Have you ever had that gnawing feeling, just as you’re sitting down to your computer at work, that you’ve left the central heating on at home? You’re not alone. Rising concern about wasted energy and the financial cost of unregulated thermostats, as well as the convenience of a connected and cozy home, all point to the rise of the smart thermostat. Berg Insights projects it’ll grow 64.7 percent over the next five years.

Founded in Munich in 2011, tado° is Europe’s biggest maker of smart thermostats and air-conditioning controls. Looking to grow, tado° approached IDEO, a longtime collaborator, with a late-stage prototype for a new, wall-mounted gadget to connect any air-conditioning unit to the web so it could be controlled remotely through a smartphone app.

Dubbed tado° Cooling, the device recognizes when people leave their house and heats or cools the house upon their return. The brand tasked IDEO with a three-fold goal: gauge interest in the device, raise brand awareness, and work out product/market fit.

After stakeholder interviews, research, and prototyping, IDEO supported tado°’s team in refreshing the industrial design of the hardware and creating a distinctive yet unified user-interface language for the brand’s existing and future products.

To work out what potential customers thought of tado° Cooling, tado° turned to a novel research medium: Kickstarter. Its ultimate goal? Knowing whether people would part with their money for one. The IDEO team provided an overarching crowdfunding strategy, including funding goals, giving tiers, and marketing, and shot the brand’s Kickstarter campaign video.

As a result, the campaign burst through its $150,000 funding goal to $200,000, and scored coverage in a raft of tech media outlets including TechCrunch, GigaOm, TheNextWeb, Engadget, and PC Magazine. After hitting its “stretch goal,” tado° is adding non-A/C device controls, a Windows Phone app, and IFTTT and Jawbone Up integration.

In addition to media coverage, and showing the public’s appetite for the device, the Kickstarter community’s conversation unearthed further user insights that fed into product development, according to tado° head of design, Jens Pohl.

Buoyed by that success, tado° enlisted IDEO to translate user insights and a big-picture overview of the connected home sector into new services to enhance the device’s UX, and introduced new business models to strengthen its European brand strategy. Early visual concepts, learnings, and evidence from this exploration supported the brand’s investor pitch, securing a further round of $15 million venture capital.

Dr. Reddy’s, a 36-year-old global pharmaceutical company headquartered in India, was growing at a rapid pace. Over the years, the company’s main focus had been on producing affordable generic medication. But with more than 24,000 employees and seven distinct business units operating in 100 countries, there was an urgent need to identify a core, unifying purpose—one that would articulate a set of shared values and align leaders on key business decisions and goals.

G.V. Prasad, the company’s Co-Chairman and Managing Director, knew that the vision had to be simple and elegant–an emotional drive that every employee across the company could relate to and act upon.

Prasad partnered with IDEO to distill the focus that would align the company. Over the course of several months, Dr. Reddy’s team worked with IDEO to learn about the needs of everyone, from shop floor workers to scientists, external partners and investors. Together, they defined and distilled the essence of the company, paring it down to four simple words that center on the patient: Good health can’t wait.

The simplicity of these words belie their power. According to Prasad, the newly articulated purpose has resonated across the company, changing the whole culture of the organization. The idea of infusing a sense of urgency and nimbleness to their systems as a means of serving their customers has had a direct application in almost every corner of the business. Employees connect the message to their own experience, and each of the different business units are now moving towards a common goal.

A Shift Inside

“Good health can’t wait” has become a powerful recruitment tool and employee rallying cry. It makes clear that the company is in the business of serving patients, not just creating products, no matter how innovative or affordable. This has given a new sense of meaning to all personnel, from frontline sales representatives to senior leaders to scientists. Many key decision-makers, including new CEO Erez Israeli, share that the purpose statement inspired them to join the company.

