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.

Since 2015, IDEO has measured innovation in more than 100 companies, and discovered that leaders who create effective and sustainable work environments give their teams more capacity to experiment and solve problems in creative ways. These teams tend to outperform teams that stick to the status quo.

So what kinds of changes can you make (and scale) to help your company become more innovative? It starts with simple methods like adopting digital tools, implementing new internal processes, and introducing modular physical spaces that can be flipped around to support modern modes of working. Here are five ways to get started.

1. Create a shared vision

Illustrate the future of your team to show your colleagues what they’re working toward, and what new behaviors they’ll need to adopt to get there. A vision for the future should not only create a shared understanding about what needs to change, but more importantly, explain why. To get started, identify who it is you’re serving, what value your team can provide, and what you need to achieve your goals. Next, create a set of guiding principles to help contain the scope of the initiatives you’ll take on. This list will help you maintain focus, and avoid doing too much at once. Then, compare these guiding principles with the strategic priorities of your organization to make sure that your plan is scalable, will have a positive impact on your business, and can influence the daily work of your teams. According to our research, teams that use their purpose to guide their decision-making have 61 percent more successful launches than teams that don’t.

2. Let your teams influence their space

Often, organizations over-regulate the way teams work, either in an attempt to limit liability, or maintain control. But that extreme oversight suppresses creative judgment and collaboration. It also signals to employees that they are just cogs in a machine; if their work doesn’t seem important, they’ll detach mentally and emotionally. When leaders design work environments with their teams’ needs in mind, they are more likely to be engaged and willing to adopt new, better behaviors.

Think about how your values and vision are represented in your team’s space. Do you have early prototypes hanging around represent the value of experimentation? Do your communal work spaces actually encourage collaboration? (Do you have communal work spaces?)

Modern work environments should encourage, but not dictate, the most productive behaviors. The idea is to design an environment that encourages the collaboration and experimentation so crucial to creative work, while also empowering teams to adapt as new challenges arise. Data shows that teams that work collaboratively and have flexible spaces and tools to experiment are 32 percent more successful than teams that don’t.

3. Learn how your teams actually work

It seems basic, but many leaders don’t know the ins and outs of how their teams work, which means they don’t know how to craft the conditions that will set them up for success. Make sure to check in with your teams to get a sense of what they love, loathe, and want to tweak about the way your company works. Keep an eye out for work environment hackers who are using tools and spaces in unconventional ways—manipulating what’s available to support their work as best they can. And make sure that everyone has the tools that they need: For example, people in organizations that restrict access to online collaboration tools are sometimes forced to recreate the same benefits using a combination of project management, file sharing, and messaging software.

4. It all starts with prototypes

Have an idea for a new method of brainstorming, or a more effective workspace? Test it out by prototyping with high-performing teams. The key isn’t to start with the perfect solution, but to arrive at something that works and continuously improves. Identify teams that are enthusiastic about change, and start there. And don’t forget to look to your employees for suggestions—not all change needs to come from the top, and teams have a better sense of their own needs. Prototyping is an iterative process, so teams should be given the freedom to test a lot of ideas. According to our data, teams that test five or more solutions in parallel are 42 percent more likely to create successful solutions than teams that don’t do rapid prototyping.

5. Codify and share what you learn

As teams grow and mature, the lessons they gather from experimenting with their work environments should be packaged and shared with the larger organization. Codifying the characteristics of effective work environments can help new employees develop productive behaviors more quickly. Consider creating events or programs that allow teams to share the lessons they’ve learned from prototyping and inspire others to adopt similar changes or begin their own experiments. The data shows that teams that have access to information about prior initiatives are 51 percent more likely to create successful solutions.

Creating change and empowering people to determine their optimal work environments are the most powerful tools leaders can use to set the conditions for innovation. These changes have a material impact on a company’s ability to compete in an uncertain future. But don’t be intimidated by the enormity of the challenge. All it takes is empathy, empowerment, and curiosity to set yourself and your teams on a journey toward self-discovery.

Executing innovative ideas requires creativity. And creativity thrives in a work environment that fits the dynamic needs of modern teams, from hyper-collaboration to heads-down time. As today’s organizations strive to become more innovative and resilient, they must adapt their spaces and modes of working to promote creative problem-solving across teams.

Here are three exercises and strategies that might come in handy next time you’re applying for a new job.

1. The “so what?” test

Sadly, most bullet points on resumes read like a laundry list of job tasks, and many feel redundant if those tasks can be assumed by reading the company name and job title. Instead of telling a resume reader what you did day-to-day, tell them about achievements and things you are proud of. Tell them about the moments when you went above and beyond.

