the concept: Assemble the most popular or top-selling products in each category—peach-flavored candy, facial wipes, gift envelopes—and put them all in one store. Ranking makes it easy to breeze by the brightly lit, clearly ranked items, pick up the most highly recommended toothpaste or most popular J-pop album, and be on your way. The easy-to-understand system helps make sense of the myriad categories of Japanese consumer goods.

I began to realize that in Japan, people don’t just want to suspect they’re making a good purchasing decision, they need to know. Ranking Ranqueen taps into this innate cultural behavior by validating the shopper's choice as one that everyone else is making, too.

4. D47: Where provenance is put on display

For first-time travelers to Japan, it's all about Tokyo and Kyoto—most don’t realize that the country is woven together with a collection of prefectures, each with its own signature tools, crafts, and food. As a restaurant, museum, and design travel store, the D47 concept puts the spotlight on lesser-known cities.

At the restaurant, patrons are asked to choose where their food comes from, instead of selecting items they’d like to eat. The museum offers rotating exhibits. One of my favorites asked each prefecture to put together the "perfect gift box"—allowing visitors to experience the best from each region.

5. Kurage ga kumoni naru hi: Where loyalty is earned

Every year, our IDEO Tokyo studio goes on an off-site to immerse ourselves in a new part of Japan and set our goals for the upcoming year. Kanazawa was one destination, and dinner at Kurage ga kumoni naru hi was our last meal.

The menu comprised of just five items, all handwritten on a sheet. Confused by the lack of choice, we ended up ordering multiples of everything and were incredibly satisfied with the beautiful food. Just before the bill came, our server presented a tray of 10 blank wooden tokens, which she proceeded to pass out to each of us, one by one, saying, “The next time you come here, bring this token, and you will unlock a new set of dishes on the menu.” It was as if we’d uncovered a secret new level in a video game. We were definitely coming back to unlock it.

Kanazawa is hours from Tokyo, but we can't wait to see what the next part of this culinary adventure holds in store.

This article first appeared in digital magazine Ignition: ignition.co

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In 2011, I moved here to help start the IDEO Tokyo studio and immediately started collecting a list of places that push us to think of the everyday in new ways. As designers, we thrive on inspiration, and this country is overflowing with it, from carefully curated hospitality to sculpted food to the incredible assortment of subcultures. As with everything in Japan, each experience compels a look beneath the surface to truly grasp its meaning and intention.

We took a trip to the factory to see how far they’d come. The building looks more Willy Wonka than gritty Chicago. It features colorful banners on the front, greenhouses on the roof, and sun-tracking solar panels in the parking lot. A wind turbine spins in the back and the property even keeps its own colony of bees. Yet, as we explored inside, I found the most compelling part of their story was how human they decided to be along the way.

These folks are seriously clean.

Method is a B Corporation, which means they are a mission-driven company that follows certain environmental and social standards. Our tour guide Shannon, an old soap industry vet, helped us understand what this means at Method. We learned that each employee receives two paid volunteer days per year to help an organization of their choice. All ingredients used are sustainably sourced and packaged, mostly in recycled containers, and the energy surplus from their wind turbine and solar cells goes back into the grid. They even chose to forego factory fences and built a sidewalk through their property so their neighbors can more easily access nearby shops.

Method takes bottle service to the next level.

One of Method’s biggest inefficiencies was bottling, as the company they work with had bottles traveling nearly 1,000 miles before being filled and packaged. They built this new factory with enough space to bring the bottling company in-house, taking 1,000 miles down to 1,000 feet. Add to that a fleet of bio-diesel semi trucks used for delivery and you have a pretty efficient system.

Soap and salad, anyone?

Method rents their 75,000 square foot rooftop to Gotham Greens, a New York-based urban agriculture company, making it one of the largest rooftop greenhouses in the world. The fully automated setup has seeds entering one end and fresh, ready-to-buy produce exiting the other. (Hot tip for Chicago veggie lovers: Check out Gotham Greens' Windy City Crunch lettuce. It’s so fresh it hits shelves in just two days, compared to the average two weeks!)

As our tour wrapped up, Shannon told us a story about the biggest criticism lobbed at Method. In the world of eco-friendly soap making, Method is frowned upon for using color dyes and fragrances in their soaps, prompting some to claim Method isn’t even a “green” soap company. However, Shannon helped us understand this decision. It turns out, it takes more energy to dye the plastic in each soap bottle than it does to dye the soap. So, given that consumers want to pick brightly colored things from shelves, dyeing the soap is a better solution.

The story illustrates the fact that being eco-friendly is never simple. Instead, it involves many decisions, involving all facets of an organization. Having seen inside the factory, we emerged believing that Method was truly committed to making the planet—and our homes—a little bit cleaner.

Photos courtesy of Method, Sophie Feng, and Magen McAfee.

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Method Soap began in a grungy San Francisco flat, where roommates Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry started mixing eco-friendly soap recipes in beer pitchers. Now, 15 years later, they've opened the industry’s first LEED Platinum certified factory in Chicago’s Historic Pullman District.

Laughter erupted. Who in their right mind names their blog after an invertebrate?

