Midea, one of China’s largest appliance manufacturers, wanted to identify growth opportunities in the domestic consumer market, while focusing on people’s cultural beliefs around health and well-being. During the course of the project, IDEO found that Midea could play a key role in building a healthier nation.

The team set out to design potential future products for Tong (“through, whole, and to understand”) that are built around the basic themes of eating, breathing, and being: an easy-to-use, hassle-free herbal tea dispenser, an air balancer that improves and balances the quality of air in the home, and a body-balancing mobile phone app that encourages users to rebalance their body condition where needed, through movements created with the Chinese philosophies of well-being in mind.

The Tong project was featured extensively in the press, and opened further conversations with Midea about creating new value and extending into new markets.

Put food on the table or keep the furnace running on a frigid day? It’s an unfortunate choice many low-income families in Flint, Michigan, face.

To help customers in Flint and other Michigan towns stay on top of their utility bills and better understand the relationship between their energy consumption and the resulting costs, Consumers Energy partnered with IDEO and utility assistance provider The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW) to create an innovative pilot billing program called Clear Control in late 2013.

The pilot was designed with three major human-centered changes to the traditional utility experience:

• Instead of monthly bills, participants received two bills per month. Shorter billing periods allowed for smaller, more frequent payments, helping customers match available funds with their ability to pay.
• Daily text updates on energy usage and bill amounts kept consumption top of mind.
• Consumers Energy offered personalized, in-home audits to help customers make low-cost, high-impact changes to their energy bills.

A year later, the results of the pilot are energizing. Clear Control participants accumulated no new debt, while the control group owed $300; pilot customers used 20 percent less electricity, reducing their bills by $200 per year; and 95 percent of participants paid their bills in full and on time, compared with 35 percent in the control group. The utility company simultaneously benefited by avoiding arrearages, late-payment fees, and shutoffs. Consumers plans to incorporate Clear Control lessons into its overall energy assistance program design and development moving forward.

"It’s no longer ‘me’ against ‘them’—now it’s ‘us,’" said one Clear Control participant.

In 1980, Apple asked IDEO to develop a mouse for their radical new computer, the Lisa. Previous attempts at mouse design, by Douglas Englebart and Xerox PARC, yielded results that were too expensive and hard to make. The Apple mouse needed to be more reliable and less than 10 percent of the cost of the earlier versions.

To start, the design team created a cheaper, much-improved mechanism that would operate the mouse, and found that a complex, plastic "ribcage" would hold the pieces together. The team similarly tested and refined the mouse’s other key components, from the audible and tactile click of the button to the rubberized coating on the ball. A record turntable spun for days, logging “mouse miles” to check the reliability of the electromechanical assembly.

The resulting mouse proved mechanically and economically sound and was changed only slightly when adapted for use with the first Macintosh computer. The basic mechanism design is used in virtually all mechanical mouses produced to date.

Food is the heart of most cultures. In China, one of the oldest cultures in the world, food is central to family gatherings and celebrations. It’s what binds people, a tangible way of showing love and respect. But in recent years, the Chinese food industry has suffered from concerns around safety.

Two siblings, Harn and Anmao Sun, set out on an ambitious venture: to create a trusted source of food in China and, by setting an example, to instigate a movement around conscious farming practices. The American-born entrepreneurs launched Hunter Gatherer, a restaurant and retail food space built around a transparent supply chain, from farm to table to grocery shelves. The venture is based on growing and serving what they call real food: The ingredients are chemical-free and come from known and trusted sources—food they’d eat themselves. The purpose of the venture is simple: to serve people real food that is their right.

Having studied and worked in the US, Harn and Anmao grew accustomed to browsing farmers markets on Saturday mornings or picking up a burrito at Chipotle. But when they returned to China, they were unsure about the safety of the food they were eating.

“In China, you wouldn’t go to a food stand, because you’d be concerned about the ingredients,” Anmao said. “You can’t take the safety for granted.”

Hunter Gatherer’s very existence challenges bedrock assumptions about how food is produced in China. A long and depressing list of scandals—milk contaminated with melamine, pork produced from diseased pigs, used cooking oil repackaged and sold as new—has rocked the public trust.

