Named after Ernest O. Lawrence, UC Berkeley’s first Nobel Laureate, The Lawrence Hall of Science’s wide-ranging products, services, and tools developed organically over half a century. To begin to make sense of the breadth and depth of its offerings, IDEO asked leadership and staff to surface the myriad activities, audiences, and relationships with external partners, enabling the group to visualize—and make sense of—the totality of The Lawrence brand.

During in-depth research with parents and kids, educators, and experts, IDEO discovered that each of these audiences had distinct mindsets. Parents and kids engaged with The Lawrence to explore, have fun, and dive deeper into a specific topic. Educators utilized it for professional learning opportunities and to discover new, exciting classroom tools. While experts, including UC Berkeley faculty, STEM educators across the US, and funders, viewed the center as a resource for best-in-class STEM education research. The mindsets highlighted The Lawrence’s unique capabilities, but the complexity also created some opportunity areas, including ways to use storytelling to create emotional resonance around The Lawrence’s core values and how to design a unified narrative to connect the dots across audiences and offers.

Building on its strengths as an institution and the identified opportunity areas, IDEO created a modern, vibrant, and flexible brand that strategically and visually unites all of The Lawrence’s offerings, working across digital and physical media. Grounded by a grid system, the updated brand identity is simultaneously rigorous and fun, featuring a bright color palette and signature retro-cool super-nova mark. Different offerings are bundled together based on different audience needs, preventing confusion and easing navigation. Even the name of the science museum, The Lawrence Hall of Science, was updated to a more contemporary and approachable, The Lawrence, inspired by The Met.

The Lawrence unveiled its new brand with much fanfare in late 2018 as part of its year-long 50th anniversary celebrations. Visitors can see the updated identity across all public-facing elements, including The Lawrence’s website, curriculum and educator materials, letterhead, collateral, and exhibition and wayfinding signage. The redesigned brand has been credited with bolstering the popularity of the science center among families and schools and causing ticket sales to return to—and exceed—pre-pandemic levels. Internally, the rebranding effort has helped generate excitement and energy across departments, helping solidify a collective future strategy and vision for its next 50 years.

The Lawrence Hall of Science’s diverse offerings had grown extensively over the decades, creating a confusing and disjointed experience for its various audiences. On the eve of its 50th anniversary, Lawrence leadership sought a brand refresh to better connect with its target audiences and differentiate itself in the STEM education ecosystem.

Over $6M in new funding

raised to transform and modernize The Lawrence, thanks to IDEO's rebranding effort

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When Greene King approached IDEO in early 2022, it was (and still is) one of the UK’s leading hospitality brands, with over 2,600 pubs, restaurants, and hotels. At that time, consumers in the UK and other parts of the world were beginning to rediscover the joys of travel after years of pandemic lockdowns. Greene King’s newly formed Venture Hotels Team wanted to understand how guest expectations had shifted during Covid-19 and how a new customer-centric hotel brand and signature service experience might meet—or exceed—their expectations.

To get inspired, the IDEO team interviewed a range of travelers of different ages and backgrounds, met with hospitality and luxury experts, and conducted immersion visits, including visiting high-end hotels. The research revealed modern travelers want unique hotel experiences that cater to their curiosity, support local communities, and are environmentally sustainable. Luxury, which once meant “exclusive,” was now about enabling one-of-a-kind cultural experiences. Today’s travelers value inclusivity, accessibility, and well-being; they want to feel welcome, do things at their own pace and have thoughtfully curated options to choose from. They also expect hospitality practices to be ethical and sustainable, contributing to the welfare of local communities and the planet.  

Building off this research, IDEO crafted a new entry proposition for Greene King’s new Everly Hotels Collection called “The Discover Collection,” which leverages the best parts of a classic British pub and inn—bespoke historic locations full of character, culture, and stories—while offering guests a modern experience from pre-arrival to departure, all grounded in supporting the communities they are in.

