More than 7 million people each year came to the Boston.gov site to tap into all sorts of city services: reporting a pothole, learning the assessed value of their property, paying a parking ticket, checking recycling schedules.

Boston wanted to create a beautiful platform that would make the process of finding and navigating information easy and intuitive, one that prioritized the needs of its people.

The Boston.gov site had outgrown its existing structure and needed an overhaul. The user experience was mired by the fact that Boston City Hall has nearly 50 different departments, each with its own microsite, navigation and content standards that feed into a centralized site.

So the City of Boston hired IDEO to design its new digital home, Boston.gov. IDEO designers worked with the major stakeholders—department heads, employees, and Boston residents, with a focus on those in underserved communities and those with varying levels of technical proficiency—to gather insights into what users needed.

The objective was to design something that would simplify how people navigate the site, to make it easier for residents to find answers to common questions, and, in the process, serve as a community facilitator—an up-to-date, reliable resource that makes life in the city more manageable.

Rather than organize the site by the city’s departments, the design solution was rooted in illuminating relevant content by topics—people’s life moments—many of which overlapped through different branches of government. Owning a car in the city, for example, is closely related to preparing for winter, so bridging those common threads allowed for a more intuitive organizing principle.

In the process of the site redesign, IDEO also helped to create a visual identity system that underscores Boston’s strengths: the city’s confidence, humility, personality, and optimism.

In addition to the web architecture and redesign, IDEO also produced a comprehensive style guide to help maintain design consistency, so departments can add content without compromising the overall integrity of the site, as well as a brand look that the city has decided to adopt across nearly all of its consumer-facing media. Now you’ll see the famous underlined B on T-shirts, banners, and even snow shovels.

Holding true to its mission to include Boston residents and all site users in its design process, the new Boston.gov site was piloted for six months, and the process document on the city’s blog (including the IDEO designed brand guide), before a full launch was rolled out in July 2016.

“The website should act like a helpful human. This is one of the big differences between the old site and the new site,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the city’s chief of information technology in a Boston Globe article. “Oftentimes, when you looked at something on the old site, it would feel like you were interacting with some sort of lawyer-robot that was speaking to you in government-speak, using very formal language. We are trying to move away from that so your experience is akin to a person.”

The City of Boston was in need of a new digital home—one that emphasized a shift to a more welcoming tone and commitment to its citizens.

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In the Western Hemisphere, The North Face brand has long represented an active, sporty lifestyle that’s filled with challenges and adventures. But appreciating “the great outdoors” in China is less about extreme sports and more about connecting with nature in a communal, spiritual way. This research-based insight led the team to identify new opportunities for The North Face to better target its messaging.

Designers found a key opportunity: Encourage Chinese consumers to escape the pressures of hectic city life by enjoying the freedom and renewal that comes with spending time outdoors.

Today, as people find less time to enjoy the benefits that lie just beyond China’s large cities, there’s a tangible desire to return to the outdoors to refresh, reassess, and renew oneself. The North Face aims to help consumers do exactly that.

To create a compelling new brand vision for The North Face in China, the team’s design research tapped into Chinese ways of spending time outdoors. IDEO’s insights and creative brief provided the essential brand story for The North Face in China and informed the tagline of the company’s current marketing campaign, “Go Wild” (去野). The North Face brand’s new messaging links “old nature” and “new outdoors” through a combination of digital, retail, and interactive community channels.

IDEO also collaborated with the company on designs and prototypes for a new digital platform and an updated store-within-a-store merchandising display. The digital community aims to attract newcomers and connect them with more experienced outdoors enthusiasts and clubs. As the platform evolves, it will help aspiring adventurers plan trips, learn skills, and share their experiences through photos.

The retail community space aims to integrate this digital community with in-store shoppers and an effort to turn the “buy-a-product moment” into a “join-the-outdoors moment.” Both will be integrated to provide a holistic brand experience in China centered on nature and community.

