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.

The role of an engineer on a product team may not exactly involve saving the world, but the scene has some origin in reality: Engineers and other team members often have to come together creatively to solve a problem, and they each have their own language and jargon for describing solutions. As teams practice leaner and leaner development cycles, the process of defining and agreeing on requirements, challenges, and solutions needs to be an ongoing conversation, where everyone comes away with a shared understanding and a feeling that their role’s needs have been met.

So how do you start that conversation, and keep it going successfully throughout the life of a product? Here’s a roadmap to get you started.

Start by developing a common language

Do some level-setting at the beginning of the project to agree on general terminology that everyone can understand. Sometimes, this piece can even be as small as defining your individual product’s features in a way that allows you to speak clearly about your product roadmap.

Early in a recent project, when we were going over wireframes, people were throwing around a lot of terms that referred to the same thing: Was a “folder” the same as a “collection”? What differentiated an “item” from an “object?” By coming together in the product’s infancy and agreeing upon these terms, we were able to define our system architecture and have meaningful database model names that we still use.

Share your vision for the product

Build in time to ask your team members how they feel about the product, and share your vision as well. Try to think outside the smaller details of what everyone’s currently working on, and find opportunities to share thoughts and feelings about the product at large. You might be surprised to hear that an engineer is anxious because they’re worried that the latest feature build is getting way more complicated than they originally planned, or that a designer is excited because users have been clamoring for the feature you’re working on. These small, casual interactions build a sense of trust and shared knowledge about the larger vision that each functional team has for the product as a whole.

Leverage disagreement to come together

It can often feel like product managers, designers, and engineers are at odds with each other. Between wanting to meet deadlines and stakeholder needs, pushing for a joyful and user-centric interface, and working toward robust and uncomplicated code, things can get tricky. The key is to take this source of potential conflict and turn it into a shared learning opportunity. Make sure that every side is not just arguing for a solution, but actually communicating the “why” of a solution. If an engineer understands the user research and decision-making that went into a proposed feature, it will help them communicate all the possible solutions that can meet that particular user need, and then the team can prioritize and make better decisions.

Find opportunities to translate for each other

This opportunity often presents itself when you’re integrating new members onto the team. For example, new engineers with fresh eyes often want to jump in and optimize and uncomplicate things. While that can be a good thing, there may be situations where the more experienced team member needs to explain the design decisions that led to certain features being a certain way—and suddenly the engineer is empowered to speak for the UX designer because they understand the shared vision.

Once you find your conversational rhythm, you’ll find that team members begin to understand each other’s roles better. Because the designer now understands why the engineer pushed back on a certain complicated feature, and the engineer understands why users have been wanting a different feature, both roles on the team are now better equipped to advocate for each other and push toward a common goal—whether that’s defusing the bomb on the bus, or building a successful product.

Illustrations by Cassandra Fountaine

We’ve all seen the action movie trope where our hero needs to defeat a ridiculously complicated doomsday device, and the plucky engineer has to explain how to reverse the polarity or engage the spatio-temporal hyperlink. The hero inevitably responds, “In English, please?”

Work friends are very important, and different types of work friends can fill different needs. We’ll cover three: the confidante, the inspiration, and the frenemy. Understanding how and why you relate to these people will help you commit appropriate mental resources to developing workplace relationships that can bolster your motivation (and maybe even help get you out of bed on that Friday morning).

1. The confidante

This is the work friend who will commiserate when you’ve had a rough conversation with your boss, rush you to the bathroom when you’re about to cry, and give you honest feedback when you need it most. Confidantes make us feel like we can conquer the world—or at least ace a presentation and finally ask for that raise.

But these days, it can be tough to find a confidante at work. Because we tend to switch jobs more frequently, it can be hard to invest as heavily in workplace relationships. To counter that and find your confidente, start by building trust and sharing stories with a coworker you gravitate toward. Or initiate a get-together: People who provide social support to others—by organizing an office event or inviting colleagues to lunch—are ten times as likely to feel engaged at work than people who keep to themselves, says Shawn Achor, author of Before Happiness.

2. The inspiration

The inspiration is your platonic work crush: you don’t want to be with them, you simply want to be them.

This person can either be a colleague you deeply admire or a formal mentor. You probably could've guessed this, but mentors can help improve job satisfaction, teach us how to be effective leaders, and steer us towards the right career moves.

“They’ll bring a field to life for you. They’ll teach you how to find quality material in that field,” advises economist and author Tyler Cowen.

Pro tip: The best way to find a mentor isn't to ask, “Will you be my mentor?” but to start by asking someone for specific advice, then slowly work toward building a relationship.

3. The frenemy

We tend to choose friends who are similar to us, especially at work. But the more we have in common with someone, the more likely we are to compare ourselves to them. The frenemy is both our friend and our benchmark within the organization.

Another pro tip: Don’t feel guilty about experiencing the occasional twinge of envy! Frenemies account for almost half of all important members of our networks.

While frenemy relationships are linked to greater stress, they also motivate us to work harder. In a survey of consultants, those who had a frenemy made more of an effort to succeed and network. Leverage the positives of a tricky relationship by partnering on an important project; you’ll try harder to prove yourself and might end up with a real friendship.

