Sealy and IDEO first collaborated in 2008, to rethink the design of its Stearns & Foster line. For years, Sealy, the largest mattress manufacturer in the world, had taken the standard industry approach to selling mattresses and watched market share and sales flatten; it knew something had to change. Stearns & Foster evolved from a single product design into a keystone for transforming the organization.

IDEO helped Sealy use actionable consumer insights to develop a scalable design methodology and new brand principles, which it applied to product design, operational and manufacturing decision-making processes, and sales and marketing strategy. This “brand-to-product” framework was subsequently used for three separate and consecutive product launches—Stearns & Foster, Embody, and Posturepedic—resulting in an overhaul of 85 percent of Sealy’s mattress portfolio.

Tempur-Pedic was already working with IDEO on a new mattress design when it acquired Sealy in 2013. It was also interested in how design thinking and human-centered design could improve its business. Once solely focused on the technological elements of designing a mattress, together with IDEO, Tempur-Pedic redesigned the outer shells of its mattresses to reflect the quality on the inside. This design change led to the company to look at new ways to infuse design into their products.

“The initial project was to design the mattress,” said Thomas Overthun, associate partner and design director at IDEO. “But the second project was to create a whole design language from the mattress out to what it meant for any other product, from pillows to blankets and other accessories. It eventually became bigger than just the mattress.”

Working on the Tempur-Pedic/Sealy relationship has been gratifying, said IDEO partner and design director Michael Hendrix, because although home goods can be thought of as simply products, nothing could be further from the truth. IDEO and Tempur-Pedic/Sealy changed the course of the mattress company's business through the transformative power of designing where, and ultimately how, people sleep. And in the process, the organization itself changed as well, moving siloed departments to cross-functional teams, with the brand division central to their cooperation, which led to consistent and aligned decisions across the board.

Some of the projects include:

Stearns & Foster Luxury Mattress
Sealy teamed up with IDEO to develop a design language for Stearns & Foster mattresses that would reestablish what the brand stood for. Through redefining brand principles and rounds of prototypes that focused on evocative details, the new Stearns and Foster mattress was the highest rated in Sealy’s portfolio since it started keeping records, and initial retailer orders were three times what management projected.

Next-Generation Posturepedic
An icon in the mattress industry was brought into the 21st century by developing a new product that delivered on the long-running promise of the brand. Together, IDEO and Sealy designed a product that focused on holistic back health. In its earnings report, the company said US bedding sales for the quarter were up 10.6 percent, to $253.4 million, a figure driven by the new product line’s introduction. According to Sealy’s Q3 earnings report, the Posturepedic launch represented the largest and fastest rollout in the company’s history.

Embody by Sealy
The project began by defining the market opportunities for all-foam beds, and ended with the modern, streamlined Embody mattress as well as a simplified design language, free of industry jargon, to help retailers talk about the mattress to customers. “Sealy collaborated with IDEO to create an approachable and attractive mattress that delivers the simple, healthy rest consumers want with a selling story they can easily understand,” said Jodi Allen, Sealy’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Tempur-Pedic Sleep System
Best known for the revolutionary, NASA-proven Tempur material inside its mattresses, Tempur wanted to transform the exterior of its mattresses to match the caliber of innovation inside. Together with IDEO, Tempur created a new sleep system, including an easily removable and washable fabric mattress cover. “Tempur-Pedic was born of innovation, but we were never a design-driven company until we worked with IDEO,” said Patrice Varni, senior vice president of brand marketing, Tempur Sealy North America, LLC. “Seeing consumer need in a new way through IDEO’s eyes has transformed us. Our product design, our creative psyche, our brand are all fundamentally changed by this sharper focus. This collaboration has given us all a renewed sense of pride.”

The challenge of how we’ll feed the exploding world population in the future—in a sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way—is seeding an agricultural revolution in Europe.

In 2012, INFARM founders Erez, Guy Galonska, and Osnat Michaeli found that vertical farms could be a solution to urban self-sufficiency. These farms could allow people to grow vegetables and herbs in small spaces, with no soil and far less water.

An approach that’s captured the imagination of futurists for decades, vertical farming involves growing vegetables and herbs in stacked units or inclined surfaces, within which moisture, light, temperature, and nutrients are monitored, and controlled.

After creating their first vertical farming experiment in their apartment in Berlin, the founders brought together plant scientists and industrial designers to explore and develop vertical farming’s potential.

Since then, the startup has created custom growing systems for clients including Airbnb, Mercedes-Benz, and Weber. Most recently, INFARM installed a vertical farm growing herbs and vegetables at the Berlin branch of German supermarket chain Metro, the fourth-largest retail chain in the world, to sell to the public. It’s been profiled in Wired Germany, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian, and Zeit.

