Life Technologies, a global biotech company that supplies scientists with products and services, needed to grow big, from a $4 billion to a $10 billion enterprise. So it hired IDEO to help seed innovation across the company.

"When we started out, it was an R&D thing for driving innovation in new products. Now it’s not just R&D; user-centered innovation is a central part of our culture. It’s what we do throughout the organization," said Amy Cuneo, Associate Director, Customer Insights.

Over a three-year engagement, IDEO helped transform Life Technologies’ corporate culture through the introduction of User-Centered Innovation (UCI), an optimistic, experiential approach to problem-solving. Far outperforming its ambitious goal, Life Technologies is now a $13.6 billion company and uses UCI to inspire innovation throughout the 10,000-person organization.

After working with Life Technologies, IDEO designers came up with three products that have gone to market, including, a new bottle that showcases superior handling and storage, easier identification, and additional room for supplements. And Life Technologies has transformed from a company that aspires to focus on customers to one that truly does.

Unplanned pregnancies are a big problem in the US, especially among unmarried 18- to 29-year-olds. Seven in 10 pregnancies in this demographic are unplanned, a statistic that applies to women of all ethnicities and socioeconomic levels. Complicating matters are the social tension between abstinence-only and contraception-inclusive education, and the difficulty and expense associated with obtaining prescription birth control.

Since 2009, IDEO has worked closely with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit NGO, to address this pressing social challenge. One of the first insights on the project was identifying the need for comprehensive birth control support. Designers looked at ways to transform birth control from a prescription (a piece of paper that is handed to you by a doctor) into a subscription (a program that ensures you start using birth control, use it correctly, and migrate to more effective methods).

Given the complex and potentially overwhelming subject matter, the IDEO team interviewed women in the target demographic; talked with doctors, counselors, and other experts with varying opinions about birth control; and hosted roundtable discussions. They developed several concepts and scenarios that allowed members of the National Campaign to see sex and pregnancy through the eyes of the young women they’re working to reach.

Research and prototyping efforts led to the design of Bedsider, a multi-touchpoint birth control support system with a carefully crafted sex-positive brand, which is uncommon for the healthcare industry. Bedsider focuses on five key areas (awareness, motivational drivers, digital offerings, services, and loyalty) and acts as a vehicle for behavioral change that’s flexible, with room to grow into a much larger movement.

The Ad Council and the National Campaign debuted a multiyear, multimedia public service campaign in November 2011. The Bedsider website offers comprehensive education about existing birth control methods. This includes opt-in reminder services, personal stories from women across the country on why they chose a particular method, a phone service that provides information in both English and Spanish, features such as “Fact or Fiction” (hilarious animated clips debunking popular myths), a “Frisky Friday” newsletter, and more.

Bedsider has launched nationally with the help of an Ad Council campaign that drives sexually active women ages 18–24 to Bedsider.org. The multimedia Public Service Announcement effort includes television, radio, print, web, and nontraditional advertising, as well as an integrated social media program.

“We hope that Bedsider will be a useful tool for women to learn about their birth control options, better manage their birth control, and in the process avoid getting pregnant until they’re ready,” said Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast in its monthly newsletter. Planned Parenthood and Philliber Research Associates joined forces with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy to help test and evaluate Bedsider.

Through a social media campaign called #ThxBirthControl, people are voicing their thoughts about what birth control has made possible for women, men, families, and society. It’s all part of Thanks, Birth Control Day, launched in November 2013 as part of a continuing initiative to encourage positive conversations and more consistent use of birth control by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. To celebrate the movement, IDEO wrote, scored, and performed an animated musical featuring condoms and pill packs dancing the cancan.

According to an independent evaluation of the program, Bedsider is the first digital intervention in reproductive health in the U.S.—with adults as an audience—that has shown to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Turns out that when women and men have the ability to plan, prevent, or space pregnancies, they’re more likely to finish school, achieve their goals, and ultimately have healthier families, according to the nonprofit organization.

