Fevers. Boogers. Yucky meds. IDEO Play Lab designers dove deeply into the challenges of sick days and doctors’ appointments through video diaries, online surveys, and in-person interviews with parents, healthcare providers, and small children in homes and pediatric offices across the US. They heard about the struggles of giving medicines, wonky thermometer readings, kids having “stethoscope scaries,” and, worst of all, what happens when kiddos hear the “s-word”—shot.

‍‍The research confirmed Sydney and Kaitlin’s initial hunches about playful healthcare products and provided the team with insights on how to move forward. The answer was a formula of sorts. To help reduce kids’ anxiety and keep them calm at the doctor, give them a choice in their care whenever possible. Build familiarity with doctor’s visits and medical devices through playful moments at home. Redirect their attention away from fear. Design for multisensory richness. And provide age-appropriate narratives about healthcare experiences.

Inspired by this kid-centric formula, the IDEO Play Lab team worked closely with Sydney, Kaitlin, and their co-founder, Michael Kamins, to iterate on several designs, winnowing down more than 150 brainstorm ideas into a dozen tangible prototypes (or tinker models) that were shown to doctors, nurses, parents, and young kids for feedback. The designs—a rocket ship medicine dispenser, an elephant-shaped nose aspirator, and a narwhal nasal bulb, among others—were intended to evoke a sense of playfulness, comfort, and familiarity, with features designed for maximum cuteness. Some even lit up and played sounds, like popular toys.

While the designs passed the fun test with kids, they also needed to be functional for parents, trusted by doctors, easily manufactured, and affordable. Eventually, they would need to be approved by the FDA as regulated medical devices. Playhouse MD also requested patentable innovations to help protect their products from imitation.

With these constraints in mind, IDEO Play Lab delivered a collection of nine unique, high-fidelity prototypes that add a dose of fun to caretaking challenges in homes and doctors’ offices. The final designs were durable, medically sanitizable, and safe for testing with real kids, which helped the startup secure multiple rounds of funding and bring its first products to market in 18 months.

Playhouse MD began selling its first four direct-to-consumer products on its website in June 2025: two Medicine Buddies (medicine dispensers shaped like a rocket ship and a butterfly) and two Booger Buddies (a light-up nasal aspirator elephant called Luna and a light-up nasal bulb narwhal named Noa, which was named one of The Best Inventions of 2025 by TIME). The products are available at Target and Babylist stores, and on Amazon through leading medical distributor McKesson Medical-Surgical.

Most companies design child healthcare devices with parents’ or doctors’ tastes in mind; none, however, focus on what will make kids smile, too.

TIME Best Inventions of 2025

in the Parenting Category, Playhouse MD's Light-Up Nasal Bulb

1 ½ years

from initial brainstorms to in-market launch of 4 kid-centric medical products

Verathon offers one of the broadest portfolios of video laryngoscopes on the market. While these life-saving devices increase the likelihood of successful first-time intubations, reducing trauma and speeding recovery times, they are more costly and can be more challenging to learn how to use than traditional mechanical ones, which rely on directly looking at the vocal cords. Wanting to make it easier for cost-conscious hospital administrators to transition from traditional laryngoscopes to Verathon’s video systems, the medical device manufacturer asked IDEO to technically and visually unite its next-gen reusable baton and stats, ensuring they worked together seamlessly, flexibly, and intuitively during the most routine and demanding healthcare moments.

‍The IDEO and Verathon teams used a prototype-led approach to safely gain feedback from anesthesiologists and emergency physicians. Research participants were given various intubation models to simulate surgical use cases and understand ergonomic trade-offs between different design directions. Insights from the field led to design principles such as prioritizing device balance over weight reduction, providing flexibility to accommodate a variety of gripping positions, making connection points between various parts clear, intuitive, and secure, and ensuring the device was easy to clean.

Inspired by physician feedback, the team designed an innovative video baton that felt both familiar and new, supported the ergonomics of diverse holding styles, and fit Verathon’s wide range of stat sizes (one of its competitive advantages). To prevent accidental disconnections, users receive clear tactile, visual, and sound feedback when the monitor and cover are correctly attached to the baton. IDEO chose color, materials, and finishes to help clinicians quickly distinguish between parts of the system and easily identify reusable components from single-use ones.