In the West, The North Face, with its decades-long history, has long symbolized an adventurous, active lifestyle. In China, however, the outdoor market only began accelerating in the early 21st century.

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Success in this growing market depends on building strong and deep connections with Chinese consumers.

‍

20% sales growth in China

from 2012 to 2013—the year the project was completed—propelling the brand from sixth place to a market-leading position

Over the last 36 years, IDEO and Lilly, along with the pharmaceutical giant’s other design, development, and manufacturing partners, have collaborated on more than 250 projects. During this time, Lilly has not only honed its engineering-focused internal device-development team but also transformed into a human-centered organization with extensive, robust in-house innovation capabilities.

Early in the relationship, a team of IDEO designers and Eli Lilly leaders traveled the world to understand how people with diabetes live with the disease. Their findings led to the design of a series of award-winning insulin injection pens like SAVVIO. Portable, aesthetically pleasing, and discreet, the pens are suitable for use in both medical and personal settings. Combined with Lilly’s technical design prowess, this human-centered focus allows the devices to seamlessly integrate into patients’ lives and routines, making a challenging disease like diabetes feel more manageable.

Fast forward to today, Lilly’s innovative, easy-to-use auto-injectors are not only continuing to provide life-saving treatments to people with diabetes but also enabling the adoption of the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, which together accounted for the majority of the company’s annual revenue in 2025. Perhaps most importantly, patients consistently rate the experience of using Lilly’s auto-injectors as relatively pain-free, easy to use, and preferable to competitors’ brands, improving adherence, satisfaction, and health outcomes.

This unwavering focus on driving innovation through a patient-first mindset is evident in some of the most impactful projects Lilly and IDEO collaborated on over the years:

GLP Auto-injectors
Convenient and cutting-edge, the first Trulicity injection device was originally designed to deliver the GLP-1 drug to treat type 2 diabetes. Today, it has been adapted for use with other GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, which are increasingly popular weight-loss drugs and are also administered once weekly via fixed-dose injections. A wide base enables the pen to be held securely against the injection site, and the device automatically regulates the dose and needle depth.

Taltz Injectors
For most patients, living with severe plaque psoriasis means being your own medical technician—metering your drug dosage each time, and attaching and removing needles by hand. Taltz provides patients with clear visual and auditory feedback throughout the injection process through simple icons, bright colors, a translucent material, and clicking sounds. The devices are available in both autoinjector and prefilled-syringe formats and are adapted for Emgality, a preventive monthly migraine treatment, and Ebglyss, which helps treat eczema or atopic dermatitis.

HumaPen SAVVIO Injection Pen
Key insights informed the design of SAVVIO, including patients’ preference for insulin pens that look less like medical devices and more like everyday objects you’d find in a backpack or purse. The sleek, colorful device was created to help patients feel comfortable and confident about fitting mealtime injections into their everyday lives.

Refillable Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Injector and Reconstitution Device
Designed to be kid-friendly, the Refillable HGH Injector leverages insights into pediatric treatment adherence to create a more integrated, systematic approach to treatment, while the Reconstitution Device makes mixing Lilly’s powder-and-liquid drug easier and less intimidating for parents and healthcare professionals alike.

KwikPen Insulin Pen
KwikPen is a next-generation, prefilled insulin injection pen that builds on the success of two previous designs, reducing its size to 5.7 inches and enhancing ease of use for patients.

HumaPen(R) Luxura™ Insulin Pen
HumaPen Luxura combines several innovations into a robust yet elegant pen that can be carried and used anywhere—an insulin pen solution that improves dosing accuracy, dose setting, and injection force.

In addition to designing products to meet the needs of people with diabetes, IDEO and Lilly have developed innovations in areas of oncology, autoimmunity, and men’s health. The results of this collaboration and expansion have won numerous design awards and produced one of the longest and most fruitful innovation relationships in IDEO’s history.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Eli Lilly had a number of new, life-changing medications and two big challenges: Most of its drugs were self-injectables, not pills, so patients were hesitant to take them. And its drug-delivery device platform lagged behind its drug pipeline.

