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"

I was fortunate enough to work closely with Liu on an art installation about food's carbon footprint when she was a Researcher in Residence at IDEO's Design for Food Studio. The piece was exhibited at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in collaboration with the Perennial, a sustainability-focused restaurant. Thanks to that project, I became an expert in engineering ways to pop balloons, and also a major Liu fan. I caught up with her to hear more about what inspires her work.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am an artist, long-distance runner, sci-fi dreamer, and corgi-lover.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am incredibly lucky to have my dream job: thinking deeply about technology, and making the art to express it. I followed a meandering path. First, I learned how to express ideas visually and spatially by studying architecture at Harvard, and from there, I became a VR geek. Eventually, I ended up at MIT Media Lab, where I started making bioart.

The female body has long been a source of contention, where opposing ideologies in religion, politics, and cultural differences often play out. In this video, Ani explores what would happen if women could control something inherently male: Spermatozoa.

3 favorite possessions?

1. My best friend's wisdom tooth
2. My mother's family album
3. A collection of smells I've bottled from those I love

What does a typical work session look like?

The beginning of my projects involve a lot of research. The process often starts with a large cup of coffee, a stack of papers, and my sketchbook in hand. In the next phase, I am often found visiting other scientists' labs to ask questions. I've sought advice on everything from how to use an EEG headset to read brainwaves properly to trying to score the right plant hormones to make flowers blossom on command.

The next phase is an enormous amount of exploring, prototyping, and failing. In the last phase, I hunker down and crank towards an impending deadline. It is often the most stressful part, but it's full of adrenaline, and my favorite.

How do you get over creative block?

I have the benefit of working across many disciplines, and I find that my love of one thing often inspires the next. If I am stuck debugging code, I'll draw, and the meditative act often untangles a logic block. When I am stuck on expressing an idea visually, I like to read physics textbooks (I know, this is unbearably geeky) to find inspiration in the way physicists express radically abstract concepts.

I also love looking for synaesthetic inspirations. I have a large collection of perfumes and scents, and sometimes breathing one in will trigger an unexpected thought or emotion, and my mind will spiral into new territories.

What was the last item on your to do list?

To plate and incubate fresh bacteria for a new art piece. I have been invited to participate in a group show on self portraits, and I am prototyping a living work of art based on my microbial signature.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I can't claim to predict the future, but I hope the approaching inevitability of continued automation and augmented intelligence will cause us to deeply question what it means to be human, and what is worth pursuing in our lifetimes.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

To finally share my life with a corgi! The top contending names are Stardust and MOSFET. I would also love to write a science fiction novel in my lifetime.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Tania Bruguera is an amazing Cuban artist and political artist whose strength and solid dedication to expressing the truth and the narrative of marginalized populations inspires me every day. In every studio I stay in, I pin up a small image of her work because the images hit me at my emotional core, but also remind me that art and design can have a profound impact on the world.

"Art is how you can see and feel the future," says Ani Liu in her TED Talk, "Smelfies" (if you haven't seen it, go watch that now). Drawing on synthetic biology, AI, and the microbiome, Liu crafts multi-sensory art and experiences that are at once beautiful, poetic, and a total mind-bender.

After outing myself as the lone office introvert, I expected a look of horror to pass over my coworker’s face. Instead she gave a knowing nod and smile, and said she’s heard this sentiment so often here that she calls IDEO an “extroverted office full of introverts.”

I was stunned. The majority of my colleagues are introverts too? How did they manage our everyday activities, like brainstorms? The goal of a brainstorm is to uncover new opportunities by bringing in fresh perspectives, but as a group activity it can make introverts clam up.

Inspired by Susan Cain’s research on the power of introverts and how solitude, like collaboration, is a crucial ingredient to creativity, I asked my fellow designers what strategies they use to incorporate solitude into the most extroverted of activities.

Here are five ways they've adapted the brainstorm for introverts:

1. The Silent Circuit

Ask each person to write a “how might we” question on a sticky note (IDEO’s standard brainstorm kickoff question) and post it around the room. For about 15 minutes, everyone walks around, silently adding as many ideas as they can to each prompt. When time’s up, everyone returns to their question and discovers a bounty of new ideas that their colleagues have given them. This approach works well for keeping large groups engaged, while providing quiet, focused time to those who want it.

2. Musical Chairs

Breaking up a big group helps encourage quieter voices. To limit the number of people in a brainstorm, split into groups of three or four and play musical chairs. Post a handful of "how might we" questions around the room, assign a group to each one, and start the music. When it stops, rotate to the next station with your team. That way, there are never too many voices to contend with, but a lot of ideas are shared. Leave time at the end for people to wander around the room and add any remaining ideas.

3. Get to the Bottom of the Stack

This is the most exhaustive brainstorming activity on this list—it can take up to two hours—but can also generate the most ideas. The goal: Each person fills an entire stack of Post-its with new ideas. (A “stack” can be a full Post-it stack divided into halves or thirds, depending on how much time you have.)

After the questions are introduced, everyone goes heads-down and captures ideas. It's a lot of silence, but it allows those who prefer to think and brainstorm silently the time and space to do it. When everyone has reached the bottom of their stack, one person volunteers to share first. As she presents, others add similar ideas or build on top of them to draw out themes.

The exercise can be a great empathy builder. For a project about helping high school students build purpose in their life, a team used the prompt, “What are your most awkward memories from high school?”