Verathon’s new GlideScope ClearFit stats-based video laryngoscope hit the market in August 2025. Combining one reusable baton with an industry-leading selection of six single-use stats, it’s compatible with both the GlideScope® Go™ 2 handheld and GlideScope® Core™ cart-based systems. Magnetic QuickConnect™ technology allows doctors to seamlessly switch between platforms, giving hospitals a standardized airway management solution that simplifies workflows, streamlines inventory, enhances medical education and training, and promotes cost-effective care.

Verathon invented video laryngoscopy technology. Twenty years later, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred more competitors to enter the market.

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Cutting-edge technologies like video laryngoscopes are critical—and costly—devices. Hospital systems want to invest in the most comprehensive, flexible, adaptable, and affordable tools for quality patient care

6 shapes and sizes

of single-use covers fit one video baton, enabling health workers to quickly access different throat anatomies

Since its founding in 1992 by the Gokongwei family, which also operates one of the nation’s largest conglomerates, JG Summit Holdings, GBF has supported Philippine education through student scholarships, teacher training funds, and donations to top universities. Over its 30-plus-year history, GBF has reached more than 200,000 teachers and impacted over 1.5 million learners nationwide. When the foundation approached IDEO in 2021, it wanted to move the needle on STEM education in the country’s struggling public schools.

The IDEO and GBF teams interviewed more than 100 subject-matter experts across various government agencies, leading technology companies, and top national universities and educational institutions to build a comprehensive understanding of the current state of STEM in the Philippines. To experience classroom struggles firsthand, the team also shadowed STEM educators and principals. The research revealed that time-strapped teachers needed help mastering overall STEM content, preparing for their classes, and selecting the most suitable activities for their students. They also didn’t always feel supported in their own career development journeys. But the burden of daily responsibilities didn’t leave them any time for outside learning opportunities, either. 

Recognizing that empowering teachers empowers students, the team created an innovative lesson prep tool, the GBF Class Builder, that's based on these insights. Using existing technology and course materials designed to align with school curricula, IDEO developed a working prototype of the Class Builder in under a week, with minimal investment. The team then systematically improved it over several “build-test-iterate” feedback cycles in real classrooms over the course of four months.

The final GBF Class Builder is a targeted program that helps STEM teachers deliver compelling lessons for their students, learn new teaching strategies, and build content mastery along the way. In addition to helping design the Class Builder, IDEO continues to advise GBF on key aspects of the program's piloting and rollout. This includes advising on how to implement the content development, think through the curriculum development process, support in designing feature iterations, define metrics for success, and decide which additional roles GBF will need to support the ambitious program going forward. 

The foundation launched the GBF Class Builder at its 30th-anniversary celebration in 2023. Feedback from pilot 3,500 public schools and 15,000 teachers has been overwhelmingly positive. “Through the GBF Class Builder, we envision our teachers to be more confident and effective in class, more ready to face the challenges of the future, while enjoying every class—feeling proud to be a teacher, " says Grace Colet, Executive Director of GBF.
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The ambitious program continues to scale and is on track to be rolled out in public schools nationwide by 2029.

90% of 10-year-olds in the Philippines can’t read a simple text, according to a Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics report. Eighty-three percent of Filipino 10-year-olds lack minimum proficiency in math.

More than 15,000 teachers in 3,500 public schools

are now using the innovative GBF Class Builder program
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94%

of teachers report the GBF Class Builder has improved student engagement, while 89% say it saves them 1-2 hours in prep time per lesson

Fizik came to IDEO with the aim of entering the helmet market with a range of high-end performance options fit for road racing, mountain biking, time trials/triathlons, and everyday cycling. Fizik planned to use its world-class production and engineering capabilities (the company is part of the Selle Royal Group, which has over 1,400 employees and manages five other cycling brands, including Crankbrothers and Brooks England). IDEO’s task was to develop an on-brand design language that would unify its new helmet line and integrate seamlessly with the sleek, modern aesthetics of the company’s other products.

