Master Kong (known internationally as Tingyi Holding Corporation) is number one in market share in both instant noodles and ready-to-drink teas, with over $10 billion USD in annual revenue. While China has a rich tea culture, most sugar-free bottled tea on store shelves markets itself as “healthy” and “tasty.” Wanting to set itself apart from the competition by uncovering new consumer needs, Master Kong reached out to IDEO. Together, Master Kong and IDEO immersed themselves in modern Chinese tea culture and built a new, premium, sugar-free bottled tea brand that resonates deeply with contemporary tea drinkers. ‍

During research, the combined IDEO/Master Kong team took a two-pronged approach to uncovering new opportunities: industry exploration and consumer research. The team visited various tea-related businesses, from traditional tea houses to modern beverage shops, as well as “third place” tea spaces outside of home or work. They also conducted in-depth, in-home interviews with consumers with various levels of interest in tea, delving deeply into their daily routines to better understand their lifestyles and any emotional or functional needs related to tea.

The team discovered that the essence of Chinese tea culture resonated with contemporary consumers’ longing for authenticity, simplicity, and physical rejuvenation in their fast-paced lives. This insight presented a unique opportunity for Master Kong. Instead of positioning its new sugar-free tea brand as merely a “healthy alternative” to other beverages,  it could spark a meaningful connection to tea culture, seamlessly integrating into various moments of modern life.  

Armed with this insight, IDEO designers and dozens of Master Kong beverage team members participated in a series of immersive, hands-on tea innovation workshops. Teams of experts from R&D, marketing, supply chain, and other company departments temporarily set aside their job titles to explore, iterate, and refine dozens of new tea concepts that were commercially viable, feasible for mass production, and aligned with consumer needs. The cross-departmental collaboration allowed for a broad mix of perspectives, experiences, and expertise, enriching the innovation process.

The co-creation sessions led to a new sugar-free tea product and flagship brand called Cha De Chuan Ren (“Descendants of the Tea”), which celebrates fine, origin-sourced tea and the passion and dedication of tea farmers. The novel concept resonated strongly with consumers and was validated during subsequent rounds of quantitative market testing, ensuring its relevance and market potential.

Cha De Chuan Ren launched with two signature flavors: Tieguanyin (green tea) from Fujian and Pu’er (black tea) from Yunnan. The unique mottled bottle design pays tribute to traditional handcrafted glass containers and the handiwork of tea farmers. The tactile paper label, which features Jia Ma-inspired woodblock illustrations of local tea fields and tea farmers’ hands, nods to the artisanal craft of tea making and the source of the tea inside.

“Descendants of the Tea” debuted on Tmall in April 2024. It claimed the top spot on the commerce site’s Tea Beverage V-List in August and September. Offline, it launched in FamilyMart convenience stores in May and has since expanded nationwide. The new brand received a 2024 Red Dot Award for “Brands & Communication Design.”

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“We are honored to collaborate with IDEO, a global leader in innovation, as our strategic partner. ‘Descendants of the Tea’ is not just an exceptional product but also a tribute to the rich heritage of tea culture. Only by continuously integrating culinary traditions with innovation can we sustainably meet consumers’ true needs.”

Richard Chen
‍CEO, Master Kong (Tingyi Holding Corporation)

“Innovation is incredibly fragile. If even one leader is unsupportive or hesitant, the culture of innovation can collapse. I always encourage my team to take risks, as long as they’re not high stakes. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? At the very least, we’ll have a fair chance at creating something new.”

Wei Hong-Chen
‍Chairman of Master Kong Beverage Holdings Co., Ltd.

Sugary bottled teas were once very popular in China. Today, rising consumer demand for healthier beverage options has expanded the market for sugar-free tea.

#1

on Tmall’s Tea Beverage V-List, August- September 2024

2024 Red Dot Award Winner

‍for Brands & Communication Design

Twenty years ago, carrying a single-use plastic water bottle was a status symbol—no more. Growing awareness of the negative environmental impact of plastic pollution, combined with the adoption of healthier lifestyles and social media influencer trends, has made reusable water bottles “it” accessories for on-the-go consumers. While brands such as Stanley, Yeti, S’well, and Hydro Flask own the under-$100 market, fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, and Prada have etched out a new and growing market for high-end bottles that appeal to discerning, trend-conscious young people looking to perfect their hydration habits.

