To bring students healthy food at school, San Francisco Unified School District had already hired Revolution Foods, a caterer that serves some of the highest-nutrition meals in the nation. But when the lunch bell rang, 72 percent of those who could afford lunch weren’t showing up; students didn’t want to wait in the long lines or rush to finish, so they headed off-campus to eat.

Working alongside more than 1,300 students, parents, union leaders, nutrition staff, board commissioners, principals, teachers, and community groups, IDEO and SFUSD redesigned school lunch. Together, they developed recommendations for three age-appropriate dining experiences, from communal eating to student-designed spaces to new technology platforms, and worked to develop a robust business model.

In September 2013, the San Francisco Unified School Board expressed unanimous enthusiasm for IDEO’s work, clearing the path for this new vision of student-centered lunch to take root.

You can learn more about the cafeteria, and hear firsthand from the students, in this immersive, interactive story.

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Steelcase and IDEO have been collaborating for more than 25 years. The relationship has influenced furniture design across a range of environments, from work spaces to hospitals to schools, and has resulted in numerous design awards for iconic pieces like the Node Chair for classrooms and the innovative modern office chair Leap WorkLounge.

At the heart of the relationship lie trust and a spirit of collaboration, said IDEO founder David Kelley, allowing the space for innovation. “It has to be the collaboration between our inherent innovation capabilities and their extraordinary internal knowledge about the market and what they do best,” Kelley said. The way IDEO began working with Steelcase decades ago has influenced the way they continue to work today, involved in all areas of the business, from design and engineering to strategy and marketing.

The first collaboration in 1989 was for a new Steelcase division called Details, and featured desktop products to go along with its already successful line of office furniture. From the beginning, IDEO founder David Kelley and a group of designers were involved in helping Steelcase with decision-making on every level of the new division, from product strategy to hiring and everything in between. The particular blend of strategy, design, and engineering used to help Details become successful actually became the prototype project for the future IDEO, and is the blueprint for how IDEO works today.

What followed were a series of projects in which Steelcase and IDEO explored moving away from the traditional office cubicle toward furniture that was more architectural and open. More than 10 years ago, Steelcase noticed that the way people worked was changing from static work in offices to more fluid environments that were technology-enabled with laptops and mobile phones. This insight led to two collaborations, Room Wizard and media:scape, design efforts that captured this changing landscape by extending intelligent work to be supported by digital products, not just physical ones.

Jim Hackett, former CEO of Steelcase, said that an early brainstorming exercise in IDEO’s Palo Alto studio made him realize the power of a human-centered design approach. “They asked me to come to Palo Alto for a brainstorming exercise, so I went through the literal exercise that IDEO was having clients do at the time,” Hackett said. “As I was cutting foam core on the floor of one of the studios, I was thinking: I would never work the same way again after doing this. Not just designers should work like this, but anybody who is a knowledge worker should work like this.”

The collaboration’s many successes had a profound impact on Steelcase, and on Hackett personally: “I’m so humbled, I can’t even express it. I can’t tell you how many waves of joy come over me when I’m at IDEO. It’s just an extraordinary part of my life.”

Over the years, the two companies have been in nearly daily communication, a practice that has informed the work of both. While Hackett brought Steelcase’s perspective of corporate boardrooms and running a global company, Kelley and IDEO were working in the most innovative place in the world, saturated in design. Both companies agree that neither would be the same today without the experience gleaned from the other.

Some of the projects include:

RoomWizard
Aiming to connect the convenience of digital technology to physical spaces, the teams designed RoomWizard, a web-accessible touch-screen display that provides the real-time status of shared meeting rooms, simplifying the process of reserving and managing those spaces.

Leap WorkLounge and Ottoman
Building on their earlier work on the Leap Chair, the teams created a work chair with the comfort and style of a classic club chair, a luxury Leap Chair that takes work away from the desk.

i2i Chair
In researching the needs of a growing number of collaborative settings, Steelcase identified an opportunity to combine task and lounge seating. Named for the collaboration it enables, the i2i chair supports a variety of postures, including sideways, reclining, perching, and leaning. Winner of the Spark Gold Award, 2010, and the IDEA Silver Award, 2009.

