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.

Design Research—the practice of asking questions that help us understand users, their needs, and their context—is the foundation of our work at IDEO. The way we ask questions and what we do with the answers really matters. Our intake includes white papers, data sets, expert consultants, historical reviews, in-the-field interviews, contextual observation, and analogous research experiences. In all of those inputs, there is a lot that can get ethically murky.  

To identify first principles and set some guardrails, we put together the Little Book of Design Research Ethics back in 2015. Yesterday’s guidelines were terrific for their moment, but they won’t cut it now.

Today’s world looks different.

So, we paused, sat down together, questioned our own practices, and wrote a second edition. In it, we’re making a new set of promises to ourselves and to one another about how we work ethically to benefit everyone. An evolution from the first edition, this version also tackles some tough questions and topics: research with minors, HIPAA compliance, affirming ongoing consent, and shared credit in participatory design practices.

We aspire for our design research approach to intentionally shift power from designers to those impacted by design. It is research that helps us better see, understand, and shape our collective future. 

In this book, we outline the principles that guide all of our work: Respect, Responsibility, Honesty, Inclusion, and Evolution. That last one is critical, because we already know we won’t get it right. We commit to an ongoing dialogue about ethical practices in design research. As new laws, technologies, and communities emerge, we’ll continually evolve our practices to meet a changing world. We hope you’ll be part of that conversation, too.

Click here to download the Little Book of Design Research Ethics.

The secret to groundbreaking design isn’t found in the latest software, but in discovering untold stories and  unheard voices.

And for the past 20 years, our innovation practice in China has been on a journey to answer this question together with our clients and collaboration partners.

Our environment and the challenges we face are constantly changing. Design—whether you see it as visual expression, a way to solve problems, or a tool for innovation used by individuals, organisations, and even social systems—exists in that same frequency of change. The answer to what design can do is naturally and continuously evolving. It’s why we believe the question is worthy of exploration, and worth continuing to explore.

In this article, we share our current thinking on what design can do. It’s not a definitive answer: we know that as the challenges we tackle continue to change, and our expertise and experience continue to develop, new thinking will emerge.

Through a conversation with Tony Wong, Global Partner of IDEO and Remy Jauffret, Managing Director of IDEO Shanghai, we aim to show the changing face of design from four angles:

1. How design is practiced.
2. The outputs design delivers
3. The value it brings
4. The conditions necessary for success

As IDEO Shanghai celebrates its 20th anniversary, Tony and Remy mark their 15th and 10th years at IDEO respectively. In this dialogue, Tony and Remy, reflect on their work with clients and experience in the field, and share how these have evolved over time. They also imagine what new frontiers and challenges could lie ahead, and what the next 10-15 years of design might look like.
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Q. Can each of you briefly recap your career paths, why you joined IDEO, and how your role as a designer has evolved along with the Chinese market over the years?

Tony:
I studied Industrial Design at Central St Martins in London and spent a number of years with Philips and the Electrolux group design teams in Europe and Asia, prior to joining IDEO in 2008. My time as a designer with these businesses gave me knowledge and insight into the role and value of design in these organisations. I was hungry to learn how external design consultants could possibly add more value to topics that we were thinking about every day. IDEO is known for creating solutions that disrupt industries with better solutions for answering unmet needs. I thought this would be the ultimate skill to learn and I was keen to acquire it.

2008 was a defining time for China, and I was curious about how the confluence of cultural and economic developments in China might influence design and innovation. Instead of moving to Palo Alto to join IDEO, I decided to move to Shanghai.

China has been a place that focuses on high growth and impact, and this has taught me, as a designer, to think much harder about the value of the work we are creating. As China shifts towards a richer and more competitive market, growth for businesses no longer relies heavily only on meeting demands, but now also on creating differentiated solutions that are tailored to the Chinese culture and way of living. As a designer, this has pushed me to deepen my knowledge about how economic conditions and demographics shifts might impact what are the right things to design, as opposed to only focus on how to design things right.    

Remy:
Tony and I went to the same university even though we didn’t meet there. I was reading my Master’s degree at Central Saint Martins and did a Masters called Creative Practice for Narrative Environments. The premise for this course was to ask what happens when you bring a diverse set of creative people together to imagine impactful futures. I got to work alongside Curators, Product Designers, Artists, Writers, and Architects. It was wild and thrilling how much permission we had to collaborate and build a possible future. This created the desire to work on big messy complex things that people probably should not be working on alone, and this is where I first heard about IDEO.