99%

of Trulicity users reported the auto-injector was “easy” to “very easy” to use in a JDST study

$36.5B

of Lilly’s $65.2B 2025 revenue came from sales of its auto-injectable GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, a 45% increase from 2024

‍“…the Advisory Council will recommend transformational programmatic, cultural, and physical change to San Quentin that can serve as a practical model that can be replicated and scaled to other institutions.”

Source: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom: Governor Newsom Names Leading Criminal Justice and Public Safety Experts to San Quentin Transformation Advisory Council, May 05, 2023  https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/05/05/san-quentin-transformation-advisory-council/

The Advisory Council included the expertise of established criminal justice, public safety, healthcare, academic, reentry, and rehabilitation professionals, along with system-impacted/formerly incarcerated community leaders, and representatives of crime victims/survivors. The premise of IDEO’s involvement is to augment the Advisory Council Co-Chairs’ and members’ expertise in evidence-based best practices and lived experience living and working in prisons, with expertise in collaborative design, synthesis, visualization, storytelling and bringing visions to life.

Specifically, IDEO was brought in to facilitate input-gathering, and assist with incorporating the many viewpoints into a single, cohesive report of recommendations to the Governor. This included meeting the challenge of bringing together the viewpoints of 21 people on the Council (17 members, three Co-Chairs and an advisor to the Governor); incorporating the views of people who are most impacted (those incarcerated at San Quentin, San Quentin staff, community-based organizations, victim/survivor groups, among others); and formatting and designing the final report.

IDEO’s facilitation included workshops with the full Advisory Council, individual interviews and check-ins with Council members to gather their input to inform the recommendations. Each Advisory Council member was asked to speak with, and record feedback from, no fewer than five people at San Quentin or in affected communities and to share this feedback with IDEO. IDEO integrated this information and feedback into this report.

Research activities included visits to San Quentin to speak with and facilitate conversations with:

• San Quentin residents (100+) including the Citizens/Inmate Advisory Council, focus groups with Spanish-speaking residents, former gang members, ACT (LGBTQIA+), Voices Heal, People in Blue, San Quentin Citizens Advisory Council.
• San Quentin staff (100+) including interviews with numerous officers.
• San Quentin staff and residents together.
• Current participants and staff at Amistad (MCRP) and Beacon (former lifer) campuses (many who were previously incarcerated at San Quentin).
  
  

IDEO also organized listening, information sharing and feedback sessions, both at San Quentin and in the community, between Co-Chair representatives and various stakeholder groups, including victim/survivor groups, labor unions, and advocacy organizations. These perspectives were also brought into the report.  

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Sixty years later, amidst technological advances that have spurred massive innovation and changed the face of science, we decided it was time to re-inspire today’s generation. James Musick, a digital communications lead at Genentech, came to us for help in creating an immersive iPad experience that would celebrate Watson and Crick’s seminal discovery, as well as engage the science-curious. But with three months to complete the project, we needed to hit the ground running.

Ralph and The Cheesy Mess

The idea of using a game or puzzle as a way to bring users into a world filled with genetics became an early favorite in the ideation stage. Puzzle-based gameplay was a great analogy to reflect the scientific process: from trial-and-error learning stages, to information synthesis, all the way through solving the puzzle and answering the question. A game hinging on a real-life genetic mechanic would be novel and stood to introduce the science to a new audience. If designed well, with engaging play and a compelling story, we would be able to integrate the science, narrative, and gameplay into a beautiful app.

We started off diving deep into the world of video games. We indulged in playing some of our tried-and-true favorites, as well as newer games such as Osmos and Eufloria to understand how they bridged science and storytelling. At the same time, we were learning about cutting-edge research in genetics through conversations with Jason Long and other Genentech scientists, listening to podcasts, and a hefty amount of reading.

