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.

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.

In this revised and updated edition of Change By Design, Tim Brown reintroduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem-solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.

Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; it is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Purchase

Know someone who might love this book? Purchase Change By Design here.

Our checklist made all the difference when the Wellcome Trust tasked us with designing a way to cut down on unnecessary antibiotics use in middle-income countries. The world’s antibiotic misuse has staggering implications: By 2050, antimicrobial resistance is expected to kill 10 million people every year. That’s more people than we lose annually to cancer.

What became known as Project Marvelous took us to Kenya and India, where we encountered patients who self-diagnose and prescribe for themselves and their friends, community health workers with very little training, and pharmacies that dole out antibiotics without a prescription in order to make a sale.

As far as complex systems challenges go, it was an extreme one, but after testing several rounds of concepts rooted in behavior change, we found an intervention with real potential. Smart Prescriptions, as we called it, was an endpoint that varied drastically from where we began. The original hypothesis was that the intervention should be designed for pharmacists. But after following the checklist, we found we had to start with doctors.

Here are the five steps we followed to address this complex systems challenge:

1. Define your ecosystem

We can’t claim to have reached an understanding of the whole ecosystem by a longshot—the sheer number of stakeholders involved is what makes it such a complex problem. So at the outset, we defined our ecosystem, drawing a line at pharmaceutical companies, which seemed beyond the scope of the design challenge Wellcome had set. We then set out to interview antibiotic users, doctors, and pharmacists. In doing so, we realized there was a category we had overlooked: India’s tens of thousands of registered medical practitioners (RMPs). They typically aren’t licensed to prescribe antibiotics but have studied Ayurvedic medicine. Being willing to pivot and expand (or contract) the ecosystem is key: We began interviewing RMPs after realizing the huge impact their population has on antibiotics consumption.

2. Adopt a beginner’s mindset

In interviews, we positioned ourselves as people who didn’t know much about the topic. We were there to learn about them as people—their motivations, their struggles, their day-to-day. We listened. We made sure our questions were free of judgement and left our assumptions at the door. What we came to understand is that a primary motivator for doctors is to succeed as a business. They depend on patients coming back.

This insight made it through to the final design. Smart Prescriptions is, at its core, a tool to improve the doctor-patient relationship. Features like automated advice for patients and medication reminders increase the personal interactions doctors have with patients. The antibiotics recommendation is a Trojan horse, tucked inside the features doctors were really clamoring for.

3. Lead with empathy

Continually put yourself in your user’s shoes and make sure you’re seeing the situation from their perspective. We quickly came to understand, for instance, that many people working in pharmacies aren’t actually pharmacists, and that their financial motivations eclipse any duty of care. They dole out antibiotics without a prescription because refraining from doing so means sacrificing a sale and possibly losing a customer to a rival. Rather than slapping a “bad” behavior label on this, we accepted it as their reality and used it as a design constraint.

4. Consider your language

Systems challenges are often as sensitive as they are complex (consider homelessness or mental illness). As designers we are outsiders, so in designing Smart Prescriptions, we needed to make sure doctors were upheld as the experts. We weren’t creating a diagnostic tool, but rather an intervention that offers a recommendation based on their diagnosis. The tool doesn’t actually change the way they prescribe, it just offers guidance. It’s tough to remember every antibiotics guideline, especially as they update. The language that was used was consciously designed to be light and supportive of their expertise.

5. Generate unlimited ideas, then co-create

Don’t fall in love with your first good idea. Every assumption we made was challenged in our first trip, which ended up being more exploratory than we expected. We made a point to talk to every stakeholder and actor about our sacrificial concepts—early ideas we put in front of people to spark reactions. We gauged whether they had a positive or negative response, then iterated accordingly. After the discovery phase, we came up with seven concepts to test with participants and gauged their reactions. Smart Prescriptions was the clear standout, generating the most interest and excitement. We refined the concept back home, then returned to India and Kenya to gather more feedback. This allowed us to design something that spoke to doctors’ primary motivation, and to add features that the doctors felt would make it even more useful.

