Since the early 1990s, Samsung and IDEO have shared a history of influential and award-winning collaboration. Together, the two companies have worked on more than 50 projects, the offerings created by this partnership spanning a broad spectrum, from a series of conceptual multimedia devices to industry-changing monitors, TVs, laptops, mobile phones and interfaces, computer peripherals, and mobile platform strategies. But beyond the design of products brought to their global market, the Samsung/IDEO partnership used the human-centered design approach to produce the innovation that ended up transforming the electronics giant’s entire business.

After years of being an industry fast-follower, Samsung approached IDEO with the idea of an immersive cultural exchange. Samsung designers, marketers, and strategists came to Palo Alto and set up a studio near IDEO to learn everything they could from the US consumer market and IDEO’s design approach. Together, the teams began to design groundbreaking electronics products, while using design thinking to look at the entire business through a new lens. By putting users at the center of the process, and beginning to understand their needs and emerging behaviors, Samsung found it could not only satisfy existing customers, but also begin to anticipate market shifts. This tipping point led Samsung to evolve into a market leader.

Samsung and IDEO created a design powerhouse, following a journey from designing products to services to experiences, interactions, and innovation that moved Samsung away from consumer electronics toward an even bigger market of back-end services and interactive and systems-based services.

Culturally, the partnership with IDEO has helped Samsung adopt new ways to integrate internal teams, a human-centered design approach and iterative prototyping, and the methodologies to merge technology and design to create a leading-edge consumer line and brand. As evidence of Samsung’s rise to being one of the world’s largest design-driven companies, the company has more than doubled its internal design teams since 2000, according to the article “Samsung Design” in BusinessWeek Online.

Some of the projects include:

LCD Computer monitors
Samsung and IDEO created the industry-standard 970P and 971P monitors, featuring clean surfaces, contrasting textures, and a simple design for a premium look and feel. Designed with IDEO founder Mike Nuttall, they won both the 2009 iF Award and a 2007 IDEA Gold award.

Brand awareness for Samsung Memory
Wanting to raise awareness about Samsung Memory’s products that enhance the performance of electronic devices, IDEO and Samsung designed a humorous campaign that highlighted consumers’ need for Samsung Memory.

SimpleMedia and TotalMedia home entertainment concepts
IDEO and Samsung designed two concepts: SimpleMedia combined a computer, television, DVD, fax, and telephone; TotalMedia featured an adjustable screen and LCD projector combination. Although neither was ever produced, they were honored with design awards from ID Magazine and BusinessWeek, respectively.

SyncMaster 400TFT Flat Panel Display
Samsung and IDEO designed the SyncMaster LCD flatscreen multimedia monitor to be thin and elegant, and it garnered several design awards in Korea, Germany, and the U.S. The British magazine T3 called it “the sexiest monitor we’ve ever seen.”

Nana Joes, a beloved San Francisco granola company, was born from an avid surfer’s desire to bring healthy breakfast back to the kitchen table. Embracing the philosophy that good food is about wholesome ingredients prepared with care, the startup took pride in carefully scraping each vanilla bean by hand and soon gained a devoted following at farmers markets around the Bay Area.

As Nana Joes’ reputation grew beyond the hills of San Francisco, the company asked IDEO to explore how to take a small company and scale the brand for national distribution, while keeping its heart and handcrafted ethos at its core.

A team of IDEO designers set out to position Nana Joes for growth by developing a brand identity and packaging system that would resonate with customers and reduce operational complexity. The entire team went on factory tours and met with packaging suppliers to identify solutions that would be easily manufactured en masse, but still retain the familiar handcrafted feel. With mock-up packaging in hand, they hit local farmers markets to conduct live in-market prototyping with both loyal and new customers and met with retail buyers to get their real-time reactions to how the brand and packaging stood out on shelves.

The final deliverables included new branding and packaging for the entire line of granola, granola bars, and cookie products, as well as a guide for Nana Joes to operationalize the rollout by 2016.

The legacy company that produced the first phone book in Australia more than 130 years ago—and the disruptive change it represented—became directories company Sensis. As Sensis made the transition from a print directory to a digital service in recent years, the company came to IDEO to foster a startup mindset.

Together, Sensis and IDEO identified four ways for Sensis to become more agile: Focus on the company’s core skills, revitalize the product development process, develop insights about Sensis’ global competitors, and strengthen connections to current and potential customers.

