International e-reading service Kobo, Inc., with more than 2.5 million digital book, magazine, and newspaper titles, approached IDEO to gain a strong foothold in the shifting publishing landscape. The design challenge was to create a new suite of advanced reading devices with the best aspects of paperback books—tangibility, portability, and a small footprint.

To make digital reading devices feel approachable, personal, and sophisticated, designers focused on the intersection of physical and digital interface design. The teams created a family of affordable e-readers with clearly differentiated feature sets, and the resulting design provides a reading experience that approximates holding and reading a paperback book. No larger than a novel, the front of the e-reader is designed for the reader’s eyes, while the back features a signature “quilted” back shell designed to create a pleasurable, tactile memory for the hands.

The Kobo family includes the Kobo WiFi, with a 6-inch glare-free E-Ink screen; the smaller Kobo Touch, with infrared touch-screen interface, E-Ink Pearl screen, and faster processor; and the Kobo Vox, a 7-inch Android tablet model with social and digital sharing options.

Kobo saw record sales of its digital reading devices during the 2011 holiday season, and was named “Editor’s Pick for Best e-reader” by Wired magazine.

The U.S. Green Building Council asked IDEO to help visualize how buildings might communicate environmental performance. Together they came up with the LEED Dynamic Plaque, an elegant public declaration of a building’s environmental efforts.

Located in a lobby or other common space, the plaque displays real-time measurements about a building’s resource use—from energy to waste disposal. IDEO designed and built the physical plaque, and the IDEO Digital Shop created an online interface that allows USGBC’s software to interact with it, enabling people to enter data, analyze details, and make personal decisions that influence a building’s performance.

WATCH: "LEED Dynamic Plaque" video

In China, most kitchen appliances available on the market are rooted in Western cooking practices. High-end kitchen appliance company Fotile, based in Ningbo, China, was looking to design a new cook top and range hood that would satisfy the unique needs of Chinese cooking culture.

The new appliances designed by Fotile and IDEO support a key need of Chinese cooking: the dual-cooking center. This two-burner range eliminates unnecessary burners, instead dedicating one side to the wok, the primary tool in Chinese cooking, and the other side to a flat-bottom pan. The wok burner has a special stand with angled posts to hold steady a round-bottom wok (typical in China) and ease the rigorous, constant “tossing” movement that is prevalent in Chinese cooking. The Fotile cook top and range hood have become popular with Chinese consumers since market launch.

Great art requires great openness, a space large enough to contain all the tragedy and comedy of the human experience.

The limestone walls and Palladian arches of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) hold such a space. The institution’s building in Mayfair contains galleries where a wanderer can appreciate the everyday miracle of a Caravaggio or amble through the former home of Academicians, a group led by some of the most eminent artists in the world, from Anish Kapoor to Sir Norman Foster. This revered site has also been home to the Summer Exhibition for 246 years, an event open to submissions from any living artist.

As the RA approached its 250th anniversary, the institution came to IDEO to help create a digital strategy that would open new doors to these resources, reveal hidden avenues to new experiences, and offer broad vistas of the collection.

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After rounds of research with artists, staff members, and visitors, our designers immediately started building and testing. They ran workshops to refine digital tools, watched as patrons scribbled notes about things they wanted to know more about, and built pop-up design studios in RA’s galleries where they could generate insights on the fly.

The result is a rich, immersive site for different audiences. Art lovers can view stunning images of the works, artists can learn more about RA schools, and RA staff can share surprising stories about some of the most prized pieces.

Based around human needs rather than organizational structure, the new digital space allows audiences to wander freely in this immense storehouse of inspiration and awe. And perhaps most important, the RA organization has benefitted from a human-centered paradigm shift that will enable the institution to forge boldly into its next quarter millennium.

But to-do lists aren’t all bad. To-do lists let me capture things so I don’t stress out over having to hold it all in my brain. To-do lists let me see everything in one place. They’re a necessary evil.