Unlike pilots, we don’t have the benefit of a known destination. Our checklist doesn’t just guarantee a smoother ride, it plays a major role in mapping the route itself. When the ecosystem is unfamiliar and the complexity is vast, it is a must.

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Every time we board an airplane, we assume our pilots aren’t going on instinct alone. They’ve worked their way through a checklist—fuel levels reviewed, the flap setting confirmed—to ensure the plane is ready for takeoff. They may be pros, but they’re human, and the complexity of the job makes it easy to forget a step.

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While I occasionally geek out over numbers, I spend most of my time going deep with clients, sketching business models, and building prototypes to test our ideas with real people.

I’m currently working on a project to create a new taxi experience for Japan. We’re working to help our client, a taxi equipment supplier, stay relevant when taxis themselves are being disrupted.

There’s really no typical day for me at IDEO, but here’s a little peek at what a recent one looked like.

8:30am: Commute

On nice days I walk to work through Yoyogi Park, one of Tokyo’s largest. It’s hard to believe that I live in a concrete jungle with views like this! Most days, though, I take the train. It’s exactly 16 minutes to get to work. (Perk of living in Tokyo: Trains run like clockwork.)

10:00am: Team stand-up

Our team has daily morning and evening stand-ups. We’re supposed to plan the day, but we get sidetracked and spend most of it playing with our taxi prototype.

10:30am: Business model review

I sketch out our current idea using our Business Model Tiles. They’re a quick, visual way to bring our plan to life, and they make it easy enough for anybody to come in and iterate with me. (The team liked this version.)

12:00pm: Monday lunch meeting

The entire studio gets together every Monday for lunch. The food is amazing—we have different caterers provide freshly cooked, seasonal dishes every week. Usually, we share silly photos from the previous week and studio/project updates. Everybody takes a turn as host, and shares personal inspiration. This week it's Ryo, introducing one of our new D4V (Design for Ventures) portfolio companies, Tabi Labo, to the studio. (More on that later!)

1:00pm: Crash course in graphic design

Outside of work, I run a pop-up curry shop with some friends. We make curry with a Japanese twist, using seasonal ingredients or flavoring that you might not usually find in curry. I’m lucky to be surrounded by talented graphic designers who helped me transform my very analogue potato stamp logo into a digital masterpiece.

2:00pm: Video shoot

We’re making a short user journey video to showcase what our taxi service might look and feel like. As a business designer, making things tangible is important, because it makes the service feel real, and empowers clients to take risks and launch new businesses. Our client got really into it, and even starred in the video as the taxi driver!

5:00: Design sprint

IDEO Tokyo is co-located with D4V (Design for Ventures), our in-house venture capital fund. I really enjoy working with the startups, which have different needs from our typical clients, and move really fast. Here, we’re helping Famzon (a company that makes shoes with interchangeable heels) create its first pop-up store in the Haneda Airport.

6:30pm: Heading home

It’s been a long day. Can’t wait to go home, eat dinner, and recharge for tomorrow.

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When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, “I find innovative ways for companies to transform and grow.” I think a lot about the intangible parts of creating a new service. How do we make money? Who do we partner with? What resources do we need to begin?

IDEO organizational designer Mollie West Duffy doesn’t buy it. “By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk preventable mistakes,” she says. “We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to make work meaningful, and we are more likely to burn out.”

Last month, West and her coauthor Liz Fosslien released No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed, which argues for harnessing emotions to push your career forward. “Most of us have never learned how to do this in our professional lives, let alone been allowed to admit how much feelings at work matter,” she says. IDEO’s Anna Moore Silverstein sat down with Mollie to learn more.

What inspired you to write this book?

The inspiration for this book came from the fact that when Liz and I started our first jobs, we thought professionals did not fail, did not fuss, and certainly did not feel. But we soon realized this view was not only unrealistic, it stood in the way of our sense of fulfillment—and of our success. Our goal as we began researching No Hard Feelings was to better understand our emotions—when are they useful and when are they just noise? Can we mold them to change how we experience work?

