Glide, a video communication software startup, came to IDEO to collaborate on the design of its first hardware product. With current Apple Watch models not including cameras, Glide sought to design a compatible band that would empower users to capture and share photos and videos directly from their wrist.

Faced with this challenge, IDEO designers embarked on a six week-long design sprint, involving users in the research to understand how they might use the band for interactions such as taking reminder snapshots and intuitively sharing photo and video messages with friends. The team then brought these ideas to life through a comprehensive industrial design and engineering process, working to meet a range of technical and performance requirements along the way.

IDEO’s final band design elegantly integrates two cameras—one nestled in a wave-shaped notch above the watch face, and the other on the band’s outward-facing surface. Together, the cameras ensure that, between recording themselves and the vibrant world around them, users never miss capturing a moment worth sharing.

IDEO also designed a compatible, on-the-go charging dock that conveniently refuels both the watch and band with a single plug-in, completing an effortless user experience.

Today’s younger workers are more comfortable dressed casually. They prefer an impromptu meeting over coffee, than at the conference table. They’re used to working flexibly, collaboratively and creatively. And, via smartphones, tablets and laptops, they’re accustomed to having everything from hailing a cab, to doing work, to getting groceries, at their fingertips.

Tech-savvy, independent, entrepreneurial, demanding: this new generation of business people and the lingering impact of the financial crisis, are reshaping hospitality.

To that end, Crowne Plaza approached IDEO to understand the needs of this audience, the macro trends impacting them, and to develop a new meeting and work offer that expressed the brand’s values.

Research, sensor data, surveys, interviews with potential customers revealed what modern travelers wanted, but lacked: informal, flexible experiences; energizing and uplifting spaces; peer-style service; curated choices; and integrated technology to control it all.

IDEO translated those customer insights, and Crowne Plaza’s promise—Making Business Travel Work—into an integrated, designed and built-out branded offer. Launched with two pilot schemes in Atlanta, Ignition is a free-to-use, innovative new meeting and working experience, housed in the lobby of Crowne Plaza hotels.

Spanning space, food and beverage, service, and digital, every touchpoint is designed to keep travelers in a state of flow, and heightened productivity. From single-person Pods, to the Nooks and Huddles for four-person impromptu meetings, to the 10-person Apartment (bookable by the hour), Ignition’s spaces cater to every professional’s needs, whether they’re on the road or in their home city.

Food and beverage offerings have been redesigned specifically for work meetings. Delivered to where you’re working, it’s non-drippy, made to be eaten one-handed, and served on square plates to sit neatly alongside laptops. Out of hours, a new self-service marketplace offers 24-hour premium sustenance.

A new role, the Host, provides peer-style support, whether greeting guests’ guests, helping with meetings, or sourcing local restaurants for a client dinner.

Underpinning Ignition is a new tablet-based ordering system (Food To You), and Host chat platform, to easily get everything from photocopies to coffees.

But ultimately, IHG’s ambition for Ignition goes beyond its existing guests. It’s designed to become a local business fixture in its own right, attracting people to meet, and work, irrespective of whether they’re staying. As one guest summed it up: “There is nothing any hotel brand in this range is doing to stand out. This concept, however, could completely change that. It could even live on its own. It’s what you would seek out.”

Fender, a brand that’s been synonymous with rock ’n’ roll since 1946, is best known for its iconic electric guitars—think Stratocaster—played by everyone from Eric Clapton to The Edge, the lead guitarist of U2. Less well known is the imprint Fender has made on the acoustic space. IDEO worked with the company to design a new family of acoustic amplifiers: one professional and one with stereo effects.

After gathering insights from amateurs, professionals, music magazine editors, and producers, the team explored portability, storage, materiality, and form through a series of early prototypes that they tested with users.

While most acoustic amps in the market don’t look all that different from their electric cousins, the new Fender product line reflects the pure, natural sound at the core of acoustic. This new line of amps uses a unique manufacturing technique with bent plywood that’s new to acoustic amp design. Not just a design statement, the innovation also improves sound quality.

The acoustic amps were also designed with simple, intuitive controls, and with illuminated features that balance high-tech performance with a satisfyingly analog experience. The design emphasizes portability and maneuverability, targeting the acoustic artist who often may have to make a tough choice between traveling light and using the often unreliable house PA.

Pi Jacobs, a singer-songwriter who participated in the design research process, said acoustic sound requires its own unique medium. "Acoustic is raw, pure, no bells and whistles. You see someone playing and singing, it’s like looking through a window into someone’s soul," he said.

For Fender, the work proved to be transformative. "Working with IDEO was an eye-opening and refreshing experience," said James Gifford, vice president of design for Fender. "The result of the work that was done with IDEO on the acoustic amp project was a game-changer that challenged the traditional definition of the design and experience received from using acoustic guitar amplifiers."

To better articulate the Bigelow family values—obsessive about ingredients, environmentally conscious, community-oriented—the company asked IDEO to help convey its story to a younger demographic, for whom tea was popular but the Bigelow brand was not. Any changes to the product or its packaging would have to improve the offering without alienating Bigelow Tea’s loyal customers.

IDEO worked with the company to update its positioning statement, brand identity, and packaging. After many interviews with tea drinkers, IDEO and Bigelow executives learned that the brand could differentiate itself by crafting a strong point of view—one that cultivates and celebrates tea enthusiasts with a superior yet accessible product. With a refined positioning statement in hand, a refreshed identity system followed.

The new packaging ties together all of Bigelow’s lines of tea. Each box features bold graphic elements like a larger, easier-to-read logo, instructions for brewing a perfect cup of tea, a caffeine “caff-o-meter,” and the name of the team member who packed the box. Bigelow boxes now stand out when stacked on store shelves, winning over tea drinkers and retailers alike.

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.

‍

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...

Looking for the rest of Neil's post? Please continue reading on Medium.

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.

‍

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.

‍

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‍

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

‍

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

‍

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

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

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

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