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

1. What inspired #clientwork?

I had been drawing for about six months, specifically for an art show, and I was sorta cashed and looking for the next rabbit hole. We hosted another Fortnight (our artist-in-residency program) in the Chicago studio, and I was really lucky to act as a mentor to C.M. Ruiz, from Seattle.

He is a Xerox machine master; he just makes incredible art with the most humble tools. We spent a lot of time just hanging out in the studio talking about art and making shit. It was a three-week jam session and I got super inspired and just started making the ugliest designs possible using only the Xerox and markers, paints, etc. FUN.

The Clientwork hashtag is just something that has bounced around in my brain for the past few years. We as makers, designers, artists, etc., often try to separate our lives into two buckets: the work we get paid to do (Clientwork) and the other, fun stuff. I really dislike that idea! I feel like the entire body of making should just be THE WORK, dig? My IDEO jams for Allstate or Chicago Fire or ConAgra should feed my weirdo artlife and my weirdo artlife should come with me inside project spaces.

Freelancer and IDEO contractor Kyle Fletcher has been influential in helping me learn this lesson, as he is constantly bouncing back and forth between design and art, yet it all feels very KYLE FLETCHER.

I tag things with #clientwork that obviously are not client work to (hopefully) push this idea. The idea of doing really dumb, silly, sometimes provocative ads for companies that aren’t paying me is scary. I’m making something and I think it looks AWESOME and I write NIKE or VANS on there because, to me, IT SHOULD BE A VANS AD. I suppose that part is my own little secret joke. No one knows if I actually like Nike or not, or if I eat Hormel Chili (I do, duh). It’s not like I’m tagging them super hard or trying hard to be seen by the brand puppet masters… but there’s something really frightening about half-assedly drawing a corporate logo on a terrible collage or drawing and sending it into cyberspace. I’ve told myself that I’ll either do this as long as it’s fun or until I receive a cease-and-desist. I actually sorta worried if anyone from IDEO was going to come down hard on me, but so far only a minor slap on the wrist that I deserved.

2. Does this work make doing your day job easier?

Easier is a strong word. DESIGN IS HARD, and I’m not taking the piss. Doing the daily art jams does help keep my brain active. I’m trying so hard to get in the zone and stay there. IDEO can be so stimulating sometimes that I find it hard to focus. Everyone knows what it’s like to get that precious two hours of heads-down time when you have to work FAST to get something on paper. Trying to think like a designer/artist 24/7 takes practice. It’s hard to be in the zone all day!

3. Name one artist or designer you consider unassailable and tell us why.

Ian MacKaye will never re-form Fugazi to play Coachella for millions of dollars. And for that I am very grateful.

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If you're not following designer Zach Hobbs on Instagram, you're not truly living. The sheer volume of artwork he posts there and on his website makes us wonder how he manages to stay awake in the office. We asked him about a pleasingly tart series titled #clientwork (which is occasionally #NSFW).

I had just relocated to the Bay Area after five inspiring years at IDEO Chicago. The Chicago studio is a tight-knit family of roughly 70 or so friends, often known for taking extra moments out of our day to inspire, uplift, thank or prank one another in the course of the work we do.

The IDEO San Francisco mothership, however, is much larger; nearly 200 strong across four independent studios. As such, it can be difficult for a new guy to know exactly how our forgiveness in lieu of permission culture manifests itself across locations.

It turns out quite well, I found.

Nine days into my tenure at IDEO SF, someone snapped a photo of Ethan, who had come up with a clever solution to shade his eyes from the passing sunlight as he worked (see above). The photo went out in an email to the entire location. The subject line: "Innovation".

If you're anything like me, you simply cannot see a photo like this without your mind beelining to Photoshop Battle. So, I made a few quick edits and offered up my reply-all:

It would be an understatement to say that I succeeded in learning what I set out to about my new colleagues. When the dust had finally settled, the thread was comprised of more than 50 unique entries submitted over three days.

Check out some of our favorites, below:

The original photo is on Instagram now. Share our glory.