Signature moments include a warm welcome during check-in, as well as staff recommendations and local maps highlighting neighborhood gems. During their stay, guests enjoy expansive seasonal food menus, as well as a beverage menu that includes a wide variety of locally brewed, distilled, and crafted drinks by local suppliers. Rooms feature a smuggler's treasure chest with a surprise treat. Art and books from local talent are on display throughout the hotel, and local experts lead activities and events. Guests tangibly experience Greene King’s commitment to sustainability through its use of local materials, produce, talent, and partnerships, all designed to support the surrounding community. Upon departure, guests receive a personalized postcard.

In addition to the hotel experience moments, IDEO delivered branding recommendations for The Everly Hotels Collection, including visual identity and tone of voice that provide a cohesive look and feel for the collection of hotels while simultaneously showcasing each property's unique character. This was all packaged as an experience playbook, with design principles and briefs to help guide implementation decision-making across Greene King’s marketing, digital, interior design, and food and beverage teams.

A few months after the project ended, Greene King launched The Everly Hotels Collection. Its pilot hotel, The White Horses in Rottingdean, East Sussex, opened within the year. The new brand and guest experience strengthened bonds with Greene King’s loyal customers and first-time guests, ensuring the brand's relevance and appeal in a competitive market. More hotels are planned in the future in other scenic UK locations.  

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Greene King wanted guests to have a consistent brand experience while maintaining the storied charm that makes each property unique.

2 years

from concept to the launch of Greene King’s boutique Everly Hotels Collection

1 pilot hotel

The White Horses opened in Rottingdean in 2024

The hard drive space is full of companies competing over technology and performance. But iodyne wanted to add another layer, focusing on user needs and product aesthetics to better position the company to meet the values of a broader audience and create compelling new entrants into this crowded market.

Together, IDEO and iodyne jumped into in-depth discovery research to learn more about the needs of their end users. The team sat down with photographers, videographers, and digital imaging technicians, asking questions about their file management systems, how they used hard drives in the field, and how they stored them for transport and at home. They also headed to the source, visiting studios and home office set-ups to understand the full range of potential use cases.

A few big discoveries leaped out. No one had a single storage solution to rely on. Users constantly transferred data from different hard drives designed for different purposes (in the field versus at home), accumulating hundreds of old hard drives over time. Traditional hard drives also don’t allow multiple users to work off them simultaneously or come with software systems that help keep projects and tasks organized, protected, and sharable. Meanwhile, the ever-shrinking size and weight of laptops—and people’s willingness to take them everywhere—set a new benchmark for portability, one that iodyne could lean into.

With these and other insights in hand, the team brought unrivaled performance and aesthetics together to create a far superior user experience. IDEO and iodyne developed Pro Data’s engineering architecture, collaborating on thermal performance analysis, material choice, inspection of sample parts, and even packaging design. By combining integrated venting, multiple laptop-quality fans, smart power management, and 20 thermal sensors, the team was able to minimize cooling fan loads and reduce noise and power consumption. A single, centralized, and consolidated storage space makes sharing data among teammates easy, too—up to four computers can connect to the Pro Data at the same time and access the same files. The redesigned Pro Data creates new value for consumers in a highly mobile, secure package that can go from desktop to backpack and back again.

The iodyne Pro Data hard drive launched in 2021 to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Storage Review wrote “Nothing else comes close to this level of performance in a package this size,” while Jemery Boros of StarGate Studios said “I don’t think I could have done the shoot without Pro Data. It was easy to use, fast, and kept all of our data safe on the other side of the world.” The drives have since been used in the making of major motion pictures from F1 to A Complete Unknown.

Spurred by Pro Data’s success, iodyne decided to create a second product with IDEO, a Pro Mini that could provide the same cutting-edge performance and sleek design but scaled down to fit the needs of customers who required less storage capacity in an even more portable package. Pairing Pro phone-quality industrial design with a unique internal solid-state cooling architecture that imposed key constraints on airflow was critical.

IDEO worked with iodyne to create the Pro Mini’s internal layout and collaborated with an emerging engineering company to incorporate novel solid-state cooling technology, positioning the vents to maximize airflow and optimizing how users physically interact with the device. The team also addressed users’ durability concerns, advising iodyne on part selection as samples came in from vendors. The new Pro Mini is set to ship in the second half of 2025.