Amia Chair
Steelcase and IDEO designed a task chair with modern ergonomic capabilities that accommodated a wide range of body types at a lower price point. Winner of the IDEA Bronze Award from IDSA and BusinessWeek, 2009.

media:scape
Steelcase asked IDEO to help evaluate and design a “walk up and connect” experience that merged furniture and technology to help teams access and share information. Designed to look light, open, and inviting, media:scape used a pedestal table with cleverly embedded hardware and interactive technology to foster group work. Winner of the IDEA Bronze award for Office & Productivity, 2011.

Node Chair
IDEO collaborated with Steelcase to design a platform for improving the classroom experience. The final product, dubbed the Node chair, has received praise for promoting student collaboration, allowing educators to reconfigure classrooms to fit different teaching styles, and enabling institutions to save money by making spaces more flexible and accommodating for varied uses. Winner of five design awards.

Watch: A love letter to Node.

A great healthcare experience shouldn’t be a luxury. It should be available to everyone, regardless of who they are, where they live, or what they need.

Planned Parenthood health centers have opened their doors to every woman and man for 100 years with this core conviction, offering services ranging from pap tests, cancer screenings, and breast exams to contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, counseling, and education.

As the healthcare landscape continues to shift, Planned Parenthood is evolving to lead the progress. For the past year, the organization worked side by side with IDEO to rethink and prototype a patient and employee experience that elevates individuals and their health and well-being.

Together, the teams designed a number of patient and employee interactions and corresponding prototypes that address different patient needs: education, personalization, connection, and support for any decision.

Concepts in Development

These concepts are being rolled out across health centers around the country:

Welcoming Waiting Areas
To help set the right tone for patients from the time they enter the door, the teams designed waiting rooms that offer different types of environments for different needs. The Hub is an area that transforms the passive waiting room experience to a greeting area that’s staffed by knowledgeable guides who help orient patients, and quiet nesting spaces for reflection and privacy. Patients can spend time with friends and family in a social, kid-friendly common area, and those who want to get involved to support Planned Parenthood’s mission can learn about health and advocacy information. This modular design toolkit can adapt to the individual buildings, budgets, and community needs of any existing Planned Parenthood health center.

Restorative Recovery Rooms
For women who are recovering from surgical procedures, small thoughtful details have a magnified positive impact. Redesigned recovery rooms have been separated into semi-private spaces, accommodating loved ones who want to join patients after a procedure. Soothing colors and soft, warm fabrics create a comforting environment, and service gestures including cards with words of support and encouragement from staff reinforce Planned Parenthood’s promise. A take-home kit provides clear information about what to expect during recovery and recommendations for follow-up care.

Unifying Employees
Because the heart of Planned Parenthood is its dedicated employees, we developed and launched an engagement and training program that provides staff with the tools and support they need to do their best work. In This Together, an employee engagement training, prepares staff to work with a vastly diverse community, reduce stigma around health choices, and empower patients to take control of their care. It’s based on a clearly defined set of workplace values and service standards, common goals that help employees across the global organization work together to provide top-notch experiences at every location.

Vision for the Future

These concepts are in varying stages of development, with plans to launch coming soon.

Patient-Physician Tool and Educational App
Visit Companion is a prototype for a suite of digital tools that help patients learn about their reproductive health choices and create personalized plans with their clinicians. While they wait, or anytime before a visit, patients can learn the answers to common questions related to their appointment and see side-by-side comparisons of their care options. The app uses familiar language and symbols to describe symptoms and side effects, and it provides a record of what was discussed during the visit as well as reminders for follow-up appointments.

Simplified Medical Forms
For the 2 million-plus patients who visit Planned Parenthood health centers, there’s an opportunity to make appointments more convenient and straightforward. Currently in prototyping stages, Friendly Forms is an easy-to-understand, interactive digital questionnaire written in simple, conversational language that was designed by replicating how Planned Parenthood clinicians speak to their patients. The forms adapt as patients answer questions, giving only the prompts that are relevant. Patients will be able to complete Friendly Forms any time before their appointment, so it’s easier to complete the forms accurately.

Holistic Women’s Health Care
Women who rely on Planned Parenthood for their sexual and reproductive healthcare can benefit from having trusted clinicians guide their care throughout their lifetime. Through the Well Woman Plus program, Planned Parenthood will connect women to trusted providers for care beyond physical exams and birth control consultation. Clinicians will use interactive digital and physical tools to map out lifelong health care milestones and help patients think proactively about their future, from family planning to preventive screenings.

To learn more, go to PlannedParenthoodExperience.org.

Find out more about Planned Parenthood's approach to creativity in this Q&A with executive vice president and chief brand officer Dawn Laguens.