The design sprint began with in-context interviews with avid and professional cyclists to learn what they wanted—and didn’t—in a helmet. Unlike other accessories, such as shoes or shorts, riders viewed helmets as a necessity rather than an exciting or aspirational purchase. They also wanted a helmet that complemented their overall style, rather than standing out, and had a flattering silhouette. Avoiding making a cyclist look like a “mushroom” was key.

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Different cycling styles involve varying riding postures, ranging from a dropped and horizontal position (time trial/triathlete) to an upright and vertical position (mountain biking). IDEO proposed a family of helmet designs that correspond accordingly. On the horizontal extreme, the time trial/triathlete helmet has the most fluid, organic, aerodynamic shape. A statement of refined simplicity and speed, it features minimal venting and a magnetic wrap-around visor to reduce drag that can be exchanged for the rider’s own cycling glasses.

On the vertical extreme, the mountain biking helmet features a more rugged, angular form with an adjustable brim, rectangular venting, and boxier, back-of-the-head protection. It also offers affordances for goggles, sunglass storage, a GoPro mount, and an optional integrated rear light.

In between, a compact helmet for road racing features evolutionary variations on these design extremes, with more venting as well as a front glasses holder and integrated rear light. All four helmets strike a balance between lightness, comfort, safety, and performance, embodying Fizik’s signature modern style.

In April 2025, Fizik launched all four helmet models simultaneously: Kassis (mountain biking), Kunee (trial/triathlon), Kudo, and the more aerodynamic Kudo Aero for road and gravel. The helmets were greeted with critical acclaim from the cycling world, while Virginia Tech’s independent helmet-safety research lab gave them five-star performance ratings for their strength and durability.‍

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Legendary cycling company Fizik was known for its high-performance bike seats and shoes, but wanted to be a fierce entrant in a challenging product category—helmets.

4

new helmet designs

1

new product category

Eltono coincidently was on our inspiration mood board so we knew we must connect. At the same time our studio was revisiting work by an artist-nun named Corita Kent. We found her work and process deeply inspiring to our culture.

There's a backstory worthy of telling here: In 1971, Boston Gas Company commissioned Kent to paint a mural on a gas tank in her new hometown of Boston.

The work, known as Rainbow Swash, is a simple commentary on the nature of painting and minimalist joy, a six-color combover on the bald head of a stout roadside tank.

Kent was an unlikely candidate. For nearly two decades, as a nun in the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in Los Angeles, she had pushed the edges of acceptability as an artist, teacher, and activist.

Her work, now recognized in the Pop canon alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, challenged cultural norms by reappropriating common packaging and advertising slogans and setting them alongside passages from the Bible, pop music, and classic literature.

As counterculture gained momentum, and Kent used her art to advocate for justice and peace, her profile grew and her messages sharpened. Eventually her protest was too much for the Church to handle, and they mutually separated, leading Kent to make a move to Boston and continue her art.

But something changed in 1970. While her activism persisted, a new body of work arrived, with simple brushstrokes and appeals to love each other.

It was this moment that, 15 years later, culminated in her iconic USPS Love stamp, and also led to the commission from the Boston Gas Company.

Today’s headlines are a 1960s deja vu: culture wars, social injustice, sexual harassment, mass shootings, covert ops, media corruption, political failure. It’s easy to draw parallels to Kent’s day, and to find artistic expressions in response (Shepard Fairey comes to mind). But I’ve personally wondered how Kent made the shift to rainbows and love, and I mean that with no irony.

Maybe it comes down to this simple truth: Love wins. While Kent was popular in her time at Immaculate Heart, even landng on the cover of Newsweek, she didn’t achieve true household status until her 1980s USPS Love stamp. It’s the message we all needed, and it’s still the message we want today.

Eltono has done installations in more than 90 cities around the globe; each unique, but connected by a calculated joy. His work is made from randomly placed forms inspired by the architectural elements of the site. Though we had yet to meet, his work felt right—a cosmic alignment of our values. And once we did share ideas, we were stoked, except about one thing—color.

