kate spade new york has been an iconic fashion brand since the early 90s, when its handbags first stormed the Manhattan fashion scene. Since then, the company has expanded and evolved into a global lifestyle brand.

With e-commerce reshaping the retail landscape and redefining the role of brick and mortar stores in recent years, kate spade new york leadership asked: How can we make the kate spade new york specialty store experience, well, more special?

kate spade new york already held the key to a new way of thinking about a multichannel customer experience: a brand promise “to inspire her to lead an interesting life.” Hoping to bring that promise to life in store, they engaged IDEO to help make it happen. The solution was for kate spade new york to take the brand message from words to action in the form of a customized guest journey. The team created more than 100 design concepts and strategies for building a retail experience that rewards curiosity and sparks artistic and literary exploration.

“In partnership with IDEO, we spoke extensively with our customers and associates to better understand how we can provide the most engaging and fulfilling in-store experience,” said Mary Beech, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Kate Spade & Company. “The new store elements that we introduced speak to our customer’s personality and appetite for adventure while aiming to enhance engagement with new and existing customers.”

The team knew that striking the right balance of digital tools in in-store interactions was pivotal in allowing two people to have a more rich and collaborative face-to-face connection. The concepts include things like “pack a purse” to test drive how many everyday items can fit in different style handbags, cheeky “dare cards” that challenge customers to go on an exciting adventure with their new purchase, and digital moments like the “shoe selfie” platform that would allow a guest to share “I’m thinking about them” heels or just-purchased flats with her social network. IDEO live-prototyped a selection of concepts in stores around the country and saw a high correlation between customers’ positive reactions and their subsequent purchasing decisions.

“At kate spade new york, our brand promise is to inspire women to live a more interesting life,” said Jenica Myszkowski, Vice President of Stores at Kate Spade & Company. “Our new and improved guest journey experience puts our customers at the center, allowing us to more fully deliver on our brand promise in our retail stores with a stronger vision and purpose for our stores and our store teams.”

To deliver the newly envisioned guest service experience, the role of the sales associates needed to be redesigned, as well. The kate spade new york and IDEO team created a new role: the Muse, whose job is to live the brand promise of an interesting life and to inspire customers to do the same. The reimagined role ultimately shifted the focus in specialty stores from selling to inspiring and building long-lasting relationships with guests.

Athletes’ Performance and its subsidiary, Core Performance, were both founded on a single mission: to enhance human performance through a holistic approach to mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery. Athletes’ Performance focused on elite professional athletes, and Core Performance provided corporate fitness programs and workouts for employees hoping to lead more healthful lives, and both found a footing in the competitive health and fitness market.

Faced with a challenge to redefine the brands, IDEO designers collaborated with the founder and integrated marketing team to unite Athletes’ Performance and Core Performance under one name that would cut across the health, fitness, and wellness markets to reach a full breadth of audiences and partners. Under a new name, EXOS, the teams created a brand identity system unified by its founding mission and focus on human performance.

For the new EXOS brand, IDEO designers created a visual language using “x” and “+” to highlight the progress from goals to achievement, as well as a system of interaction for athletes of all performance levels. The team also created a bespoke digital tool, outfitted with custom software, which gave designers both guidance within the brand guidelines and creativity to explore new products and contexts.

Imagine this: Your company has just gone through a $2 billion merger. You show up at work to find an invitation from the CEO asking you to help shape the bank’s future. This is what happened when Umpqua acquired Sterling Financial Corporation in 2014, doubling its size and resulting in the creation of the West Coast’s largest community bank overnight. With a mission to be “the world’s greatest bank,” CEO Ray Davis seized the moment to reinvest in design across the organization.

Umpqua asked IDEO to help examine the brand they had and take it to a new level. They wanted to find out: how can we leverage our strength and reputation by activating the brand in new ways to deepen employee and customer engagement and foster continued growth?

IDEO identified three core brand opportunities and a newly articulated purpose statement that became a launch pad for more than 15 different concepts to express the brand internally and externally.