Spotting an opportunity to disrupt the predominantly utilitarian water bottle market, Steinmann partnered closely with IDEO, tasking the team with developing an industrial design that perfected the tactile and sensory user experience, from drinking and carrying to disassembling and cleaning thoroughly. The collaboration deepened over time, with Steinmann and IDEO working together to develop the high-level engineering concept, the OKAPA logo mark, and packaging ideas.

Key user-centered features of the OKAPA bottle include a medical-grade German borosilicate glass interior for superior taste of hot or cold beverages with no lingering odors; a Swiss-engineered thermoplastic lockable and leak-proof tilt cap that can be easily operated with one hand when driving or doing other activities; and an ergonomically shaped mouthpiece for a pleasurable drinking experience. Precision-engineered for maximum longevity, the inner glass bottle is suspended via a shock-absorbing system inside a bead-blasted, extruded, and anodized aluminum outer shell. Eight modular parts come apart easily for either a quick or thorough cleaning.

At its core, the OKAPA bottle elevates an everyday ritual through meticulous design and uncompromising engineering. Launched in January 2025, the new bottles are available in eight contemporary colorways curated by renowned color and materials specialist Beatrice Santiccioli (BSD), including Misti Pinku, Goldie Samba, and Fetishe Noir, among others.

In the US, the reusable water bottle market is estimated to increase from $10.2B in 2024 to $14.1B by 2031, with 69 percent of Gen Zers owning at least one. Customization trends, such as personalized design and branding, are anticipated to boost the market, ripe territory for disruptive startups such as OKAPA. (Persistence Market Research)

Once a practical accessory for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts, reusable water bottles have gone mainstream. Yet none check all the boxes in terms of purity of taste, hygiene, durability, functionality, and beauty.

8

modular pieces ensure hygienic cleaning is quick and easy

100%

recyclable materials in each bottle

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s mission is to interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science. Over its 110-plus-year history, its offerings grew to include everything from a quarterly magazine, popular websites and apps with millions of users (Merlin, eBird), partnerships with outside organizations, and the world’s largest database of photographs and audio recordings of birds. This abundance is a testament to the passionate enthusiasm of its employees. Still, it confused potential members and led to siloed internal efforts, preventing the Lab from advancing its urgent collective vision. “Birds and biodiversity are in peril,” said Executive Director Dr. Ian Owens. “We must take radical action with a coherent vision, united voice, and purpose.”

IDEO began by helping the Lab better define its audience. While primarily composed of people passionate about birds, IDEO discovered its larger audience was nature lovers interested in biodiversity, bioacoustics, conservation, and science. From there, IDEO created a brand strategy and architecture focused on helping the Lab streamline its efforts under the “One Lab” brand. The brand architecture visually articulated the relationship between Cornell University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Lab’s many products and offerings. IDEO designed a comprehensive brand identity system to work across mediums, including a simplified logo system, new colors, type, graphic language, voice and tone, and key messaging.

When the Lab’s design team began implementing the new branding elements across its website and many digital products, it became clear that the organization also needed IDEO’s help in creating tools to facilitate cross-department collaboration. To better understand the day-to-day nuances of the organization, IDEO designers worked out of the Lab, co-creating a brand activation playbook. The playbook, launched in 2023, contains recommendations for new cross-functional working groups (partnerships, visual identity, and brand voice), as well as exercises and interactive tools designed to build trusting relationships, gain alignment, foster collaboration, and manage change at scale.

Post-collaboration, the Lab has applied the new brand across its website, apps including Merlin and eBird, Living Bird magazine, email and newsletter templates, and its line of merchandise. A new internal brand guidelines site has become central to employee onboarding, while new working groups are helping to bring down barriers between teams and spur collective action. Like a flock of birds, the Lab now sings one collective song.

The Cornell Lab’s 300+ scientists, professors, staff, and students were passionately dedicated to their individual team’s unique conservation projects, but segmented internal systems could stymie their collective impact.

1 brand

unifying 300+ employees and 8 departments

Founded in 2008, Ascend Public Charter Network prides itself on providing “rich, joyful learning experiences that unlock lives of boundless choice” for its students, 93 percent of whom identify as Black or Latinx. The organization is also proud of being Black-led: 78 percent of staff and 80 percent of the executive team are people of color. Using co-design and joy, IDEO held a mirror up to Ascend’s core optimistic spirit during a moment of anxiety and change, helping its new CEO, staff, students, and parents reflect a dynamic, collectively imagined vision.