China has seriously educated me on the value of perspectives. As a foreigner living and working here, I get to hold several, often radically different perspectives at any given time: how businesses are run, how leaders lead, how value is created, how systems are built. All of these aspects have matured significantly over the last 10 years and I think we are at a very intriguing moment where design—and the way that Tony and I get excited about it—has an abundance of new complex challenges to solve, significant opportunities to leverage, and meaningful outcomes to enable.

01 How design is practiced

Q. How have your years of experience of working with various types of clients in China influenced your views on what design can do?

Tony:
We have a very diverse set of clients in China. What design can do for an edgy Chinese start-up can be very different from what it can do for a corporation, a state-owned enterprise, or a multinational corporation (MNC).

Remy:
The sheer pragmatism and ambition of working with leaders in China leaves very little time for theoretical processes and so-called methodologies without results. It’s all about outcomes.

Tony:
And during my 15 years at IDEO China, I have seen how design has delivered for our clients new horizons and mindsets, stronger capabilities, deeper engagement with key stakeholders, and more sustainable and agile ways of doing things. Essentially, design has given businesses a robust set of returns on investment around purpose, people, planet, and profit.

But what I have learned most from China—which I believe is true everywhere, though perhaps more prominent in the Chinese business culture—is that trust needs to be built for design to be effective in adding value. When we design, we are delivering a point of view on a future our clients should make, and our clients need to trust that the design we are putting in front of them is the most informed choice to help them achieve their goals.

Trust is built through communications and shared experiences. Design has an unfair advantage in its ability to visualise potential futures, to create conversations and make opinions tangible, and to enable meaningful shares of perspectives before arriving at the most informed decisions. I believe design, when used in the right way, is a great tool to enable trust-building in business, not only between us and our clients, but also amongst the people in our clients organisations.

“Maple and IDEO have collaborated on multiple projects over three years. Each time, the IDEO team would discuss the market environment and the business positioning of the project with us rigorously, and validate the business strategy of the enterprise from different dimensions, to help us open up our thinking and transform our mindset. Throughout the project, we would have open discussions and even heated debates, and everyone involved would in this way reap the joy brought by continuous innovation.

Our mutual trust is gradually built up through this step-by-step practice, as well as our common desire for successful innovation. Our team members have benefited from our co-creations with IDEO and from their mentorship. One of the values that IDEO often cites is 'Making others successful,' and we are the actual beneficiaries of it."

- Jim Lu, Founder and CEO of Maple&CO

Q. What are the most notable changes in how IDEO practices design over the last 10-15 years?

Tony:
It’s important to acknowledge how much businesses have integrated and adopted the practice of design over the last couple of decades, thanks to the collective effort we all made in the design industry. IDEO as a partner to our clients will always be adding value through complementing our client’s capabilities, and not overlapping them.

Remy:
We have intentionally shifted to a deeper embedded approach with our clients, where rather than delivering work to them, we are doing work side by side with them. This way of working tends to spread out over multiple phases and modes of engagement and it requires a very different approach to design. It’s ultimately a more agile way of working, in that our team learns faster and in-situ with our client and, simultaneously, we are building buy-in, enabling decisions, and scaling execution on the client side as soon as the project starts, not at the end. It creates deeper empathy and consideration for how our clients run their businesses. What is their current company culture, how does that affect the decisions they make, and how do we calibrate our approach to deliver the best value within these constraints? This is really important because coming up with solutions without living and breathing the reality of what it takes to make it real is irresponsible.

Tony:
And as our clients become increasingly fluent in their own design capabilities, our roles and methodology in how we help have also changed and become more sophisticated.

For example, a decade ago, it was common for our engagements to be 6-12 weeks projects where our goal was to provide a fresh perspective for our clients. The output of these projects was often a set of provocations for these clients to illustrate how their sectors have changed, and tools to facilitate the level of change to realise the opportunities. As designers, we did not have permission to be part of these ‘boardroom’ decisions.

Today, our conversations with clients often start with a business goal rather than a design brief, and we spend a substantial amount of time understanding how our client’s teams are set up, and what might be the true challenges that are making it difficult for them to design innovative solutions. While there are occasions where the 6-12 weeks project format is the right path to enable the client to get to their goals, our ways of helping our clients design better solutions have become much more diverse, many of which are not measured by weeks.

For example, the work we are doing with IKEA’s North Asia product development team has approached a business challenge through a mix of accelerated, sustained, and punctuated project typologies, as well as co-working and coaching sessions with their designers on their other projects, where we offer fresh perspectives on the craft of design and engineering.