Hard drives are essential tools of the trade for people with large troves of media to store and transfer, like photographers and videographers. But beyond rolls of masking tape and label makers, there isn’t an easy way to see what’s on each drive without literally going through them one by one.  

Traditional hard drives generate a lot of heat and need fans to cool them, making them bulky, loud, and slowing transfer speeds.  

Many external hard drives are treated like commodities. They’re designed for mass production rather than for durability and aesthetics.

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2 cutting-edge hard drives

to market in 3 years

LACDMH is the nation’s largest public mental health department, serving over 10 million people. The agency provides critical support for the most vulnerable, including staffing a toll-free, 24/7 Help Line. Since late 2024, more than 70 Field Intervention Teams—comprised of mental health clinicians (social workers, psychologists, licensed psychiatric technicians, and registered nurses) and community health workers (trained peers or community members with lived experience)—have been dispatched around the county to help de-escalate mental health crises quickly, compassionately, and without force.

Because those experiencing a crisis are often too disoriented, confused, or otherwise unable to seek help for themselves, IDEO’s communication strategy targeted reaching “trusted messengers”—parents, spouses, siblings, and friends of people who have a mood or personality disorder like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The campaign aimed to define mental health crises, help people understand what to expect when they call, build trust in FITs, and divert mental health crisis calls away from 911.

To understand what drives these specially trained mental health professionals to do this type of work—and what sparks trusted messengers to call for help—IDEO met and interviewed former clients and loved ones who had reached out to the county for support during a mental health crisis. The team also interviewed multiple FIT staff to learn more about how they approach clients and families.

The research inspired the communication strategy’s central idea: position FIT members as real-life superheroes and first responders. By associating FITs with that term, the campaign changes the narrative and communicates their compassion and expertise to those in crisis. Custom illustrated portraits feature actual FIT staff in strong, action-figure-style poses, while a bright, eye-catching color palette and clear, direct language convey confidence and inspire trust.

The team explored their initial design directions in a series of focus groups with LA residents, trusted messengers, and county and mental health workers to better understand the impact of the potential messaging and visuals. The research uncovered the importance of clarity, even in an inherently emotional situation. The  IDEO team discovered that transparency—and real personal stories—would be the key to building public trust in ACR.

Between March and June of 2025, the robust awareness campaign will run across LA County in a number of languages on city buses, in Metro stations, on social media, streaming TV,  radio, and more. An updated landing page on LACDMH’s website includes in-depth information and educational videos about mental health crises, as well as heartfelt testimonials from staff and former clients who have been helped by the service.

LA County Department of Mental Health created an innovative new program to provide urgent, compassionate care to Angelenos experiencing a mental health crisis but needed help driving awareness of its service across the region.

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Calling 911 is an entrenched behavior in an emergency. However, dispatching police officers who are not trained in mental health can make a bad situation worse. In 2022, 39 percent of people shot by LA police officers were in the midst of a mental health crisis.

172 million impressions

delivered via digital and physical ads across LA

50% increase

in calls to the ACR helpline, year-over-year, attributed to IDEO’s awareness messaging

24%

of Angelenos now name LACDMH as the first to call in a mental health crisis, leapfrogging 911 or the police, which slipped 14.3 points

In 2020, everything has been turned upside-down, and all budgets are starting from scratch. Planning for the coming year will be more ambiguous and uncertain than ever. It’s time to ditch the carry-over mindset, which can’t solve the complex and often competing challenges faced by business leaders today. What we need now is to broaden our perspectives and use imagination to project into the future.

Back in the spring, when it became clear that coronavirus would reshape the entire world in short order, we began tracking principles to help us focus on understanding context as it evolves, having a clear vision for successful recovery, rebuilding for resilience, and designing through collaboration.

As we spoke to clients and business leaders within and outside of IDEO, we saw the opportunity to develop a tool that would help leaders plan with imagination for the tumultuous road ahead. We were inspired by the Early Recovery principles used by the United Nations to respond to crises or natural disasters. Early Recovery helps people and societies "build resilience and establish a sustainable process of recovery from crisis."