Articulating Dr. Reddy’s purpose has empowered these employees to take risks, experiment, and work together. For example, the marketing department has refocused its efforts on finding solutions that improve patients’ consistent use of their medications. And motivated by the idea that patients can no longer wait for a cure, employees from different disciplines are coming together to find inventive ways of bringing new products to market in record time.

“The website medznat.ru required immense collaboration between various teams—medical, information technology, marketing, and analytics,” says Mvsma Raja, Head of Strategy and Marketing for Emerging Markets. “This served as a platform to bring the latest happenings in the area of pain management to doctors in Russia, who we learned are looking for the latest medical updates on the go.” Building on this cross-functional collaboration and momentum, Dr. Reddy’s established an internal design studio dedicated to using consumer insights and rapid prototyping to drive innovation.

New Offerings

“Our brand belief has inspired how we’ve thought about our future growth,” says CEO Erez Israeli. The new purpose unlocked a series of initiatives, including the aforementioned website for Russian physicians and innovative pill packaging that helps patients better understand their instructions.

Purple Pack is a new type of pill package that ensures that vital information like the expiration date is not torn off and thrown away. Born out of Dr. Reddy’s in-house design studio, Purple Pack allows the pharmacist or patient to mark their daily dosage and reminders on the packaging itself, as paper prescriptions are often misplaced.

A Business Boost

“Good health can’t wait” has not only attracted and unified talent and inspired new offerings, it’s boosted both sales and profit. For example, Dr. Reddy’s generic oral diabetes medication, Metsmall, has become the fourth largest brand in India based on the number of pills sold. The medication is distinct from competitors’ versions in that the pill is smaller and easier to swallow—a clear embodiment of product development oriented around the patient. With its signature Purple Pack convenience packaging, the medication has been one of the fast-growing Indian pharmaceutical brands over the last two years.

Looking ahead, both Prasad and Israeli hope to continue building a purpose-led culture that influences the business from the inside out, inspiring employees to be empathetic and responsive and realizing its mission to deliver good health to all.

In 2006, the MacArthur Foundation made what became a big bet about the future of education, shifting its attention away from the traditional school-based model of reform toward a more youth-centered approach.

By 2014, the bet was starting to pay off, but for it to really succeed, it needed an innovative path to scale and an entrepreneurial approach to sustainability. That’s when MacArthur came to IDEO for help in designing a new organization.

Together, IDEO and MacArthur set out to transform the foundation’s efforts into a self-sustaining enterprise that could balance the social responsibilities of a nonprofit with the lasting viability of a business—an opportunity that was as much about designing a new infrastructure as it was about creating a new culture.

Using a novel prototyping process, IDEO created three illustrated scenarios to tell different versions of LRNG’s possible future, each with an alternative portraiture of its purpose, vision, operating structure, product portfolio, and business model. Through a playful, modular storytelling structure, the stakeholders considered the potential trade-offs of the different approaches and how to prioritize their organizational goals with clear definitions of success.

These different future-forward scenarios helped funders and partners grasp a radical organizational vision, as well as a clear operational model that was go-to-market-ready.

In October 2015, the MacArthur Foundation launched Collective Shift, the organization behind LRNG, with $25 million in seed funding and 30 partners, including Arizona State University, Gap Foundation, the Boys & Girls Clubs, Electronic Arts, and musical artist John Legend.

Based on the scenarios created by IDEO, LRNG is dedicated to creating a “learning as a lifestyle” movement that will transform the learning landscape and close the equity and opportunity gap for young people.

Hundreds of millions of people, from excitable teens driving their first hatchback, to new parents going in for a minivan, have driven Fords off lots around the world since the first Ford Model A was produced in 1903. And cars have changed how we shop, travel, and work; they’ve reshaped our homes, towns, and the world’s infrastructure.

Today, Ford, along with the entire industry, is at an inflection point. As millions around the world move into gridlocked, polluted cities, the allure of owning a shiny new car has dulled. In some places, young people are driving less, and getting their licenses later or not at all. Lightening their load, city dwellers are relying on ride-sharing services and other alternatives to individual ownership.