After prototyping more than 65 ideas, the team decided on an app, Skip, with which a customer connects remotely to her favorite café right from her phone, sends her order, and schedules a time to pick it up. Then she breezes past the line when she arrives at the café.

To understand how this app might work in the real world, the team fanned out across Melbourne, talked directly with café owners and their customers, gathering data, and watching behavior, then launched the live app just 10 weeks after developing the first prototype.

Watch: Team members from Sensis and IDEO share their experiences.

Fueled by a mission to “help everyone love what they eat,” the Chicago-based food-tech startup Food Genius created a consumer-facing mobile app that used a complex algorithm to track more than 16 million restaurant menu items and classify consumers’ dining-out behaviors.

After the year-old startup became part of IDEO’s Startup in Residence program in Chicago, the company changed its focus from consumers to the food industry.

To build their food industry-focused platform, the designers collaborated on a number of business and technological development strategies, product road-mapping, and a prototype viral marketing experience called Curry Crawl to test the usability of the new API.

In April 2016, Food Genius was acquired by US Foods. "What was really striking about US Foods is that they take a very analytics-driven approach to their business," said Justin Massa, founder and former CEO of Food Genius. "They bought the technology knowing it's going to be able to do great stuff."

I took this picture in the San Francisco airport. Airport lounges are shared places where you're invited to make yourself at home temporarily. I love watching how individuals and groups position themselves to take personal ownership of space and make it work for them by creating boundaries and surfaces with whatever is on hand. This heads-up newspaper display system was a clever repurposing of roll-aboard luggage that I hadn't seen before. In one elegant move, this traveler has provided himself with an information screen (the bottom half of a page anyway), hands-free support to read in comfort while eating his cereal, and a clear delineation of personal space and visual privacy.

Thoughtless acts reveal just how natural it is for everyone to design, modify, and rearrange the world to make it work better for them. We draw on that capacity everyday in our quest to create useful products and services for others.

1. Sketch Your Neighbor

Most people default to verbal/analytical mode, so getting people to use their hands and get involved with pen and paper can prove to be a very refreshing gear shift. As the name suggests, Sketch Your Neighbor requires everyone to draw the person next to them. Set a timer for a minute or two and let loose. For the majority of people who claim that they can't draw, this exercise involves a certain amount of vulnerability—and that's the point. If everyone is used to failing in front of each other, the group dynamic is going to be more open, generous, and positive.

2. The Name Game

When you're dealing with strangers, learning everyone's name can be a significant challenge. The improv legends at Second City use a game to get past this. Everyone stands in a circle and takes turns saying their name while making a gesture. Everyone else repeats the name, while copying the gesture. They go around the circle doing the same thing one more time, and then everyone has to do the whole thing from memory. The association of movement with the name is a shortcut to embedding it in long-term memory. That, plus that fact that everyone has made themselves look ridiculous, leads to an open and fun meeting.

3. The Stretch

Sitting hunched in a chair while someone drones on and on feels like going through a slow death. Getting people out of their chairs is a quick way to perk up energy levels and set the stage for collaboration. The Stretch is a very simple exercise: A facilitator asks everyone to stretch their arms up to the ceiling, tilt them to the left and the right, and then shake them out. It takes less than a minute, and allows the meeting leader to take control of the room and wakes people up.

4. Last Word, First Word

One problem with meetings is that we aren't great at listening to each other. This is even more of a problem if people are glued to their phones and laptops. We cribbed this game from Second City, too. Everyone pairs up and has a conversation. The rule is that the first word of your sentence must be the same as the last word of the sentence your partner just said. This requires listening to their entire sentence before beginning to frame your reply. Sadly, for most of us, this is an unusual behavior.

5. The Story Opener

One of the keys to a good creative meeting is to have everyone show up as their whole, human self, rather than their"work self." A quick way to get there to have everyone tell a quick personal story. For example, ask your colleagues to talk about a youthful hobby. If possible, connect the story topic to the purpose of the meeting. Talking about ways to motivate a team? Ask them to tell a story about the moment in their life when they felt most excited. The main benefit comes from having each person tell a story from the heart, which will bond everyone for the rest of the meeting.

6. Dance Lesson

If you're ready for an added level of risk, get people to do rhythmic movement in unison. This requires a charismatic (i.e. shameless) facilitator or a very willing group of participants—or, ideally, both. The facilitator takes the group through a set of dance moves, and then everyone performs them together to music. If you start a meeting like this, nothing that happens afterwards will faze anybody.