So as much as I dislike to-do lists, I need to have one. There are a billion to-do list apps and methods out there, and I think I’ve tried 900 million of them. My favorite was David Allen’s paper-based Getting Things Done. But I constantly fell off the wagon. When I organized my tasks with GTD, I was damn organized—but every time the system fell apart, I not only lost sight of the big picture, I felt guilty, too.

So after a lot of ups and downs, I started doing my own simplified, imperfect thing. I’ve been using my system for a while now, and figured I might share it in case it’s useful to others. Yes, I know, another to-do list system! But you clicked on this story, so maybe you need one.

I call my system the “Burner List”

I’ll explain the name in a sec, but FYI, it has nothing to do with Burning Man. Basically it’s a simple-as-hell to-do list designed to force me to prioritize.

The Burner List is not perfect. It won’t keep track of every detail, or help you juggle a million projects. But that’s exactly the point. The Burner List is intentionally limited—and therefore focused. Here’s how to make one:

1. MAKE TWO TALL COLUMNS

You can fold the paper, draw a line down the middle, or just eyeball it. Precision is unimportant. What is important is the metaphor you’ve just created: Left = front burner. Right = back burner.

2. PUT YOUR MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT ON THE FRONT BURNER

You are allowed to have one and only one project on the front burner. Not two, not three — just one. In the top left-hand corner, write the name of your most important project and underline it. Then list the to-dos for your top project — any task you can do in the next few days to move it forward.

3. LEAVE SOME COUNTER SPACE

Leave the rest of the first column empty. The Burner List is not intended to make an efficient use of the damned paper surface area — it’s intended to make good use of your time and energy! The blank space gives you room to add more tasks for the top project, but, just as important, extra visual space makes it easier to focus on the important stuff.

4. PUT YOUR SECOND MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT ON THE BACK BURNER

In the top of the right-hand column, write the name of your second most important project and underline it, then write related to-dos underneath.

5. MAKE A KITCHEN SINK

Finally, about halfway down the right-hand column, list any miscellaneous tasks that you need to do but don’t fit with project 1 or project 2. It doesn’t matter if they’re part of project 3 or 4, they just get chucked into the kitchen sink with everything else. Yes, this goes counter to all organizational and productivity advice — but by constraining the space and attention you give to other stuff, you'll help yourself spend your time well.

Now get cooking

Imagine there was a chef standing to the left of your page. He’ll naturally focus most of his attention on the front burner. He’s aware of the back burner, and sometimes he stirs a pot or flips a pancake back there, but the front burner is where the action is.

The Burner List is intentionally limited. It won’t have room for everything. You’ll have to let go of things that aren’t as important.

The Burner List is also disposable. It gets stale fast as you cross off finished to-dos. I “burn” through my list every few days and then recreate it, over and over. This act of recreation is important, because I always discard some unfinished tasks that no longer matter, and I reconsider what belongs on the front burner right now. Sometimes it’ll be a work project, sometimes it’ll be a personal project—over time, I’ve realized that it’s okay and natural for the spotlight to shift. What’s important is there can only be one most important project a time.

To learn more about Jake's methods, subscribe to his newsletter here.

Man, I hate to-do lists. Checking off finished tasks feels good, but the glow of accomplishment masks an ugly truth: Most to-dos are just reactions to other people’s priorities, not mine. And no matter how many tasks I finish, I’m never done — more to-dos are always waiting to take their place. To-do lists just perpetuate the feeling of “unfinishedness” that dogs modern life.

1. Embrace Randomness

On my 20-minute walk to work, I'll use chance to determine my route. "Don't walk" sign? Cross the other way. See a dog? Walk on that side of the street. Does the time of day end with an odd number? Make a right. I won't walk the wrong way, of course, but I'll use random cues to make myself choose different paths so I'm forced to notice new things along the way.