“In China, agriculture is going through a huge change,” Anmao said. “In the US, agriculture operations are regulated. Farmers’ practices are regulated. If they use pesticides, there are limits because these farmers understand that once a certain threshold is hit, additional pesticides will not yield more crops. But in China, pesticide use came about 30 years after the US and Europe, and because of a lack of full understanding, farmers in China incorrectly operate under the assumption that more pesticides means more crop yields. Also, with over 250 million farmers in China, it becomes immensely difficult to properly regulate everyone.”

New Ventures

Harn and Anmao wanted to restore trust in the simple act of eating in China, and they came to IDEO to build a scalable business based on that vision. This was essentially a startup, a shared commitment between IDEO and Hunter Gatherer.

“I’ve lived in Shanghai for the past seven years, and as a relatively active and health-conscious person, I’ve had to invest quite a bit of time in finding food that I trust,” said Charles Hayes, managing director of IDEO Shanghai. “That investment has been both in the time it takes to research the sources of ingredients but also a literal investment in paying a high price for imported food just for that extra peace of mind.”

Anmao and Harn took up residence in the IDEO Shanghai offices to incubate their business. Together with IDEO designers, they tested packaging, cooked countless meals, and found ways to introduce unfamiliar ingredients to Chinese consumers. They discussed different concepts of lunch and dinner, and how notions of freshness in Chinese culture might affect cold-storage systems. In IDEO’s prototyping kitchen, the teams tested all manner of different foods, flavors, colors, mixes, and price points, and they brought consumers in to try them out. IDEO designers, along with the founding team, also worked on the brand and positioning of what would eventually become the Hunter Gatherer enterprise—its location, human resources, and marketing strategies.

As the restaurant concept came together, finding the right food sources had to be addressed. Traditional agriculture couldn’t be trusted; organic certifications were available on the black market, and safety protocols around chemical use were nonexistent. Anmao and Harn decided to invest in their own farms. They met with farmers, asked questions about their methods, and walked in the fields to see for themselves. Eventually they settled on two plots of land outside Shanghai and began developing more than 80 different crops to be used in the restaurant.

From Seed to Table

When it came time to find the right space for the first location, Anmao and Harn discovered an open, airy storefront on Anfu Road in Shanghai’s tree-lined former French Concession area. They designed and built a retail space and kitchen, and along with IDEO designers, they trained the staff and organized workflows. The staff set the tables with Mason jars filled with flowers, hung photographs of the farmers who grew the food, and put up a sign that showcases the percentage of vegetables coming directly from the Hunter Gatherer farms, already more than 70 percent in less than a year after opening.

Customers can shop for fresh vegetables, locally sourced and imported canned and jarred goods, bins of cereal, freshly made smoothies, artisan sauces, and exotic chocolates. Upstairs, they can feast on delicious dishes in the homey restaurant.

Reviews have been glowing. One customer raved about the machine that grinds fresh nuts. Another loved the open space, the “good vibes,” and the refreshing cucumber water. Young people go there on dates, and families return for the delicious menu variety.

The convivial space has blossomed into more than just a restaurant and grocery store. It’s become a gathering place of sorts, both for the community and for partners who share the same vision. Farmers and food purveyors are invited to showcase their products at seasonal events and to mingle with customers and share recipes and stories.

“Hunter Gatherer has come to symbolize a kind of lifestyle the Chinese people have been looking for,” said Eugene Lin, an IDEO business designer. “A place they can enjoy hanging out with friends, as well as a movement and mission they can stand behind.”

A Digital Future

This is just the beginning of the venture. The plan is to open 40 more locations throughout China. But the vision for Hunter Gatherer’s growth is bigger than brick-and-mortar restaurants—where the business will truly scale is in the digital space. Eventually, the plan is to launch a Hunter Gatherer online grocery store from which anyone can buy food grown from trusted sources.

“We have to create trust with the consumer. It’s the most difficult and most valuable thing to do in China, especially with food,” Anmao said. “Our brick-and-mortar locations will establish that increased trust. Then we can go online and grow the idea to the rest of the country.”

Will Hunter Gatherer have a hand in changing the way that the world’s most populous nation thinks about food? Its principles are already spreading, from neighboring farmers adopting more sustainable planting methods, to a growing market for products like wine.

But the true sign of success will be almost invisible—the moment when an increase in demand will result in safe food for everyone and when real food becomes commonplace.

Fast forward to fall of last year. Adobe announces an update to its Lightroom iOS app that allows users to capture RAW photos using their smartphone camera. Slowly, I began experimenting with on-the-go editing techniques similar to those I’ve developed over time using Lightroom on desktop. Could the iPhone, with its tiny image sensor, actually be the magic gadget I craved?