INFARM collaborated with IDEO to further explore their B2B offer, including concepts for the industrial design of the stackable, modular, climate-controlled units; the interaction design of an accompanying app to monitor and control the units, and its business model.

Urban farmers will sign up for “farming as a service,” comprising the units themselves, as well as a monthly subscription for seeds, cartridges filled with nutrients, and a pH regulator. Because they’re stackable, the modules can be scaled to suit anyone from a home grower to a restaurant chef or supermarket owner. And Erez claims a 1 square meter growing tray can yield four to six mature plants every day, 365 days a year, doubling that of state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouses.

As well as remotely regulating each unit’s climate, the app will educate growers about new vegetables and herbs, selling packs of complementary seeds, with suggested recipes for them, and cooking instructions. Aiming to promote biodiversity, the firm will sell rare-breed and heirloom seeds too.

The startup has funding from the EU’s European Pioneers fund, and is now looking to secure investment to accelerate software development and ramp up their hardware production capabilities. Quite literally, it's growing its business.

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational group that revolutionized children’s television with the launch of the landmark Sesame Street program in 1969. The show, which has since become a household name, is now watched in more than 150 countries worldwide. The Workshop also creates educational content for new media platforms, and partnered with IDEO to design a line of Sesame Street–themed apps for Apple’s iPhone. The Elmo Calls app, which functions as a utility app for parents and as an entertaining behavioral-development app for kids, is now one of the Top 100 paid iPhone apps in the iTunes store.

The collaboration began with a mutual desire to bring the show’s beloved characters to the iPhone platform—and to do so using a human-centered design approach. Child-development experts, educators, toy and interaction designers, and even the Sesame Street puppeteers weighed in on the design decisions. The team also worked closely with families throughout the project—from initial concepts to early prototyping to the final development—in order to stay focused on how children actually use the iPhone for play. The games were designed accordingly. For example, the team omitted menus from the Sesame Street apps to keep the experiences simple, playful, and fun for a young child. And each game features exclusive new Sesame Street videos, allowing players to enjoy “lean back” moments along with interactive ones.

The resulting iPhone applications let children engage with the favorite Sesame Street characters in a whole new way. Kids touch, shake, swipe, and tilt their way through original games featuring Elmo, Grover, Bert, Rosita, and the Count.

The titles, all of which are available from iTunes, include:

• Elmo Calls: Engages 2- to 5-year-olds in listening-skills practice and active participation during everyday situations.
• Elmo’s Monster Maker: Allows kids to create unique monster friends that dance and play with Elmo.
• Sesame Street Video Maker: Lets kids star in their own music videos, mashing recordings of themselves with popular Sesame music videos and adding their own stamps and special effects.
• Sesame Street Makes Music: Helps kids explore an array of instruments as they contribute to new renditions of classic preschool tunes with their Sesame friends.

How do you know when you’re successful in your work? You can check off a list of technical skills and expertise you bring to the table. You can use a career development rubric to make sure you’re hitting the right goals. But often, it’s your behaviors—the intangibles that are the most difficult to articulate—that make the most impact. Things like your ability to stay optimistic or your willingness to adapt when there’s no roadmap.

Because of the nature of our work at IDEO, these intangibles are a big part of what defines the experience of working at the company. So in 2012, a global team of designers from our U.S., Europe, and Asia offices came together to codify these values and behaviors as part of a larger effort to evolve IDEO’s career development platform. More often than not, when IDEOers hit road bumps in their career, it was not about what they were doing, but how they were doing it.

The team agreed that, in addition to identifying the technical requirements needed to progress through one’s career, it was just as crucial to give IDEOers the tools they need to navigate the complex culture. So they captured the values they believed were foundational to the culture and most strongly shared across the IDEO community, and put them to paper in The Little Book of IDEO. The title is meant to reflect its purpose for readers—a handbook that’s compact, useful, and free of any corporate jargon.

For IDEO-ers, this red cloth-bound guide provides a shared lexicon around both the hard and soft skills we need to succeed. It describes things like why IDEO is so loosely structured, where it comes from, and where it’s headed.

Most importantly, the book identifies the organization’s seven core values. These are by design specific, actionable, and integral to the kind of work we do and the environment in which we do it, going beyond common sense and general ethical practice. The intention: to foster meaningful conversations within the community about life at IDEO, and how to achieve success along the way. With each succinct expression comes a deeper explanation of why it matters, and how it shapes our experience at IDEO.