Technology underpins that shift from ownership to usership. Smartphones, sensors, and open data have enabled new ways of getting from point A to B: from car-sharing services like Zipcar to taxi services like Uber or clever transport apps like Citymapper that help people skip effortlessly between the bus, a shared bike scheme, and renting a car.

While the owner of the very first commercially available Model A—Chicagoan dentist, Ernest Pfennig—couldn’t see more than a century ago how cars would change the world, Ford is squinting into its future by prototyping it now. Building on a longstanding relationship with IDEO, the carmaker approached us, along with a number of other partners, to undertake two of 25 experiments exploring a car company’s place in the changing world of mobility.

The first, Data-Driven Insurance, investigates a new pay-as-you-go insurance offer based on people’s driving behavior, as measured by a small adapter plugged into the car. The second, Infocycle, plots a snapshot of how bikes traverse the city and interact with cars and public transport by using Ford’s open source API, Open XC, to track cyclists around San Francisco.

Tackling the tangled ecosystems of bike sharing, private cars, and open city data proved an international effort. The two projects brought together a multidisciplinary team of researchers, hardware and software developers, data scientists, and interaction, industrial, and business designers from IDEO’s San Francisco, Palo Alto, Chicago, and London studios.

Have we cracked the future of mobility? Probably not. And that’s okay, says Fields. Smart mobility is simply part of Ford’s journey of evolution. Along with global competitions, collaborations with universities, and opening up their hardware and software platform Open XC, these experiments help Ford meet the needs of a fast-changing mobile world. “As we drive innovation in every part of our business,” Fields said, “we are determined to learn, to take risks, to challenge custom and question tradition, and to change our business going forward.”

More information on Ford’s Smart Mobility projects can be found here.

Her face, sitting in front of a beautiful brick wall, had been on my screen for weeks as we worked on our current project. Before COVID-19 sent us off to work from home, we used to work together on projects at the IDEO Cambridge studio. Now she was living in yet another window on my desktop.

I’m an interaction designer by trade, but I’m also a photographer. I’ve managed to bring those two passions together in my work at IDEO. Now, with all the available software, I can do the former from my house, but I had pressed pause on much of my photography work—and I missed it.

From my couch, I realized I wasn’t missing the weight of my camera or meticulously packing my camera bag—I missed people. Could I recapture the magic of an in-person portrait session from my living room? And could I make all these video calls feel less soul-sucking in the process?

Given the constraints of a global pandemic, I asked myself a how might we: How might we photograph people in a socially-distanced way while still preserving a sense of intimacy?

That’s where Tamara comes back in. I’d seen one or two photographers shoot “virtual portraits” online and I was inspired to give it a go. I was nervous, but experimenting with somebody I knew from “real life” prevented the process from feeling too daunting.

It went like this: During (yes, you guessed it) a video call, I asked Tamara to choose a few well-lit places in her home where she’d been spending a lot of time during lockdown. As she showed me her apartment through the laptop’s camera, it was like the world suddenly expanded.

We decided on a spot in the kitchen where she had been making a lot of tea. In order to frame the shot, Tamara created an improvised laptop stand using a chair. I asked her to open the camera on her phone and set it to selfie mode with a 10 second timer. She positioned the phone next to her laptop and we worked together to match the angle of the phone to what I was seeing on my screen as closely as possible.

Then Tamara pressed the button on her phone to begin taking photos and I gave direction on positioning and lighting. Waiting for the countdown on the timer was a little awkward, but not awful, especially since we knew each other well. Then I would review the photos as she sent them via text.

The final result was pretty good. Tamara looked relaxed, almost joyful. I was inspired to continue.

I reached out to a few more IDEOers and continued to refine the process. Next I shot Natalie. She’d recently (and begrudgingly) acquired an air conditioner to make working from home more comfortable. This had become a hot topic of conversation during our many calls. When I asked her to take me somewhere she’d been spending a lot of time during the pandemic, we naturally ended up in the coolest corner of the house: in front of the AC.