I was barely into my second week at IDEO's San Francisco location when a particular opportunity to get to know my new colleagues presented itself.

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Less apparent to outsiders is the fact that the creative license that comes with making IDEO eye-candy serves a very important purpose: It’s an antidote to the intense and often prescriptive nature of designing for clients. Event posters allow us to stretch our legs, color outside of the lines, and take a new tool for a walk around the block. And in a collaborative culture that is driven by the “we” and not the “me”, these one-offs offer a rare moment in the spotlight for the artist.

Check out the entire collection on Pinterest.

Be visual. It’s one of IDEO’s seven rules of brainstorming. Not too tall an order for those who are quick to start sketching when attempting to communicate pretty much anything. So when a special event gets dropped on our calendar, lots of hands shoot up volunteering to design a poster.

Where did the idea for Antibotics come from?

Stina Jonsson: It started as a simple brainstorm idea. I was doing a project in Boston around nerve monitoring, and I drew a small pill on a Post-It that looked like a little character. It had nothing to do with pills really, or the project at hand, but I liked it so much that I brought the Post-It back with me.

From that initial idea grew a larger one, to think about how we could use these characters and storytelling to help people with their medication. We’d done a ton of adherence work for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, as well as helping people take their insulin. Eventually the characters become little robots and the Antibotics were born.

Can you explain how the Antibotics work?

When a child is prescribed antibiotics, their parent receives a pack of the Antibotics. The pack holds clear pills that have individual robots inside them. The child picks one and swallows it. Their parent then logs onto a computer or tablet, and along with the child, proceeds to read the first chapter of a fun, educational story about the robot-fighting bacteria inside the child’s stomach. Each day after that, parent and child pick another robot to join the crew, and with each episode learn more about how antibiotics work, until the course and story finishes.

What problem is Antibotics trying to solve?

The overuse and incorrect usage of antibiotics—not finishing the entire course, for example— can make bacteria multi-resistant. Without effective antibacterial drugs, a simple operation might lead to an infection that can kill. And the economic consequences are huge, one estimate puts it at £1bn annually in the UK alone.

You’ve got a background in cognitive psychology. Can you explain the science behind using storytelling to improve adherence?

Research on the impact of storytelling on memory shows that the human brain is better at retaining and recalling information and concepts when they are presented in a story format.

Information structured through a narrative makes for very powerful mnemonic devices because stories provide order, allowing new information to slot into existing schemas and cognitive maps we already have about the world.

The story format provides familiarity and predictability, setting us up to take in new information and vicariously deal with emotional stress and conflict through the the story’s protagonists.

Studies have also shown that stories affect brain chemistry, which is connected to behavior change.

What’s next for the concept?

At this stage Antibotics is only a concept, but we’re looking for someone to work with to take it further.

*The Antibotics were brought to life with help from communications designer Jack Haslehurst and interaction designer Miha Feus.

Bacteria beware, here come the Antibotics. Created by London-based interaction designer Stina Jonsson, these cute robotic germ-fighters educate kids and parents alike on how to take antibiotics properly, and defeat the rising army of resistant germs. We asked Jonsson to tell us more about how the 'botics came to life.

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.

Ed White has a rule he's tested on his own writing: hold yourself as the writer, and let AI be your editor. Ed is a Senior Design Director at IDEO's London studio, where he co-leads the firm's AI portfolio across Europe. Before IDEO, he spent 12 years as a writer and editor at the Financial Times, Wired, and Contagious. So when he talks about when to use AI for storytelling and when not to, it comes from two decades of crafting his storytelling skills.

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In this episode, Mina Seetharaman talks with Ed about two specific tools he uses to keep AI in an editor's seat: a "roasting agent" prompted to critique his drafts without any sugarcoating, and a simulated audience he rehearses pitches on before the real thing. They also get into what Ed is hearing from design leaders at Anthropic, Lovable, Shopify, and Google Creative Lab about how creative work is changing, and why he thinks the friction of writing something yourself is worth protecting rather than automating away.

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.