Eltono’s choices were exuberant and bright. Colors inspired by Mediterranean sun, French countrysides, and European sensibilities. They are radical for hidebound New England, an area known for its pilgrim stoicism, and not native to a region that is white and gray for five months of the year. We quietly fretted about what to do, how to discuss the issue with him. Then I was reminded of Kent. Of her joy in the face of adversity—love and rainbows. We didn’t change a thing.

In fact, we wore the colors—in the form of paint splatters on our faces—with pride! Eltono invited help not only from other muralists, but also from IDEO families and neighborhood kids. His colors greet each passerby’s smile with their own. Each defies the gray sky of the coming winter and the equally gray social climate.

When Boston Gas sold to Keyspan in 1992, the original tank was torn down. But, due to its popularity, Kent’s mural was immediately repainted on a accompanying tank.

Eltono’s art continues making the case for defiant joy, standing in solidarity just a few miles from Kent’s Rainbow Swash. In this season of anxiety and division, there is no greater protest than to stand proud and bright with joy and love.

*Deepest gratitude to the many that helped us make this possible: Geoff Hargadon and Gary Strack at Central Walls; Michael Monestine from the Central Square Business Association; Amanda Hill, Pedro Soto and Al Wilson from Beyond Walls; Jason Weeks from the City of Cambridge; our artist assistants Lena McCarthy, Brian Denahy, Laura Menucci, Meghana Srinivasan, and Julia Roth; the many at IDEO that helped coordinate, paint and photograph, especially Christina Abele, Tiffany Knight, and Dirk Ahlgrim; and the architecture and interiors teams at Hacin + Associates.

Earlier this year, we moved our Cambridge-based studio into a building in Central Square. We wanted to personalize our new home with some public art, but were uncertain about what final expression it should take, so we got started by slapping on a new coat of paint—transforming it from an oppressive gray brutalism to a welcoming white canvas. Then, a local connection, who shared our desire for more street art in Cambridge, suggested we look up Eltono.

So, in addition to designing the thing, I spend 50 percent of my time crafting the story of the thing—showing people how the interaction will influence new behaviors, new futures, new ways to live. The story has to be good enough for the user to picture the experience for themselves. Here’s a sneak peek at a typical day:

6:00 AM: Warming up at SoulCycle

It's not always easy rolling out of bed this early, but sweating my heart out on a stationary bike is my favorite way to start the day. To me, design is like a sport—you have to be intentional about the routines that you do everyday to help you be at your best mentally and physically. Spinning gets my brain revved up for the eight hours of creativity that lie ahead.

9:00 AM: 👋 Project Space!

“Fudgyolk” is my project team's code name (we always keep the client confidential), but it is also a fun identity. The name was inspired by a blended sous vide soft poached egg sauce we had at our first team dinner (here)—yum! Shoutout to my talented teammate Brooke Thyng who designed our team identity!

10:00 AM: Post-Synthesis Cleanup

Our project just completed the "synthesis" phase. What does that mean? About a week ago, we were in a room full of Post-Its with 10 more of these boards, moving ideas around, interpreting what they meant, and sharing our initial hypotheses as a team.

Synthesis helps us discover important themes and patterns that point to opportunities for design, and a story to share with our clients about the needs we uncovered. This process typically takes about a week and it's mind-bending work as you try to make sense of lots of data!

To celebrate a successful completion of this phase (and finally clean up our project space) we challenge each other to a race for who can strip their board the fastest. We try to design some fun into everything, even our chores! We're especially excited because post-synthesis we move into pixels—the interaction designers dream world.

11:00 AM: Analogous Inspiration

My team rocks out to our "Hair" after we've all had an indulgent blowout. Though seemingly unrelated to our health and wellness project, Dry Bar's ability to make people feel confident and at their best inspired us to integrate some of that experience into our own project's design solution.

Analogous inspiration is one of my favorite moments in a project. It allows you to design in a less cognitive, more intuitive and experiential way.