We’ve adapted this concept into a framework for organizations to use in planning the coming 12 months. The Build Back Bolder canvas offers a simple template for reflection, and a series of short exercises designed to help set strategic priorities and initiatives, and to uncover opportunities for growth and impact in the midst of fluctuating conditions. Build Back Bolder is a straightforward, two-page tool that business leaders can run alongside their own planning processes. It can help leaders and teams make sense of the present, get out of analysis-paralysis, and move towards action. Simply put, the Build Back Bolder canvas helps you think, and that helps you plan.

Circumstances don’t get much more ambiguous and uncertain than the ones we’re living through now. In moments of crisis, when markets are redefined, imagination rarely leads the day. But this instability calls for a more varied and experimental suite of tools. Change is inevitable, but using imagination is not. By choosing an imaginative approach, we can plan for a more resilient, bold, and sustainable 2021.

Download the Building Back a Bolder 2021 tool here.

Illustration by Charlota Blunarova

In typical years, there’s a continuity to the annual planning process. Changes are incremental. Many budgets that were approved the previous year are simply carried over. Not so this year.

To fix big, systemic problems like inequality and climate change, many called for rethinking how companies generate value and who they generate it for—from shareholders, employees, and customers to partners and the planet itself. This wasn’t just a moral argument that business ought to “do the right thing.” The movement was anchored in an existential understanding that radical forces are changing not just the rules of the game for business, but the game itself.

The multilayered crises we face today offer a powerful moment of reckoning for purpose-led businesses and leaders: will we make good on this rallying cry for a reimagined capitalism or not? The pandemic put stakeholder capitalism to the test: a report funded by the Ford Foundation found that companies that had signed on to the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” fared no better than other top companies in prioritizing worker rights. Though there is clearly the opportunity and will to rethink the purpose of business to address systemic problems, the way forward is often less apparent. Understanding where to begin can help us realize the more equitable promise of stakeholder capitalism.

I’ve long been curious about how forward-looking companies have jumped over this hurdle, so I’ve spent this year learning from dozens of movers and shakers already in the thick of tackling systemic changes, from professors and CEOs to founders and non-profit presidents working across sectors and industries. They’ve shared with me the first steps that helped them break the initial inertia of business-as-usual—and, importantly, the mindsets they’ve adopted to sustain new kinds of activity. I hope their wisdom will be as inspiring for you as it has been for me.

First steps

Set bold targets and innovate your way to reaching them
Even if they don’t know where to start, the changemakers I’ve talked with have put a stake in the ground and set bold targets. But they don’t rely on a big PR splash and then move on: alongside these bold goals is a commitment to a process of brave experimentation and innovation.

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, has committed to becoming a fully circular company—one that is restorative and regenerative by design—by 2030. To make good on this future, they’ve invested in a range of experiments, prototyping smaller-format shops in city centers that rely on fewer resources, electric vehicles for home delivery, new products like home solar systems, and buyback and rental programs to reduce waste, among others. Taken together, these many activities are moving IKEA closer to their ambitious goal. But they’ve also enabled fast learning and iteration, so that when the company chooses to scale any of these solutions they have the greatest impact for their investment.

From this example and others, a common method is emerging for how companies can use their scale to unlock change at a systems level: commit boldly to an outcome, design a number of experiments, learn and iterate quickly, and scale what works. Spoiler alert: It’s not going to be one thing.

Create a coalition of partners around a tipping-point problem
From homelessness to climate injustice, our challenges demand unprecedented collaboration across sectors. The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a powerful framework to rally around, but there are other emerging partnership models that leverage the capital investment, innovation muscle, and ability to scale that corporate partners often uniquely bring to the table.

Take the NextGen Consortium, for example. Managed by Closed Loop Partners and powered by OpenIDEO, some of the most powerful food and beverage companies (including Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, the Coca-Cola Company, Yum! Brands, Nestlé, and WWF) are collaborating to create a new cup that will curb the 250 billion fiber cups piling up in landfills each year. The approach of this coalition has been to enable many breakthrough solutions, working directly with founders and stakeholders in the system, to take root in the market.