Read each bullet point out loud and ask yourself this question: So what? Why is this bullet point important? Why is it taking up room on your resume? Now imagine someone else—a stranger, someone who has never met you—going through your resume the same way.

If you get defensive or fired up when you run the “so what?” test, that’s good! That means there’s something you’re proud of in that bullet point that you need to communicate. Make that the heart of your bullet point.

When I run resume writing workshops for people starting out in their careers, they can become self-conscious and feel that their limited experience isn’t worth bragging about. To prove that you can take this approach with any job or experience level, I’ll provide you with the wait-server example. (Back in the day, I worked at a restaurant and firmly believe it teaches you great skills.)

If I were to take the laundry list approach, my bullet points would read:

• Greeted patrons
• Took food orders
• Provided friendly service

That's all great, but it's assumed that a server would do those things. It’s the job, after all. With that list, I’m not telling you anything new or unique about myself.

If I communicate my achievements and proudest moments instead, my bullet points read like this:

• Worked part-time while in school
• Trained all new staff
• Organized a volunteer day for employees
• Selected as employee of the month in my first month

This has a different tone to it. In this new phrasing, I communicate that I'm good at time management, I have the ability to teach and mentor others, I was able to project-plan and activate engagement, and I very quickly made an impact.

So what, you ask? That’s what!

2. The tailoring session

Just like tailoring your clothes, tailoring your resume isn’t about creating something from scratch. It’s about snipping, hemming, and stitching things together so that it fits perfectly. Use this strategy to keep yourself from reinventing the wheel over and over again.

Keep a master resume that lists every single experience you’ve ever had. The master resume is where you don’t have to worry about page count—it’s for your eyes only, so there are no limits. Add sections and bullet points to your heart’s content. Let this master version be everything from your security blanket to your resource library.

When you are ready to apply to a role, create a copy of the master resume and give it a name that is specific to the role you’re applying for.

Now read the job description again. What are the requirements? Use those as guidelines for tailoring your resume. Because you’re starting with a master resume, you don’t need to create new language. Simply delete the text that isn’t pertinent to the role, leaving only the relevant experience.

You are almost done. Before you submit this tailored resume, read through it. Start from the bottom, then move your way up, going in chronological order. Does this new tailored resume show career progression when read from the bottom up? Is there a thread that runs through it? Does it need to be stitched together in some places? When you are ready to go, make sure you convert it to a PDF!

3. Give curly parsley the chop

In the culinary world, NFG stands for non-functional garnish. If you’ve ever ordered a breakfast dish at a restaurant that came with a random slice of orange, and the orange has a piece of inedible curly parsley stabbed into it, you have experienced NFG. This unnecessary addition has nothing to do with your dish; in fact, it may spoil some of the flavors, and you might even start off your meal a bit annoyed that you need to eat around it.

On a resume, NFGs include images as fillers, multiple fonts, italics, bold, a spectrum of colors, and charts and infographics with no data source.

Use these things wisely and sparingly. Remember, you want to create a space that is welcoming, clean, and easy to navigate. A resume with curly parsley is hard to read. If the eye doesn’t know where to look first, the mind will get tired trying to figure it out.

Best case scenario: The person reviewing the resume needs to work hard and find extra mental energy to focus amidst all of the distractions. Worst case scenario: Your resume gets passed over because it’s sensory overload.

If you do want to share more but don’t want to overcrowd your resume, here’s a challenge: Think beyond the resume.

Times have evolved. There are other ways to highlight your work. LinkedIn is the obvious one, and GitHub is useful for engineers. More and more, we see candidates creating personal websites to showcase their experiences in interactive, visual ways.

If you are feeling tight on space, provide links to other resources where you can get more creative. And there’s always the cover letter!

Hopefully these tips help save you time, energy, and a bit of anxiety when you're crafting a resume. Remember, there is beauty in simplicity—after all, the only person who can truly pull off a pink, scented resume is Elle Woods.

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In my career advising days, I’d tell job seekers that one of the most important spaces they will occupy is only 8.5 inches wide by 11 inches long—or about 21 by 28 centimeters for our friends outside of the US. Trying to capture yourself, your experience, and your potential in one-to-two pages is hard. It’s often the first introduction companies have to you. As with any space, there are ways to make it feel empty and impersonal, or crowded and noisy. Luckily, there are also ways to create a page that is welcoming, clean, and easy to navigate, too.