I’ve long wanted to do a project that celebrates the diverse architecture of my adoptive city, and my newly augmented smartphone camera provided just the opportunity. So, I set out to answer my own question with a specific aesthetic in mind and a simple design constraint in place: I would use my iPhone, alone, for both photos and edits.

I have now captured and shared more than 40 photos—one each day since April 1st—and will continue to do so until the series tops out at 100 images. The constraints I held myself to and the consistency of daily publishing have allowed me to quickly refine and iterate the technique—an accidental outcome as happy as it was unforeseen.

As designers, we often yearn for carte blanche freedom to explore and create as we see fit. What we forget is that our best solutions often come from imposing limits on that freedom, and seeing what comes of it.

How I did it: all photos in the series are captured using an iPhone 6S, and all edits were performed in roughly 60 seconds using some black and white alchemy in the Color tab of Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile app for iOS.

Want to see more of Burton’s work? Check out this, a NATO & G8 protest he attended in Chicago in May of 2012. And this, the stations of the Moscow Metro he captured during a visit in the fall of 2015.

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When I first moved to San Francisco, I spent every free moment exploring my new locale, camera in hand, with a backpack full of lenses and a tripod. With time, however, the weight of my DSLR and pack felt more like an albatross than an accessory, and I adopted the usual photographer’s lament, yearning for a magical gadget that could output images of a quality inversely proportional to its bulk.

These days, I frame my life less as a sensible narrative with a rise and fall, and more as a series of small, densely packed moments that leave sweet and sour aftertastes. These moments are the ones I choose to draw in my sketchbooks, usually several months after they’ve actually occurred. The unimportant things, I forget. What’s left for me to draw is what matters: moments of wisdom, aged by feelings that have grown more complex and multi-dimensional over time.

Here are a few moments that have stuck with me:

Blame it on the Boba

When I first moved to San Francisco, I started dating someone—less because it made sense to date him in particular, and more because I was enamored with the idea of christening my new city with a new relationship: new city, new boy, new me! Predictably, things didn’t work out, because that’s what happens when you rush into things for the wrong reasons.

Over a year after dumping me, however, he asked me out to boba. Somehow, we ended up seeing each other again. And again, predictably, things didn’t work out. Apparently, I saw things differently the second time around. I rarely drink alcohol, but that doesn’t stop me from attributing my poor life decisions to boys touting sweet beverages.

Most People are Terrible

I met one of my best friends, Cory, over two years ago. Since meeting him, I’ve probably drawn him about ten times. A savvy reporter with a sharp tongue but a heart of gold, Cory has provided me with many invaluable nuggets of wisdom. One of the most memorable nuggets was a sobering reminder that I tend to assume the best in people too quickly.

In some cases, this just means that someone who I thought had excellent taste in clothes, music, books, or food actually doesn’t. In more serious cases, this means that I have a difficult time distinguishing charm from crazy. In any case, and particularly the latter, I keep this axiom close to my heart.

Not Assholes, Just Shibas

In 8th grade, I met a girl named Mira who is now one of my oldest and closest friends. Mira is much more charismatic and social than I am. During our younger years, I always thought were two sides of one coin: she was the outgoing and social one; I was the quiet and taciturn one.

However, a few years ago, she told me that she’s actually a total introvert. I realized two things: First, that our introversion was probably what brought us together in the first place. Second, that I had completely misunderstood one of my best friends. But that’s water under the bridge at this point. Lately, we’ve started characterizing ourselves as shiba inus, who aren’t exactly the cuddliest of dogs. But they’re not jerks, they’re just independent. Just like me and Mira.

At the end of the day, I use these moments to remind myself that I can always adapt when life doesn’t work out exactly as I expect. And if all else fails, finding humor in turbulent moments is the quickest solution for a bad day.

I’m a huge nerd. I grew up watching a lot of fantastical and post-apocalyptic anime, and I’m a former literary history student with a fondness for medieval poetry. Having spent enough time with Chaucer, Boccaccio, Satoshi Kon, and Hideaki Anno—most of whom tend to leave their audiences hanging or uncomfortable—I learned to appreciate stories with ambiguous endings. I’ve carried this same sentiment into my sketchbooks.