Over the years, the book has been roundly embraced by the IDEO community as an honest articulation of who we are, as opposed to what we aspire to be, and what we appreciate most about working together. When IDEOers first got their hands on it, a movement took shape to create videos that bring each of the core values to life. To depict the value of "Embracing Ambiguity," for example, New York-based designers built a makeshift cardboard rowboat, and while simulating a storm, navigated their way through uncharted territory with teamwork and optimism. San Francisco produced a Jacques Cousteau inspired look at the lifestyle and behaviors of designers in their natural collaborative habitat.

Through the process of making the videos, IDEOers came together to reflect on each of the values, talking through what resonated and what didn’t. It gave them a sense of ownership, and a platform through which to share their interpretations.

A Global Conversation

IDEO has a global presence—offices in two countries in Europe, two countries in Asia, and multiple locations across the U.S. As an organization that embraces a human-centered culture, it felt important to learn if the values resonated with the IDEO community in all of these locations, especially in a country like China, whose working culture is so different from the west. We saw the authenticity and resonance of the values as essential for attracting, motivating, and retaining local talent.

So how did The Little Book of IDEO land in Shanghai? Exploring this question would illuminate insights into how our own clients are often challenged to keep their company culture resonant within the global landscape.

A team of IDEOers in our Shanghai office took on the challenge of exploring the meaning behind each of the values. They were surprised with what they discovered—that despite the firm’s Western origins, locals felt largely connected to the values. It even helped to further solidify their identity as a community, even if it may have been in tension with local working culture, because it was rooted in a set of shared beliefs.

In some instances, the Shanghai team built on the existing values in order to refine the meaning for the local context. For example, the core value "Be Optimistic" rings true, but could sound naive when translated directly to Chinese, implying "rose-tinted glasses.” So in the Mandarin edition, an extra phrase was added to convey the measuredness we mean when we talk about optimism at IDEO. The lesson here: The treatment of something as fundamental and nuanced as our values requires authenticity and emotional connection, and therefore more of a transcreation process than straight translation.

Lasting Power

As an organization, we are designed to be flexible. This means we’re always changing—even when it comes to how we are structured—so that we can respond to the kinds of challenges that clients come to us for. In the midst of our constant evolution, The Little Book of IDEO is as resonant today as it was when it was published.

In one sentence who are you?

Artist from Bristol, UK, currently living in NYC.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I draw and paint every day. It is hard to pinpoint how I learned to draw, but I have been practicing since I was a young lad. I would always draw what was around me.

I have always been inspired by artists who draw with an energetic, loose line. Quentin Blake, Ralph Steadman, Chris Orr, Robert Weaver, and Linda Kitson were artists I looked up to.

As I got into my early teens, I really got immersed in depicting the urban environment. This was fueled by picture books that my dad would bring back from trips to the US. American cities didn’t look like UK ones.

I went to art college, but I largely stuck to my guns and just made the work that I wanted to make. To be honest, I’m making it up as I go along.

WATCH: IDEO San Francisco mural, 2017

3 favorite possessions?

My sketchbooks from the last 25 years and a giant Spitfire that I made and had hanging in my old studio.

What does a typical work session look like?

I am normally juggling three projects, so I try to split up the day and do a few hours on each.

I tend to do the large-scale work in my studio apartment, and then I have a desk in a shared studio where I do smaller jobs.

So I guess I work in two to three hour bursts, and then go do something else. Obviously, if there is a pressing deadline, that goes out the window. I do 12-plus hour sessions sometimes.

How do you get over creative block?

Go running, to the gym, or for a pint. Talk to a friend and then go out and draw something. Or just start something. Sometimes I think too much.

I also keep a small, pocket-sized sketchbook on my person, so that when I am traveling about the city I can draw people and things that catch my eye. It is a lovely way to see stuff. People spend so much time looking at their phones these days, they miss out on so many things that are happening in real life.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Warm.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

I’d like to watch a cricket test match in the Caribbean.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

I am looking at painters a lot these days. Here are a few: Peter Doig, Paul Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Jules de Balincourt, Enoc Perez, John Virtue, Edward Hopper, George Bellows…

I first discovered Patrick Vale's work while sourcing muralists for an installation in our entryway. I became entranced by the organized madness of his large-scale cityscapes—the attention to detail, consistency, and sheer patience they required to complete. Pat embedded himself in IDEO's San Francisco studio for more than a week—morning, noon, and night—to create an alternative map-view of San Francisco. I caught up with him to get the backstory.

