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. Daily Worth (website & newsletter): A daily dose of financial news offering advice tailored specifically to women. It separates your financial life into four major buckets: Plan, Earn, Spend, and Live. Articles are easily digestible and engaging. Topics range from “Running your business like Beyonce” to “Increasing your willpower.”

2. Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach: Reading this changed how my husband and I manage our money. It intends to get you and your partner on the same page financially and moving forward as a team. Which can be good for your bank account, and your relationship.

3. How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong: Taking a unique approach, this book addresses our relationship with money rather than advising us on how to make more or spend less. It asks you to define your “money worries” and their origins as opposed to, say, dithering over “money troubles.” It made me realize that all relationships take introspection, nurturing, and work. Including my relationship with money.

4. Society of Grownups (Boston-based brick & mortar and online platform): Our friends at the Society of Grownups are a vast resource for fiscal education and advice. They are helping to normalize financial planning as a component of our daily conversations. In fact, my conversation with the young woman that kicked off this whole affair was one of many that inspired the creation of the Society of Grownups—a project that deeply inspired each individual team member to make fundamental shifts in their relationship with money.

Smart designers really do finish rich.

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Two years ago, I interviewed a young woman about money. Sitting in her living room in Southern California, I was struck by two things: One, I realized she was completely clueless about the role finances played in her life, and two, I realized that I was, too. So I set out to school myself. Here is a selection of my go-to money resources:

Detroit's auto industry is slowly speeding toward recovery. Kansas City's fierce foodie culture is helping it reclaim its status as "Paris of the Plains." And inspiring Chicago artists/urban-renewal impresarios like Theaster Gates are breathing new life into long-neglected neighborhoods.

As IDEO's official Midwest outpost, designers in our Chicago studio wanted to mark this "it moment" in the region's history with a series of talks exploring its past, present, and—as we see it—very bright future. We humbly call these prognostications about automobility, food, urban infrastructure, agri-tech, water, data, and more, "The Future of the Midwest."

As Midwesterners, we're said to be plainspoken pragmatists. But as designers, we can't help but be outspoken optimists.

But don't just take my word for it, hear what my fellow "ChIDEO" designers have to say.

WATCH: A series of provocations and prognostications on our beloved Midwest by IDEO Chicago.

What do Twinkies, skyscrapers, House music, and the Model T have in common? These (in)famous cultural phenomena all hail from the Midwest. At one time, the region was disregarded as "flyover country" by jetting-setting East and West Coast-types, but these days, the nation's Heartland is regarding itself with a new sense of pride.

It’s not just the squirrel that is looking at me. A cemetery employee purrs past in a golf cart, giving me the once-over. I am an intruder. The etiquette of cemeteries is strange. You come here for funerals, at which you’re allowed to be sad and to contemplate mortality. The rest of the time, you’re supposed to be getting on with your life.

I look up at the oak trees again. I recognize them from a video posted on YouTube by an Italian man. Like me, he was here looking for the grave of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs died in 2011, of complications arising from pancreatic cancer. Now he’s somewhere around here, just a couple of miles from his house, in an unmarked grave in the Alta Mesa cemetery.

I remember watching The Daily Show on the day his death was announced.

“For him to die young seems so strange,” said Jon Stewart. “With other people of his magnitude, like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, you feel like we wrung everything out of them. They were old when they died. With Steve Jobs, you really got the sense… we’re not done with you yet.”

Looking at Alta Mesa’s barren grassy field, broken only by tarnished plaques and a couple of windswept bouquets, I wonder if Jobs would have ever got around to redesigning the death experience...

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I’m in a graveyard in Palo Alto, California. The sky overhead is cornflower blue. Wind rustles through surrounding oak trees. A squirrel trots out onto a tree branch and squints at me. It’s like nature is doing everything it can to emphasize the contrast between its own glorious aliveness and the utter deadness of the humans underfoot.

This clever new app and connected device allows aquarium owners to remotely check the health of their tanks. Recently, we spoke with Garrett Winther, an IDEO Chicago engineer by day and FishBit co-founder by night, about how he got involved in the scrappy seven-person startup and how they plan to win over the aquarium market—hook, line, and sinker.