While the project’s goal was serious, the combined team centered the collaboration on bringing back fun, beauty, and imagination to those who could use it most: educators. Through engaging interactive activities, the IDEO team invited principals, PTA members, student council representatives, and board members to join “organizationally sanctioned play” moments like creating collaged vision boards and writing poems about Ascend’s impact. These interventions helped burned-out educators escape the day-to-day tasks of running schools and dream expansively about Ascend’s future. The team also solicited written, visual, and audio stories, asking community members to describe Ascend at its very best.

Stitching together submissions from 551 students, 75 parents, and 16 staff members, the co-design sessions resulted in a powerful new purpose, mission, and values, as well as a vibrant visual language and activation tools to bring Ascend’s vision of a “dope,” “unapologetically Brooklyn” charter network to life. The joyful, eye-catching visuals are embedded throughout its 17 Brooklyn schools, staff recruiting and training materials, and digital presence.

Shortly after the collaboration with IDEO, Ascend received an unsolicited  $11 million donation from MacKenzie Scott's foundation, Yield Giving, the most significant gift the then-14-year-old institution had ever received. The pivotal funding will allow the organization, with its bold new “grown-up” vision, to focus on becoming the school of choice in Brooklyn by 2027.

In the summer of 2021, one in four K-12 teachers was ready to quit. Pandemic stressors and increased curriculum scrutiny were to blame, according to a 2021 Rand Survey.

In 2022, 44% of K-12 workers reported burnout, the most of any US professions the time, according to a Gallup Poll.

Pandemic exhaustion and leadership turnover left Ascend’s new CEO eager to align staff around an exciting new vision.

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$11M grant

Ascend received an $11M grant from the MacKenzie Scott Foundation a few months after the collaboration

1 collective vision

to guide a network of 17 schools

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This can prompt a lot of thorny questions. Where do we want to go together? What do we stand for? Beyond profit, why do we exist?

At IDEO, designers often find themselves working with companies and organizations that are looking to do just that: rally around a sense of purpose. Earlier this year, the two of us were working with the visionary CEO of a parent company who wanted his global organization to be led by purpose. He also wanted all of the business group leaders to be a part of articulating it. So we started by creating a place for everyone to start.

Inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and what motivates human satisfaction, we created a purpose framework called the Purpose Wheel. (Spoiler alert: We'll have a version of the wheel for you to download at the bottom of this post.) The idea is that groups of people working together—both large and small organizations, as well as teams and individuals—can find a sense of purpose if they’re able to first imagine various ways they might have impact on the world.

The Purpose Wheel helps the designers who are leading the way take the first step. It’s a tool to encourage generative conversations about future goals, and ultimately create a foundation that the organization’s leadership can align on before sitting down to write out the statement that answers “the why.”

Just like building a house starts with the scaffolding, the Purpose Wheel helps you engineer the intent behind the purpose statement before you start crafting the words. Though the original wheel was used in a corporate setting, these four steps will set you up for success in using it no matter how big or small your group is.

1. Start at the center

The center of the wheel suggests five ways a company or organization might have an impact on the world. Each slice answers the “Why do we exist beyond profit?” question in a different way.

Think about the company you’re working with, and ask yourself: beyond profit, why does it exist? The first step is to consider your hunch and make a prediction. Where do you think your business will land?

• We exist to Enable Potential
  Creating impact by inspiring greater possibilities. (Tesla, Nike)
• We exist to Reduce Friction
  Creating impact by simplifying and eliminating barriers. (Google, Spotify)
• We exist to Foster Prosperity
  Creating impact by supporting the success of others. (Pampers, Warby Parker)
• We exist to Encourage Exploration
  Creating impact by championing discovery. (Airbnb, Adobe)
• We exist to Kindle Happiness
  Creating impact by inciting joy. (Dove, Zappos)

2. Go full circle

The idea is not to select one reason for existence and insist everyone rally around it. Instead, the goal is to imagine the company in question having impact in each of the five ways, then have conversations about what that impact might look like today—and in the future—even if some of them feel like a tight fit or a challenge.

Here are some questions to ask at this stage:

• What actions, behaviors, or experiences would have to happen in order for that statement of impact to be true?
• How might this kind of impact inspire your culture?
• How might this kind of impact change the way you make business decisions?
  