Inside Umpqua, company evangelists handed out notebooks with tips on “how to be better-makers,” and associates now participate in collaborative design challenges through an internal tool built on IDEO’s OI Engine, software that fosters open innovation. The design challenges are drawing unprecedented participation of 84 percent among employees and are having a real impact on the organization. Of the five they’ve run in two years, the company has implemented three winning ideas including a buddy program for new hires or transferees that upwards of 1,000 associates could experience over the next year.

WATCH: Umpqua Bank on using the OI Engine platform

IDEO also worked with Umpqua’s team to conceive digital products including a new digital app called Raindrop that lets people bank in the way that they think about saving and spending, not the way a bank does. It’s due for release in 2016.

To introduce all of this work, IDEO set up an immersive exhibition at Umpqua’s headquarters in Portland. Teams large and small, including the executive and associates from across the company, walked through the exhibit and witnessed how the brand impacts every aspect of their business, from employee engagement to product development. It was signed on the spot by Davis, who invited employees to sign their names, too.

The sweltering summers in China can be insufferable—especially for people who like to wear jeans.

Lee Jeans, in its quest to boost its brand differentiation among an expanding market of apparel brands that also use fabric performance as their unique selling point, like Uniqlo and Levi’s, developed denim that’s cooler to wear during hot weather. It found a novel solution in an ancient material: jade. When woven into denim, crushed jade particles maintain the coolest temperature and, alongside other technological enhancements made to the fabric, pull sweat away from the body. The fabric dries quickly, creating a refreshing cooling sensation.

The immense popularity of jade in China makes the denim a natural fit for Lee’s Asian market, and although Lee’s jade-infused fabric was entirely unique, the company needed to differentiate its inventive new product from a rapidly expanding market of high-tech fabric alternatives made specifically for hot weather.

Lee and its parent company, VF Corporation, saw an opportunity to create a new product that helps position the company not just as a premium brand, but one that leads with innovation. Lee came to IDEO to help design the go-to-market and launch strategy for the new line of jade-infused fabric. Looking for insight, designers conducted research in multiple cities in China and India, seeking out those who were committed to wearing jeans despite the most extreme circumstances—the denim-clad bicyclists pedaling through sweltry city streets, the basketball players on the court, commuters who stripped to their underwear while driving and wriggled back into their jeans upon arrival. The common thread: They were all steadfast in their preference for thick, heavy denim, no matter how hot it got.

The resulting strategy for product launch: positioning jade—a traditional material that has strong cultural and spiritual meaning—as a high-tech solution for the contemporary lifestyle of young people. IDEO helped Lee name the new line JadeFusion and created a system of messaging to communicate that these aren’t just jeans—they’re jeans with a fascinating narrative woven within; a hierarchy of messaging that blends jade’s exotic premium significance with a very modern technical story. Lee salespeople learned how to share the story with customers, encouraging them to talk about jade-cooling technology at work, on the streets, and even on the basketball court.

The JadeFusion line sold out within seven weeks of its debut. The launch, which was originally limited to mainland China and Hong Kong, was expanded to India, Malaysia, and Thailand, and sales orders doubled for the following year. Along the way, Lee developed a new understanding of how to incorporate customers’ input and be open to discovery and inspiration from the very start of planning a product launch.

During the project shareback, one of the designers held up a piece of paper with this quote:

“Interacting with legal was one of the worst experiences of my life.”

Full stop.

Maybe the commenter was talking about me. Maybe she was talking about another lawyer. Maybe she was commenting on the legal process generally. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my career, I thought about the impact I have on the people I interact with in my role as a lawyer, and how that impact might be quite negative.

We never discussed anything like this in law school. Instead, we focused on “making cases,” “winning arguments,” and “clerking for the right judge.” Later, as Biglaw associates, we talked about “billing hours,” “closing deals,” and “working with the right partner.” But I don’t recall ever being asked, “How did your client feel about how you handled that matter?” or, “How did the lawyer on the other side of that call feel about the interaction?” Or, for that matter, “Are you providing a colleague or client with one of the worst experiences of his life?” We talk about these issues all the time at IDEO when it comes to our clients and their customers, but they aren’t things I ever talked about with fellow attorneys.

In that moment, I made a decision: There was no reason I couldn’t do my job — and do it well — and care about the experience of the people I was affecting.