But even the best work friendships have a dark side. Sometimes being close with our colleagues can leave us emotionally exhausted. Managing relationships we care deeply about while giving critical feedback or rushing to meet deadlines takes effort. Talk to anyone who has worked at a startup where coworkers describe themselves as a family, and you’ll inevitably hear how tiring it can be.

And for every friendship, there is also someone outside the friendship. The closer the relationship between two colleagues, the more others might feel left out, even if the friends aren’t actively excluding anyone.

Here are some concrete ways that you can engage with people at work to reap the rewards of having solid work-friends:

• Go for quality instead of quantity. High-quality connections don’t necessarily require deep or vulnerable relationships. Small moments of connection full of trust and engagement can be the beginning of something larger.
• Prevent silos from forming. IDEO structures all of its teams to include designers from different disciplines so each team is cross-functional. Our San Francisco office also has a ritual called tea time, in which people are invited to take a break from their work and mingle with people they don’t work with directly.
• Don’t rely on social events. Studies show that work parties aren’t always effective at helping people make friends. “People don’t mix much at mixers, and at company parties, they mostly bond with similar colleagues,” says Adam Grant.
• Spend casual time together. Google and Facebook plan times for employees to play games and eat meals together. At LinkedIn, the whole family can get in on the fun during Bring Your Parents to work day.

This post was adapted from Mollie and Liz's book No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work.

Choice, meaning, and opportunities for learning all make work more enjoyable. But on rainy Friday mornings when we’re low on sleep and irritated with our managers, research suggests our real motivation isn’t a what—it’s a who. People with friends at work find their jobs more satisfying, and are less affected by stress.

It's my first few hours in Bangkok, and by looking around the train, I can tell it's rainy season. Thin raincoats cover suits, and young mothers juggle both sunglasses and umbrellas.

As I exit the train, I look up, count to three and speed through a very thick rainstorm toward my Airbnb. After a much-needed nap, I open my eyes to a completely different climate. I peek through the shutters of my room and see an indigo sky, birds flying, and I am feeling the heat.

I pick up my fanny pack and leave the Airbnb immediately to explore the neighborhood. On a quiet side road, beside the fence of a wood craftsman shop, a thick black piece of tarp covers a corrugated fence. It’s held in place by a clever set of weights—filled plastic water bottles.

It strikes me that such an old trick can be found everywhere across the world. I start to wonder how can these four small bottles make it through such heavy, rainy days.

I stop to stare at a man approaching me. The woodchips on his shirt make it seem like he must be heading out from the shop nearby. He whispers something, unties a couple of bottles, and brings them to the shop's outdoor sink. These short bursts of sunlight heat must dry the water in them pretty quickly, I thought to myself. Regardless of the one million square meters of water falling over Bangkok each September, nothing beats the strength of a tropical sun, and the dedication of an old craftsman to keep his work tools dry.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

After steaming smooth, straight pieces of wood, Katie sculpts them into loose knots, braids, and squiggles, inherently fluid shapes that defy the medium’s natural rigidity.

To me, Katie’s work represents open-mindedness, possibility, and the means to evolve beyond appearance, expectation, or past. Her sculpture that sits in our living room—a wooden braid that bends upwards in an elegant arc, like a ballerina’s arm extending over the bar—reminds me to be unafraid to challenge the seemingly accepted, even when it comes to myself.

Katie sat down with me to share more about her craft, plus her fondness for classic 80s movies and finding freedom in chaos.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am many things: an artist, mother, wife, designer, and powerhouse.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I’m an artist specializing in wood. I bend wood by steaming it, which is a unique and pioneering technique that challenges classic woodworking practices. I learned the craft from a young age. Growing up, my grandfather and father were both carpenters and taught me how to work with wood.

3 favorite possessions?

1. My father's Old Timer pocket knife. 2. My wedding rings and grandmother’s jewelry. 3. My adventure hat.

What does a typical work session look like?

I like to have a lot of projects going at once, so there are typically a couple things in the works at any one time. I tend to work a bit on each project all at once. Sometimes it can be a bit hectic, but there’s something in this chaos that allows me to move freely from project to project.

How do you get over creative block?

I try to take a step back. I change my surroundings and not think about the project. I find that once I zoom out, I find the solution I was searching for.

What was the last item on your to do list?

Getting a pedicure. Sometimes making time for myself can be tricky.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Hopefully I'll still be around then. Let’s see... I hope to be telling my grandchildren about growing up in the 80s, and blowing their minds by showing them ET and The Goonies. I hope that the world still holds on to the classics, like going for road trips, camping in cars, or reading books snuggled under a blanket while its raining outside. I hope that the world is similar to today and yesterday. Mostly, I just hope it’s not uninhabitable because of global warming or something crazy like a nuclear explosion.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

I’d like to have a solo exhibition in Japan.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

My number one creative crush is always Aleksandra Zee. She's my creative sister. Windy Chein’s ombre knots are killing me, and Meryl Pataky is truly pushing the boundaries of neon art.

With a dose of hot moisture and a little imagination, San Francisco-based woodworker Katie Gong makes the seemingly stiff become supple. Kind of like my attitude after a bath.

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.