Chicago’s federally funded, citywide bike-sharing service, called Divvy, makes a fleet of bicycles available to commuters and tourists 24 hours a day. Alta Bicycle Share (which runs bike-sharing systems in Boston, the Bay Area, DC, and New York City) collaborated with IDEO to spread Divvy’s message, “Divide and Share!” to the cyclists and would-be cyclists of Chicago through the brand.

The new brand would appear on its bikes, stations, company vans, member fobs, and website—and it needed to be ready to hit the streets in just six months. IDEO partnered with local brand strategy studio Firebelly Design to collaborate on a solution. IDEO led the early research, conceptual brand development, and naming phase of the project; the Firebelly team led the visual design and developed the brand guidelines.

The brand has become a functional and fun part of Chicago’s transportation landscape and has been embraced by Chicago commuters. Just three weeks after it launched, the City of Chicago called the Divvy Bikes program the busiest bike-sharing system in the world. Six months into the service, enthusiastic cyclists have racked up over 780,000 trips and 1.7 million-plus miles, and over 12,000 Chicagoans have become members.

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After watching her husband suffer from cancer, Tomoko Namba, founder of Japan’s leading mobile internet company, DeNA, wanted to empower people with better health information to aid them in making medical decisions. DeNA partnered with IDEO to help with the design of a genetic test that had mass-market appeal.

Together, IDEO and DeNA designed all the consumer touchpoints from the ground up for the expanding new business, called MYCODE. The aim was not only to create a functioning, usable product, but also to introduce the notion of genetic testing in a privacy-sensitive country that for the most part, hadn’t yet considered it an option. What would make MYCODE resonate with mass-market Japan? How could genetic testing results be shared in a way that was accurate but also actionable and motivating?

The team worked with doctors, nutritionists, medical governing bodies, and more, setting up fast, iterative cycles, and conceptualizing and prototyping almost every aspect of MYCODE in just 16 weeks. Data design, home testing experience, purchase flow, and how the service would be used over the long-term were all considered, along with traditional branding elements, like name, logo, and visual identity.

The result is a product that puts reliable genetic information into the hands of Japanese consumers, helping them to make more informed healthcare decisions. MYCODE went to market in August 2014, just nine months after the engagement with IDEO began. Not only did MYCODE fulfill Namba’s mission, it helped the company find new ways to grow: Upon announcement of the new service, DeNA’s share price jumped 6.7 percent.

1. Get out of your head

When the music comes on, I let go of what’s in my head and let my body take over. Learning the steps mechanically will never get me into the groove—I have to connect to the music to find my flow.

Design work is no different. Exploring the future of the credit card (yes, that’s part of “design” work here at IDEO) probably won’t have you jumping out of bed; you have to find something in the challenge that moves you. In this case, it was understanding that the card could be about access—to that trip you often dream of taking, to the most amazing cup of coffee in a little-known cafe, to that stunning bag that is clearly missing from your collection. This shift, from payment to access, unlocks a whole new way of thinking about the opportunity. When you move beyond executing the mechanics and find a way connect to the opportunity on a deeper, more personal level, you will be able to bring your best creative energy to it.

2. Learn as you go

In class, we don’t see the full routine at the beginning. We learn it in parts and build as we go. This requires trust and patience: trust that the parts will add up to something bigger, and the patience to go through a process of trial, error, and repetition.

This runs counter to how I (and many people) work. Designers like to move fast—to begin with a vision and quickly start building it out. For example, imagine a smart, voice-activated delivery service for an older adult. You can probably already envision a prototype in your mind. But how will the service interact in a way that feels appropriately human? If the user asks the same question again and again, how will it respond to her? How might it share relevant information with her family and caregivers? Designing these details is critical to getting the service right. Even when the vision comes easily, following through requires is an exploratory process that requires patience. Putting in the time and effort to learn something new is sure to pay off when some unexpected revelation emerges.

3. Add your flare

Once I know the mechanics of the dance, the real work starts: a subtle swing of my hips, the way I hold my hands, adding my flare to a key transition. This is where I make what I’ve learned my own.