Fast forward to 2014. I took my mother to see a neurologist at Stanford University. He confirmed our family’s worst fears: My mother had Alzheimer’s, and it was advancing. Rapidly. This was devastating, hard to hear news. And yet, in the car on the way home, I felt strangely positive. Why? Because the doctor took the time to translate the complexity of her disease into language we could understand as non-medical professionals. He walked us through very difficult territory with honesty and compassion. He was respectful of her even as she repeatedly asked him the same questions. And he highlighted the factors we could control. We couldn’t change her disease, but we could approach it proactively and honestly, while giving her as much dignity and comfort as possible.

What if the experience of working with a lawyer felt more like this?

Even though law and legal processes are designed by humans for humans, the reality is that most interactions with legal professionals don’t feel very good.Interactions are often harsh, transactional, and bereft of transparency, emotion, or humanity. Touch points are filled with frustration, confusion, and disempowerment. Lawyers may resort to aggressive tactics as a way to navigate conflict or out of fear they will be taken advantage of in a given situation. Worse, many lawyers I talk to seem to accept this status quo. That’s just the way law is practiced. That’s just the way it is.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Instead, we can practice what my colleague, IDEO partner Chris Domina, in 2011 termed “human-centered” lawyering (when he asked me if I knew “any human-centered lawyers outside of IDEO?”). Human-centered lawyers are those who can treat legal problems as human problems, translate legal complexity into relatable frameworks, and navigate tension and conflict with skill, patience, and respect for all stakeholders involved.

In working toward becoming more human-centered, I’ve come to understand the value of making emotional connections with individuals I’m interacting with and not treating legal matters and the people connected to them as purely transactional. Empathy, the key to human-centered design, is the same key that opens the door to human-centered lawyering.

For example, instead of being frustrated that opposing attorneys are “rejecting” my proposals or “not seeing it my way,” I’ve learned to try to put myself in their shoes. If I were representing their client or working for their in-house legal team, what would I be most concerned about? What problems are they trying to head off, and what problems have they had in the past in these types of situations? Are they frustrated because this is just one of too many things they have to deal with today? From this very human place, I can be a collaborative problem solver, rather than someone engaging in an argument to win a point or “push back” because that’s what lawyers are “supposed to do.”

In being human-centered, am I any less firm when it comes to working through difficult legal challenges? No; my colleagues generally refer to me as “strong” and “confident.” Do I “just give” on issues during a challenging negotiation? Not at all. IDEO doesn’t compromise its people or its business, no matter how big the deal or how aggressive the opposition. But neither do we compromise our compassion.

Most legal professionals I know have had interactions with other lawyers who use anger, hostility, power tactics, aggression, and rude or belittling behavior to try to navigate legal situations (and most of us have also been guilty of the same at times). In addition to harming the relationships their clients are trying to build, those behaviors leave their mark on people. They leave people fearful or resentful of lawyers, and of course they tarnish the profession’s reputation. That’s not the kind of impact I want myself or my team to have on the world.

Is the legal team at IDEO perfect? Do we succeed in making every legal interaction with people inside and outside of IDEO positive? Of course not. But as a team, we have a clear purpose: to provide human-centered legal support and solutions to the IDEO community and to the broader legal industry.

Stay tuned—and stay human—lawyers.

This story was originally published on Medium. For more on the subject of human-centered lawyering, read this story by legal designer Sean Hewens and this interview with IDEO's general counsel Rochael Adranly.

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Not long after I began working with IDEO, I had the privilege of taking part in a project to design how its new internal legal group would operate. For those unfamiliar with IDEO’s process, each project begins with a “looking in” phase in which the design team interviews project stakeholders and shares their feedback.

Because usage is tied to a period of time, a digital calendar with interactive feedback seemed like the perfect way to represent a year in the life of the Chicago studio. There would be three elements to it: a milled piece of wood whose undulating shape would represent changes in energy usage over time; an interactive display that would show usage in more detail; and a set of buttons that would let users call up specific data on the display.