There are many other examples of convenings—whether official or unofficial—and the power of rallying partners around a shared challenge. Founded by Sam Polk, Everytable is on a mission to bring healthy, affordable food to communities that do not have readily available options. Polk grew Everytable to eight locations and delivered 160,000 meals just a few weeks after launching. Through a philanthropic initiative led by the California government, Everytable partnered with a hotel offering shelter and protection to the homeless during COVID to provide food, eventually facilitating additional partnerships with elder care homes. Everytable is now on track to deliver a million and a half meals, and they’ve added jobs along the way. As Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen, shared with me, this is an example of business, government, philanthropy, and individual volunteers, leaders, and donors uniting and busting siloes to address hunger.

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for stakeholder groups
Despite its recent buzziness, the stakeholder perspective—a fundamental commitment to all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders—is not a new idea. Many companies already consider multiple stakeholder interests in their decision-making. But the problem with stakeholder capitalism as it exists today is that it doesn’t offer a clear compass for how to make decisions in complex scenarios where win-win outcomes for all parties are rarely possible. This brings us to the elephant in the room: not all stakeholders are created equal. Leaders are often forced to pick favorites, and at the end of the day, we know who will always win.

To address this, companies like Airbnb are beginning to hold themselves accountable to new stakeholder-centric metrics. Airbnb sees their stakeholder community as made up of guests, hosts, communities, shareholders, and employees. Their design challenge—Rob Chestnut, Airbnb’s Chief Ethics Officer, told me—was to create a company that measures itself against the value it creates for each. Airbnb began by listening to these groups, establishing principles and metrics reflecting the needs of each. For example, they have committed to treating hosts like partners, and measure their delivery of this through survey data evaluating hosts’ satisfaction and earnings over time, among other things. Airbnb reports their progress and continues to update their corporate governance and compensation to reflect delivery against these KPIs.

This approach isn’t perfect. But doing the work of measuring the value you create with and for stakeholders and institutionalizing accountabilities for delivering that value is certainly a step in the right direction.

New mindsets

Allies over heroes
When it comes to business’ role in the big problems society faces, they are often cast as either heroes or villains. Some see capitalism as society’s savior, especially when governments have seemingly abdicated their responsibility to serve citizens’ best interests. Others see capitalism as society’s villain, the cause of many of its major problems like climate change and inequality.

The leaders I’ve interviewed reframe the discourse entirely. They know that systems change requires bringing together key actors—local communities, nonprofits, governments, businesses, donors, and others—to address unjust systems and solve social problems at scale. So, they see their organizations as meaningful allies in the work of change-making, adopting a partnership-as-leadership approach to their engagement in these issues.

“Greyston’s founder Bernie literally started pulling people off the streets to work for a small cake-baking business he had started to address the problems he saw in Southwest Yonkers...Just as the bakery started growing, [Greyston’s founder] Bernie met two guys named Ben and Jerry. Our relationship with Ben & Jerry’s started out as a serendipitous one, but it’s held steadfast as a strong partnership over the years and has enabled us to employ more folks who would normally be deemed excludable, non-employable.”
—Joseph Kenner, President and CEO, Greyston Bakery

“Cooperation among investors is a key to this progress. More than a third of the world’s invested capital—about $19 trillion—is controlled by the world’s hundred largest asset owners…In principle these investors have enormous power to move the entire economy in more sustainable directions. All they have to do is find a way to cooperate...The rumor is that they look at each other and say, “You go first.”
—Rebecca Henderson, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

Gardeners over architects
As the pandemic unevenly distributes pain and suffering across our society, it’s ever more clear: true systemic change requires a shift in power. That means that a top-down approach to change just won’t work to produce the equitable outcomes we need. We need new voices with new ideas to reimagine our economic system. Personally, I’m inspired by the small business owners who have reimagined the role businesses might play in neighborhoods through creative pivoting—like restaurants now offering CSA boxes and large family meals while their dining rooms are closed. Or Black communities that were forced to develop regenerative economic strategies decades ago, long before these concepts penetrated white-dominated corporate worlds.

These are the imagineers of a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable society for everyone, and the leaders I’ve learned from believe this, too. Their job, as they see it, is to find the seeds of ideas and nurture them. They play the role of gardener, but instead of a green thumb they have a green ear, tuned to listen and learn.