Remy:
We have gotten really good at becoming the most optimistic and generative versions of our clients. They see us as them, and we are there to push them and work side by side to get work done in ways that are faster, more collaborative, more generative, and bolder. We're very clear about the value we should be delivering and mindful of when we should step away.

Q. How do you arrive at decisions and choices in projects? Do you use consensus amongst client teams as the benchmark for making decisions? When does IDEO’s perspective come into play?

Tony:
At IDEO, we don’t just use design to share our thoughts on the ultimate solutions, we also use design to visualise potential futures that create conversations and make opinions tangible, from the views of both users and client organisations, all in service of enabling meaningful exchanges of perspectives before arriving at the most informed solutions.

To be clear, being informed by diverse perspectives does not equate to using consensus to make important design decisions.

Business leaders we work with listen deeply before they respond with actions and decisions. IDEO’s role is to bring the desirability lens as the starting point for conversations about how best to balance desirability with feasibility and viability to enable great design innovation. This balance is about our ability to help client teams make the right trade-offs within their constraints, in service of achieving their business goals. It’s not about consensus that makes everyone happy.

The work we did with Alia Gogi, the president of Sephora Asia, is a good example. Here is a leader using design as a tool to listen deeply to the different needs of her region, in order to find the right balance between meeting the needs of an evolving set of customers and the right level of stretch in their existing constraints to enable innovation.

02 Outputs of design

Q. How would you describe the nature of the outputs of your work in these years? Has IDEO’s work leaned predominantly into the area of strategy?

Tony:
Strategy is inherent in the work we do because design is a strategic act. The outputs of our work, as can be expected, are varied. From strategy blueprints to products to spaces, to work we’ve done for clients ranging from startups to corporations to state-owned enterprises, in industries from retail to health, to food—there is no sameness about any of our outputs.

The near-decade-long relationship we have with the Shinho group is a good example of how we use design to inform their strategy and journey of transformation. We have designed from their purpose as an organisation to how they talk about themselves with a refreshed identity, to the event experiences they host with the Michelin Guide, to the most core of their condiment product innovations. There is a complex strategy we have helped design, but it is also the tangible manifestation in market outputs that makes the strategy real.  

Remy:
Another example I’d like to add here is a piece of work I’ve been involved in over the last four years, which is still ongoing, where we are addressing a systems-level challenge within the logistics industry for a commercial vehicle original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

This is first and foremost a strategic question about what value an OEM could add in a future with greater automation, higher volumes of parcels, and deeper needs for integrated mobility solutions. The ability to rapidly build and stress test feasible prototypes, in real conditions, as a manifestation of that strategy, allowed the leadership of that organisation to consider very different paths for making that strategy real, while also understanding its implications.

From a design output perspective, we needed to illustrate very unusual business models for a traditional OEM. The design of an integrated user experience between hardware and software takes into consideration multiple users across multiple organisations in a high-volume, labor-intensive ecosystem that is evolving fast.

The fact that we built and ran these live experiments, together with our clients as one team, meant that strategy was informing design and design was informing strategy—constantly. The high level of tangibility meant we could move fast and identify the next big questions to solve. This was not about building the perfect solution, but using design to get to the right level of feasible, desirable and viable fidelity to inform a strategic decision.

“The collaboration with IDEO has helped us to further understand the glamping category. Our team gained the confidence to move forward, and we began to invest in it without reservation, enriching the product line at a very fast pace. Some of the business, in fact, advances on forecasts, but because of the confidence, we were bolder in our forecasts and didn't hesitate to invest. I think this is the most valuable thing we gained."

- William Lu, Founder and Chairman of Mobi Garden

03 Value of design

Q. What, in your view, is the role and value of design thinking in business, and how has that changed?

Tony:
I find the debates about the relevance of design thinking over the last few years fascinating in how they highlight the gaps between understanding design thinking as a problem-solving approach and understanding it as a set of activities to follow. Some of the activities that are associated with design thinking are out of date, and perhaps successful applications are not quite as simplistic as following these sequential activities to guarantee success.

Remy:
Design thinking has been heralded within business circles as a methodology and process to get to innovation solutions. This is not wrong, but to talk about the process without talking about the conditions for design and clearly defined business outcomes can make it dangerous. People often misunderstand what value it should be delivering. In the context of business, design thinking is a tool that should be about enabling an organisation to learn fast, de-risk bold choices, and progressively grow confidence in the right decisions before executing on costly and potentially irrelevant solutions.

