Once considered one of Boston’s best-kept secrets, Boston Harbor Islands National Park was looking to increase visibility and entice visitors to its network of 34 islands, a Civil War–era fort, historic lighthouses, and more than 50 square miles of bays, harbors, and rivers within the Boston Harbor basin.

Together with the National Park Service, Boston Harbor Alliance, architecture firm Utile, and landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand, IDEO and the National Park Service came up with a plan to design a pavilion on the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway, which reconnects the city’s historic waterfront to the downtown area. The team believed a successful pavilion would sell boat tickets, attract passers-by, and enable a positive encounter with the islands. Today, the structure serves as the primary gateway linking Boston to the Harbor Islands, equipping the city with an experiential anchor to better connect visitors with Boston’s coastal gems.

The Boston Harbor Islands Pavilion was officially unveiled on June 2, 2011, and honored with an Honor Award for Design Excellence from the Boston Society of Architects, the 2011 Grand Honor Award from the Associated General Contractors of New England, and a Silver Award from the 2012 ACEC/MA Engineering Excellence Awards.

The Boston Harbor Island Alliance, which acts as a steward for the 34 islands, anticipates that the pavilion will positively impact the number of visitors this year.

In 1901, Charles R. Walgreen, Sr., opened up a small neighborhood pharmacy on Chicago’s South Side. Today, Walgreens is the largest drug retail chain in the US with more than 8,200 locations in all 50 states. As healthcare reform has become top of mind in the US and patient-centered care increasingly the norm, Walgreens sees its scale as an opportunity to rethink the role of the community pharmacy in the 21st century. The company collaborated with IDEO to redesign its pharmacy experience in order to foster rich, trust-based relationships between customers and the most highly trained medical professionals on staff—pharmacists.

Most Americans—75 percent—live within five miles of a Walgreens. With the Affordable Care Act bringing millions more Americans into the healthcare system, Walgreens’ proximity and reach provided a big opportunity to become a convenient and trusted touchpoint for patients outside of hospitals and doctors’ offices, especially those suffering from chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. The challenge: Use design to shift customer perception of Walgreens from just another convenience store to a local place at “the corner of happy and healthy,” where customers could receive everyday health and wellness advice. In other words, bring Charles R. Walgreen’s vision of a community pharmacy to unprecedented scale.

IDEO built out two full-size prototypes of a reimagined Walgreens pharmacy designed to cultivate better relationships between customers and pharmacists. Key to building good relationships were private consultation rooms that allowed for close conversations, and friendly health guides that helped customers browse over-the-counter medications or schedule “take care” appointments. Pharmacists, usually barricaded behind their high counter at the rear of the store, were now positioned out on the pharmacy floor, ready to listen and—most important—ensure continuity of care.

"Patients are engaging with pharmacists even more often to ask about everything—including their medication, health conditions, and prescription regimens," said Nimest Jhaveri, Divisional Vice President, Pharmacy Transformation.

The new Well Experience format was launched in two pilot locations in Chicago just a few months after the prototypes were built. Combining IDEO’s pharmacy work with Walgreens’ new approaches to beauty products, fresh food, and online shopping, 750 Well Experience locations have opened in the US and Puerto Rico—including 14 flagship stores in major cities—and an additional 1,000 are planned for the coming years.

Walgreens is also expanding the scope of its Take Care Clinics, which are usually staffed by nurses or physician’s assistants, to include the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of chronic diseases such as diabetes that are typically handled by doctors. The company considers its Well Experience pharmacies a work in progress and plans to keep evolving the design based on customer feedback.

Opening a bottle of wine is typically a moment of no return, because what remains after the first pour almost immediately begins to oxidize.

But Greg Lambrecht knew there was a better way. He came up with an idea to pour the wine without opening the bottle. With a new device, a slender needle is inserted into the cork, and argon, an inert gas, pressurizes the bottle to pour a single glass. Remove the needle, and the tiny puncture in the cork naturally reseals, maintaining the integrity of the wine in the bottle.

Working with Lambrecht, IDEO refined the look, feel, and user experience of his device, designing and building a prototype that captured the expression of his eureka moment. Using this prototype, Lambrecht raised significant seed funding for his startup, and launched the Coravin System in July 2013. The company continues to grow year after year.

Lambrecht introduced the only product of its kind sold in the global market, and preliminary sales have far exceeded expectations. What’s more, for wine lovers everywhere, there’s finally a solution to savor and preserve every last drop.