“We were open to new ideas from anywhere and created new mechanisms to source them. Part of our mantra was the conviction that all the good thinking doesn't come only from people sitting on Fifth Avenue in New York City. We ran competitions, we did global innovation challenges, and we learned a lot from what was going on on the ground.”
—Judith Rodin, Former President, The Rockefeller Foundation

“Purpose is obviously about how a company acts, but it’s also about how they listen.”
—Maryam Banikarim, Chief Marketing Officer, Nextdoor

“And so it's going to be up to the rest of us in the conversation to hold those people’s feet to the fire—to make sure that as we are reimagining capitalism we are reimagining it to actually work for all. And part of that is by creating systems that are actually inclusive and equitable and regenerative because only those things will dismantle a version of capitalism that is just for the elite.”
—Andrew Kassoy, Co-founder and Global CEO, B Lab

An audacious question over an assumption about the answer
Rather than start with an assumption about the right solution, these leaders begin with an audacious question. What, for example, would it look like to be a fully carbon neutral company by 2030, asks IKEA? Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures asks what would a future look like if women’s power and influence was equal to that of men?

By starting with a question instead of an answer, these individuals are searching for far more imaginative solutions. This is how radical breakthroughs happen.

“Business has a huge role to play in designing our future. They can do this by first, stepping back and asking, what are the problems that need to be solved? And how can we make that the purpose of our business? Start with that problem. Then, look at the different stakeholders you engage with and rethink how we might come together around that problem...This is moral imagination—the humility to see the world as it is and the audacity to imagine what it could be.”
—Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen’s CEO

“For the big briefs we face, we need questions that open up new possibility. We don't need the obvious questions — we’ve got plenty of those. We need questions that reframe how we think about some of these systems, ones that change our perspective.”
—Tim Brown, Chair and former CEO, IDEO

The work of changing systems is hard. Taking any of these first steps might require you to flex new muscles, fit yourself into a mold that isn’t quite perfect, or develop new collaborations that might not go seamlessly. Likewise, adopting any of these mindsets might clash with your business-as-usual culture and process. It’s not for the faint of heart. And yet, we can’t move forward—on equity, on the environment, on social cohesion—unless we roll up our sleeves, start redesigning our organizations, and make room for the voices most affected by these systems. So let’s take some first steps, and prototype them together to help push this work forward.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the promise of a reimagined purpose for business—one that serves a diverse set of stakeholders and society more broadly—had bubbled into mainstream industry discourse. From boardrooms to business schools, a growing chorus argued that our economic system is not only unable to respond to the world’s most urgent challenges, but has excluded many people from the prosperity capitalism promises.

Well, not complete strangers. They had shared an unusual experience, designed by IDEO, over the previous five weeks: The Department of Super Secrets.

When COVID-19 shut down elementary school buildings, it shut down opportunities for young students to build soft skills like empathy. It also severed personal contact between seniors and other human beings, leaving many confined and lonely.

Alongside teachers and students at Mineola Union Free School District in Mineola, New York, IDEO took on a project to design a program that would help 4th graders build empathy by connecting idle students with isolated seniors. We thought it would be a simple, playful opportunity, but in the end, we found a powerful tool for connection that might be scaled to bridge any number of social divides.

What’s the key? Well, that’s a secret.

Connections grown in isolation

The IDEO team decided that instead of trying to compensate for the limitations of quarantine, we would embrace those constraints and make them the centerpiece of the experience.

People can’t meet face-to-face? Perfect. We’ll beat quarantine at its own game. Neither partner will know anything about the other. No names, no ages. They’d have no clue about the other’s most basic biographical information, like age, race, gender; instead, this would simply be two human beings building a connection by sharing stories of their hopes and fears. A relationship built on meaning rather than appearance.

Thus, the Department of Super Secrets was born—an IDEO twist on the pen-pal relationship. Our heroes picked secret super aliases and we paired them up: one student with one senior citizen. Over five weeks, the partners were prompted to share five specific secrets designed to be low stakes, but highly personal, carefully crafted to spotlight character, values, and feelings. This was a delicate tightrope walk, asking them to offer up something meaningful without being invasive or uncomfortable. We designed the prompts to build on each other, gently establishing a bond through vulnerability and reflection.