“Design thinking can strongly enhance the development or improvement of a process or program within an organization. For it to truly be successful, it must be accepted and desired by the people utilizing it. This is where the steps of design thinking to empathize and define are critical. When an organization takes this approach, it ensures that there is an initial deep understanding of what people really need and want. Through asking the right questions to assess these needs and interests, the most suitable design, or policy, can be developed. This becomes the core focus of the development of the design. Without such, substantial time and resources can be wasted, and the final design will not be successful."

- Lindsey Garito, Head of People & Culture, Westchester Country Club, in Forbes Magazine.

Tony:
I think this is more about understanding what value design can bring to businesses today, what role the designer’s approach plays in problem-solving, and how the skill of making can best be integrated into organisations. It is also as much about how businesses, societies, and technologies have changed, as it is about the changes in design.

Q. As you reflect on your 10 years and 15 years in China, why do you think it's still important to talk about design—a word that is so widely used and frequently mentioned in China now?

Tony:
The design discourse is important and especially relevant precisely because design is pervasive and widely practised. The more we discuss and debate, the more progress we will make with refining and advancing design as a tool for deepening understanding and solving problems, building belief and inspiring action, delivering results, and creating tangible value. The role of design and what it can do for China’s growth remains as important as ever.

Because of China’s economic opening in 1978, there are now many large Chinese organisations that are going through generational leadership succession, where the founders' ways of working have largely been top-down decision-making that enables efficiency. As these companies continue to grow with their new leaders, the increasing complexity will require that more voices be heard for these organisations to evolve and stay relevant. While there are transformation and change methodologies that need to be applied in this succession period, these methodologies can feel academic and mechanical, on occasion. I think design can offer a more transformative and practical take that creates inspiration and useful and usable tools for people in these companies to want to change, as opposed to being told they have to change.        

We have been working with one of the largest beverage companies in China where their success has been built around efficiency and the great intuition of their founder. Our work has been to help the new leaders get closer to the voices of their customers, and to allow for all departments of the product creation chain to input their thoughts and expertise in the context of the desirability we have discovered in our research work. This collaborative muscle, enabled by the inspirational nature of design, is something that I believe is critical for some of these organisations if they are to be successful in their succession.

Remy:
Any company in the world that aspires to be a global company needs a China point of view. That need for clarity and strategic relevance will only increase as Chinese organisations challenge on all fronts, domestically as well as globally. Tony has shared what it means in the context of leadership transitions and transformation for domestic companies. I would add that multinational organisations also face challenges to remain relevant, and to build their muscles learning from the level of world-class excellence that we are experiencing here. I believe this is where design will have an increasing role to play: to inspire and communicate across functions and geographies about what can be the same, and what needs to be different, to create market-relevant value.

It is increasingly clear that foreign companies can no longer design a competitive solution for this market from a distance. The need to use locally relevant insights to define solutions is a must-have. We are working with a well-known international automotive company exploring the theme of sustainability and what that might mean in the definition of a future product for China. By looking at broader cultural signals, design helped articulate that sustainability is important to Chinese consumers, but the interpretation of this theme across geographies can and should lead to very different expressions on a brand and product level. In this instance, insights to design enabled a very different conversation for a China-driven vehicle program for a global brand.

04 Conditions for success

Q. What are the key conditions for success when using design or design thinking to tackle a complex challenge?

Tony:
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach. Design is a strategic act of making. Solving complex challenges often needs more than just the expertise of design, and design thinking is not a silver bullet.

As design thinking becomes more widely adopted amongst business communities, and more people begin the learning process, I think it is important to recognize the need for mastery in the application of the approach to meaningfully solve complex challenges. A good recipe does not make great meals without a seasoned chef. Having seasoned practitioners with practical experiences in the approach, and the skills to design and make as a way of inviting others outside the design discipline to collaborate, is an important condition for success.

Design thinking strives to understand why people do what they do, and to use the act of design to create, test, and iterate for better solutions. Finding challenges that are largely in need of human analysis tends to lead to a more effective use of the approach.  

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“An important aspect of IDEO's co-creation approach is to use design thinking as a tool to discern the real needs and existing perceptions of all stakeholders. If we hadn't carried out co-creation, the framework and details of the entire Capstone Program wouldn't be as clear... The overall quality improvement of the course through co-creation is also evident. We as teachers are the ultimate implementers of the course, and it is especially important for us to have comprehensive information and a grasp of how to land on the details."