12:00 PM: Interaction Design Kraftwerks

Every Friday, the interaction design community gathers over lunch to build on our craft, and inspire one another. We call it Kraftwerks. Today, led by our Design Director, Tobias Toft, we're geeking out on making autonomous toothbrush-headed robots.

Interaction design is a very diverse community made up of visual designers, systems designers, motion designers, and software designers and these craft sessions give us a chance to teach each other new skills and evolve our digital fluency as a community.

1:00 PM: Gathering Inspiration for the Final Experience

Collaboration is so important across every phase of the design process. I like using Pinterest to engage everyone on the team to collectively gather inspiration and create alignment on a visual direction before we start making.

Here, we're collecting images for an exhibit we plan to build to display the key moments of our final app.

2:00 PM: Designing the Final App and Story

When it's time to design, I use two screens: One running Sketch to design the screens of our app, and one showing a Google Doc that provides a work-in-progress narrative. (Use your imagination—this work is confidential!)

We write user narratives that act as a framework for us to share the signature moments of the app. This produces a to-do list of screens we need to design. When we present the final app to the client, the story makes it feel less like a screen walkthrough and more like a compelling story that portrays how the app benefits the user's life.

3:00 PM: Photoshoot

When we're designing new experiences, stock image/video sites don't cut it, so we create them from scratch. Here's our B-roll where we're planning who will be playing the role of the user in our narrative, and sketches of what the scene will look like. We included confetti in one of our photos ;)

6:00 PM: Caltrain

I catch up on my jamz on my ride home from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Currently streaming SZA's Love Galore.

Finally home and ready for an interaction with my couch. Thanks for spending the day with me!

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When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, “I design things that make the invisible, visible.” Sounds super vague. Let me explain: While the role of an interaction designer is usually associated with building apps, websites, and VR environments, my role at IDEO also includes thinking about how to bring digital-physical interactions that have never before existed to life.

My mom and I have a lot in common. We think problem solving is fun. We love people watching. We both only wear black. But our most striking similarity is that we both ask questions for living. I am a design researcher, focused on helping organizations build innovation capabilities and evolve their culture, and my mom is a political journalist in Turkey. The influence of her profession on my personality has been enormous, and so much of the way that I work comes from watching her. Here are five design lessons she’s taught me.

1. Plan the research through role playing.

My mom's favorite way of understanding the truth and planning her story is to put herself in others' shoes and go through the experience herself. For instance, when covering a policy change affecting a local community, she wouldn't just interview people from her desk, she would spend days embedded in the neighborhood, waiting in the same lines, sitting in the same overcrowded offices, eating at the same spots. That immersion helped her connect the dots of how the policy was actually playing out on the ground, and allowed her to focus on the details that mattered most to the people living through it.

Walking in someone else's shoes before you even meet them can also inform how you plan your research. On a recent project, we needed to understand what physicians experience when they do rounds in clinical contexts, so we went speed dating. We captured the pain points of quickly talking to a lot of people at once and trying to remember the essence of the conversation. This experience helped us to focus on asking the right questions during our interviews with physicians.

2. Lean-in the right moment.

She was great at tracking the questions politicians refused to answer, keeping a running list of what they sidestepped, deflected, or went silent on. She always said you learn more from what politicians decide not to say than from what they actually do.

As designers, we prioritize empathy in our interviews, but my mom’s approach always inspired me to keep going to discover better insights. Finding eloquent (and ethical) ways of asking more about an uncomfortable topic might require a bit of pre-work—creating the right environment to make a person feel at ease, or sharing a bit about yourself. I once worked on a project about bathroom hygiene— one of the most intimate topics a stranger can talk to you about—and instead of asking people about their own behaviors, I talked to them about their roommates or friends. Turns out, people are way more comfortable talking about someone else's bathroom ritual.