Every secret was shared in two ways, with words and images. We wanted the partners to spend energy reflecting on their own lives so they could benefit as much from the telling as the receiving.

You know what was so wonderful about it—I had been cheated all these years not remembering that image of my brother and I playing under the table. I wouldn’t have [remembered it] if we didn’t do this.

MARVELOUS MUSEUM MAVEN, SUPER SECRET SENIOR

The secrets were exchanged through actual mail, not email. This slower method gave the partners time to explore their memories, express themselves deliberately, and—in a situation where days begin to blend—gave them something to look forward to. The tactility of cards filled with handwritten words and pictures turned them into a gift; it made the receiver a caretaker, safeguarding moments of someone else’s life.

Friendship across distance and decades

We wanted our participants to build a connection, not just exchange information. This was not about grown-ups humoring kids, or kids humoring grown-ups—this was about two experiences at either end of a spectrum, sharing a window into their point of view.

As part of the final exchange, each partner used what they’d learned about the other to create and send a gift to their anonymous pal: a superhero mask based on the shared secrets. And then the Department of Super Secrets hosted a reveal party. Partners came together on a video call, each wearing their newly gifted masks. Although they had been exchanging stories for weeks, this was the first time they saw the face behind the feelings. This was the first time Super Potato met Fantastic Fixer, and it was lovely.

Visit the Department of Super Secrets to meet the 4th graders and senior citizens behind the masks

Before and after their experience, we asked the partners to answer a few questions meant to gauge their empathy. Turns out the numbers support the anecdotes: Their time with the Department of Super Secrets seems to have genuinely increased their empathy scores, especially their ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

So what went right? We built the Department of Super Secrets by combining three key elements:

1. Anonymity: character vs. characteristics

No one in the world is more perfect for you than the mysterious stranger sitting alone in the coffee shop. The less we know about someone, the easier it is to dress them up and see them exactly as we wish. That’s why we sidestepped the introductions, the descriptions of hair color, and the family history. We wanted each side to begin by speaking across the mysterious absence created by anonymity to someone they assumed was a kindred spirit, ready and excited to connect.

We’ve all seen enough awkward hugs and pinched cheeks between kids and elderly relatives to know these two groups don’t always dance to the same beat. If the relationship began with the mental shorthand of “old” and “young,” there would be silent assumptions on both sides. Confirmation bias would run wild.

We used the freedom of anonymity to create rapport so partners would speak their truth honestly without tailoring it to their audience.

2. Story: introductions from the inside out

My name Is Ben. I once had my heart broken.

Which of those two offerings is more likely to create a bond between us? Ironically, the things that shape us most distinctly—our stories—are also the things most of us have in common. At the very core, we all share the same stories, but told in our own unique ways. Your parents may not have named you Ben, but you probably know what it is to cry into your pillow.

We used story as a sneaky back door to help Super Secret partners appreciate each other's identities once we dropped the anonymity. By the reveal party, they had connected enough through the shared stories that when they discovered each other’s identity, it enriched their idea of who a young or old person could be.

3. Play: lighten the mood, deepen the conversation

As I’ve written elsewhere, play is powerful. It lowers the bar for self-judgment; it can function like oven mitts for handling sensitive subjects; it can encourage us to stretch our everyday thinking and see possibilities we might have otherwise missed. Fun is a fuel.

We could have said, Hey, this is a school project to build empathy. Bo-ring. Instead, we led with the language of secrets, superheroes, and surprise to elevate it to something memorable, meaningful, magical.

Play allowed the partners to share vulnerable stories in a safe way. One prompt—"Share the secret of your most embarrassing moment"—became a funny way of sharing values, fears, and anxieties. Because underneath the slipped bathing suits or milk-spewing nose is the nature of what you find embarrassing, and that tells a lot about a person. Is it failure? Public or individual? Loss of control? Misunderstanding? Fear itself?

Sharing a moment you wish had never happened is an act of trust and bravery. Receiving someone else’s story is a way to remember you are not alone in the world as a flawed human being.

Play allows you to do both with a smile.