- Zac Zou, Program Lead of the Capstone Program at Yungu High School

Remy:
I think what has definitely changed is using design thinking as a conduit to bring  more voices into the room, consider broader and different perspectives, and to leverage its acute ability to synthesise these aspects and marry what is truly valuable to people (desirability), how these new conditions unlock what can be done (feasibility), and giving organisations the confidence that they can thrive in this complexity (viability).

A good example of this is our work in the healthcare industry, both internationally and in China. When working with multinational companies and local organisations we have to take into consideration the cultural attitudes and nuances towards healthcare that vary across different regions. We also consider factors such as funding mechanisms, KPIs for Hospital Directors, the regulatory environment, and distribution networks. By incorporating these perspectives in our work, solutions have a better chance of making it to market, and our clients are better equipped to anticipate and navigate challenges along the way together with us.

We don’t do this sequentially, but we use tangible design to ask questions about the reality of these complex systems, while learning and building towards something that must be truly different and valuable for caregivers and patients.

Future of design

Q. What does the the next 10 to 15 years of design look like to you?

Tony: Generative AI, Web3, climate change, and DE&I are just some obvious top-of-mind factors that are influencing businesses in their decision-making. Perhaps more importantly, these are complex, systemic challenges where I believe design can have a key role to play—not on its own, but alongside other disciplines such as data science, behavioural economics, architecture. It is time for design to become more porous, and more fluid. We are excited to explore with some of our trusted clients new methodologies, formats, and occasions for design. The future of design in China is bright, and we at IDEO have set our sights on the next horizon, where design will play a role in helping make boardroom decisions, deliver the multiplier effect, and achieve even higher order impact.

Remy:
The industry will change and tools will evolve, but design inherently brings an optimistic lens to problems and complexity. This is what has always nourished design and I see that still being true for the foreseeable future. The speed at which technology, society and the environment are changing will create unimaginable opportunities, but also unanticipated problems. I feel design will feed into those new cracks and continue to create new value. Some businesses will forge a path into the future and many will need to go through radical transformation to survive this next era. I’m hopeful that design, with its optimism, can lend a hand to some of these companies so they can find their next curve. That feels meaningful for me.

What can design do? This simple question is an ever-renewing source of motivation for us at IDEO.

From the very, very big (our housing systems) to the very, very small (shower handle placement), our designers have a lot of thoughts about things they’d like to reimagine, if given the chance. 

Here’s a look at what’s on their minds as we head into this new year.

PRODUCTS 

1. Why are shower handles directly in the blast zone of cold shower when you turn them on? —Conor Farese

2. Can you imagine traveling by plane and needing to bring your own custom-sized seatbelt to carefully install in the cars you ride in? That’s essentially how we treat child car seats. It’s time to engineer a way to build them into cars. It’d be more sustainable, safe, and inclusive. —Rachel Young

3. Clothes that shrink in the dryer because it's too cold outside or you don't have the space to hang dry them. WHY DO DRYERS STILL DAMAGE OUR CLOTHES? This may have just happened to me. —Alicia Duvall 

4. We need to redesign news around nuance and empathy instead of siloed points of view. —Sarah Asif 

5. Christmas trees! Not only are the needles impossible to keep up with, but there's still a pervasive myth that plastic trees are more environmentally friendly. Real Christmas trees are one of the best examples we have of capitalism working in favor of the environment. A big market creates demand for people to start tree farms, plant and sell trees, and repeat that cycle every year. If you have a plastic tree, keep it—but let's rebrand real Christmas trees as the environmentally responsible (and delicious-smelling) choice. —Becca Carroll

6. Why do expensive, fancy face creams come in jars with hygiene and air seals that 10 percent of the product sticks to? I look at that cream stuck to the seal and see money, and then I either have to keep the weird seal and line it up to close the jar carefully, or scrape the cream off manually. Bleh. —Becca Carroll 

7. We have warming garments for everything but our mouths. This creates problems for the place I live, which is Massachusetts. Sometimes, in the winter, my mouth gets so cold and my jaw gets so tight it becomes hard to speak! A wintery vow of silence notwithstanding, I think we deserve socks for our tongues and warming pads for our cheeks. This would also prevent the tongue-on-frozen-pole problem that seems to have plagued humankind since we built metal poles. Lick all the poles you want! You’ve got a tongue sock! —Andy Reischling