As the person in charge of the overall employee experience for IDEO San Francisco, I should have known better. Neither my husband nor I have any experience running a coffee business. Had we known how hard it would be, we would have surely taken one look at the space and balked. Instead, we tore down walls, stood in line at the city building department, had our eyes opened wide, cried out in frustration, and in the process, learned a hell of a lot.

Thinking about starting a side business after hours? Here are 5 lessons we learned the hard way:

1. The laws won’t bend around your business

Turns out it’s staggeringly difficult to open a city-approved and permitted food establishment in a space where there hadn’t previously been one. The ADA laws (The Americans with Disabilities Act) are incredibly intricate. When IDEO opened a new office to house our growing business, I already understood the language the architect used to describe ADA issues we might face, and how bureaucratic and difficult the permit process might be.

2. Designing a great experience = problem solving

If you're starting a side biz, think hard about which learnings from your day job are transferable. Working in experience design, I already knew what it was like to be in a constant state of problem solving, failing quickly, and learning from it all. My relationship with the IDEO community and my commitment to giving them what they want—and to saying no when necessary—was paramount. I use my skills in thinking about space, how best to use it, and how to realize potential problems before they surface every day at Snow White.

3. Everything will go wrong

We installed an ice cream machine that failed almost immediately. (Who knew your ice cream machine won’t stay cold enough if your shop isn't air conditioned?) We’ve also dealt with the lack of a freezer or a proper ice machine, too little dry storage, and leaking sinks. When you're starting a new business, expect to be prototyping and problem solving around obstacles constantly.

4. Take breaks and rely on your community

We’ve learned when to say no and when to take a break. That has been essential to avoiding burnout. Expect to call in lots of favors and make sure you return those favors over time. We’ve made strong relationships with our community by asking them for favors when we need to, and giving back to them when we can.

5. Blind faith is your friend

Some lessons are less tactile, like how being fearless pays off in the end. It allows me to make quick changes without feeling paralyzed. We all let barriers get in the way. We come up with reasons why something won’t work. The blind faith we had when we decided to open the shop is in itself a lesson—and the most important one we learned. I've taken that lesson back to IDEO (and we certainly have better coffee in the office now too!).

A year later, the learning continues. We’re constantly trying new things to evolve our business. Stop by Snow White Coffee Bar for a latté some time and let our defiance inspire you to jump into something you think you can’t.

Last winter, while walking down a busy shop-lined street a block from our home in Oakland, my husband and I noticed a handwritten FOR LEASE sign posted in the window of a dirty dry cleaners. “This is such a great location, someone should put a coffee shop here!” we joked. But it was no joke—four months later, on April 20, 2016, we opened the doors to Snow White Coffee Bar.

Inspired by the New York Times’ piece on How to Fall in Love with Anyone, I reached out to my fellow IDEOers and asked about some of their favorite ways to break down barriers when meeting new people—especially in a group setting. They showered me with activity ideas.

Here are my top 5 favorite ways to break down barriers:

1. 3 Things in 3 Minutes

Everyone partners up with someone, ideally a person they don’t know well. Each pair has three minutes to discover three things they have in common that go beyond the obvious, like “We’re both in this room together,” or “We’re both wearing glasses.” After three minutes, everyone shares what they’ve learned with the group. Discoveries get pretty specific and have ranged from “We both have an adopted 11-year-old daughter from Guatemala” to “Our moms went to high school together in Detroit!”

2. Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Each person brings photos of their life (house, room, stuff, friends, etc.). The only rule is they can’t be in the images. When the group comes together, each person puts up their photos, and everyone has to guess whose life is whose. After each person is revealed, they have an opportunity to share a few components from their lives that are represented in the photographs.

3. Grouping Game

Create a series of categories that a group can use to organize themselves. They might be as simple as “cat person or dog person” or “Mac user or PC user,” or provide a bit more context about people’s background, such as “oldest, middle, youngest, or only child” or “religious or non-religious.” Once you have a handful of categories, call them out one-by-one, and have people form groups based on how they identify. For each round, have people ask one of the other questions of another group. By the end of the exercise, they will have been part of a dozen or so different “communities,” each comprised of a different set of people.

4. Acknowledgement Line

Have the group form two lines facing each other. Then, have them partner with the person they’re facing and take turns following these prompts (even if you know nothing about them):

• What do you want to know about this person? (Curiosity)
• What do you appreciate about this person? (Appreciation)
• What do you want to share about yourself with this person? (Acknowledgement)
• What can you contribute or give to this person? (Contribution)

5. Uniqueness Share

Each person takes turns sharing a fact about who they are or what they've done. If someone else in the room has done it before, then the person sharing needs to come up with another fact about themselves. So, if one person says, “I biked across the country,” and someone else says, “I’ve done that too!” then you would need find another fact, such as “I lived in Thailand.” Keep going until you find something that is truly unique about each person.