Wells Fargo, one of the United States’ largest banks, wanted to enable customers get to the ATM functions they wanted faster. The updated interface needed to be different enough to have a tangible impact, and had to appeal to an extremely broad audience. What’s more, any changes made to the interface had to be compatible with the existing hardware of all of the ATMs in operation nationwide.

Wells Fargo and IDEO worked to enhance and customize the ATM user experience by making it innovative, fast, and easy—without requiring any new hardware. The interface’s entire layout is personalized, based on what a user does most at the ATM. It gives users an immediate glance at their account balances (which they can also hide) and highlights the touch screen 'buttons' that they use most (by putting them at the top of the screen in green). New data hierarchy also facilitates skimming for fast decision-making and provides messages and notifications based on a customer’s priorities. “[The design] shows an intense attention to detail,” noted American Banker.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE LYNN, IMAGE COURTESY OF BIZJOURNALS.COM

In 2015, I spent a month in an Airbnb that doubled as an art studio. Upstairs, there was an airy drawing room where my host taught scientific watercolor classes. In the garage, a multimedia artist named Diego had built his own 3D printer and spent his time creating furiously—everything from ink paintings to cardboard sculptures to warped digital imagery. I started spending my afternoons in the garage, watching him work and quietly editing travel photos, hoping to soak up some of the creative juices.

One day, after over-contemplating whether the photo of three chairs I had just edited was art, I worked up the courage to ask, “What do you do with all of the stuff you make? When does it become art? What does it even mean to be an artist?”

First, he laughed.

Then, Diego opened up his laptop and plugged in his external hard drive. A few clicks later and we were deep inside his folders, files, and spreadsheets. "This," he said, "is what I do with all of the stuff I make." He showed me how he edited and selected images in Photoshop, created cohesive photo series, added titles and captions, wrote artist statements, meticulously noted the date/medium/size of each piece and how they should be displayed, exported PDFs, and organized the files by theme. He showed me his spreadsheet of deadlines and requirements and contact information for calls for entries, residencies, conferences, and shows.

I felt like I had just pulled back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. The image I had in my head of the artist as natural born creator was just the front end, hiding the logistics of what it takes to really make it work as an artist. Creativity as an effortless, inherited talent was a myth.

I found comfort and familiarity in Diego’s near-obsessive organization and realized that my love of structure and systems isn’t actually at odds with artistry. In fact, formal processes can unlock new ways of thinking and doing. Structure can reduce the mental and digital clutter that often blocks people from actually making things. If categorizing and list-making and data visualization gives me creative confidence, then so be it. Knowing I have an entry point into the world of creativity has made it much easier to dive in.

Today, as a business development associate at IDEO, I sit at the intersection of creativity and strategy, art and operations, design and business. Though I am in near-constant awe of the making and creating that seems to flow from the fingertips of my deeply talented colleagues, I know that design doesn’t just happen. Behind the curtain of creativity, there are layers and layers of order, process, painstaking detail, and hard work. These days, I find just as much beauty (and madness) in the back end.

Diego de los Campos is a multimedia artist from Uruguay who currently resides in Florianópolis, Brazil. His work can be found at diegodeloscampos.wordpress.com

I’ve never considered myself an artist. My handwriting is too neat, I enjoy coloring between the lines, and I don’t always get poetry. I imagine artists as forces of raw, unbridled creativity—messy, like mad scientists, but with more color, magic flowing out of their fingertips like a scene from Fantasia. I, on the other hand, live and die by my Google Calendar.

Name: Evin Dempsey
Location: Tokyo
Role at IDEO: Communications Design Lead
Joined IDEO: Freelanced from 2010 to 2012 in IDEO Shanghai; joined IDEO Tokyo in 2013
Social Media: I abstain. Better for the heart and soul :)
Titillating Fact: At the age of 10, I had about 46 hamsters in my garage in cages that I made myself from scrap pieces of timber. I used to breed them and sell them back to the petshop for a quid each.

1. Inside

Inside is a puzzle platform game from Playdead, a small, independent game studio in Denmark. It’s an absolute masterpiece of storytelling, art direction, animation, sound design, and even camera work. Each frame of this game is meticulously designed, from the bubbles in the water to the flicker of the torch. It’s the culmination of a very talented team of designers, programmers, and storytellers. The plot follows a young boy as he attempts to escape from a forest. Along the way, he encounters various puzzles and obstacles that help to reveal more details about his predicament. It's quite possibly the best game I've ever played.