La Victoria Lab (LVL) is a group of designers, anthropologists, architects, and entrepreneurs working on improving the lives of the Peruvian middle class. Founded in 2014, LVL is the Innovation Lab of Intercorp, an economic group of 35 companies spanning banks, malls, cinemas, schools, health care clinics, and more. Intercorp was founded by Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor, one of Peru’s most successful entrepreneurs, employs more than 90,000 people, and accounts for almost 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Peru is one of South America’s fastest growing economies, with a healthy 6 percent year-on-year growth from 2007 to 2017, on average. That rising economic tide, along with government policy, has created extraordinary social mobility: Between 2005 and 2017, the share of poverty fell from 55% to 22%, of a population of 32 million.

Know The Customer

As Peruvians’ lives have improved, the new middle class's needs and aspirations have changed: They’re entrepreneurial, expect great services, and want the best for their children. That challenge and opportunity led Rodríguez-Pastor to enlist IDEO to bring our empathic approach to the construction of Innova Schools, a new school system, and to redesign Interbank's customer experience"

Success in these two projects bred ambition. Intercorp, Rodríguez-Pastor realized, needed to build two capabilities: a deep, bedrock understanding of the new middle class, and an innovation capability with which his companies could create new products, services, and experiences. “I want a little IDEO,” Rodriguez-Pastor said, and the germ of LVL took root.

A Lab Takes Shape

In early 2014, as contractors broke ground on the Lab, its founders set about hiring an eclectic team from across the globe and undertook their first project: to deeply understand the needs, desires, hopes, and dreams of the emerging middle class.

Three months of ethnographic research was followed by three months of bringing their insights to life. LVL’s team surrounded themselves with mementos of people’s lives: toys, products, ads, as well as video interviews with families, to help Intercorp’s executives literally step into the lives of their prospective customers.

Solutions and Skills

Powered by those insights, La Victoria Lab has brought human-centered problem-solving to a variety of Intercorp’s companies, including new retail ventures, and improving the cinema-going and banking experience.

In 2015, the Lab began scaling its efforts to build innovation capabilities across all of the portfolio companies by using IDEO’s innovation readiness assessment, Creative Difference. Each company received a report of their strengths and improvement areas, and as a result, LVL facilitated workshops and community groups focused on building essential capabilities.

"Creative Difference is the first tool that has allowed my team and the organization to have a precise picture of where we are in the spectrum of doing truly innovative work. Now, we can identify our strengths and areas of improvement, we can develop work plans and actions based on data, and can start to really dig deep into innovation,” says Aurelia Alvarado, Director of Innovation, Innova Schools.

La Victoria Lab’s experiments are catalyzed by Intercorp’s scale, reach, and national ambition. Innova Schools, for example, is now Peru’s biggest private school network (read more about Innova here). And Interbank’s new retail experience rolled out to more than 180 branches nationally.

As LVL matures, its focus is changing, says Hernan Carranza, Chief Innovation Officer, Intercorp. “There's a transition taking place at La Victoria Lab, from a studio undertaking typical design projects, to a platform for impact-led journeys that start at pipeline discovery, defining key performance indicators, all the way to implementation and stewardship."

Just as important as the projects it delivers is the wider intent of LVL. The aim is for IDEO’s role within La Victoria Lab to wane, as Intercorp’s waxes, and the company’s internal Innovation capability and culture strengthen. LVL’s ventures range from mindset-changing initiatives, such as curating Peru's largest innovation festival, to deeply transformative endeavors targeted at reinventing the core value propositions of Intercorp's insurance, drugstores, and medical services. It envisions massive cross-organizational transformation.

“Innovation,” said Rodríguez-Pastor, “is too important to be outsourced.”

Keep up to date with the latest projects from La Victoria Lab: lavictoria.pe

"For the latest developments on our work with Intercorp, head to "The Possibilities Business: An Oral History of Organization Transformation"

Since 2015, IDEO has measured innovation in more than 100 companies, and discovered that leaders who create effective and sustainable work environments give their teams more capacity to experiment and solve problems in creative ways. These teams tend to outperform teams that stick to the status quo.

So what kinds of changes can you make (and scale) to help your company become more innovative? It starts with simple methods like adopting digital tools, implementing new internal processes, and introducing modular physical spaces that can be flipped around to support modern modes of working. Here are five ways to get started.