3. If you can’t ask, experiment.

As a journalist in Turkey in the 1980s, my mom covered many presidential elections and other world-changing events. Though occasionally her young age was to her advantage, from time to time, she had to come up with her own hacks to get the information she needed. One of her favorite tricks was to ask herself: how would a completely different journalist cover this story? She'd pick someone with an opposite beat — a sports writer, a foreign correspondent, a food critic — and imagine their approach. Even if she didn't follow their approach, it forced her out of the obvious angle and almost always pointed her toward the story she actually needed to tell.

My colleagues Sean Hewens and Mat Chow did something equally creative. To understand the influential layers in a major international law firm, they created what they call The Blue Hat experiment. They picked a blue hat and brought it to the leaders of the law firm and asked, “What would you do to convince everyone in your organization to wear this blue hat?” Some said a raise. Others said a friendly competition. And some said, get the “cool” lawyers to do it first, then the others will follow. These answers helped the team figure out how influence actually happens at the firm, and shaped how they thought about rolling out a new change initiative.

4. Look outside the mainstream.

My mom would always push me to think in extremes. She always says, “To avoid ready-made answers, don’t talk to expected people. Talk to the extremes. Gather witnesses from all walks of life and listen to stories that others didn’t cover.”

At IDEO one of our biggest source of inspiration in design research is talking to extreme users, or what we sometimes call “super users.” Those who are at the edge of the bell curve of the challenge help us capture workarounds and interesting behaviors. For instance, when we are designing for change inside an organization, we don’t just talk to people in the C-suite; we also focus on people who recently joined or quit the organization, who might have a fresher take or more honest feedback.

5. Don’t just research the people, research the system.

One of the most important parts of being a journalist is understanding the ecosystem you’re reporting in. Otherwise, you can’t make sense of what you find. For my mom, that meant making sure she understood who all the power players were, and how the system worked before she started crafting her stories. This is also true in our design process.

At IDEO, we believe that if you want to create the conditions that change behavior, you have to have a deep understanding of the landscape you are in. When my colleague Divya Viswanathan and her team took on a project to help unify a massive, 20,000-employee generic medicine manufacturer with operations in 27 countries, they didn’t just focus on talking to executives; they talked to everyone. When they chatted with a worker on the shop floor of one of their factories, he read them a poem he had written for the founder of the company. This conversation helped the team realize how much people care about the company’s purpose, and it changed the course and outcome of their project.

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When I was a kid, my mom made up what she called “The Journalism Game” to keep me entertained while we were grocery shopping. She would give me a hypothetical scenario and ask me to think like a journalist, to tell her who I would talk to first to create the story.

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Before that happened, I spent a lot of time doodling my favorite characters—almost exclusively The Looney Tunes. My classmates and teachers liked my sketches. Some kids even paid me for them. I was good at it. But when the tremors started suddenly, after a series of unexplained episodes where I lost consciousness, I couldn’t make my simple lines simple anymore. Coloring was so hard and messy that pencil gray became my favorite color.

I dropped the pencil for more than a decade, did some clay work, played sports, and even started teaching Spanish. But when I got into the design school, I had to face up to challenge again. I ended up learning how to work with other media like 3-D modeling and animation to express my ideas. It was effective, but I still missed using the pen.

For me, nothing can really replace sketching. I learned during these years that drawing is not just a media; it is a way of thinking. So I embraced the shaking in my hands by thinking of every sketch I was doing as an idea, not a product. Just as every idea can be refined, so can every drawing. That was freeing. It meant that no matter how bad it was, over time, it could become something decent that expressed something. I start with my shaky sketch, and if I like it, I start adding shadows and details that are still shaky, but once it’s finished, it’s a single sketch; it is an idea.

One of the things I like to do when I’m traveling is to take the time to sketch the city I’m in. It’s an exercise for getting my tremor down; it helps me breathe slowly and focus on contemplating the moment, the people, the water, the sky, the birds, the glass. My shaky hands help me to draw silly lines in a fast enough way that I can capture the general picture. Then, it’s just a matter of letting my tremors go free until they become part of the landscape.

My hands shake. They literally shake. I’ve had a slight tremor since I was 12 years old, and it hasn’t been easy to adjust. For a while it was just too hard, and I stopped drawing altogether.

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.