4. Office Hours

This one came from Fast Company: Instead of asking people to commit to a crowded, hour-long session, reserve a space and ask folks to stop by for 5-10 minutes to contribute ideas—in between meetings, on the way to lunch, etc. This gives people permission to come and go as they please, and limits the number of voices in the room at one time. To make participation even easier, introduce the questions a day in advance—over email or in a calendar invite—to give people time to think.

5. The Slow Build

Post a question in a shared space in the office—the kitchen, in the bathroom, by the bike rack—and allow people to add ideas over several days. At our San Francisco studio, we post monthly questions and prompts in one of the private, unisex bathrooms in our office. The questions often ask people to reflect: “I feel loved when…” and “I show my love by…” Or, “What’s something new you want to try this year?” As an introvert, it’s my porcelain palace.

How do you create the conditions that can help everyone feel welcome and heard at work? I’d love to hear your ideas.

Thanks to Charla Bear, Minnie Bredouw, Deirdre Cerminaro, Eileen Farrell, Peter Macdonald, and Heather Ross for their contributions and inspiration.

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One day, I confided in a coworker: “I feel like an impostor in such an extroverted office.” The culture here is built on constant interaction—every question is an opportunity for collaboration, we work exclusively in teams, and our brainstorms encourage everyone to think out loud. It exhausts me.

What could be more satisfying than a blueberry in every waffle hole? My son Tom took his time to arrange everything just perfectly before gobbling it down. Even if you are not meticulous enough to do it yourself, I'd be surprised if the same idea didn't cross your mind. It makes me think about all of the times that I've thoughtlessly (or thoughtfully) constructed my own bites—optimizing for flavor, making sure that there are goodies in every bite, until my plate is clean.

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.

As a result, I spent most of my time finding problems, real or imagined, and adding them to a growing list of things I would solve to make my mark. My notebooks from those days suggest that I believed I would be a hero one day, but for now, was resigned to suffer through unrewarding and lonely work. I was an asshole. And you get what you give.

I had started a project with Quiksilver, and with that came a new relationship with a very successful creative director, Erik (now a good friend). Erik invested in inspiration for himself and everyone on his team. He made sure he was creatively nourished—maybe even selfishly so, if that can be said in a positive way—and emulating the kind of creative culture he wanted to instill. It was mutual and reciprocal among his team.

He inspired me, too. I wrote a simple note on a Post-It and stuck it to my computer:

“Be the leader you wish you had.”

I know. It’s all Gandhi and shit (apologies, Gandhi, for any disservice in my comparison). But it shifted my thinking radically. I made a commitment to own my happiness and creative experience.

That week, over regular tears-and-beers drinks with a colleague, we were laughing over an article in Vice called “Wear Dare” in which a couple of friends dressed one another for a day and described their embarrassing moments. We wondered what that would be like at work…

“Let’s do it,” I said. Following my new directive.

We goaded each other through nervous fear, laughter, and finally action… what if this goes wrong? Or worse, what if it goes right?

We invited everyone to put his or her name in a hat and drew at random…

Here’s what happened:

It was the
best
day
ever.

It was joyous and unserious. It wasn’t about fixing; it was about sparking something and letting go.

Only four people didn’t participate out of a studio of nearly 60. I am sure they regretted it! And looking back, I believe that day was a key moment in a process of transformation for myself, using my position for fun instead of misery. It was that raw creative act that broke the dam for me.

Around that time, the project leader for the Quiksilver work came to me with the idea of traveling the California coast in an RV—you know, “as research.” I knew he expected me to say no. And it would certainly lose us a bit of money, but I suppressed the leaderly should and followed my new directive and said yes.

My landlubber colleagues got to be surfers for a few weeks. I joined the team on the road and reconnected with my surf-teen years in San Diego. More importantly, surfing every day, sketching in the sunset over beer and pizza in roadside campgrounds with a bunch of other (mostly) dudes, trading ideas until we fell asleep in the RV, and fomenting the growing optimism and joy of building play into our workday led to the design of great concepts for the client—some of which went to market.

Other changes followed.

We hired some amazing people, who we never would have hired prior, as interviews shifted from picking people apart to finding and supporting possibility.

For a colleague’s wedding we dressed up in Tyvek suits and marched, single file, to the courthouse through Cambridge, MA. (That's what you see in the image up top).

We did design fiction exercises over lunch. The culture began to be one that craved creative pokes to encourage the flow of great ideas.

The studio evolved from being a quiet participant in the business to a creatively rowdy collection of designers from Boston producing content that the rest of IDEO references.

How we were began to shape what we did.

So much had changed with that simple note to myself.

I’m not suggesting that dressing your colleagues in thrift store pantsuits will fix everything. Nor that you need to hit your nadir and be ready to quit before you can find the inspiration to lead from your creative self.

In fact, this is not really about you or me at all.

This is about what I learned the hard way: That great creative leadership is about letting go of that nagging mental image you have of what you are supposed to do. It’s about believing in others, and focusing on fanning the flames of creative, weird, exothermic people, rather than on fixing problems.

How you approach your day is how you will live your life.

If you see your role as a list of broken things that need to be fixed, life will deliver you nothing but. But if you actively seek creativity and fun, and enjoy a little embarrassing dress up now and again, you might just find yourself successfully in the middle of the vibrant culture you’d once wished for.

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When I was a fresh, newly appointed lead in our Boston studio, I struggled to have much fun. I believed I was a fixer of broken things, thinking, and people. The story I told myself was that I was a martyr for the fun others were having while I dealt with the important leaderly stuff.

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.