Any one of these exercises will help bring a feeling of common humanity into view. So, next time you enter a room full of strangers, save the cheesy icebreakers and admit that you’re a cat person instead.

Thanks to Mollie West Duffy, Neil Stevenson, Deirdre Cerminaro, Caryn Voskuil, and Heather Currier Hunt for their contributions.

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Walking into a room of strangers can feel daunting. Small talk is hard enough, and it’s even trickier to delve into deeper topics right off the bat. I chuckled when I found out that the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows has a term for the realization that every person has a story as complex as yours. But how do you unlock those stories with someone you've just met?

Working in food and hospitality design, I’m always on the lookout for what's new in the space. So, the moment I heard about SingleThread, I booked a night for my husband and me as an anniversary gift.

I suppose it’s an occupational hazard that I couldn’t help but notice the thoughtfully considered details that give SingleThread its hospitality superpowers. We were swept off our feet personally, but I also walked away with design insights that I took back to work.

At IDEO, we look to extremes for inspiration—people, brands, or environments that exaggerate specific behaviors. When we designed a line of ergonomic kitchen tools, we prototyped with both sous chefs and with those suffering from arthritis. Edge cases reveal what is or is not working, helping us generate opportunities for innovation.

SingleThread is most certainly an edge case. The name says it all—their vision is highly crafted, and a thread of that vision is woven into every detail of the experience.

3 lessons SingleThread Farms taught me about designing modern hospitality:

1. Don't tell your brand story, weave it in

At some hotels, the brand or theme takes over everything. Sweden’s IceHotel, Japan’s Robot Hotels, Underwater, and Disney's Star Wars hotel might be fun once or twice, but they're less about a tailored guest experience, and more about their own story.

To say that SingleThread’s theme is “farm to table” would be a gross oversimplification. The larger purpose, as its creators Kyle and Katina Connaughton shared with us, is “to be an extension of our home.” That is demonstrated in every detail, from the open kitchen serving a kaiseki-inspired menu that changes with the micro-seasonal produce Katina has pulled out of the ground that day, to the guest rooms upstairs, where the mini-bar is replaced by a curated selection of gratuit handmade snacks and beverages.

About halfway into our 11-course dining journey, we were presented with a basket of mismatched sake cups and invited to “choose one that speaks to us.” That was a first.

2. Aim for personal, not personalized

Personalization, the longstanding holy grail of the hospitality industry, is being reframed in the sharing economy. Airbnb's “belong anywhere” message is made real by guided experiences that help guests feel at home in the local culture.

SingleThread builds in degrees of freedom that make the experience feel personal, not programmed: A towel hook thoughtfully placed just outside the shower door so you aren’t left to tiptoe across the floor, a wooden ladle atop a tray over the bath, pre-filled with soaking salts.

At a nightly pre-dinner meeting, the staff reviews guests’ bios and dietary requests so they can adjust the dining experience in a seamless, subtle way.

3. Put smart tech in a supporting role

Tech features in hospitality are growing fast. From Disney’s MagicBands to mobile check-in apps, hospitality providers are looking for new ways to meet guests’ needs.

SingleThread has mastered hidden tech, integrating just enough to create a highly sensual, human-centered experience that connects them more deeply with their guests.

Guests prepay through a reservation ticket system called Tock, so that any transactions that might take them out of the moment—tipping the bellhop, front desk check-in—are removed from the equation.

A front door camera helps to ensure you are greeted by name when you walk inside.

For keyless entry into your room, you’re invited to create your own passcode.

Each room is equipped with a Teforia tea system that calibrates the exact time, temperature, and amount of water needed to brew you the perfect cup.

These smart tech moments aren't show-stoppers. They're there to remove friction from the experience.

Though SingleThread Farms is a boutique hotel, it doesn’t take five stars, or dollar signs, to show guests you truly understand their needs. It was the small design moments that made our stay an experience I (and my marriage) will never forget.

Have your own outstanding hospitality experience to share? Share with me on Twitter @MeijaJ with the hashtag #HospitalitySuperpower.

Header image by Garrett Rowland.

Where would you like your breakfast served? Your room? The study? The roof? This was the kind of tough decision I faced during my stay at the SingleThread Farms, the highly anticipated inn and restaurant that opened in Healdsburg late last year. After the 90 minute trek from San Francisco, I was welcomed by name and guided to my room, where I tapped a code I’d made up for keyless entry. I never touched a credit card during my stay.

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.