Immigration
There should be an AI bot for navigating the immigration process. If they can do it with TurboTax, they can do it with immigration (and I suspect there may even be fewer edge cases). It’s also easy to make something like that multilingual, which would be key. Right now, my friends in New York are paying $300-400 for an hour of immigration consultation. —Alex Staudt

Price Tags
I would like to redesign the cost of products and services to include environmental cost. This would allow consumers to factor in environmental impact as they make purchasing decisions. Currently, it is hard, if not impossible for consumers to understand the environmental impact of their lifestyles, which I believe is largely due to a lack of transparency on the corporate side, not a lack of interest on the consumer side. —Santiago Seira

Sockets
I’d redesign the electrical outlet—a standard for a century past—with a 'data as a utility' mindset. TV and radio have gone digital, voice is going digital, but power is still analog. —Ryan Osero

Razors
Shaving! It's the biggest waste of time. —David Haygood

How We Entertain Ourselves
I’d want to redesign live entertainment. Like, all of it. But here is where I’d start: There’s a gap between spending 2.5 hours seeing a play on Broadway and spending a full day immersed in the world of Disneyland. I love both of these experiences, but theater is dying (it’s basically only older populations who go, so the majority of current patrons will be dead in 30ish years) and shows (with the exception of Hamilton) aren’t being designed with an eye towards new demographics.

Disneyland and large-scale theme park experiences are resource-intensive, and I can’t imagine that too many new entertainment experiences on that scale will be created. But, at its core, Disneyland is a fully-designed, alternate reality that guests can immerse themselves in however they’d like for as long as they’re in the park. There’s freedom and choice in this experience that theater doesn’t often provide (hence the appeal and success of Sleep No More). How might we create a flexible yet fully immersive live entertainment experience? —Andrew Evans

The Menu at National Parks
I want to redesign the food served at our national parks so it reflects their mission of preserving the majesty of this nation, its wild places and wildlife, and the happiness and health it brings to humans. —Vivian Barad

Access to the Outdoors
I’d also piggyback on national parks, in particular on access. Camping and outdoor pursuits should be a right for all, and encouraged, if we want to see people care for the Earth. It doesn’t matter your background or mobility level, we should have everybody get into nature, while maintaining a balance to prevent overuse. Our bay-tech-privilege has managed to infiltrate even the basic purity of camping. —Tim Opsahl

The Olympics
I want to redesign the business model of the Olympic Games. What if the games were spread across multiple countries, instead of just one? What if each Olympics pursued an expressed goal of improving some aspect of the host country (i.e. child malnutrition, urban poverty, etc.)? —Rachel Tobias

Incontinence
Ever since I went to design school, I’ve wanted to redesign bed pans. I know this sounds super weird, but I had an extended hospital stay during my time at university, and found that the bedpan is the single most humiliating object on the planet. Obviously, my redesign wouldn't only include the object itself, but also the experience of what it means to not be able to go to the bathroom on your own and the experience of having to assist someone in this very intimate moment. —Annette Diefenthaler

Laundry
Whenever I walk by my local laundromat, I wonder what IDEO could do to make it better. Laundromats are relatively rare public shared-use spaces (similar to bath houses and communal bakeries in the Middle East and northern Africa). They provide a crucial service, especially for low income folks—a group that sometimes doesn’t get the same level of design consideration. What if they focused on some of the benefits of shared-use space, such as relaxing (you have time to read, call family and friends, play video games, etc. while you wait for your load to finish) and building community (you can meet neighbors, read about local events, catch up on the news, etc.)? —Biz Wells

Channel Surfing
F—ing remote controls, man. —Peter Olson

Police Interaction
I want to see us redesign the U.S. police-citizen interaction experience during arrests, traffic stops, and inquiries to help both the police and citizens feel safe and prevent wrongful deaths and excessive use of force, particularly against citizens of color. Maybe it's helping police organizations realign with their purpose to protect people and address any biases they may have developed. Or maybe it's an opportunity for a protective product to help police feel more secure in potentially threatening situations and therefore prevent them from using fatal measures for what they feel is self defense. Or maybe it's restorative community building between populations and the services that protect them in order to understand and break down historical tensions. I think it would be world-changing work. —Hannah Williams

The Gym
I'd like to redesign gym equipment to make it more accessible to women. I'm freakin' tired of using equipment sized for men. —Jennifer Maer

Phone Screens
I dropped my iPhone and the screen cracked. The Genius Bar fixed it in 30 minutes for $140. I asked the guy how many screens had he personally replaced and he said more than 1,000. Apple really is genius to convince us to pay that for a phone falling three feet; imagine dropping your wallet and it breaking! —Brendan Boyle