The wheel works best when you try all five types of impact on for size and eliminate those that may not align with your business strategy or long-term vision.

If this feels hard to nail down, we understand—purpose can be a fuzzy thing. For a tangible example, take purpose-led Patagonia and North Face, for instance. Since purpose is inextricably tied to brand, you can see how purpose can show up in the world very differently, even from two companies who might otherwise have a similar product offering.

Patagonia: We’re in the business to save our home planet.

The North Face: Pushing the limits of innovation and design, so that you can push your limits outdoors.

Looking back at the wheel, you can see how the engineering of Patagonia’s purpose statement could be enable potential, while The North Face could be encourage exploration.

3. Answer the "how" questions

Once you have alignment around the center wheel, you can move to the outer wheel. This is where you can move the conversation towards the “how”—how your business makes an impact. The outer wheel doesn’t offer a comprehensive list of hows, and there may not always be one clear answer.

However, the outer wheel is there to push your imagination and force you to consider how your company might make an impact. With it, you continue to engineer your purpose statement: We exist to (inner wheel) through (outer wheel) to impact society for the better.

4. Pressure-test it

Start to apply this to your company by putting yourself in the shoes of employees who range from top to bottom, east to west. Have conversations and ask them: what would happen if you applied this purpose framework to your work today? What would this unlock for you as an employee?

Once you’ve dug into what purpose looks like for your organization from the various angles of the wheel, you’ll be armed with lots of rich conversations and hopefully a newfound agreement on the engineering. The rest of the work happens in the writing.

In other words, you can start playing with the poetry and build on bringing your organization’s purpose to life.

If you’ve ever tried to do anything with your extended family, you know getting a bunch of people to agree on anything is hard—where to go on vacation, what to eat, who to invite to come along. Businesses face the same kind of group challenges.

The human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, and 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual. As designers, when we explore the craft of storytelling, visual language may be one of the most important languages of them all.

Earlier this year, OpenIDEO, in partnership with the Hewlett Foundation, launched our first Challenge on visual language. We called on visual creators from a multitude of mediums to join us in answering the following question: “How might we reimagine a more compelling and relatable visual language for cybersecurity?” With the close of the Challenge and announcement of five Top Ideas, we’re highlighting several visual design tips to get you inspired for your next project.The thrill—and challenge—of design is forging into uncharted territory to help make the abstract tangible, the overwhelming exciting, and the technical accessible. With the topic of cybersecurity, we navigated the ambiguity of doing just that. After learning from IDEO designers and Challenge participants across disciplines about how they use visual language to translate complex topics, we’ve curated some tips and tricks to share with you. Learn from IDEOers Felicia, May, Allison, and Erika, plus Challenge participants Abraham, Abrahma, Claudio, and John.

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Felicia Chiao, industrial designer, IDEO San Francisco

Felicia Chiao is a designer and illustrator based in San Francisco. By day, she works as an industrial designer for IDEO's food practice; at night she has been drawing in sketchbooks for over seven years, mostly for fun.

"When starting a composition, create an anchor first, then build around it. The anchor can be the focus of the piece (like an object/animal/person) or a setting (interior, beach, city, etc.) and the rest of the elements drawn in after should support it.

You don’t need to know what the whole drawing is going to look like when you start it. Start with what you know and build into it as you go. I work mostly with markers, which often limits my choice of colors for the color palette, but you can start with the colors you know you will use (a red apple, blue water, etc) and then looking at your palette, pick which other colors would go well with what you have.”

‍May Kodama, graphic designer, IDEO San Francisco

May is a true-crime-podcast-listening, plant caring, constantly eating, Japanese-American graphic designer at IDEO.

"Try limiting your color palette to 1-5 colors, and even limit the shades of those colors. Explore how simply you can communicate depth and perspective with the layering of the limited palette. You can start with monochrome in pure black and white before layering the additional complexity of color.

The thing that motivates me the most is experimentation and exploration. I find that as long as I'm constantly doing and learning something new, I stay inspired and excited about the work. However, don’t look at too much inspiration. Sometimes, I can get lost on the Pinterest train, clicking into link after link after link. Visual overload can crowd and push out your own ideas, so be careful to balance looking externally and looking internally. Always be hungry for discovery, but save space for your own creativity to flow.”