It can be scary to take something that’s been expertly designed and change it. When working through a new digital ecosystem for a retailer, a visually compelling user interface could stop you from questioning possible disconnects in the customer experience or retailer mechanics. But being part of a design team is about looking for places where your unique perspective adds depth and insight to what you collectively create. So don’t be afraid to put your post-it sketch on top of a beautiful screen. Sharing your point of view gets you to an even better design.

4. Get inspired, not competitive

During class I seek out the people in the room who pick up the moves quickly and execute them perfectly. When I start comparing myself to them, I always lose. But when I shift my perspective and instead draw energy and take pointers from those dancers, it opens up a world of possibilities. My moves improve and so does my confidence.

We all have high expectations for our work. But when you look at other people as reference points for how you’re failing, self-doubt invariably creeps in, preventing you from doing your best work. What if the next time you start to judge yourself, you pair up with a designer who inspires you to explore the challenge side-by-side? Your design jam session may not get you as sweaty as a hip-hop jam session, but you'll likely still find yourself smiling—and doling out a few high-fives along the way.

Illustrations by Yue Yuan.

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I wanted to try something new this year. Something that scared me a little bit. (Okay, a lot.) So I signed up for a hip-hop class. On the first day I almost didn’t go, but an hour into class I was covered in sweat, smiling from ear to ear, and high-fiving my fellow classmates. On Monday morning I found that what I learned in class had followed me to work. It was more than just the music in my head—there were other lessons to take from that class. Here’s what I discovered about how hip-hop can make you a better designer:

Today’s products were designed for the industrial era of browsing store aisles and making choices based on packaging. But now that we’re largely buying stuff online, it’s time to rethink that model.

So, IDEO’s London and Munich studios teamed up to create an exhibition of six circular design fictions called Never Finished. (We also worked on a design guide with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which you can find here.)

Circular products and the materials they’re made of are designed to be kept in use, to be regenerative, and not to be thrown away. Tomorrow’s things will also be smart—with sensors and software built into them—which will allow us to improve their usefulness over time. Circular products promise to save both money and the planet. (You’ve heard about the great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, right?)

Take a peek at the potential future of product design:

What if your makeup got better with age?

Infinity is a makeup service with packaging that is designed to get more beautiful, more useful, and more valuable as you use it. Housed in luxurious, long-lasting brass, Infinity’s lipstick holder and blusher case are designed to grow old with you. A built-in scanner (sensor) also captures skin health data, and orders (customized) refills when empty.

What if food packaging was redesigned for online shopping?

Food packaging is designed to attract people’s eye on a supermarket shelf, extend the lifespan of the product, and protect what’s inside from damage. But it’s over-engineered for online delivery, and it's hard to recycle. Clean is a new food packaging system designed for online delivery services. It’s refillable and easily decanted, recycled, or composted.

What if sneakers could be made better than new?

Once these sneakers are worn out, the owner simply bags them up in a pre-paid shipping pack and sends them back to the factory, where the sole is scanned and the materials are disassembled and processed for reuse. The factory then uses the scan of the sole to print a new shoe using the reclaimed materials—perfectly tailored to the user.

What if your household gadget sold itself?

Use Me/Lose Me is a usage-monitoring service that aims to get the most out of household appliances—even if that means changing owners. Using a web-connected chip, Use Me/Lose Me sends a text message to a gadget's owner quoting the latest price they could get for selling it. If the user wishes to sell, they can simply reply to the text message, which automatically uploads the item to an online auction site, arranging the entire sale, payment, and shipping.

We had a lot of fun pairing circular design principles with user needs. By exploring “what if” scenarios, we believe we have found more elegant solutions to the traditional linear path of make, use, dispose.

Of course, moving to a Circular Economy won’t be easy. Consumerism is a huge, gnarly, systemic problem, driven by shifting business models. But change will be driven by people who choose to buy products and services not because they’re circular, but because they are better.

We hope Never Finished feels like a gauntlet thrown down to you designers out there. Let’s make things that are better for the user, better for business, and better for the planet.

Already working on something circular? Tell us more!

What do you do with your stinky, worn out sneakers? How about that empty lipstick case? If you answered, “Toss it in the trash, of course!” you’d be completely normal. What other choice do we have?