8. Paint samples. They should come in something more like a ketchup packet and less like a small can. —Rachel Young

9. Repairs. Why does it require hours of Googling and watching shaky YouTube videos only to still get nowhere to learn how to fix your coffee machine or repair a hole in your clothes? —Anya Shapiro

SYSTEMS

10. The American service industry, especially tipping culture. I’m newish to America and the idea of not paying people liveable wages is wild to me. I’d prefer if tax and tips were just included in the price of the service or meal. It’s also so hard to know what is appropriate to tip as the unwritten rules are different for taxis, takeaway food, a drink at a bar, dining at a restaurant, hairdressers, etc. Also, I don’t drink, and as soon as I ask for water only I seem to immediately put servers offside as drinks mean bigger tips. It makes for an uncomfortable dining experience. Surely we can design a way where people get paid fairly and customers have a pleasant experience without pressure. —Hannah Lewis 

11. How we reward and compensate people who make other work possible. Why does childcare cost more than college in 2/3 of states, and yet childcare workers make so little? Why does an IPO reward employees for the work they put in, but not the caregivers for their employees' families? Why can't we price and pay the true value of care work? —Becca Carroll

12. Housing! Not only in the financial sense around the lack of affordability and equitable access, but also in terms of different models for home/land ownership. By rethinking both the architectural design of spaces and alternative financial/organizational structures, we can develop community-oriented, sustainable, and equitable housing models. Let’s learn from indigenous communities and cultures that prioritize multi-generational family systems. —Esha Reddy

13. The cost of college. My 17 year-old daughter described the FAFSA application process as "Hunger Games for high school students" to become indentured servants of banks until they retire. —Vivian Barad 

14. The immigration and immigrant experience. Trying to obtain a visa, green card, or citizenship here is such a painful process. There are also so many restrictions that exclude noncitizens and visa holders from experiences like using investment platforms, participating in giveaways, going to school part-time, or doing contract work. —Deniz Cengiz 

15. Food systems! While there's often an emphasis on designing, buying, and receiving food as fast and easy as possible, I hope to see a world that prioritizes cooperative models: promoting direct, affordable access to fresh food while fostering sharing and more equitable distribution within communities. —Esha Reddy

16. It boggles my mind that we have a set of broken systems that simultaneously create food deserts and massive amounts of food waste, just in different geographic locations. How have we not figured this out? With all of our resources and intelligence and technology in 2023, how is food insecurity still a thing? —Shannon Vossler  

EXPERIENCES

17. I would love to design a universal platform that lets patients and doctors simplify all the health insurance programs in the US. The interface and experience would be the same for everyone, no matter who their insurer may be or how their policies change, and would focus on radical ease. Let all the complexity of our healthcare system get sorted out by tech in the background. Sort of like how Square made payments so easy and unified for small businesses, there could be a way for people and providers to plug into just one insurance platform, so even when my plan changes, how I use it and get treated stays the same. —Ian Mathias

18. Why is it that companies invest so much money in customer service and still play that horrid, staticky acoustic music that makes your phone speaker sound like it's an AM radio death rattle? Here's my idea: You still need a sign that you're on hold, so it can't be total silence, but why not experiment with different formats? What about a trivia quiz that moves you up in line the more you get right? What if you could connect your Spotify account and play your own hold music? What if you could do on-hold karaoke? So much of what passes for customer service is just what companies think is the blandest possible way to treat people. But by playing it so safe they create an experience that makes everyone equally miserable and bored. More courage, please! —Andy Reischling 

19. Public restrooms are unhygienic. Why does everything from door latches to paper towel dispensers require your hands or shitty sensors that don’t work? Our feet are awesome tools, and wildly under utilized in public spaces. My favorite: In the Charlotte airport, they have hand sensors for soap dispensers, but they all broke, so they’ve installed hand pump soap dispensers above the sinks. It takes most people 30-60 seconds to try all the automated dispensers before they notice the old school soap above. —Joe Brown

20. Plus one to bathrooms, but more so thinking inclusivity: what does an actual great gender-neutral bathroom look and feel like? —Stuart Getty

21. Performance management: Is anyone ever satisfied with a system of measuring human output? —Joe Brown 

22. Dying! But really, end-of-life care and advanced planning, especially for low-income folks and the sandwich generation who will care for their parents and younger generations. I've been an intermittent caregiver for a terminally ill parent this year and my goodness there are so many things I want to design to make this experience more human-centered, easier—and dare I say, joyful. —Jaz Henry

23. The reboxing and the recycling experiences of physical products. And the whole recycling system. If we mean to live harmoniously alongside non-human life on this planet, we need to design better circular systems that help us use less raw material, and recycle what we've already made. —Conor Farese

24. Breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent care, from the initial screenings and mammograms to sharing results, diagnoses, and treatments. I'd love to see a more holistic, human-centric approach to all cancers that doesn't require multiple systems working flawlessly in tandem to support individuals and their families in understanding and navigating a complex system. We need to design a system that helps ease the burden of those in medically vulnerable moments instead of leaving them with bureaucratic headaches. —Shannon Vossler 

25.  Finding a therapist: Speaks for itself. —Anya Shapiro

26. Ads (especially online). It is insane how many ads are shoved in our faces. —Deniz Cengiz

27. Our relationship to time. We think in quarters, but organizations and people that will lead us into the next century will think in generations. Such deep time / long horizon thinking inevitably leads to new perspectives on consumption, (de)growth, and planet. For example: Norway's Minister for Future Generations, Patagonia's commitment to restore huge swaths of South America, hundreds of corporate net zero by 2050 plans, nations like Tuvalu that are planning to resettle populations sunk by the sea. It's why groups have been coming to IDEO for our futuring capabilities. —Natalia Vasquez

28. I love running, a sport that seems super accessible—all you need are shoes. When in reality, those shoes are expensive. You also need time, a safe route, a secure starting and ending point that stores what you need before and after the run... not to mention the motivation, accountability, and education to make it habit. —Melissa Lobato

When you spend your life rethinking the built world, discovering things you’d love to overhaul is an occupational hazard.

Fortunately, IDEO’s Play Lab is filled with toy inventors, game designers, and tech wizards for whom play is a day job.

Here is our list of faves, for everyone from the littlest kids to kids at heart. Trust us and ready to shop? Here’s where you can buy them all. (Please note that IDEO makes a commission off of affiliate links.)

Snap Ships By PlayMonster

This has been my son's most-used toy for years! Each box comes with a bunch of modular pieces you can use to build all sorts of cool ships and mechs, plus minifigures to act out story play. There are 23 sets and we have them all! Now that he's older, he spends a lot of time building LEGO, but he still plays with his Snap Ships (which are much cheaper). His younger brother also loves them and has become an expert builder!

Who will love it: Kids who love building. It says it's for ages 8+, but my 3-and 6-year-old boys love these things!

—Josh Finkle

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum

Named the very best board game of the year by Barnes and Noble, Steam Up lets players spend tokens to create their own dim sum feast. I like it for the adorable props, which give players an immersive experience. Another great feature: an unpredictable spinner that players can rotate 90 degrees to change up the dim sum steamers. Want to mess with your friends? Move their streamer away. With 12 different characters that have their own unique skills and scoring, you’ll never know who is going to come out on top.—Jeremy Chen

Who will love it: Kids 8 years and up, and family and friends who want to play a board game with them.

—Jeremy Chen

The Chameleon

One of our favorites to come out of our board game research, The Chameleon is a great contest of accusations and deception, where you have to catch the Chameleon before it’s too late. The mechanics are friendly to different levels of players, and there are lots of tactics for the Chameleon to keep themselves hidden. It has the right balance of challenge, clever clue-giving, and thrilling reveal moments.

Who will love it: Teens 14+ and adults. It’s also a great pick for a game night with friends.

—Takashi Wickes

Hues and Cues

This is one for the designer in your life. Players guess at an exact color out of the 480 color tiles with just one hint. Not many games vault you into heated debates about the exact hue of “Shrek green”, or “How pink is ‘salmon pink’?” A must for anyone on your list who takes color very seriously..

Who will love it: Kids 8+, families and future designers.

—Takashi Wickes

Settlers of Catan

Settlers are a studio favorite for a reason—it’s a regular feature of our “game night” research sprints. Klaus Teuber’s invention has so much to teach us about game mechanics, player dynamics, and more. There are entire courses and research papers dedicated to Catan. Thanks to an ever-changing board that introduces new tactics and strategy, it remains  fresh even on frequent game nights. (And if you’re looking for a way to play remotely, there are great alternatives like Colonist and the official Catan Universe.)

Who will love it: Kids 10+, and families and friends looking for a game night classic.

—Takashi Wickes

Pikmin 4 (for Nintendo Switch)

Gardening becomes an extreme and alien sport in Pikmin 4. Grow an army of pintsized Pikmin and navigate the world from a miniature perspective as you battle bugs, furniture, and multi-tasking. Don’t be deceived by the adorable graphics or cute and calming sound design, Pikmin 4 is the kind of game you buy for your kid, then find yourself spending all night transforming a garden with your dog sidekick Oatchi.