A few days later, Shavon showed me around her new apartment. We brought her dog Oliver’s bed into the frame to try to lure him into the background. We snapped a few shots when he showed up.

Todd also moved during the pandemic. When I dropped into his new home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, he took me outside to his deck where he has coffee every morning. I love how the trees seem to absorb him into the picture.

Next I "went" to Virginia to shoot my friend Favin. The first location we scouted was outside in the blazing summer heat. After sweating through a few shots that felt a little too staged (like the one on the left below), we moved inside. Favin picked a new, more comfortable spot: the couch she'd been spending time on during quarantine. We ended up with the shot on the right, which we both liked better.

My colleague Greg uses his Instagram account to chronicle the records he listens to every Sunday. I asked if he might let me photograph him where the magic happens: in front of his record collection.

After we finished, he sent me this shot of Oscar, his three year old.

Seeing my colleagues and shooting photos again were both a relief. As far as new hobbies go, maybe this one was a bit strange, but it gave me back what I was missing: my community. Here are three things I learned by stepping outside my comfort zone and doing virtual portraits.

#1. Everything is different now, so we're all adapting

The unexpected constraints of a pandemic have revealed a completely new way of working. I no longer go on long walks to scout locations; instead I get walked around virtually. Photos are framed by leaning an iPhone up against a pile of books or a toaster, and everything shot is from a phone. And now I can time travel—I can shoot in the UK in the morning, Massachusetts in the afternoon, and California at night.

I wouldn’t have dreamed up these strategies in the past, but given the constraints, it works.

#2. These remote sessions are a collaboration between photographer and subject

In traditional photography, the person holding the camera is in control. Now that my hands are empty, who’s in charge?

I asked Alyson, a former IDEOer, if she’d take me to the beach where she surfs every morning. I had a shot in mind: Alyson from below, holding her board with the line of waves behind her.

We nailed it. A few minutes later, a man walking by started talking to Alyson, asking her what she was doing with a tripod and two phones on the beach (understandable). We ended up taking this second shot mid-conversation. We both liked it better.

From behind my screen, I didn’t have the opportunity to adjust the angle of the board or tweak the lighting—I had very little control about what was actually happening and the portrait still came out great. Here’s how I see this remote photography experience compared to other modes:

When I shared this project with Jane Fulton Suri, IDEO's first design researcher, she told me, “You are unlocking something in both yourself and the subject—it’s a negotiated process.” I can’t help but agree.

#3. Distance can feel intimate too

Today, video calls can be work meetings, birthday parties, therapy sessions, weddings, murder mystery games, and everything in between. It’s not necessarily intimate by nature, but during a pandemic, the definition of intimacy has changed.

My dear colleague Bruno traveled to Miami to be with his family this past summer. During our portrait session, he told me he’d never lived at home with his little sister, Rafa, who’s four. The setting he chose for his photo was her room. At one point, they were both holding toys as they looked out the window. We captured a quiet, beautiful moment that may have never happened if it weren’t for the pandemic.

I also got my family in on the gig. When I texted my mum to ask her to participate in this project, she was less than enthusiastic.

With her in northern England and me in Massachusetts, I hadn’t seen her in person since September 2019. She had been knitting up a storm—everything from cardigans to giraffes—for my daughter. I explained what I was hoping to do, and when I called, she and my dad had set everything up perfectly. I speak to my mum often, but this was the first time I involved her in a project.

This isn’t the 2020 I dreamed up; I’m sure that’s true for you too. But this experiment has re-inspired me as a photographer. I’ve come to realize that I don’t always need to be fully in control, or even physically present to get interesting, intimate results. In fact, I can be anywhere…even in my living room.

It was during my 800,000th video call of 2020 when I started to wonder about what the rest of my colleague Tamara’s apartment looked like.