Throughout this inspiration phase, we kept coming back to a wildly intriguing area of research called epigenetics, which focuses on how environments affect genetic expression. In short, epigenetics is the area of genetics that, given a fixed DNA makeup, tells the DNA which parts of the code should express themselves and how they should express themselves as determined by external factors like weather, stress, diet, etc. So while we may have a fixed genetic makeup, the environment still plays a large modulating factor in our genetic expression.

Our fascination with the content—combined with a teamwide love of comic books and mutant-origin stories—evolved into an epigenetic-inspired noir-puzzle game based on Ralph, an artisanal cheese-maker, and his cheese company Ralph's Killer Muenster.

The mechanisms of genetics

Early on in the ideation phase, Evan Shapiro, who would become a core team member and help prototype game logic, introduced us to phylogenetic trees and maximum parsimony theory. You’ve probably encountered phylogenetic trees in biology class, where they serve to illustrate evolutionary relationships among species. Maximum parsimony, on the other hand, is more obscure. It serves as a computational forensic tool to help us understand the evolution of genetic traits along the phylogenetic tree, as well as help us infer species evolution. With maximum parsimony, the “preferred phylogenetic tree is the tree that supposes the least evolutionary change to explain observed data.” After mulling that over for a bit, we decided creating and solving a phylogenetic puzzle by employing maximum parsimony as a scoring criteria was a great jumping-off point and a compelling challenge.

To test this, our first prototype was a paper prototype where we started with a sample origin genetic trait. We sketched out several generations by mutating one trait at a time, and created our own phylogenetic tree. Given the final generation of traits and no tree structure, the goal was to see if we could work backwards to recreate the tree structure and uncover the origin trait. Basically, reverse evolution. After a lot of finessing we came up with a rule set that actually reflected natural evolutionary rules and allowed us to solve the tree and find the origin species.

With this excitement, we spent a weekend programming a single prototype puzzle using mechanics that would become the main gameplay: players reverse engineer evolution by mutating a given set of species traits backwards to a common ancestor in the fewest moves possible. This was maximum parsimony made tangible. In order for the puzzles to be solvable, we had to use real evolutionary rules describing how the species’ traits can change. By the end of the weekend, we had puzzles and a game mechanic that were keeping us up late into the night trying to one-up each other’s scores, which, to us, meant we had hit the nail on the head.

From a design perspective, one of the significant balancing acts of the project involved weighing the desire to impart specific scientific knowledge against the value of experiential learning. When we used maximum parsimony it became clear that this was a perfect mechanic to give people an experiential interaction with real genetics.

Prototyping and puzzle design

From day one, Ralph’s Killer Muenster was an intensive prototyping project. The first bare-bones prototype of the puzzle was written in Qt because we wanted a framework in which we could rapidly prototype the GUI and could reuse game logic for the production app. Qt, although not extensively used, has great functionality and plays natively with Javascript and C++. It was a well-suited framework for prototyping the core puzzle experience, which included coding the evolutionary logic, adding and testing interactions, modifying visual communication, and testing informational displays.

Our daily workflow started with an early morning meeting so we could all share progress from the previous day. We spent the rest of the day implementing and testing new visuals and interactions on paper and integrating them into the Qt prototype architecture. Lastly, we tested them with people around IDEO to see how they reacted to specific design and gameplay decisions.

We used Unity for the production app in the development environment for many of the same reasons that we chose Qt. But Unity has the added benefit of working with native OpenGL, along with the capability to compile to iOS. As time-constrained as this project was, we still wanted to impart as much narrative and visual interest as possible, and Unity proved an excellent match for this challenge.

Nivi Ramesh, our interaction designer and art director, worked to create an amazing game landscape with analogies to microscopy and slide specimens. Working closely with developers at Substantial, we created layered and animated textures paired with OpenGL shaders to achieve the tone we wanted. We had parallel work streams throughout the prototyping phase, with one team working on developing the logic and overarching architecture of the production app while the prototyping team refined interaction elements, game mechanics, and informational displays in the prototype testbed.

What makes a good puzzle?