Allison Press, interaction designer, IDEO San Francisco

Allison is an interaction designer and strategist at IDEO on a mission to design for the public good. Whether it’s improving how public institutions serve their citizens, creating digital access to learning, or cultivating civic engagement, she is driven toward systems-level challenges.

"A balanced composition has three things—a large element (like a colored background), a medium element (like the focal point), and a small element (to add visual texture). If you want to take your creation to the next level, adding a little bit of texture in digital illustrations goes a long way.”

Erika Díaz Gómez, former OpenIDEO design fellow, Bógota, Colombia

Erika was born in Colombia and loves creating stories without words. She thinks that telenovelas are more interesting than science fiction.

"Create your own personal and technical rules; fail, win and be patient. Learn from yourself. Document, revisit and appreciate what you designed in the past. Explore your personal craft and celebrate your creator's identity. Make and repeat. Go analog, explore both your personal and craft's constraints, and don't let your commercial work take over. Art and side projects are the best teachers.”

Abraham Pena, Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge participant, Doral, Florida, USA

Abraham is a web designer and brand strategist dedicated to creating conceptual worlds for his clients through the use of metaphors and visual allegories.

1. "Research a lot. The key to this process is to have clear concepts from the start. Then think of the final users: How would they understand what you want to say? Even a complex topic like cybersecurity can be translated into an easy-to-understand visual language, just by making the right connections with the visual references of the final user.
2. Iterate like crazy. Your first idea is not always going to be the best.
3. Interact with your community. Your peers and mentors can give you priceless feedback and they will let you see the design from an outside perspective."

Abrahma Tansini, Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge participant, Pamplona, Spain

Abrahma is a passionate logo and identity designer with experience developing brands, advising enterprises internationally. Passionate about illustration, he has worked as a freelance illustrator on children’s book illustrator and also loves to make caricatures and cartoons.

“The best way to create images for a technical project is to know the concepts and ideas, plus have a broad knowledge of the subject, which in this case was cybersecurity. The mentorship and guidance from cybersecurity experts that we were paired with for this Challenge was important and necessary. As designers and illustrators, we are not necessarily familiar with the technical concepts of cybersecurity, but we do have the tools to transmit complex concepts through the power of visual images.”

Claudio Rousselon, Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge participant, Cuernavaca, Mexico

Claudio is a freelance artist focused on muralism, illustration and printmaking. He’s a creative that has always explored the themes of technology, sci-fi, aerospace, and energy sciences.

“Draw a lot! Sketching and mindstorming, writing things down, and reading lots. I believe in the power of instinct and how it expands with creativity. Inspiration comes to me mostly during work—the more you dig into it, the more things pop up in your head. It works for me to expand the ideas to the wall or a BIG table: getting a visual perspective of the concept helps a lot. Change your process and it will change your outcome. Also, never forget to embrace accidents and mistakes. Not all of them are useful and some can go beyond repair, but you can learn a lot from them. Plus, the feeling of being amazed by unexpected results is great.”

John Hurley, Cybersecurity Visuals Challenge participant, Boston, MA, USA

John is a product designer and art director with experience in UI/UX and visual design, creating wireframes and visual concepts for a range of platforms. As a designer, he enjoys solving complex problems by using a holistic design process with a focus on multi-disciplinary collaboration and rapid iteration.

“Collaborate. Reach out to as many people as you can. Everything from subject matter experts to co-workers, friends, and anything in between. Our final submission was the result of gathering opinions and exploring our topic in ways that are simply impossible to accomplish on your own.”

If you’re interested in learning more, you can browse the final portfolios of 23 shortlisted visual creators from the Challenge on the OpenIDEO platform.

Every story begins with the foundation of language. Oftentimes, when we think about language, our minds default to written text and spoken conversation. But language is more than words—it’s any way of communicating across mediums that brings an idea, topic, or conversation to life.

There’s still a tremendous amount of change that needs to happen at the corporate level, but we now see some big food companies responding with greater transparency in sourcing, cleaner labels, and more natural ingredients.

Project Drawdown, one of the most comprehensive and respected plans to reverse climate change, lists the top 100 solutions to reverse global warming. Eight of the top 20 are connected to the food system, including reducing food waste, adopting a plant-rich diet, and supporting regenerative agriculture.