What do we stand for in this moment when education is being disrupted, inequities are being exacerbated, and we feel more isolated than ever before?

Knowing we couldn’t answer those questions alone, we hosted listening circles earlier this year to learn how educators were navigating their personal and professional lives as the pandemic surged.

Those sessions surfaced questions like these:

• What can we do to increase students' and families' joy right now?
• Can we build safer and more inclusive spaces for school communities?
• How do we make sure we prioritize—not just accommodate—the needs of marginalized students?
• How might we be healers of a broken system?

These gnarly, complex issues can’t be addressed by any single person or organization, and making progress requires more than repurposed solutions delivered by outsiders. As we’ve learned through our work with teachers and principals, navigating these types of challenges depends on school communities being supported to co-design the future for themselves. As one teacher in Fremont, California told us: “Teaching and innovating have to go hand in hand right now.”

With that in mind, we developed a method for educators to take a co-design approach to driving better outcomes for their schools and the students and families they serve. The Co-Designing Schools Toolkit is a collection of 40 activities, frameworks, and research-based practices designed by The Teachers Guild and School Retool programs, supported by and in collaboration with Riverdale Country School, the Deeper Learning network, Liberatory Design, the Stanford d.school, and the input of educators, local collaborators, and coaches.

At its core, the toolkit is about designing for equity. It complements an approach we developed nearly 10 years ago, the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit, encouraging educators to focus on equity issues in their schools as part of diverse design teams. The toolkit focuses on the needs and lives of students furthest from opportunity, helps teams explore their members’ personal identities, and guides educators in articulating equity goals for their schools. Taken together, these components aren’t just boxes to tick off, but a set of principles that guide the entire change process.

Designing with students, not for them

Myron Long, Principal of The Social Justice School in northeast Washington, DC, says the co-design process has pushed him to fundamentally rethink the role of his students. “We ask for their feedback,” Myron says, “but we actually have to listen to them and then act on it.” For example, rather than assuming his students are always eager to take on justice issues, he asks them, and recalls a student replying, “Can’t we just play dodgeball, too?” Myron urges his colleagues to regularly invite students to be co-designers, and to build in “time to pause, listen to, and design with our students, not just for them.”

Meet parents where they are

Another example of co-design comes from across the country in South County San Diego, where a team of Special Education leaders hosted co-design workshops. Inviting families in was crucial to the team’s efforts to bridge gaps in understanding between parents and the countless people who provide support for students with special needs.

But to ensure that caretakers of children with special needs would be able to show up as collaborators, they knew they’d have to offer some basic support, like hiring professional translators and lining up child care. “The parents felt so respected, valued, and part of the process,” said Olivia Rivera, a team member. Knowing their children would be taken care of during the workshops gave parents the time and space they needed to “share from their hearts.”

Meet 4 educators who are co-designing solutions for their school communities.

We know that no single strategy or process can solve all the complicated issues facing schools. But with roots in design, equity, and community, the Co-Designing Schools Toolkit can support schools and families as they navigate complexity and look ahead to building a collaborative environment in which all students thrive.

Learn more about co-designing a more equitable future for your community at www.codesigningschools.com.

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Along with educators and families around the country, those of us at IDEO who work in education have been asking ourselves, “Where do we go from here?”

Creating a new business is a little bit like being a sea turtle mom—you want to know your environment and create many versions of your offer to increase your odds of success.

When it comes to making sure those sea turtle babies—I mean, uh, your business ideas—thrive, there are two methods that can help: Design thinking is the approach for discovering which of your eggs has the best chances of survival. Once that baby sea turtle has made it successfully into the ocean, the Lean Startup methodology can improve its chances of successfully reaching adulthood.

During a recent project, a client asked me about the difference between the two methods. While these techniques have been around for years now, it’s a question I hear a lot—many folks in the world of business think they should know the difference, but in all honesty, I don’t blame them for being confused. The methods are distinct, but they can (and should) be used in tandem. Businesses could benefit from them both.