Before diving any further, we took a step back to make sure we got the puzzles right. Good puzzle games tend to adhere to some basic principles: They are purely cognitive challenges with a few simple rules, nearly infinite outcomes, difficulty that increases with mastery, and some clear goals. Plus, they're easy to learn.

In building the game, one of our most critical challenges was creating visual representations of the genetic traits that people would be using to solve the puzzles. People had to quickly grasp how they could manipulate and evolve the traits given the genetic logic. If we couldn't get people to make this mental leap, the game wasn't going to succeed.

A real genetic trait is made up of a snippet of DNA and is a long, winding series of genetic code (or, a lot of AGTC). To make the game approachable, we chose to abstract and simplify the cheese trait representations as visual identifiers that had a bit of mystery and were themselves a puzzle to decode. We tested many different ways of visually representing the traits, the majority of which people could not directly connect to an increasing or decreasing series. The simplest visuals turned out to be the most effective: shapes, dots, and lines.

With simple geometric shapes, people could see that moving from a triangle to a square to a hexagon involved moving through a progression of increasing the numbers of sides. Similarly, lines and dots worked well for understanding how the traits could be mutated. They were easily accessible by players in planning a strategy for mutation.

Less is more

After the weekend of playing the prototype level, we needed a way to determine the optimal solution to these puzzles so that we could give user feedback and help players improve in the game. With Ralph's Killer Muenster, an optimal solution for any puzzle involves making the “most parsimonious” decisions, i.e. using the least number of moves or fewest mutations. We needed to find a way to reward people for doing less, contrary to typical game design where users are rewarded for doing more. Without a clear and appropriate qualitative feedback mechanism, we found that people were finishing puzzles without any sense for how much better they could perform.

Scavenging the Internet for a tool to analyze phylogenetic trees uncovered Mesquite, a software package built specifically for computational biology and evolutionary analysis. After learning from tutorials produced by Harvard University, we could solve the initial species sets and puzzles we had created, and arrive at the most efficient tree structure and trait mutations.

We used the statistical language R to generate thousands of possible levels, export files for Mesquite to crunch, and output the moves required for each level into a custom level file that we could use to test in our prototype game.

Levels testing and design progressed in parallel with refining the scoring display and making hundreds of other visual and UX enhancements. With our trait visualizations, levels design and scoring mechanism solved, we felt we had achieved something that was both subtle and significant: People who grasped the underlying puzzle dynamics were quite literally using their brains in a way that mimics a core methodology of genetic science. This seemed to hit at the essence of experiential learning.

Muenster launches, Bill Nye approves

The Ralph's Killer Muenster iPad game launched at the 2013 GET (Genomics, Environments and Traits) conference, coinciding with the anniversary of Watson and Crick's seminal paper describing the structure of DNA. At the conference, Bill Nye the Science Guy, a long-time advocate of a science literate society, played the game, and loved it. This made our day. The app also caught Apple's attention, and was listed as a new and noteworthy Education app in the App Store.

To further raise awareness around the game, we created a Ralph's Killer Muenster brand, including a visual identity, packaging, website, Twitter, game trailer, and food truck—all mobilized by Ralph to push the only tool that could save the city (and his reputation) and allow him to lift the health code violations that kept him from producing and distributing cheese. Ralph’s food truck, sent throughout San Francisco, distributed grilled muenster cheese sandwiches.

What we learned

After the launch festivities, our team took a step back to consider what we had learned. Here's the take-away:

• Set constraints to help make a hard problem more approachable. Our self-imposed constraint that the game needed to rely on a scientific mechanism helped us narrow in on phylogenetic trees and maximum parsimony as our core concepts.

• A good story goes a long way. We spent significant time concocting Ralph's story, and getting the tone and art direction down in order to engage people. We want them to stick around for the more mentally taxing interactions later down the line.

• Find the right tool for the right job. We used a variety of prototyping and user testing methods and environments, rather than trying to find or force an all-in-one. Each tool elicited learnings unique to them.