Can you explain the concept of an emotional work culture?

Emotional culture is how and to what extent employees of a company express feelings at work. Every office has one, though few companies talk about emotional norms. Emotional culture affects how much we enjoy our jobs, how stressed we might feel, and our ability to do work well and on time.

To instantly get a sense for a particular office’s emotional culture, Wharton professor Adam Grant suggests you say to an employee,“Tell me a story about something that would only happen here.” For example, at IDEO’s New York studio, Thursday lunches are dedicated to Make(believe) time. Creative activities like aromatic fingerpainting, writing group haiku poems, and blind contour drawing help employees get goofy. You can also look for more subtle cues that indicate what kind of emotions are acceptable in a work space. Do your coworkers seem more comfortable expressing frustration or joy? Are there tissues in meeting rooms (which might indicate it’s okay to cry)? Is it cool to respond to emails with a funny cat GIF?

Why does emotional culture matter so much?

When we feel supported and motivated by our colleagues, we are happier, more productive, and stick around longer. We’re also healthier and better able to cope with job stress. And when our bosses respond to our mistakes with patience instead of fury, we trust them more.

As an org designer, you help people design and scale change in their organizations, and change can be challenging. How do you account for emotions in client work?

Something we say a lot at IDEO is “Change is beautiful.” But change is also uncomfortable, and can be an emotional roller coaster

To help with this emotional journey, we try to set time for weekly check-ins. On my last project, we had a retrospective every Friday that included the client team. We asked everyone to go around and share one thing that went well, one thing they’d like to change, and their overall feelings about the week. This helped us all share our feelings in a dedicated time, so it felt less awkward.

I also have had to work on my own emotions with clients. I tend to be an under-emoter, which means I process my feelings inside. (You can take our emotional expression tendency assessment to see if you are an over-emoter or an under-emoter). So I’m working on trying to warm more quickly. I try to verbalize how excited I’m feeling about a project and a team, to help get our energy up. I also try to verbalize when I’m feeling overwhelmed and I need more help. It’s an ongoing process!

Are there other exercises you would recommend to help a company build a better emotional culture?

Awareness is a really powerful communication tool. Many of the CEOs interviewed by New York Times columnist Adam Bryant create “user manuals” or “how to work with me” guides to make collaboration easier. It’s one of the best ways to pre-empt potential misunderstandings—or hurt feelings. To achieve the same with your team, Adam recommends blocking off an hour to answer the questions below.

What everyone should know about you:

1. What are some honest, unfiltered things about you?
2. What drives you nuts?
3. What are your quirks?
4. What qualities do you particularly value in people who work with you?
5. What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?

How to work with you:

1. What’s the best way to communicate with you?
2. What hours do we want to work together? Where and how do we want to work (same room, what kinds of meetings, what kinds of file sharing, etc)?
3. What are our goals for this team? What are our concerns about this team?
4. How will we make decisions? What types of decisions need consensus? How will we deal with conflict?
5. How do we want to give and receive feedback (one-on-one, in a group, informally, or during a specified time each week)?

For me, answering these questions was about revealing that I warm up to people slowly. Once people get to know me, I think they find that I’m warm, generous, and even silly. But I can come across as more reserved and serious at first. For Liz, it was about showing people that she loves to be left alone when she works. For people who enjoy frequently emailing or messaging one another, her behavior could come across as antisocial, but she’s a person who needs to put her head down to work—cognitive switching is a productivity sinkhole.

Exercises like these make it easy for people to be honest up front, and set an emotional tone for your team or office. By sharing early, you can make it easier to meet people where they are, and set the stage for sharing of feelings and preferences throughout the process.

Emotions affect so many parts of work, from collaboration to decision-making, motivation, and communication between employees and managers. But in American work culture, “emotional” can be a dirty word. There’s a misconception that expressing feelings is unprofessional or out of place in the office.

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.