For example, the food we waste is responsible for about eight percent of global emissions. And it turns out your own kitchen is ground zero for potential impact: US households account for 27 million tons of the 63 million tons of wasted food per year.

We use design thinking to help our clients run towards big challenges like food waste, but the same principles can make an impact in your own home. We can each prototype our way towards new practices in our kitchen. Food is, after all, one of the most forgiving materials, and even the most abject kitchen failure is usually edible.

Here are five simple ways to design think your way towards addressing climate change in your own kitchen.

1. Adopt an experimental mindset

I bet you've heard some of this before, but it bears repeating: If each of us replaced a third of the beef we eat with pork, chicken or legumes, the World Resources Institute reports that our food-related emissions would fall by around 13 percent. But adopting a more flexitarian, plant-rich diet is a serious behavior shift, and not an easy one.

What if we reframed “never eating steak again” as “experimenting with eating mostly plants”? Trine Hahnemann, a Danish culinary writer, tells a story about her family’s generational transition to a plant-rich diet. Her grandma’s recipe for a pork dish called for meat as the main ingredient. Later in the 1970s, her mom adjusted the recipe so it used only half the pork. Today, Hahnemann cooks the same family dish but with no pork at all.

The design challenge is crafting plant-based options that are so satisfying and enticing that you don’t miss the meat. Like Hahnemann, we can experiment our way there. Start slowly by removing meat from traditional recipes. My meat-free pozole soup was an experiment, and though it lacked the oily richness of the pork version, it was a satisfyingly rich broth with hearty beans—another edible prototype.

2. Buy less

Not all food waste is created equal. That moldy tomato you never got around to eating used up more resources than a tomato left on the vine: Resources were used for it to be picked, packed, shipped to a grocery store, unpacked, stocked, selected, paid for, brought home, and now rotted. It takes two months for that tomato to decompose in the compost, during which time it releases methane into the atmosphere—which produces eight times more emissions than carbon.

When you head to the store or farmers market, simply bringing home less food will do wonders to cut down food waste. Embrace discomfort—a key design principle—by grabbing a smaller shopping basket to constrain your purchases, even though it might feel like you’re not buying enough.

Once you get home, use a Sharpie to date your food to remind yourself to enjoy it within a particular time frame. Place your “cook first” ingredients in the front so you’re more likely to reach for them.

3. Buy better

Design requires inspiration. To bring this to your food choices, make going to your local farmers market every week a habit. With each visit, you’ll get inspired by seasonal produce and begin to unlearn the mentality of having anything, anytime (and having it look perfect). Nature has constraints, and this is one of them.

Shopping at farmers markets also helps farmers and can promote sustainable soil practices, which is one of our only proven ways to sequester carbon. Not only is good farming beneficial for the soil, but it’s a bonus for your taste buds. Healthy soil helps farmers grow flavorful, nutrient-rich produce. Good flavor is often a proxy for good nutrients. If you buy an apple that was grown using regenerative agriculture techniques, you will taste the difference: It will be juicy and delicious, not to mention rich in nutrients. But an apple picked a year ago, shipped across the country or world, and kept in cold storage only offers you sugar and fiber—the nutrients died long ago. As Alice Waters put it, “You want aliveness in your food.”

4. Embrace constraints

Design constraints in the kitchen range from your cooking skills, to your work space, to your available equipment, to your budget, to the ingredients themselves. Whatever those constraints are, embrace them. Most chefs say quality salt, quality olive oil, and heat (whether a hot plate or six burner) are the only critical elements.

Culinary confidence in the kitchen—feeling like you have the skills to make something worth eating—can help you boldly embrace constraints. The good news is that culinary confidence is a muscle that grows stronger as you use it.

To build your culinary confidence, read Tamar Adler’s book, The Everlasting Meal. It’s made me give up on exactitude in the kitchen, and instead take delight in using a recipe as a jumping off point and improvising by cooking with what’s on hand. Her simple approaches to dealing with food that might otherwise go to waste—like smashing leftover garlicky beans on toast for an easy dinner—help us look at our fridges with a new sense of frugality and hope.

Try making pesto out of leafy greens (even carrot tops), nuts, and hard cheese you have around, rather than feeling like it has to be basil, pine nuts, and parm. There are no rules, just constraints that make you more creative.

5. Collaborate

At the United Nations Climate Summit last month, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg told a group of world leaders, “The world is waking up, and change is coming whether you like it or not.”