Who will love it: Kids 10+,  and parents and siblings who want to manage everything.

—Kezie Todd

Wavelength

Forget charades! Wavelength puts a new spin on cooperative guessing games, as you work together to figure out where an obtuse clue from one of your friends falls on a spectrum. Where does a hedgehog fall on the scale from round to spikey? It’s quick to learn and play, lights up a group with laughter, and has a free app version that’s a great assist for learning the rules or remote game sessions.

Who will love it: Kids 12+, and families and friends looking for a rapidfire way to make game nights easy.

—Kezie Todd

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza

Fun for all ages, TCGCP is quick and easy to learn, with fast-paced gameplay. The illustrations are adorable and we’re always laughing by the end of a round. It’s also compact, so you can bring it along with you when you visit friends and family.

Who will love it: Kids 7+. A perfect game for families who want a quick round of fun without a lot of setup or rules.

—Diana Tobey

Dixit

This board game comes with a set of beautifully-illustrated cards that inspire imaginative storytelling. During each turn, a player picks a card from their hand and comes up with a clever headline for the image. Others then look for a card in their hand that matches the headline as closely as possible while confusing other players as they try to guess which card inspired the title. You’ll be amazed at how funny, poetic, and clever your fellow players are as they compete to win! The game also has an assortment of artist-made expansion packs.

Who will love it: Kids 8+, and families that appreciate cool art, storytelling, and witty game play.

—Michelle Lee

Tangrams 

A timeless puzzle that is endlessly reusable, challenging, and deeply satisfying—once you’ve cracked the right shape arrangement. A great way to up the ante: Add a competitive element by making it a timed challenge between parents and kids!

Who will love it: Kids 3+ who love art and puzzles! 

—Elise Granata

Cookies Makery Sweet Treats Oven Playset

Let’s start with the simple joy of a multistep unboxing experience that feels like you’re making your own pet! It begins with kitchen play with dough, then a magical reveal, and a cute plushie that pops out of the oven warm and smelling like cinnamon buns! My nephews loved exploring how it worked and kept returning to show others. 

Who will love it: Kids 4-8

—Rikki Devlin

Shit Happens

Unsurprisingly, this is an adult party game. Players set out to organize cards from the worst thing that might ever happen to you to the least terrible. A good conversation- and laugh-starter. 

Who will love it: All adults!

—Inna Yankelovich

Tonka 6182 Mighty Excavator

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but most plastic construction trucks are terrible for sandbox play.  The wheels and mechanisms bind with sand, and they collect and return sand to your house in small doses forever after. This truck actually works really well in sand, and works beautifully as an “outside-only” toy.

Who will love it: Boys 2-5, or any kid who loves trucks and/or sandbox play.

—Adam Skaates

Blokus

We’ve loved this strategy game where you try to use up all your pieces while also walling off other players’ paths. It gets you thinking of different possibilities and lets you savor your win when your plan to capture an area works.

Who will love it: Strategy-oriented kids!

—Javier Reyna

Little Live Pets: Squirkies

These cute characters give kids multiple ways to fidget. Collect them all and discover what surprises each Squirky brings. One of the best mashups of fidgets and toys, each feature seamlessly and cleverly integrates into each animal.

Who will love it: Kids who love to fidget!

—Weishan Liao

Aerobie Sonic Bounce

Oddly-shaped rubber balls that are unexpectedly bouncy! Aerobies are fun to throw around, indoors or out. We dare you to see how high they’ll bounce. Think of them as a cooler tennis ball.

Who will love it: Kids 8+

—Weishan Liao

Planted

This is a competitive-lite board game where you buy plants and various supplies (terrariums, plant stands) to help them grow. And the more they thrive, the more points you get! There are lots of different strategies to grow your collection, and just as it is in nature, you can compete without having to actively be a jerk.

Who will love it: Kids 10+

—Jon Lung

Rat-a-tat Cat

A numbers-based card game that kids will grasp quickly while discovering satisfying strategies to win! There are a few clever interactions that we love—like being able to swap cards with someone. It’s also easy to come up with house rules (making high cards better than low ones or playing with five cards instead of four) for lots of replay value. 

Who will love it: Kids 5+

—Matt Hovde

There’s an entire universe of toys and games out there, and if you’ve been adulting for a while, it can be hard to know which ones are most likely to make the kids in your life light up.

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.