1. Create a shared vision

Illustrate the future of your team to show your colleagues what they’re working toward, and what new behaviors they’ll need to adopt to get there. A vision for the future should not only create a shared understanding about what needs to change, but more importantly, explain why. To get started, identify who it is you’re serving, what value your team can provide, and what you need to achieve your goals. Next, create a set of guiding principles to help contain the scope of the initiatives you’ll take on. This list will help you maintain focus, and avoid doing too much at once. Then, compare these guiding principles with the strategic priorities of your organization to make sure that your plan is scalable, will have a positive impact on your business, and can influence the daily work of your teams. According to our research, teams that use their purpose to guide their decision-making have 61 percent more successful launches than teams that don’t.

2. Let your teams influence their space

Often, organizations over-regulate the way teams work, either in an attempt to limit liability, or maintain control. But that extreme oversight suppresses creative judgment and collaboration. It also signals to employees that they are just cogs in a machine; if their work doesn’t seem important, they’ll detach mentally and emotionally. When leaders design work environments with their teams’ needs in mind, they are more likely to be engaged and willing to adopt new, better behaviors.

Think about how your values and vision are represented in your team’s space. Do you have early prototypes hanging around represent the value of experimentation? Do your communal work spaces actually encourage collaboration? (Do you have communal work spaces?)

Modern work environments should encourage, but not dictate, the most productive behaviors. The idea is to design an environment that encourages the collaboration and experimentation so crucial to creative work, while also empowering teams to adapt as new challenges arise. Data shows that teams that work collaboratively and have flexible spaces and tools to experiment are 32 percent more successful than teams that don’t.

3. Learn how your teams actually work

It seems basic, but many leaders don’t know the ins and outs of how their teams work, which means they don’t know how to craft the conditions that will set them up for success. Make sure to check in with your teams to get a sense of what they love, loathe, and want to tweak about the way your company works. Keep an eye out for work environment hackers who are using tools and spaces in unconventional ways—manipulating what’s available to support their work as best they can. And make sure that everyone has the tools that they need: For example, people in organizations that restrict access to online collaboration tools are sometimes forced to recreate the same benefits using a combination of project management, file sharing, and messaging software.

4. It all starts with prototypes

Have an idea for a new method of brainstorming, or a more effective workspace? Test it out by prototyping with high-performing teams. The key isn’t to start with the perfect solution, but to arrive at something that works and continuously improves. Identify teams that are enthusiastic about change, and start there. And don’t forget to look to your employees for suggestions—not all change needs to come from the top, and teams have a better sense of their own needs. Prototyping is an iterative process, so teams should be given the freedom to test a lot of ideas. According to our data, teams that test five or more solutions in parallel are 42 percent more likely to create successful solutions than teams that don’t do rapid prototyping.

5. Codify and share what you learn

As teams grow and mature, the lessons they gather from experimenting with their work environments should be packaged and shared with the larger organization. Codifying the characteristics of effective work environments can help new employees develop productive behaviors more quickly. Consider creating events or programs that allow teams to share the lessons they’ve learned from prototyping and inspire others to adopt similar changes or begin their own experiments. The data shows that teams that have access to information about prior initiatives are 51 percent more likely to create successful solutions.

Creating change and empowering people to determine their optimal work environments are the most powerful tools leaders can use to set the conditions for innovation. These changes have a material impact on a company’s ability to compete in an uncertain future. But don’t be intimidated by the enormity of the challenge. All it takes is empathy, empowerment, and curiosity to set yourself and your teams on a journey toward self-discovery.

Executing innovative ideas requires creativity. And creativity thrives in a work environment that fits the dynamic needs of modern teams, from hyper-collaboration to heads-down time. As today’s organizations strive to become more innovative and resilient, they must adapt their spaces and modes of working to promote creative problem-solving across teams.

Here are three exercises and strategies that might come in handy next time you’re applying for a new job.

1. The “so what?” test

Sadly, most bullet points on resumes read like a laundry list of job tasks, and many feel redundant if those tasks can be assumed by reading the company name and job title. Instead of telling a resume reader what you did day-to-day, tell them about achievements and things you are proud of. Tell them about the moments when you went above and beyond.

Read each bullet point out loud and ask yourself this question: So what? Why is this bullet point important? Why is it taking up room on your resume? Now imagine someone else—a stranger, someone who has never met you—going through your resume the same way.

If you get defensive or fired up when you run the “so what?” test, that’s good! That means there’s something you’re proud of in that bullet point that you need to communicate. Make that the heart of your bullet point.