We’ve reached a tipping point, and change is coming. With your friends and family, let’s make time to cook and eat together. Let’s share a meal and talk about how to have a better life with less waste and more joy. And if there are leftovers, send your guests home with them, date them in your fridge, or use them to make soup tomorrow.

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There have been some exciting changes in the food industry over the last decade. Our purchasing choices collectively forced food brands to rethink their offers and evolve their practices.

Embracing conversations about taboo topics can help deepen understanding and empathy, and empower people to make better decisions about their health, finances, and careers. And since many taboos are related to serious global epidemics, like homelessness and segregation, talking about these issues is the first step toward taking action—and even affecting real change.

Thankfully, surfacing taboo topics doesn’t have to be as awkward or scary as it might seem.

Did you join millions of people to dump an ice bucket on your head to raise awareness for ALS, and suddenly find yourself discussing (and maybe even donating on behalf of) a disease you didn’t have a personal connection to? What if you walked into middle school health class, and your teacher was wearing tampon earrings or giving out anatomical cupcakes that made you laugh and made it easier to talk about periods?

Play has the power to translate fear and awkwardness into curiosity, with humor, storytelling, games, and interactive experiences that can help people feel comfortable (and even enjoy) diving into a tricky topic.

Here are three ways to start a conversation about anything—even the most taboo topics—through playful design.

1. Create an immersive experience

Death is terrifying. “Reimagine End of Life,” a city-wide exploration of life and death with creative workshops, performances, comedy shows, and reflections, makes it easier to wrap your head around. Last year in San Francisco, I joined 10 strangers in an interactive theatre experience inspired by the question, “What if facing our death allowed us to live more fully?”

Through virtual reality simulations, eulogy readings, and a theatrical visit to purgatory (picture white curtains and costumed actors), the event immersed our group in a new world and guided us to face death together, one step at a time. A year later, I still find myself reflecting on this experience and sharing my hopes and fears about dying.

At your next event, try incorporating skits, role play, costumes, and themed decorations to fully immerse your group in the topic you’re discussing. These interactive elements can create a safe environment for people to really open up.

2. Meet people where they play

Sex and contraception can be intimidating and even embarrassing topics to discuss in many cultures, making it difficult for health experts to dispel myths and support youth as they make decisions about their bodies. But dance contests, magazines, nail salons, and fashion shows? Those teens can get behind.

In Zambia and Kenya, IDEO.org has brought playful experiences to life through The Diva Centers as well as through the upbeat Future Fab brand, which give teens and staff a space to connect and talk about anything—from glittery nails to IUDs. The IDEO.org team has also designed aspirational characters known as the Divine Divas to give the girls an opportunity to talk about their goals for the future—and how contraceptives might fit into them.

If you’re looking to tackle a taboo topic with a specific group of people, consider their natural gathering places. Do they go rock-climbing, cook, or hike? By meeting people where they feel most comfortable, you can make difficult conversations easier to navigate.

3. Forgo words altogether

For topics so complex that we don’t know where to begin—how about by translating words into motion? Creative Tensions is a “conversation that moves” developed by IDEO and the Sundance Institute Theatre Program, where participants reveal where they stand on an issue by where they physically stand and move in the room along a spectrum between two options. The exercise can help people explore polarizing topics by asking, for example, “What inhibits our sexual lives more—the government and society, or ourselves?” Participants can either share their perspective aloud in a facilitated conversation or express themselves silently through their movement alone. It’s a non-verbal way to start meaningful explorations of taboo topics that everyone can be a part of, simply by moving their feet.

To do something similar, try asking people to express their thoughts without words—through dance, music, drawing, photography, or building with LEGOs. These creative exercises can lower the barrier to entry and prompt even the most reticent to participate, and eventually, start talking.

With thoughtful design, breaking the ice on complex topics can be more playful than painful. Between comic books and board games about menstruation, superhero-themed summer camps about social issues, and ballot education parties, there are countless ways to help people navigate controversial topics.

What methods do you use to help get people talking? Send your ideas so we can work together to unlock meaningful conversations around the causes we care most about.

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Cancer, sex, money, birth control, poverty—just a handful of topics on a list many of us might call Things I Want to Bring Up But Don’t Know How. But shying away from stigma keeps people from talking about the issues that really matter.

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.