The Code

This is a tricky project for someone who doesn’t know anything about coding let alone a programming language. I had to figure out how to manipulate the usage data using tools from my life as an industrial designer. I started with Grasshopper, a visual programming language and a plugin for the 3-D modeling software Rhinoceros that I learned how to use as an undergrad. Instead of writing code, you connect boxes of different abilities to each other. By connecting the boxes with each other, I was able to pull in the data from my Excel spreadsheet and convert it into 3-D shape; then it was ready to work within Rhinoceros. Because Grasshopper is a plugin for Rhinoceros, you can see what you’re doing as you go. After some long nights, I figured out how to display the data in a 3-D shape.

Prototyping

With the code all set, I moved on to creating the touchable surface. I made some quick 3-D prints of the data I created in Rhinoceros, then made a low-fidelity video prototype to display how the installation would look and work. The idea was to let the user feel the changing data via a touchable surface, and give him/her a visual representation of the data on the screen.

Build Phase

Step 1: Milling the wood

The touchable interface was the main piece of my installation, so it was crucial to get it right.

I bought one long piece of walnut and used the table saw to cut it to the length I needed, then glued the resulting pieces together. I created the undulating surface with a CNC table mill, which took roughly 10 hours. It was loud and dusty, but worth it. To get the perfect finish, I had to sand it — a lot. I probably could have stopped earlier, but I wanted to have a perfect piece. Then, I rubbed it with Danish oil to protect the surface and bring out the wood grain.

Step 2: The visual feedback

To create the visual feedback, I used a Raspberry Pi, a capacitive touch board (MPR121), a 7” HDMI screen, wires, and some copper rivets. With no experience with Raspberry Pi or electrical engineering, I had to catch up quickly. To display the data on the screen, I used a handy piece of code I found on the internet called PiPresents. For input, I used capacitive touch buttons, which I linked to specific images that display the data.

Step 3: Panel assembly

This step was one of the harder parts. I had to bring all the different pieces together and create the framed panel. I started with a cheap frame from an art supply store, then created an acrylic, laser-etched back panel, spray painted it black, and sanded it to make it matte. Next, I attached the wooden panel to the screen, and connected the 12 capacitive touch buttons, one for each month, arranged along the long axis of the wooden surface. Once everything was in place, users could feel the wood to get a sense of our changing energy usage, then touch the buttons to see a drilled down explanation of the data by month. About a month and a half after I first came up with the idea, it was finally ready to present to the studio.

A big thank you to the whole studio, especially to Chris Gold for helping me during the milling process, Rob Rehrig for giving me a Raspberry Pi 101, and Sophie Feng for taking awesome final pictures and video. Want to recreate the project? Check out the code on Github.

As an industrial designer, I’m always eager to bring together the digital and the physical. So when I discovered that the Chicago studio was collecting data about their energy usage, I decided to create a project that would make that information feel real, teach me more about other disciplines, and serve as a gift to the studio that had hosted me as an intern for half a year.

"Arrivo!," I shout to the taxi driver as I close the gate of the building with my foot. I speed walk towards his car, parked 50 meters down the road, drag the suitcase on the back seat and ask the driver to take me to the airport. My holiday in Napoli—my hometown—is over. I'm already shivering at the idea of setting foot back in London.

Halfway through the trip, my eyes catch on an unusual detail. A tennis ball cut in half to fit the top of the taxi's gearstick. I can't help but investigate.

"Ascolta (Listen)," he says in the gruff voice of a longtime smoker, "with this heat, my job gets very challenging." Despite air conditioning, he explains, the sun makes the gearstick slippery and hot, which makes for a rather unpleasant driving experience.

To tackle this problem, he decided to carefully slice a tennis ball in half and place over the gearstick's handle. "It's a precise job," he explains. "You need to make sure it won't move once it's placed." The texture of the tennis ball allows for a better grip, and doesn't get hot in the sun—ta-da!

He brakes lightly to come to a stop at the departures terminal. As he rummages for my change, he surprises me with a Steve Jobs-style "And one more thing ..."

"You know, it's not just about the function of the tennis ball, it's also the excitement of getting a new one every year. That bright yellow marks the start of a new season—it's something I look forward to!"