When I run resume writing workshops for people starting out in their careers, they can become self-conscious and feel that their limited experience isn’t worth bragging about. To prove that you can take this approach with any job or experience level, I’ll provide you with the wait-server example. (Back in the day, I worked at a restaurant and firmly believe it teaches you great skills.)

If I were to take the laundry list approach, my bullet points would read:

• Greeted patrons
• Took food orders
• Provided friendly service

That's all great, but it's assumed that a server would do those things. It’s the job, after all. With that list, I’m not telling you anything new or unique about myself.

If I communicate my achievements and proudest moments instead, my bullet points read like this:

• Worked part-time while in school
• Trained all new staff
• Organized a volunteer day for employees
• Selected as employee of the month in my first month

This has a different tone to it. In this new phrasing, I communicate that I'm good at time management, I have the ability to teach and mentor others, I was able to project-plan and activate engagement, and I very quickly made an impact.

So what, you ask? That’s what!

2. The tailoring session

Just like tailoring your clothes, tailoring your resume isn’t about creating something from scratch. It’s about snipping, hemming, and stitching things together so that it fits perfectly. Use this strategy to keep yourself from reinventing the wheel over and over again.

Keep a master resume that lists every single experience you’ve ever had. The master resume is where you don’t have to worry about page count—it’s for your eyes only, so there are no limits. Add sections and bullet points to your heart’s content. Let this master version be everything from your security blanket to your resource library.

When you are ready to apply to a role, create a copy of the master resume and give it a name that is specific to the role you’re applying for.

Now read the job description again. What are the requirements? Use those as guidelines for tailoring your resume. Because you’re starting with a master resume, you don’t need to create new language. Simply delete the text that isn’t pertinent to the role, leaving only the relevant experience.

You are almost done. Before you submit this tailored resume, read through it. Start from the bottom, then move your way up, going in chronological order. Does this new tailored resume show career progression when read from the bottom up? Is there a thread that runs through it? Does it need to be stitched together in some places? When you are ready to go, make sure you convert it to a PDF!

3. Give curly parsley the chop

In the culinary world, NFG stands for non-functional garnish. If you’ve ever ordered a breakfast dish at a restaurant that came with a random slice of orange, and the orange has a piece of inedible curly parsley stabbed into it, you have experienced NFG. This unnecessary addition has nothing to do with your dish; in fact, it may spoil some of the flavors, and you might even start off your meal a bit annoyed that you need to eat around it.

On a resume, NFGs include images as fillers, multiple fonts, italics, bold, a spectrum of colors, and charts and infographics with no data source.

Use these things wisely and sparingly. Remember, you want to create a space that is welcoming, clean, and easy to navigate. A resume with curly parsley is hard to read. If the eye doesn’t know where to look first, the mind will get tired trying to figure it out.

Best case scenario: The person reviewing the resume needs to work hard and find extra mental energy to focus amidst all of the distractions. Worst case scenario: Your resume gets passed over because it’s sensory overload.

If you do want to share more but don’t want to overcrowd your resume, here’s a challenge: Think beyond the resume.

Times have evolved. There are other ways to highlight your work. LinkedIn is the obvious one, and GitHub is useful for engineers. More and more, we see candidates creating personal websites to showcase their experiences in interactive, visual ways.

If you are feeling tight on space, provide links to other resources where you can get more creative. And there’s always the cover letter!

Hopefully these tips help save you time, energy, and a bit of anxiety when you're crafting a resume. Remember, there is beauty in simplicity—after all, the only person who can truly pull off a pink, scented resume is Elle Woods.

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In my career advising days, I’d tell job seekers that one of the most important spaces they will occupy is only 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long—or about 21 by 28 centimeters for our friends outside of the US. Trying to capture yourself, your experience, and your potential in one-to-two pages is hard. It’s often the first introduction companies have to you. As with any space, there are ways to make it feel empty and impersonal, or crowded and noisy. Luckily, there are also ways to create a page that is welcoming, clean, and easy to navigate, too.