2. Nozawa Onsen

Though it’s not very well known outside of Japan, Nozawa Onsen is a mecca for Japanese snowboarders. Located in the northeast of Nagano prefecture in western Japan, it is home to waist-deep powder as well as several onsens, or natural hot springs. It’s a winter sports enthusiast’s dream come true. The hot springs scattered all over town are also free for anyone to enjoy. I try to go at least twice a season. If you like powder, or japow as we foreigners like to call it, then you'll love Nozawa.

3. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett

A man moves to a country he knows absolutely nothing about, learns a language, changes his outlook on life, and loses his faith. Having spent my life split between eight different countries, and having a special affection for nearly all of them, this tale rings true to me. It’s an amazing account of one man's evolution as he makes his home in the Amazon rainforest. The story is universal, but the book is of special interest to people who are intrigued by linguistics and language. I couldn't put it down.‍

Header image by Mark Solarski.

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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: Evin Dempsey.

In one sentence, who are you?

I am a human being who creates art, films, and cultural movements that inspire curiosity and connection.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I do a lot of things, all of which are self-taught. First, I was an art director at Venables Bell and Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. Then I became an interactive artist making large-scale community driven projects, like Selfless Portraits, Last Photo, and Snail Mail My Email, and I published a book. And more recently, I’ve become a film director.

A lot of my work explores human connection and connecting with strangers, which comes from getting bullied as a kid and becoming fascinated with how people interact and treat each other. My biggest piece of advice in learning a creative skill is to stay curious, keep experimenting, and try reaching out to those who inspire you. That’s basically what I’ve done over and over again to get to where I am today.

Snail Mail My Email is a community art project where volunteers transform strangers’ emails into handwritten letters, free of charge.

What are your three favorite possessions?

1. My stuffed animal Snuffleupagus, which I’ve had since I was born.
2. Handwritten letters from over the years.
3. My data.

I had a house fire five years ago and lost nearly everything. It showed me that most possessions are replaceable. It’s my creative ideas and material that are most prized.

What does a typical work session look like for you?

I don’t really have a typical work session; my days are split between working in the studio, traveling to give a talk, going out to make a film, or working on-site with a client. I really like this balance of working with a team and working in solitude. I need this constant mix of circumstances to keep me both energized and recharged.

Signs of the Times explores the personal, human stories behind protest signs, without ever showing the sign holders’ faces.

How do you get over creative block?

I can’t really work if I’m in a messy or loud environment. So my studio needs to be immaculately tidy and quiet. That’s the first thing.

Secondly, I’m very sensitive, and so often a creative block means an unresolved emotional conflict. Taking the time to journal, find closure in a relationship, or talk to my therapist are all good things.

Finally, I get over creative blocks by making new work (that may not be great) and not judging myself for it. Creative block happens when my standards get so high that I become fearful of not meeting some expectation and get paralyzed. The important thing I have to keep reminding myself is to have fun and to not take everything so seriously, because nothing really matters and we’re all going to die!

The ‘Last Photo’ Project is an ongoing video series where Ivan asks strangers in different cities to share the last photo on their phones.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Optimistic version: We’ll live in a post-digital age where we've gone back to appreciate the simpler things like nature and meditation. Our lives will still be digitally integrated, but it'll be much more seamless and we’ll place greater value on taking breaks from tech.

Dystopic version: Life will be lived within a virtual reality headset and/or brands will be more invasive than they are now. On cars. On skin. In our homes. We will make money by consuming ads.

Who are you (creative) crushing on lately?

My dancer/choreographer friend Jacob Jonas who is killing it right now.

Moonlight director Barry Jenkins.

Valerie Luu and Andria Lo’s photography project Chinatown Pretty.

American Honey director Andrea Arnold.

Ivan Cash got his first job in advertising by getting arrested—for selling t-shirts advocating for the firing of Knicks coach Isaiah Thomas. No joke. After a stint in that world working for Venables Bell & Partners and Wieden+Kennedy, he set out on his own to explore a different kind of client—everyday people. His projects, whether about protest signs or the last photo someone took on their phone, are a deep dive into how the images we create help tell our stories. In this first installment of Creative Crushes, I caught up with him over coffee to find out what he's been up to.

The next time you enter a theater, take special note of the black curtains hanging onstage. I can almost promise they’ll be there. Short ones above the stage (called “trim”) obscure the overhead lights, while long ones on the side (called “legs”) hide the backstage performers. Black curtains are a set designer’s secret weapon.