The next adventure…?

While this began as a way to enrich the lives of kids and seniors, it turned out to be a powerful way of sneaking behind the unrecognized biases, the mental shortcuts that are the unacknowledged guardrails of our day-to-day thinking. What if we expanded the experience to bridge other divergent points of view related to politics, race, economics, gender, geography, or religion?

We’d love to find situations to use the Department of Super Secrets to help people hear each other in a new way. Our hope is that this combination of anonymity, story, and play can help any two strangers find common ground whether they be superdelegates or super potatoes.

*Names and details have been changed to protect secret identities

When Super Potato* met Fantastic Fixer* for the first time, she asked if Fantastic Fixer’s puppy was feeling better. Fantastic Fixer wanted to know about Super Potato’s recent birthday. There were no awkward silences, despite the fact that Super Potato was nine and Fantastic Fixer was closer to 79 and they were, until this very moment, strangers.

This year, in light of our collective Zoom fatigue, services have been shortened to just a few hours, which is already pushing the shredded edge of our online attention span. After seven months of pandemic, mass unemployment, racial justice reckonings, and school closures, it’s hard to abstain and reflect on your own transgressions when all you want is comfort food and a hug. Knowing that, the Union for Reform Judaism, leading the largest, most diverse Jewish movement with nearly 850 congregations across the U.S. and Canada, asked IDEO to help design a few offscreen moments as supplements to the synagogues' videotaped services.

To think beyond the Zoom and understand what people are craving this year, we joined Mobius for a workshop with community builders like the founder of The Dinner Party, interviewed rabbis who have responded to modern yens with yoga and dance parties, talked to a “ritualist” about how to design a memorial, and met with the creator of This Human Moment, an immersive online experience. Our collaborators at the URJ, Amy Asin, Rabbi Leora Kaye, and Rabbi Esther Lederman, along with staff from the Righteous Person’s Foundation, which provided funding for the project, helped us ground modern exercises in a 3,000 year-old tradition—pouring old wine into new bottles.

We learned that what people need right now is to feel supported and comforted by some semblance of normalcy—a holiday that feels more like getting into a warm bath (or a mikvah, where you immerse yourself in water, as we learned from the URJ’s Rabbi Leora Kaye) than like a wake-up call. We learned from speaking to congregants that they don’t just come to temple for services, but for the casual synagogue interactions. It's a chance to see Mr. and Mrs. Riley, that lovely old couple who are somehow still alive, or family friends you haven’t had the chance to call, or that old school crush who still causes your stomach to flutter once a year.

The ideas that emerged can be found at reflect.reformjudaism.org, and they don’t look much like your aunt Sheila’s seder table. They include ways to do a check-in on your spiritual health (as you might at an annual physical); ways to memorialize a person who died or an event the pandemic shut down or how to let go of a burdensome feeling; and a collage exercise that has you scrapbook the community you’re missing by congregating in digital space. And for those looking to know more about how the activities relate to Jewish wisdom and custom, the bottom of each page invites visitors to “Explore more and go deeper” with links to essays on ReformJudaism.org.

Each activity was designed to be radically inclusive—as welcoming to those who don’t know a single Hebrew word and don’t believe in God as it is to believers with scholarly knowledge. The experience is a la carte, customizable, and while housed on a screen, designed to be non-screen-based. As identity changes in America—where one-in-five Jews describe themselves as having no religion—it’s become increasingly important for Jewish organizations to offer those still seeking community and spiritual life a radically new way to engage. That’s what this is.

It’s been said that religion was the answer to a cry for help. Right now, everyone could use a little help. And awe. And beauty. And routine. Religious rituals were built to keep us in line, to keep us connected, and to keep time. Much of that has been broken by COVID. So the question for designers becomes, how might we, within the constraints of the day, mine a bit of gold that can fill in the cracks?

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Each fall, the Jewish High Holidays draw communities together for some of the year's most important rituals. Even Jews who don't attend their temple's regularly scheduled programming tend to make a point of spending a few days celebrating the new year and reflecting on the one that's passed. Now that we're socially distanced, how do we make sure the rituals are still observed? The experience of gathering and connecting still felt?

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.