Immigration
There should be an AI bot for navigating the immigration process. If they can do it with TurboTax, they can do it with immigration (and I suspect there may even be fewer edge cases). It’s also easy to make something like that multilingual, which would be key. Right now, my friends in New York are paying $300-400 for an hour of immigration consultation. —Alex Staudt

Price Tags
I would like to redesign the cost of products and services to include environmental cost. This would allow consumers to factor in environmental impact as they make purchasing decisions. Currently, it is hard, if not impossible for consumers to understand the environmental impact of their lifestyles, which I believe is largely due to a lack of transparency on the corporate side, not a lack of interest on the consumer side. —Santiago Seira

Sockets
I’d redesign the electrical outlet—a standard for a century past—with a 'data as a utility' mindset. TV and radio have gone digital, voice is going digital, but power is still analog. —Ryan Osero

Razors
Shaving! It's the biggest waste of time. —David Haygood

How We Entertain Ourselves
I’d want to redesign live entertainment. Like, all of it. But here is where I’d start: There’s a gap between spending 2.5 hours seeing a play on Broadway and spending a full day immersed in the world of Disneyland. I love both of these experiences, but theater is dying (it’s basically only older populations who go, so the majority of current patrons will be dead in 30ish years) and shows (with the exception of Hamilton) aren’t being designed with an eye towards new demographics.

Disneyland and large-scale theme park experiences are resource-intensive, and I can’t imagine that too many new entertainment experiences on that scale will be created. But, at its core, Disneyland is a fully-designed, alternate reality that guests can immerse themselves in however they’d like for as long as they’re in the park. There’s freedom and choice in this experience that theater doesn’t often provide (hence the appeal and success of Sleep No More). How might we create a flexible yet fully immersive live entertainment experience? —Andrew Evans

The Menu at National Parks
I want to redesign the food served at our national parks so it reflects their mission of preserving the majesty of this nation, its wild places and wildlife, and the happiness and health it brings to humans. —Vivian Barad

Access to the Outdoors
I’d also piggyback on national parks, in particular on access. Camping and outdoor pursuits should be a right for all, and encouraged, if we want to see people care for the Earth. It doesn’t matter your background or mobility level, we should have everybody get into nature, while maintaining a balance to prevent overuse. Our bay-tech-privilege has managed to infiltrate even the basic purity of camping. —Tim Opsahl

The Olympics
I want to redesign the business model of the Olympic Games. What if the games were spread across multiple countries, instead of just one? What if each Olympics pursued an expressed goal of improving some aspect of the host country (i.e. child malnutrition, urban poverty, etc.)? —Rachel Tobias

Incontinence
Ever since I went to design school, I’ve wanted to redesign bed pans. I know this sounds super weird, but I had an extended hospital stay during my time at university, and found that the bedpan is the single most humiliating object on the planet. Obviously, my redesign wouldn't only include the object itself, but also the experience of what it means to not be able to go to the bathroom on your own and the experience of having to assist someone in this very intimate moment. —Annette Diefenthaler

Laundry
Whenever I walk by my local laundromat, I wonder what IDEO could do to make it better. Laundromats are relatively rare public shared-use spaces (similar to bath houses and communal bakeries in the Middle East and northern Africa). They provide a crucial service, especially for low income folks—a group that sometimes doesn’t get the same level of design consideration. What if they focused on some of the benefits of shared-use space, such as relaxing (you have time to read, call family and friends, play video games, etc. while you wait for your load to finish) and building community (you can meet neighbors, read about local events, catch up on the news, etc.)? —Biz Wells

Channel Surfing
F—ing remote controls, man. —Peter Olson

Police Interaction
I want to see us redesign the U.S. police-citizen interaction experience during arrests, traffic stops, and inquiries to help both the police and citizens feel safe and prevent wrongful deaths and excessive use of force, particularly against citizens of color. Maybe it's helping police organizations realign with their purpose to protect people and address any biases they may have developed. Or maybe it's an opportunity for a protective product to help police feel more secure in potentially threatening situations and therefore prevent them from using fatal measures for what they feel is self defense. Or maybe it's restorative community building between populations and the services that protect them in order to understand and break down historical tensions. I think it would be world-changing work. —Hannah Williams

The Gym
I'd like to redesign gym equipment to make it more accessible to women. I'm freakin' tired of using equipment sized for men. —Jennifer Maer

Phone Screens
I dropped my iPhone and the screen cracked. The Genius Bar fixed it in 30 minutes for $140. I asked the guy how many screens had he personally replaced and he said more than 1,000. Apple really is genius to convince us to pay that for a phone falling three feet; imagine dropping your wallet and it breaking! —Brendan Boyle

Life With a Newborn
The first year of motherhood. It’s crazy, hard, and you can feel alone and unsure that you're doing the right thing. And as a working mom, it feels like time is NOT on your side. —Melanie Bell-Mayeda