A few days later: Headlines pour in about a spunky boneless creature, affectionately named Inky, who’d popped the lid of his tank in the National Aquarium of New Zealand and escaped down a drain hole to the Pacific Ocean. The soccer-ball-sized cephalopod was instantly exalted by the Internets for his smarts, curiosity, and, it must be said, insistence on being free. One commenter crowned him the “world's greatest hero.” Inky now has 280 followers on Twitter.

Upon further investigation, it turns out that octopuses are the designers of the deep sea. They collect coconut shells as mobile homes, assemble the perfect number of rocks to narrow the opening to their dens, and use their water jets to clean their lairs, like 8-legged Marie Kondos.

Indeed, they’ve been observed doing all the things we prize here at IDEO: "Octopuses engage in play, the deliberate, repeated, outwardly useless activity through which smarter animals explore their world and refine their skills...." They’re supremely multidisciplinary, big-brained and emotional, and they may even be possessed of a soul.

A mollusc that designs its environs, can change color and shape, and sprays ink like an old-fashioned pen? What more suitable mascot for IDEO’s blog, we thought. And so we let Inky take over our masthead forevermore.

The Octopus is intended to be a drive-thru for quick hits of inspiration. Our designers will share their thoughts on craft—how that shows up in their Moleskines and Instagrams and blogs and fonts and posters. They’ll offer how-tos and hot tips and other occupational obsessions.

Last week's obsession was Inky, so we had Greg, a designer in our Tokyo office, draw him, and Derek, a developer in our Chicago office, set him afloat (watch this space—Inky will be reimagined by guest artists).

“He is such a curious boy,” Rob Yarrell, the manager of New Zealand's national aquarium told the Guardian. “He would want to know what’s happening on the outside. That’s just his personality.” We want to know what’s happening on the outside, too. And we hope you’ll follow along as we squiggle out of our tank, pour our baggy bodies into a narrow opening, and seek out a better-designed world.

Header image courtesy of National Aquarium of New Zealand

Our blog needed a name. Like millions who’ve started blogs before us, we sat around a table and tossed around ideas, most with “design” tacked on, like a fake mustache. Exasperated after many false starts, someone blurted, “Let’s just call it The Octopus.”

If you’re not careful, that is. If you have tendencies toward indulgence. If you’re running on four hours' sleep thanks to an incredibly wakeful baby who recently exited your womb and moved into your house. If you like food.

It’s not that the food is unhealthy, it’s that it’s so plentiful. A nicely stocked office fridge and pantry is one thing; day after day of roasted brussels sprouts, kale and beet quinoa, and lemon chicken thighs left over from catered meetings is another. Not to mention the green tea Kit Kats brought back from research trips to Japan, the home-baked butter biscuits whipped up by well-meaning office mates, the bottomless bins of chocolate-covered almonds and cheddar bunnies taunting you behind those cabinet doors. All right, maybe the food’s not the healthiest.

I needed a plan, a tool of some kind to wield wooden-cross-style in the face of so much vampiric deliciousness.

For most people the food at my workplace is a dream come true, but for me it quickly becomes a nightmare of unchecked indulgence. When I came back from maternity leave, I knew I needed help. I needed a plan, a tool of some kind to wield wooden-cross-style in the face of so much vampiric deliciousness. I found that tool in my iPhone camera and a Tumblr feed.

I Didn’t Eat This is a blog of all the food at IDEO I’ve managed not to eat.

Photographing treats gave me a different way to consume them. I still got to have my moment with that cookie. While framing it up on my phone, I could savor its delectableness and availability—its sultry, loose, wanton availability, just sitting there on that napkin all alone—but then, instead of popping it in my mouth, I'd just hit a button and move on. I’d leave satisfied, yet the cookie would remain. One of my coworkers remarked that when I snapped a pic, I was capturing the cookie’s soul.

Sharing the blog became important, too. Word got around the office that I was using I Didn’t Eat This as tool for behavior change. The accountability helped. With every post, someone would joke that they had, in fact, eaten it—all the spiced carrot cake with orange-scented frosting that somebody brought from home—and I told them that was great. The blog wasn’t about shame or guilt. It celebrated food. And it celebrated my growing ability to say no to it.

One of my coworkers remarked that when I snapped a pic, I was capturing the cookie’s soul.

And, amazingly, it started to work. I replaced one behavior with another and the pounds began to drop. True, my new habit kept the cupcakes out of my piehole, but its real power was that it made me mindful. I now experienced a moment of choice — of personal agency — when I spied something yummy in the kitchen. Did I want to eat that yumminess or take its picture? Taste the food or just toast to it?

I’m now about eleven months into this experiment and I wish I could say that sticky brioche french toast bites no longer hold my mind prisoner, but nothing is ever that easy. I will say, though, that the moments of agency build on one another. It feels good to be in control. Soon after I started the blog, I found myself dusting off the old food-tracker app, drinking more water, and eventually working out.

It’s rare that I stick with any behavior for more than a few months at a time, but whenever one slips out of reach, another is there to rise and take its place, like an endless supply of chocolate-covered almonds. Or another slice of spiced carrot cake with orange-scented frosting. Or a cheddar-cheese arepa with chipotle aioli, all cozied up in a handy to-go wrapper.

Maybe I better go free up some space on my iPhone.

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Here’s what they won’t tell you about IDEO, or for that matter any company where you might happen to work: It will make you fat.

Here’s what they won’t tell you about IDEO, or for that matter any company where you might happen to work: It will make you fat.

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.