I also use my commute to connect with strangers in small but meaningful ways. I make sure to give a warm, real "hello" to bus drivers—no earbuds, please! Compliment well-dressed people on their style choices. Flirt with outgoing dogs to get their owners to smile. Thank people cleaning the streets for keeping things tidy for the rest of us. Little things like this make a city feel more like a small town. —Annette Ferrara, IDEO Chicago

2. Ride with Strangers

I'm new to the San Francisco Bay Area and I'm finding the "casual carpool" here a total novelty. It's essentially organized hitchhiking. You arrive at the designated carpool stop and wait your turn as two to three people at a time hop into strangers’ cars. The incentive for drivers is being able to use the HOV lane, which requires a minimum of three passengers and can shave 30 minutes off your commute.

There are very strict, unwritten rules for casual carpool: You don't make conversation unless the driver initiates, you don't eat or wear too much perfume, and you absolutely don’t take phone calls. The default radio station is NPR. You offer the driver a dollar at the end of the ride for gas.

At first, I thought it was so weird that people don’t talk, but now I like the quiet ride. Every now and then, I'll jump into a car and we’ll have conversation for 20 minutes as we cross the Bay Bridge. I like this too; connecting with strangers on my way to work is a great way to start the day.

If there isn’t a casual carpooling option in your city, look into organizing one for yourself. —Maria Scileppi, IDEO San Francisco

3. Spin with Your Inner DJ

One era of music that’s splendid fun is early ’90s—rave, jungle, techno, happy hardcore, etc. Much of this music was written using software called a "tracker." With trackers, you can enter notes using a standard computer keyboard.

Fast forward to modern times, and I find that a new tracker has been developed—RENOISE—that works the same way as trackers of old, but with modern-day functionality. Well, I had to have a go on that.

I installed it on my work laptop and now spend my journey home lost in the sounds of chopped Amen breaks, 808 and 909 hits, and rude-boy vocals. There's a lot to learn in terms of production techniques, sound design, and arrangements.

I start a new track each trip; these are my "train tracks." I find a great deal of enjoyment in seeing where they end up after the hour-long ride, but then I'm happy to abandon them. There's always tomorrow. —Iain Smyth, IDEO London

4. Unplug and Observe

I walk 10 minutes to the ferry building, take a 15-minute ferry ride across the river, and then walk 25 minutes to the office. I used to fill all that time listening to podcasts, checking email, surfing Facebook, or otherwise trying to get a head start on my day—which meant I'd developed a bad habit of looking at my phone while walking.

One day, I decided to end the habit for safety's sake. With my phone now tucked away during my commute, that time is spent letting my mind wander, observing my surroundings, and pondering the day ahead. The result is that I feel more prepared for my day mentally and energetically. I’m less frazzled and magically seem to have more down time. —Anna Silverstein, IDEO New York

5. Work Your Muscles, Free Your Mind

I bike to work because it's an easy way to build in regular exercise without having to carve out special time. It's a 30-minute ride each way.

I often have lightbulb moments and am able to connect the dots around things happening at work or in my personal life. There's something about the intense focus of weaving through traffic while letting thoughts percolate in the background that works for me.

For example, earlier this year, a large education company in India reached out to IDEO to talk about collaborating. On our call, it didn’t seem like a great opportunity for partnership, but then on my evening commute home, the dots connected.

I called the company back the next day to propose a program that would bring together the strengths of both our organizations (IDEO U's curriculum expertise and the partner company’s established marketing and distribution channels) to provide a great executive education experience for the Indian market. —Danoosh Kapadia, IDEO San Francisco

6. Get in the Right Headspace

I walk eight minutes to the 2nd Avenue subway and then take a 16-minute ride to Canal Street. I've been meditating every day for a few years, and this year I decided to listen to guided meditations on my commute.