Life With a Newborn
The first year of motherhood. It’s crazy, hard, and you can feel alone and unsure that you're doing the right thing. And as a working mom, it feels like time is NOT on your side. —Melanie Bell-Mayeda

Adoption
I would love to redesign the domestic adoption process in the U.S. I hesitate to mention it because I’m not sure my heart or my patience for bureaucracy could take it. (I know, that’s all the more reason to go for it.) —Denise Burchell

Political Debate
Can we redesign public discourse in the U.S.? We are divided as a nation and it’s not going to get better on its own. What can we agree on, and how might we we use our common understanding to resist the temptation to demonize one another? —Murphy MacDonald

Emergency Response
I want to redesign the San Francisco 911 call center system. This story is all about how money isn’t solving the response time problem for 911 calls in S.F.; the issue is with training dispatchers and their quality of life at work. This seems possible to tackle from a human-centered perspective, since it’s a well-funded city system that pays its employees above average salaries. —Kim Powers

Misogyny at Work
Culture at Fox News. The organization has famously had huge problems with its treatment of women—even Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes aside. It’s clear that something needs to change and that it needs to be more than their recently announced policy allowing women to wear pants (not just short skirts) on the air. How might we help Fox uncover and adapt to who they want to become? —Joe Brown

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Rethinking products, services, and systems is our bread and butter. And when you spend your days asking, “how might we change this?” radically reframing the way you see the world becomes an occupational hazard. Designers end up sitting back, scratching their chins, and assessing the utility—or uselessness—of everything, with an eye to making it better. From the immigration process to the razor, we’ve come up with a list of 19 things we’d love to redesign, if we only had the chance.

In The Octopus's Build Your Creative Confidence series, we’ve shared exercises and activities from the book to help you approach challenges from a new perspective. We’ve compiled all ten exercises here in hopes that you’ll hit the ground running on your creative journey and excel in a future where creativity is currency.

1. Mindmaps: Push yourself to think divergently and creatively

When searching for innovative solutions, mindmaps can be a powerful way to come up with new ideas or gain clarity about a topic of exploration.

2. 15 Seconds of Brilliance: Increase your creative output

Even if you never get to experience Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, you’re likely to have your own moments of brilliance once in a while. When that happens, be ready to capture the magic.

3. 30 Circles: Jumpstart an ideation session

This quick, simple exercise is perfect for getting warmed up. Use it with a group as an icebreaker or on your own when you need a jolt of inspiration.

4. Empathy Maps: Lessons from observing human behavior

You’ve gone into the field in search of knowledge, meeting people on their home turf, watching and listening intently. But synthesizing all that data can be a little daunting. Organize your thoughts with this tool.

5. I Like, I Wish: Encourage and accept constructive feedback

We all instinctively know that constructive critique is essential, and yet it can be hard to listen to and absorb feedback without letting our egos and defensiveness distract us from what may be a valuable message. Use this exercise to help introduce feedback into the innovation process.

6. Speed Dating: Warm up a group and break down barriers

Creativity thrives amidst free-flowing social discourse. To get a roomful of strangers to innovate, start by breaking down some of those pesky social barriers. By carefully thinking about your group, you can craft this exercise to prime your participants for the work that comes next.

7. Nickname Warm-Up: Eliminate hierarchy to improve idea flow

While the previous exercise useful in situations where people don’t know each other well, sometimes you’ll encounter the opposite problem: a group meeting where people know each other too well. This warmup allows folks to “try on” a new persona and new behaviors.

8. Customer Journey Map: Empathize with customers, employees, and other end users

A journey map helps you think systematically through the steps your customers—internal or external—have when they interact with your product or service. Use this exercise to drum up new insights about your end users.

9. The Dream/Gripe Session: Define a problem to work on

Dreams and gripes are both a normal part of the innovation process. In this exercise, pair folks up to translate conversations into creative thinking challenges.

10. The Wallet Exercise: Help your group understand innovation thinking

The exercise uses a simple object that most people carry with them as a prop to discover needs, design and prototype solutions, and get user feedback. It gives everyone a chance to cycle quickly through the human-centered design process.

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Creativity is on the rise as a top skill leaders will need to face the increasingly complex challenges the future has in store for them. For those who identify as "creative types," this is likely music to your ears. For those who don't, stay with me! As luck would have it, IDEO was founded on the belief that everyone is creative—and that creativity, like any other leadership skill, can be learned and practiced. In 2013, David Kelley and Tom Kelley put that belief down on paper in their best-selling book, Creative Confidence.

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.