Imagine, for example, using parts from an eel to shock the human heart with current when it’s having a heart attack? In an exhibit called Domestic Futures at Nationalmuseum of design, Stockholm Haines showed exactly such a “product”. Goodbye defibrillating paddles, hello electric eel!

More recently, IDEO’s London studio collaborated with Haines for New Old, an exhibit at the Design Museum London. The result was “Spirit,” an AI assistant for the elderly. After working alongside Haines, we found ourselves intrigued, so we caught up with her to ask a few questions about what it means to be a budding biodesigner.

When did you first think about getting into design, and why?

When I was younger, I had many misconceptions about design that I think are still problematic today. You rarely get to see the messy, exhausting, and all-consuming guts of design work, but I think it is an incredibly engaging discipline. I got my masters in the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art, and am now undertaking PhD research at Transtechnology Research at Plymouth University.

Who are the designers, artists, writers, and thinkers that have influenced your work?

Noam Toran, my tutor on my MA course, offered many fascinating and unnerving threads of research, along with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, who promoted alternative ways of thinking. I also like Floris Kaayk (a bit of enjoyable grossness there!), who always seems to have something fascinating in progress; my close friend designer Soomi Park, who is highlighting sensitivity to emotion in artificially intelligent objects; and recently, I saw a great talk by Hyphen-labs, which probes some really important questions about design.

Tell us what you produced for the “New Old” Design Museum exhibit

For “Spirit,” I made some sculptures of potential body modifications—visualizing how a fictional company might improve sociability in the elderly. The IDEO team, including Ed White, Daniel Tauber, and Javier Soto Morras, had researched alterations that could be made to the body to send biological notifications. The work made me aware of the pressures and expectations on the elderly.

Tell us about three of your favorite projects

In 2013, I produced “Transfigurations”, which depicted babies with structural modifications. The work encouraged people to consider whether surgical procedures might offer solutions to future social and environmental problems. I think the cuteness of these sculptures made the work both disturbing and delightful. Another project, involved dissecting sculptures of anatomical parts, suggesting potential future procedures such as the removal of a cyst from a bionic eye implant. The tactile element helped this work to become a lightning rod for discussion regarding scientific research. Currently, I am developing “if you prick us do we not bleed?” about how we interact with humanoid robots by including bodily fluids. I was, of course, inspired by the famous Shylock monologue in the Merchant of Venice. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” .It's still a very powerful message about the mistreatment of those perceived as different.

What does it mean to use the body as a design medium?

All of my work is, of course, speculative. I don’t spend much time actually moving human material around, although I did once spend a very interesting day at a cadaver research laboratory! Instead I research the tools and materials that may have an impact on the body, or how we perceive the body. There are already disciplines that have to view the body as editable, and moving this way of thinking from a surgical or dental domain to a design or engineering one is where there is space for interesting interventions. There seems to be lots of interest in nanotechnology, and like many biotechnologies, this means there will be interactions with designs we can not see, but can perhaps feel, and maybe also artificial intelligence that may make design decisions for us.

Want to see more of Haines’ work? Find her current exhibits and talks here.

Agi Haines’ artwork isn’t easy on the eyes. But to her, it looks just like home. As the daughter of two South East London artists who met while working at Madame Tussauds wax museum, her childhood home was populated with wax heads, antique surgical tools, and sculpture scaffolds. Viewing the human body as raw material for design interventions wasn’t the stuff of some sci-fi future—it started as a family affair (her sister, Beatrice Haines caught the bug, too) and Haines has been working and speaking about it ever since.

A few days ago, in the middle of an impromptu content brainstorm, I noticed that my colleague had her hair tie cleverly wrapped around her belt to keep the excess tail neatly in place.

Hair ties are something many of us wear on our wrists all the time. They’re inexpensive and, while essential for those of us with long hair, they're often under valued and under utilized. My colleague's back-up belt loop is by far the smartest and most delightful use of a hair tie I’ve ever seen.

I’m particularly inspired by this because I like to repurpose unloved objects in ways that exercise creativity and expand appreciation for junk. Recently, I took an old wine-stained summer dress and coiled it around my neck as a scarf. It now lives in the scarf section of my wardrobe.

Now, I'm thinking about ways I can repurpose all the brightly colored hair ties that I don’t like to wear against my black hair. Besides belt loop reinforcement, they might just be a new way to introduce a pop of color into an outfit.

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.

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.