I typically choose from a selection of meditations by Sarah Blondin on the Insight Timer app. Most are about 10 minutes long. She has a wonderful voice, and I select based on my mood. Usually, I choose something to pick up, reaffirm, or inspire me. Sometimes she nearly brings me to tears, but usually she just helps me be more present.

Listening to guided meditations while commuting has made me more mindful of my surroundings, more compassionate toward my fellow commuters, and generally calmer. —Caitlin Fitzmaurice, IDEO.org, New York

Next time you find yourself staring into space on the way to work, try one of these techniques to reboot your commute.

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What were you doing at 8:30 this morning? If you’re like me, you were slogging through the least fun part of your day. The average employee spends nearly 53 minutes a day getting to and from work, but you don’t have to sit there feeling miserable. There are all sorts of creative ways to wring positivity out of your daily grind.

I asked IDEO designers and other creatives for their commuting best practices. Here are the top six:

With this in mind, we selected key interaction moments from our client's current product. Then we prototyped three distinct new directions—usability experiences we were excited to bring to their industry. These experiments, we hoped, would spark an early conversation that was less about “we need to do this” and more about “what if we do that?”

Kickoff day arrived and we shared the prototypes with the client.

Cue uncomfortable silence.

Then, finally, one of the executives exclaimed, “This is mind blowing! This could be the future of our product.” He was not applauding the user interface or visual style we used to illustrate our idea, but the essence of what the experience did for him. An excited conversation followed and he wanted to share his own design ideas.

It doesn't always go this way. Early prototyping entails plenty of risk, too. What if you've been blind to user needs? What if the client just doesn't see the magic?

Here are 4 steps you should consider when creating early prototypes:

1. Take advantage of your fresh perspective

Before diving into industry or product constraints, take a step back and imagine if there were no limits to what you could design. What would that look like?

2. Identify what excites you and the team

What personally inspires you to be on this project and how can that be translated into the experience? Don't over think it. Take one key interaction from the current experience and add something unexpected to it. This is an opportunity to test initial assumptions with a beginner’s mind and generate radically new ideas.

3. Translate your excitement into prototypes (with content your client understands)

Use your client's current product content as a starting point. Having something they can easily recognize and understand is a great way to bring them into a design conversation. Don't think about creating long flows at this early stage. Imagine your prototype as a teaser to a product that is about to come to life and focus on key interaction moments.

4. Highlight where your client sees design opportunities

Quick prototypes are a great way to tackle hopes and fears and learn, from a usability point of view, where your client sees design opportunities at a very early stage of the project—so you don't head off in the wrong direction.

And above all, remember: A sense of excitement and momentum shared by you and the client on the very first day gives your team an important confidence boost. It helps set expectations, and gets everyone inspired to push to a new level.

For a recent design project, we decided to try something new. We were tasked with rebuilding a product experience, but instead of starting with our usual process where we gather inspiration, we thought: What if we share a prototype we are really excited about with the client right away? Just jump in.

While beautiful textiles (and now prints!) are Block Shop’s most recognizable output, there’s a good deal more going on behind the scenes. The duo created Block Shop in partnership with a family of printers and dyers in Bagru, Rajasthan to keep the artistry and craft of Indian block printing alive. (They donate five percent of their profits each year to building and implementing community healthcare programs.) If their reverence for craft and respect for humanity isn’t enough to make you weak in the knees, this interview should do it.

In one sentence, who are you?

Hopie Stockman: Josephine March with an MBA.
Lily Stockman: Gertrude Bell on a camel after too much coffee.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

HS: I run Block Shop—a textile and design studio—with my sister, Lily. In reality, I work seven days a week, but five of them take place in our 11th floor downtown Los Angeles studio. I design everything from rugs to public murals to business strategy and Grand Central Market lunch orders for Block Shop.

We both went to grad school; I went for for business and Lily for painting. Rather than dividing our work rigidly between business and creative, we’ve found that it works best when we share responsibilities.