Name: Katie Clark
Location: San Francisco
Role at IDEO: Digital Marketing Director
Joined IDEO: 2003
Twitter: @katieclark
Instagram: @katieclark
Titillating Fact: I once ran a marathon on what turned out to be half a functioning heart. I had heart surgery one month later—good as new!

1. NASA Social

I grew up in Central Florida watching more space shuttle and satellite launches from Kennedy Space Center than I can count. We had astronauts and astrophysicists as neighbors, and I had some pretty great show-and-tells in my day. I can still remember watching the Challenger explode and knowing instantly, even at age 6, that something was wrong.

Needless to say, I’ve had a lifelong obsession with NASA and became involved with NASA Social events a few years ago. The event series is NASA’s way of emboldening and educating social media-savvy citizens around events, launches, and the incredible work NASA does. The ripple effect means more and more networks learn about the variety of things happening throughout the space nerd universe.

Here’s how it works: You apply for specific events and, if approved, you receive press-equivalent access—a.k.a. “social media credentials”—to briefings, tours, NASA personnel, etc. I even got to meet Charles Bolden at the last one I attended in Lompoc, California!

2. Angel Island

Growing up in the U.S., kids are steeped in the history of Ellis Island, but Angel Island seems to be its unknown little sister. This is one of my favorite places to visit in the San Francisco Bay Area for a number of reasons, and yet, many Bay Areans have never even heard of it, even though it’s right next to Alcatraz. I recently became an Angel Island Conservancy board member, so I like to evangelize its awesomeness every chance I get.

The history of this island is incredibly fascinating (and at times fraught), from its time as an Immigration Station carved with Chinese poetry to its service as the Cold War-era Nike Missile launch site. Angel Island even has an endemic mole, found nowhere else in the world, aptly named the Angel Island Mole. You can camp there overnight or just come for a day and finish your hike with a beer, a cheese plate, and live music at the Angel Island Cafe. Get on the boat!

3. Dub Nation

If you've heard of the NBA, you’ve heard of the Golden State Warriors. I know that loving the Warriors doesn't make me special, but my husband and I have been fans since long before they were considered a good team. (Read: we could actually afford tickets back then). Here are a few things that make this team inspiring:

• Head Coach Steve Kerr. This man has been through some of the most earth-shattering events anyone can imagine, and is still one of the most inspiring leaders in professional sports. To boot, he and his family are active in several sport-related nonprofits including Peace Players International. As I write this, he’s suffering from major post-surgical complications and his team’s response has been nothing short of tear-jerking.
• Point Guard Stephen Curry. If calm and collected had a name, it would be Steph Curry. His pregame tunnel shots alone are worthy of a few paragraphs, but I’ll just let you watch this (he does this before every game). You can catch a young Steph and his former-NBA dad in these clairvoyant 1990's Burger King commercials.
• Dub Nation. I'm a former college athlete who grew up in the football-crazed American south, so I thought I knew something about intense sports fans. Nope. Warriors fans (we call ourselves “Dub Nation”) are among the coolest humans I’ve ever met. I still love this 2013 article about jumping on the Warriors bandwagon. Some of it is still applicable today, particularly Steph Curry’s mouthpiece chewing, so it's not too late to jump on yourself.

Header image by Clem Onojeghuo.

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In this series, we ask IDEO designers to share the stuff they're digging right now—tools, books, music, sites, people, places—so you, too, can drink from the fount of inspiration bubbling up here. This week's guest star: Katie Clark.

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I took this picture last summer while I was back home in Istanbul. Summer in Istanbul is very, very hot. Sometimes the mercury in the city gets up to 113F. It’s pretty unbearable.

On toasty afternoon, I took this picture of a bunch of people capitalizing on the shade in a park to avoid the sun. At that time of day and year, the shadows defined the usable space within the park.

From a design researcher’s perspective, this picture says so much about how the sun and shade affect how we interact with cities and spaces. Sometimes design is all about constraints.

It’s a great reminder of all the factors to consider when we design for urban environments. Or a great reminder that nature is a designer, too.

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 the invention of new products, services, and experiences.

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.