Back to the client question—what’s the difference? I started by explaining the difference between the two methods more broadly, laying out what you see in the chart below.

Both approaches are about building new concepts and products, learning as much as possible from users, and from what’s happening in the market. And both methodologies employ an iterative approach that consistently seeks feedback and understanding from customers in the market.

Knowing the difference is one thing—knowing when to use one or the other is just as important.

Design thinking helps teams come up with many new ideas for new offers they then test before settling on the one that is most desirable, feasible, and viable. When applying design thinking, once we’ve uncovered user needs, we create a slew of options that might solve those needs. Each one is intentionally distinct from the others so we can learn what works best. In visualizing design thinking for our curious client, I sketched something like this:

On the other hand, the Lean Startup method helps teams drive toward a better version of an existing or new concept. It’s great if you have a product in-market that you want to tweak so it performs better. That end product may vary significantly from the original, but with the Lean Startup approach, you will be able to trace a path from Version A to Version Z. If I were to sketch it, it looks something like this:

Now that we have the two distinct methods visualized, we can look at applying them. A hypothetical challenge: Let’s imagine we’ve been asked to create a new concept to upend the fact girls are called on less, given less teacher attention, and given fewer opportunities to speak in mixed-gender science classrooms.

As design thinkers, our first step would be to talk to girls, boys, and their science teachers. We would talk to psychologists and sociologists. We would explore the mixed-gender education experience in other cultures. After our research, we’d distill our findings into opportunities for improving the classroom experience. For example: How might we immediately reward girls for participating in class? How might we enable teachers to see the disparity?

Based on those prompts, we would brainstorm a slew of ideas. For example: What if classrooms had a voice monitor that recorded the amount of time that boys spoke versus girls spoke? What if there was an online instructor’s portal with exercises for how to draw out girls in every classroom session? What if there was an app that quizzed students who are girls daily to increase their familiarity and confidence with science material?

We would then take this array of ideas and create prototypes—rough, inexpensive, tangible expressions of the new concepts—and test them. Based on feedback, the next round of prototypes might look something like this:

Maybe the voice monitor didn’t affect teacher behavior, but it did sufficiently frustrate the girls in the classroom—so much so that the next prototype was a wall-mounted display to show a live tally of student input. Because of the diversity of ideas and prototypes that come from a design thinking approach, there’s no clear throughline from Version A to Version Z.

Based on knowing that we are now going to build a voice-activated wall display, we would also use design thinking to build and test the accompanying business model and the product’s visual language. We would think about, build, and test options for how the display will get in front of buyers (the distribution channel), who pays for them and how much (the revenue and pricing model), and which entities might help to expedite our success (partnerships). As we explore the most viable business model, we’re still refining the concept.

Once those designs have been sufficiently evolved, we can plan for a limited launch to test the assumptions behind the products. With a refined concept and business model in hand, we can begin in-market testing.

This is when you want to lay 100 eggs, because only a very few will meet the bars for user desirability, the company’s ability to implement it, and the crucial feature of being financially lucrative for the business. In general, using a design thinking approach for a limited launch of a new concept will reduce risk, while using the Lean Startup methodology during in-market refinement will improve the chances of success.

Sometimes, when a team launches a new product but skips the user-centered design process, they find it may be necessary to pivot. That’s a good time for a team to turn to design thinking to explore why the concept isn’t working, and to find new ways to make it meet user needs.

A sea turtle lays more than 100 eggs each nesting season, but only a handful will successfully hatch and survive the journey into the ocean.

I first saw Sharon during a workshop she delivered for Black Minds Matter. Sharon discussed the creative process as essential to mental health and considered the white dominance of the mainstream art world, all while making an original, delicate art piece with a scalpel and fine magazine paper. (I know—“multi-talented” doesn’t even cover it, right?)