A lot of our education happens in Jaipur, India. In 2010, Lily was living in there and apprenticing under master Indian miniature painter Ajay Sharma when she first met our printers. Since then, we've gone back to Jaipur twice to year to work with them on new designs and products. Everything we know about wood block printing we've learned on the ground while prototyping with our team, lending a hand in all aspects of the process, from dye-mixing to block registration on the fabric.

On the business side, the most valuable advice has all come from the (mostly) women running their own small and successful businesses here in LA. For example, our friend who runs a candle company helped us build our wholesale strategy. When we started out, we thought we wanted just a few huge department store-style accounts to streamline our operations and provide reliable cash flow. She helped us to understand the marketing power of wholesale: that smaller, well-aligned shops could be better storytellers and champions of our brand, and likely wouldn't discount as aggressively.

Another friend who has an independent furniture line shared invaluable advice on how to collaborate with large companies, emphasizing the importance of control over the design and fabrication process. Megaretailers actually need the cool factor of small, independent brands in order to be relevant. The question for small brands is whether the paycheck and promise of exposure is worth the potential chargebacks, brand dilution, and even customer alienation. For us, we've learned that it doesn't work unless we're making the products ourselves and have control over the storytelling.

What are your 3 favorite possessions?

HS:

1. Otto, our bearded mutt.
2. A painting of a rabbit that my great grandfather painted 60 years ago.
3. The Kishore Kumar Bollywood poster that my now-husband and I bought together at the Chor Bazaar in Mumbai, when we had only been dating a few months. It sort of signified that leap into a shared life—jointly owning things.

LS:

1. My baby Olympia.
2. My dog, who I bought from the pound for $85.
3. My gold bangle bracelets given to me by our surrogate grandmother, collected from her travels around the world.

What does a typical work session look like?

LS: On design days, we hide our laptops and put the screens away. No phones, no nothing! Out come the old art books on Anni Albers, Arp, Matisse, and Sheila Hicks. We put some Grateful Dead on, get the watercolors out, and swap sketches back and forth across the table. The result is so much better when we do it together. We’re always improving each other’s work. We try to design like this for two-to-three hours once a week, which is pitiful, but that’s the reality of running a small company; the actual drawing sessions take up only a small percentage of our time.

When it comes to our work, we have a simple design rule: Everything Block Shop touches must hold up as a holistic composition. That means it needs to have balance and a sense of quiet. My favorite painting teacher said, "You know a painting is done when it's quiet. Nothing on the canvas is yelling at you." And if it doesn’t look good hanging on the wall, then it doesn’t go into production.

How do you get over creative block?

HS: Take Otto for a walk past the old movie palaces in downtown L.A. to remember that inspiring design lives everywhere in architecture. On a recent prototyping trip to India, I started panicking that we’d exhausted all geometric patterns—THAT’S IT, WE’RE FINISHED! WE’VE USED EVERY ITERATION OF CIRCLES AND TRIANGLES! Then we went for a walk to get chai with our sketchbooks in hand, and boom! All sorts of ideas emerged from the marble latticework and archways in the old city. We simply needed to look.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

LS: Plan a Texas road trip starting in Marfa, where our friends run the El Cosmico.

How do you see the world in 2078?

HS: A degree or two warmer. Governed by data and manufactured by robots, with no boundaries between advertising, entertainment, and politics. Hopefully, I’ll be with the people who’ve returned to hands-on, empathy-based, slow living….off with my grandkids somewhere outside making pinch pots.

What's your number one bucket list item?

HS & LS: Design a boutique hotel.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

HS: Katja Blichfeld, co-creator of High Maintenance. (If you’re out there, hey.)

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There are creative crushes and then there are girl crushes. This qualifies as both—squared. Sisters Lily and Hopie Stockman are the founders of Block Shop, a textile company based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. I discovered Lily and Hopie a few years ago through an online web of women makers, and have been feverishly following their work ever since.

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.