I gently close the cab door, roll my suitcase to the entrance and, out of the corner of my eye, catch him smiling in the dense, departing traffic.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

In one sentence, who are you?

A queer, shapeshifting, creative cat mama with a big heart.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am currently an illustrator and a textile designer. When I was a kid, I used to draw little doodles on dinner napkins and give one to everyone at the table. I loved sharing my art with everyone.

When I was around six, my mom enrolled me in a summer program at The Baum School of Art in Pennsylvania. There, I learned all the technical aspects of drawing and painting. I went to Baum every summer for 10 years. Then I got an academic scholarship to Pratt Institute.

The next thing I knew, I was living in Brooklyn and working my ass off. During my senior year, I focused my thesis on textile design. I always liked the idea of bringing my designs off the page and applying them to T-shirts, pillows, hats, chairs, bedding, etc.

I graduated in 2015, and a few of my friends from college and I started Fem Foundry. One of the best things about art school is getting your work critiqued by your peers, and the Foundry lets us continue that. Plus, we do a lot of other fun things, like organizing drink and draws, having gallery shows, and tabling at art fairs.

Like many other twenty-somethings, I had to start paying rent after school. I worked a few odd jobs—did branding for local restaurants, taught painting classes, designed event posters, and helped out at an animation studio. There were many times when I had no idea what I was doing, but I’m a big believer in fake it 'til you make it.

About a year after graduation, I landed a job as a textile designer at Deborah Connolly Designs, a small company in Midtown Manhattan. I went into the interview clueless about the industry, and now, two years later, I can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about designing bath towels, beach towels, kitchen towels—really any kind of towel.

3 favorite possessions?

1. The first and only quilt I ever made
2. A white gold locket my mother gave me with our pictures in it
3. My black denim Fem Foundry jacket that I decked out with pins and patches and my eyeglass collection

What does a typical work session look like?

Right now, I’m designing beach towels for next summer. There’s usually some sort of inspiration or color story for the designs, and then it begins! I work primarily on a Wacom drawing tablet with either Photoshop, Illustrator, or Nedgraphics. Most designs go through a few revisions before I send them out for production.

When I’m illustrating at home, I like using traditional mediums like gouache paint and charcoal pencil. I also enjoy playing around on my iPad in Procreate. It’s exciting what technology is bringing to the table for creative people.

I’m a total podcast junkie while working. Some of my favorites are Reply All, Freakonomics Radio, On Being, Revisionist History, Lovett It or Leave It, Nancy, Death, Sex & Money. If I sit in silence, I tend to overthink things; listening to something keeps my momentum going, and it’s a great way to track how long I’ve been working on a project.

How do you get over creative block?

At work, I’ll just start a new design in order to keep the juices flowing, and then when I’m in my groove, the trickier designs come more easily. With painting and illustrating, I try to step away and come back to it later, or sometimes I flip a drawing backwards or upside-down so I can see it from a new perspective.

What was the last item on your to do list?

Buy cat food at the bodega.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Technology is going to change everything. Hopefully, by 2078, old, white, male Republicans won't be calling all the shots in politics, and there will be peace and happiness among all races and religions.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Oooh… Lauren Callaghan is amazing. She’s such a talented illustrator, I’m very into her use of patterns and bright colors. The designer Ramey Masri is mind blowing, he runs the Instagram @space.ram. Everything is rainbows— everything. I bought some silkscreen prints from Natalie Andrewson at MoCCA Fest a few weeks ago and hung them by my desk. It makes me happy to look at them. I also love Oliver Hibert. His graphic, funkadelic paintings are amazing. But honestly, I’m constantly creative crushin’ on all the talented members of Fem Foundry. I’m so thankful to have them as my friends; they are such an inspiration.

Check out their work on Instagram; or on Facebook.

Cassandra and I first met when we were young, poor, and living in Bed Stuy. As I floundered, she settled into what would become her long-term home. Her art connected her to the people around her, first as a student, then as a freelancer painting murals and business logos for neighbors, and, most recently, as a founder of a local women's art collective called Fem Foundry. Cassandra's work is unflinchingly bright, peculiar, and accessible, even when life and Brooklyn are not. I'll let her take it from here:

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.