What’s FishBit?

FishBit is the connected aquarium. Owning a large tank, especially a saltwater one, is notoriously difficult and expensive. Fish can die if the water’s pH levels change .1 percent up or down, so there are both emotional and financial stresses that come with owning a tank. FishBit allows owners to remotely control their tank’s chemical balance and keep maintenance activities on schedule.

How did FishBit start?

One of our cofounders, Nathan Levine, grew up with a fish tank. Then, he left for college and asked his dad to take care of it. When he came home for a visit, his whole tank was dead. It was one of those events where he asked himself, “There’s got to be a better way...”

Years later, when the Internet of Things became a reality, Nathan decided to do something about his remote-aquarium-monitoring idea. He’s an iOS developer. He knew how to build software, but he needed someone who could build physical electronic and mechanical prototypes. That’s where I came in.

What’s the development process been like?

My role has been less about final engineering and more about using human-centered prototyping methods to build FishBit the right way. We created the first working FishBit prototype with full sensors and an iOS app in just a weekend. Then, we showed the prototypes to aquarium owners in Chicago, got feedback, and iterated on the design—much like we’d do at IDEO.

What are you learning from being a startup?

How to nimbly prototype hardware and how to launch a product quickly into market. With FishBit, we launched on Kickstarter in a very limited fashion (just 30 Beta units) so we could put it into users' hands and start testing it in real-life situations. We hand-built those 30 units with CNC machines and some interesting molding technologies. Instead of waiting three weeks to have something professionally manufactured, we had something tangible in a few hours and learned something along the way.

What’s next?

We've fulfilled our initial Kickstarter backers' orders and made sure those Beta units lived in people's tanks safely and did everything they were supposed to. This February, we launched another Kickstarter campaign to sell our core product—the device and app—to the masses.

Do you own a fish tank?

I currently have a 30-gallon freshwater tank with three tiny fish in it. It’s challenging. Maybe when FishBit exists, I can upgrade to salt water.

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Owning a saltwater aquarium can feel like opening a can of worms, especially for nervous newbies. Tiny imbalances in pH, temperature, and salinity levels can mean the difference between life and death for Nemo and friends.

Thankfully, there's FishBit.

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I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.

Most AI products today are built for work—a space with clear problems and established systems. One founder noticed a gap: personal life is messier, harder to systematize, and mostly left behind by the AI boom. So she built Cue, a personal AI that lives inside iMessage and group chats, to go where the other tools haven't.

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In this episode, Becca Carroll, IDEO's Chief Strategy Officer, talks with Sida Li, co-founder and CEO of Shared Context Lab, about staying anchored to a human need while the technology around her keeps changing shape, why she treats her business model with the same rigor she'd bring to a product, and what it feels like to build a company at this particular, disorienting moment in AI.

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The conversation also gets into how Sida makes design decisions: the language Cue uses to describe itself, the tradeoffs behind building inside iMessage instead of a new app, and a real story about a business idea that didn’t pan out.

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This is the second in a two-part series profiling founders from IDEO's Startups-in-Residence program. The first conversation is with Johannes Seemann, founder of Sooner, on designing GenAI for the emotional side of money.

Most personal financial tools are built to run the numbers and optimize towards a budget. While that works for some, most people experience money as a lived relationship that does not neatly fit into a spreadsheet. Johannes Seemann and Becca Carroll discuss why money is emotional before it is mathematical, and what a human-centered approach to building a generative AI financial product looks like in practice.

Mina Seetharaman talks with Scott Shigeoka, author of Seek and Head of Curiosity Cultivation at the Eames Institute, about what distinguishes genuinely curious leadership from performative curiosity, how power dynamics shape curiosity, and why practicing curiosity can restore energy rather than drain it.

Mina Seetharaman talks with David Epstein, author of Inside the Box and Range, about why total freedom often produces average work, how leaders can design useful limits on purpose, and what organizations such as General Magic and Pixar reveal about the relationship between boundaries and creativity.