Adoption
I would love to redesign the domestic adoption process in the U.S. I hesitate to mention it because I’m not sure my heart or my patience for bureaucracy could take it. (I know, that’s all the more reason to go for it.) —Denise Burchell

Political Debate
Can we redesign public discourse in the U.S.? We are divided as a nation and it’s not going to get better on its own. What can we agree on, and how might we we use our common understanding to resist the temptation to demonize one another? —Murphy MacDonald

Emergency Response
I want to redesign the San Francisco 911 call center system. This story is all about how money isn’t solving the response time problem for 911 calls in S.F.; the issue is with training dispatchers and their quality of life at work. This seems possible to tackle from a human-centered perspective, since it’s a well-funded city system that pays its employees above average salaries. —Kim Powers

Misogyny at Work
Culture at Fox News. The organization has famously had huge problems with its treatment of women—even Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes aside. It’s clear that something needs to change and that it needs to be more than their recently announced policy allowing women to wear pants (not just short skirts) on the air. How might we help Fox uncover and adapt to who they want to become? —Joe Brown

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Rethinking products, services, and systems is our bread and butter. And when you spend your days asking, “how might we change this?” radically reframing the way you see the world becomes an occupational hazard. Designers end up sitting back, scratching their chins, and assessing the utility—or uselessness—of everything, with an eye to making it better. From the immigration process to the razor, we’ve come up with a list of 19 things we’d love to redesign, if we only had the chance.

In The Octopus's Build Your Creative Confidence series, we’ve shared exercises and activities from the book to help you approach challenges from a new perspective. We’ve compiled all ten exercises here in hopes that you’ll hit the ground running on your creative journey and excel in a future where creativity is currency.

1. Mindmaps: Push yourself to think divergently and creatively

When searching for innovative solutions, mindmaps can be a powerful way to come up with new ideas or gain clarity about a topic of exploration.

2. 15 Seconds of Brilliance: Increase your creative output

Even if you never get to experience Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, you’re likely to have your own moments of brilliance once in a while. When that happens, be ready to capture the magic.

3. 30 Circles: Jumpstart an ideation session

This quick, simple exercise is perfect for getting warmed up. Use it with a group as an icebreaker or on your own when you need a jolt of inspiration.

4. Empathy Maps: Lessons from observing human behavior

You’ve gone into the field in search of knowledge, meeting people on their home turf, watching and listening intently. But synthesizing all that data can be a little daunting. Organize your thoughts with this tool.

5. I Like, I Wish: Encourage and accept constructive feedback

We all instinctively know that constructive critique is essential, and yet it can be hard to listen to and absorb feedback without letting our egos and defensiveness distract us from what may be a valuable message. Use this exercise to help introduce feedback into the innovation process.

6. Speed Dating: Warm up a group and break down barriers

Creativity thrives amidst free-flowing social discourse. To get a roomful of strangers to innovate, start by breaking down some of those pesky social barriers. By carefully thinking about your group, you can craft this exercise to prime your participants for the work that comes next.

7. Nickname Warm-Up: Eliminate hierarchy to improve idea flow

While the previous exercise useful in situations where people don’t know each other well, sometimes you’ll encounter the opposite problem: a group meeting where people know each other too well. This warmup allows folks to “try on” a new persona and new behaviors.

8. Customer Journey Map: Empathize with customers, employees, and other end users

A journey map helps you think systematically through the steps your customers—internal or external—have when they interact with your product or service. Use this exercise to drum up new insights about your end users.

9. The Dream/Gripe Session: Define a problem to work on

Dreams and gripes are both a normal part of the innovation process. In this exercise, pair folks up to translate conversations into creative thinking challenges.

10. The Wallet Exercise: Help your group understand innovation thinking

The exercise uses a simple object that most people carry with them as a prop to discover needs, design and prototype solutions, and get user feedback. It gives everyone a chance to cycle quickly through the human-centered design process.

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Creativity is on the rise as a top skill leaders will need to face the increasingly complex challenges the future has in store for them. For those who identify as "creative types," this is likely music to your ears. For those who don't, stay with me! As luck would have it, IDEO was founded on the belief that everyone is creative—and that creativity, like any other leadership skill, can be learned and practiced. In 2013, David Kelley and Tom Kelley put that belief down on paper in their best-selling book, Creative Confidence.

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.