Theater strives for suspension of disbelief. It’s the reason we cry when Romeo and Juliet kill themselves… even though we know the actors aren’t really dead. (They’re not even Romeo and Juliet, for that matter.) It allows an audience to imagine the world of the play far beyond the elements we see in front of us. In our heads, the vivid and colorful streets of Verona extend well behind the black curtains that frame the stage. And all the set designer had to do to create that illusion was hang some fabric.

Designers need to stop making slide decks and start hanging black curtains. As projects become more complex, it becomes impossible to represent an entire concept through words, images, and prototypes alone. Truly innovative designs can’t exist in our present world—they change it into something new. Taking cues from theater is one way to help people suspend their disbelief and bring them inside these new ideas. Here are three ways in:

Embrace Set Design

“Space creates behavior” is a mantra used by interior designers. But there’s a step missing in that equation: Space creates new mindsets, and new mindsets create new behaviors.

When we go to the theater, the curtain rises and we get our first glimpse into the world of the play. It’s the moment when an audience is asked to leave the reality of the theater (velvet seats, half-finished wine, smartphones, etc.) and enter an alternative reality crafted by the show.

Boardrooms are not a good place for achieving that effect. If we want people to engage with unprecedented ideas, we need to transport them out of their current reality. It’s absurd to assume that people will think differently when they are sitting in the same chair, at the same table, staring at the same drop-down projection screen they see everyday.

Even simple changes to a physical environment can drastically shift the way an audience (in this case, clients, investors, etc.) will approach a meeting.

Consider:

Lighting—a darkened room creates a sense of possibility and wonder.

The unexpected reveal—bring out a hidden element part-way through the meeting.

Sound—background noise or music helps guide people to an emotional state before, during, and after the show.

Play the Role of Director

Another way to shift a viewer’s mindset is to go at it directly. Direct them, as if they were an actor, and give them a new role to play and a new way to think.

At IDEO, mid-project meetings are often the most crucial point of contact with our clients. In those meetings, they must assess the opportunities we’ve uncovered through research, and decide which ones to pursue. If the audience defaults to their standard decision-making metrics, engineers will choose the most technically-feasible option, while the CFO might choose the most cost-effective path forward. Innovative ideas are difficult to judge in this way, so they can easily be left behind.

But asking these same people to make decisions from a different perspective can open up the room to new possibilities, and create excitement around the more difficult to imagine, yet more innovative ideas.

Here, you accomplish two things. First, by having them embody a new viewpoint, they are forced to drop their default mode of interaction and pick up a new way of thinking. Second, because the exercise feels inherently contrived, it offers participants a mental safety net. It’s not real—it’s make believe. When people let their guard down, that’s often when the real insights emerge.

Think about:

Directed actions—as soon as people are required to do something, they leave the passive audience state.

Physical movement—if people are required to stand up and move around, they automatically engage in a more meaningful way.

Assigning new roles—if people are required to observe and respond as someone other than themselves, they will come at the experience from a position of empathy.

Be a Reviewer

Anytime you engage with an unprecedented experience, the take-aways are not always clear. In the world of theater, new audience members might walk out of a show thinking, “I loved it!” or “I was bored!” or “I was bawling, but I’m not totally sure why.” A good theatrical experience should elicit some type of emotional reaction from the audience, but people may not have the necessary vocabulary to analyze it. Good reviewers can help translate the experience for the rest of the world and direct attention to what is important or meaningful.

In design, crafting the takeaway message becomes a crucial exercise. It’s important to tell people how ideas and concepts can translate back to their real-world experience. If the most brilliant concepts can’t be understood beyond the context of a highly theatricalized presentation, there’s no way it will ever have impact in the world.

Consider:

A summary—what's the essence of what they just experienced?

Analysis—what's the deeper meaning or purpose this connects to?

Drafting a plan—what actions should take place as a result of the experience?

Innovation is a tricky business. As designers, we are tasked with creating unprecedented experiences that help shift the world into the future, yet we are stuck discussing them in the present. Creating innovative work is not enough. We must create innovative ways of sharing that work to help audiences suspend their disbelief and imagine the future that might exist.

Illustrations by Megan Crabtree.

Two things are required for design success: the right idea, and the ability to convince people of its value. In recent years, designers have become more interested in storytelling to make the case for their solutions. I'd like to take that method a step further, by embracing theater.

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.