In a session she later ran for IDEO, she created such a warm space while inviting us into the intimacy of her signature collaging process. She inspired us to see what it is when someone dictates the rules of their own art, career journey, how they define and are defined.

The pieces evolving from her “Seeing Ourselves” collection explore identity, representation, portraiture—when the ‘we’ and the ‘our’ are represented in art, education, media. Who is omitted from that narrative and how can art reclaim it?

Sharon is currently exhibiting at the Black Art Matters exhibition. She took a few minutes out of her day to answer some questions I had for her.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am an artist, currently creating work using handmade collage, and an educator who is passionate about changing predominant narratives of underrepresented, marginalized people.

What does a typical work session look like?

I work from a new home studio which I set up a couple of days before lockdown in March 2020. I recently resigned from my part-time job of 4.5 years in a London museum to work as a full-time artist. I am working on several different projects and I find joy in the varied nature of my work.

My work varies greatly from one day to the next: I am currently working on a project with a national museum; I have been commissioned to create a few bespoke collages; I curate creative programs for organizations; and I deliver workshops and create hand-assembled collages. Creating the collages helps me to relax, and in parallel, explore identity and representation of Black womxn.

Does sharing your process while creating such personal work ever feel too intrusive or voyeuristic?

I absolutely love sharing the process of creating my very personal art. My background includes the delivery of teaching sessions in political literacy, also known as citizenship education. I have also taught art workshops and have delivered self-esteem, getting back into work and personal development workshops to women who have lost confidence after a period of unemployment. I have worked with people of all ages from children to the elderly. Sharing my process is a further extension of this highly invigorating work.

How has your work and career evolved?

My career has evolved organically; there hasn’t been a linear route towards my current working life.

My work has been varied, but today, I can now see how so many of these seemingly disparate strands connect to inform my present practice. Early on after my first degree, I worked in recruitment sales and was a headhunter. The skills I gained there have made me feel less awkward when selling my work; I am not afraid to speak to new people.

Training teachers and people of all ages has given me the confidence and skills to deliver creative workshops both online and in person; it is something I absolutely love doing! I am passionate about connecting and communicating with others.

For much of my life I worked with marginalized groups in a variety of settings, ranging from boys in young offender institutions and the elderly living in sheltered housing to underrepresented museum audiences. This work all feeds into my current series entitled “Seeing Ourselves” which focuses on the underrepresentation of Black women. My projects all encourage others to “take up space” in environments where they may be unseen and to use our voices to create positive change and impact.

What does it mean to you to do what you love at this stage?

It feels so wonderful to be doing what I love at this stage! I have wanted to be an artist since I was a child. For many years it felt like I would not make it, but deep down, I did not give up hope.

Money wasn’t available for me to pursue my dreams in my teens, but as a mature student, I got a second degree in Fine Art. I took “the scenic route” and with hindsight I am glad I did. Things are happening exactly when they are supposed to.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

To contact a collector who has commissioned a bespoke, hand-cut collage.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Wow! This is a huge question, which immediately saddens me; in reality it’s unlikely I’ll still be around. It immediately makes me think about the world I would like my children to be living in. I would hope there would be less disparity of wealth and greater visibility and distribution of power across diverse groups.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

To return to Barbados for a holiday someday soon; it is my mother’s country of birth and I have not visited it for 11 years. Despite being born in London, Barbados also feels like "home."

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

I am creative crushin’ on Sheena Rose who is a phenomenal, multidisciplinary, Barbadian artist. Her work spans drawings, hand-drawn animations, performance art, paintings, and new media. I am particularly inspired by Sheena’s vast creative works with powerful overarching themes.

When I first came across Sheena’s work on Instagram, she was creating amazing pieces from her bedroom which inspired me to return to creating after a long time. Through seeing Sheena working in this way, I began to believe it was possible for me to do the same without the luxury of a studio at the time.

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Experiencing Sharon Walters’s work is like being given a comforting, personal gift.

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.