Illustrations by Steve Har.

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In the age of Slack, Asana, and other tools for collaboration, in-person meetings are losing ground. It’s true that having a great meeting isn't easy, and too often we fall into dull routines. But it’s also true that real magic can happen when people are face-to-face in a room together. To get people to be fully present and spark creative ideas, try these meeting warmups.

The boozy makeover started with the lid. We wanted opening the bar to be one-handed and easy, and have some dramatic flair, so we added a gas-spring hinge to connect the lid and kettle. Figuring out where and how to attach the hinge, then drilling out a slot, ended up being the hardest and most time-consuming part of the build. Go figure.

Once the gas spring was in, we designed a cooking grate—laser cut out of acrylic and spray painted silver—to accommodate six hand-lettered liquor bottles.

Next, we added a Bluetooth speaker to the inside of the lid for what we called the “Complete Party Effect,” and a push-push latch to make opening and shutting the grill seamless. A few holes in the leg of the grill and—boom!—we had cord management.

We thought we were finished when Chris Gold, mechanical engineer extraordinaire, walked into the Shop. “How can you have a grill wet-bar thingy without glowing embers?” Good point. Ten minutes, a strip of LEDs, and some quick coding later, Chris had made a modern fire. We crinkled some paper to diffuse the lights and give it some texture and we put it under the bottom grate. Embers: check.

But a grill isn’t real grill until it is loved. So this year, we’ll be throwing one hell of a St. Paddy’s Day Happy Hour by queuing up a good Irish jig and giving Webby a proper welcome to the IDEO Chicago family.

Video by Sophie Feng

Special thanks to Annette Ferrara, Party Designer in Chief, for the idea!

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Even though our Midwestern hearts haven’t quite thawed yet, springtime is right around the corner. For too many long, cold months, IDEO Chicago’s Weber Original Kettle grill—that icon of carefree springtime afternoons and a beloved local brand—has been collecting cobwebs in the corner. We thought: What better way to welcome spring than to bust out our beloved grill and transform it into a tricked-out studio wet bar? And just in time. With the start of spring comes everyone's favorite excuse to drink with coworkers: St. Patrick’s Day. (Chicagoans are particularly notorious for celebrating the holiday in style, from our rowdy St. Paddy's Parade to literally dyeing the Chicago River green.)

Name: Tony Browne
Location: London
Role at IDEO: I’m an organizational design director. I help people build modern, purposeful organizations through design, and a more human use of technology.
Joined IDEO: January 2017
Twitter: @misterbrowne
Titillating Fact: I was crowned UK Computer Gaming champion in 1994 and haven’t really given up the joystick in the 20 years since. Approximately 60 percent of our household arguments are over who is allowed on our Playstation—me, or my 5 year old son, Spencer.

1. Corporate Rebels

I mean, just look at them. With their long hair, nonchalant stance, and leather/denim apparel, Joost and Pim have corporate rebellion chic down. But they didn’t start out like that. In fact, they came from a fairly standard finance and consultancy background—until they quit their jobs, and committed to traveling the world in search of “rebellious” organizations.

Their blog has some great case studies about companies that are experimenting with radically different ways of working. Check out their insights into Zappos, Gutmann, and my personal favorite, West Coast tomato processing company Morning Star.

2. The Meaning Conference

Established in 2012, the Meaning conference is an annual UK event for those of us who believe there is more—so much more—to business than making money. It started off as a fairly small, low-key affair, but by 2016 it had grown enormously, attracting leading UK economists, global business leaders, and politicians. I always come away from the event buoyed by conversations with passionate and like-minded people, and excited that meaning and purpose are really starting to be taken seriously in the business world.

Look out for news of the 2017 event (where I’ll be a volunteer).

3. A16Z Podcast

I’m a tiny bit obsessed by all things digital. I love technology, and I love thinking about how it is blowing up business models, transforming organizations, and creating entirely new sectors. The A16Z podcast from venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz (16 refers to the number of letters between the A and the Z in their names) is the best I’ve found to help keep my thinking current and fresh. There are other podcasts that may be closer to the cutting edge of technology trends, but none that are able to translate it all into usable business insight as well as A16Z does.

In this series, we ask IDEO designers to share the stuff they're digging right now—tools, books, music, sites, people, places—so you, too, can drink from the fount of inspiration bubbling up here. This week's guest star: Tony Browne.

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.