1953 was a good year for science and technology. The polio vaccine was developed, the first open heart surgery performed, and color TVs hit the store shelves. It was also the year Watson and Crick revealed one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century: the double-helix structure of DNA.

David Kelley, IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator, and his brother Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and the author of the best-selling The Art of Innovation, have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us.

WATCH: David Kelley's TED Talk: How to build your creative confidence.

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet, David and Tom Kelley, show us that everyone is creative.

In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO and with many of the world’s top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work and personal lives, and innovatively approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

Learn more at CreativeConfidence.com.

Purchase

Know someone who might love this book? Here are some options for purchasing Creative Confidence (Crown Business, 2013):

• Order from Bookshop.org

When we were asked to whip up a special brew this July for a big Creative Confidence book-preview event featuring David Kelley, one of IDEO’s founders, and his brother, best-selling author Tom Kelley, we knew we had to kick things up a notch.

Challenge #1: Two guests of honor called for not one brew, but two! We heard Tom enjoys light, Japanese-style beers and that David doesn’t really drink, so we decided to make a Belgian-style wit for Tom and sparkling organic lemonade for David and then mix them together to create a shandy, a refreshing summer drink.

Challenge #2: Now that we had two beverages, we needed to come up with a unique way to dispense them. Luckily, we like tough build challenges with tight deadlines even more than we like beer. A few shop hours here and there between projects, and before we knew it, we said “cheers” to the Mix Master 2000 Shandy Machine!

Introducing the Mix Master 2000

How it works

The Mix Master 2000 Shandy Machine’s look was inspired by the retro-futuristic steampunk movement.

The machine sits on top of a standard, top-loading freezer replumbed to hold two kegs (one containing wit, the other sparkling organic lemonade).

Thirsty partygoers begin by turning the large hand crank on the front to select their preferred beer-to-lemonade ratio (from 0–100%). When the analog meter on top points to the desired proportions, they flip a missile switch to open the valves. The two glass vessels on either side of the machine fill with beer and lemonade, respectively, then send the home-brewed concoctions into their waiting pint via a dispensing tube.

Beer recipe

We wanted to brew a beer that would pair well with lemonade, so we decided on a nice, light, citrus-wheat ale. The goal: around 5% ABV, or alcohol by volume. We used 2-row pale as our main grain along with wheat and wheat malt with a bit of coriander, chamomile, and orange peel. You can find the complete recipe on Brewtoad.

Lemonade recipe

Making homemade lemonade is pretty straightforward. It only has three ingredients: lemon juice, sugar, and water. Batch-processing 10 gallons of the stuff, however, is a bit trickier, especially when you don’t have an electric juicer. In our case, we landed on a ratio of 1:1:8 (1 part lemon juice, 1 part sugar, 8 parts water), and ended up using 160 lemons, 2.5 gallons of simple syrup, and several man-hours of squeezing time. Yikes.

Early testing

After we figured out what we wanted our shandy machine to do, we found some glass vessels lying around the shop.

They looked straight out of a science lab, which was cool, but we thought we’d have some foaming issues because of their small openings. We hooked up a hose from the tap in our kegerator and tried filling them with beer. Sure enough, the beer started foaming immediately and it took several minutes to drain using gravity. Not good if you want a proper pour...

We needed to do something about the foaming issue in order to make this thing usable more than once. We did some experimenting and learned several things:

• There couldn’t be any kinks in the tubing.
• A colder vessel worked best.
• The first pour was really foamy, but subsequent pours were better.
• Filling the glass from the bottom via a tube prevented overflow and allowed any foam that did bubble up to dissipate quickly.
• Adding some back pressure to the vessel made the biggest difference in preventing foam. (To give you an idea of the really rough type of prototyping we love, we used the finger of a rubber glove to make a makeshift balloon on top of the vessel.)

Architecture

The basic plumbing layout of the system is pretty simple. We have three-way ball valves that direct flow from the keg to the vessel, from the vessel to the dispenser tube, or block flow entirely.

To control the valves, we 3D-printed some gears to fit onto the lever controls. To drive the valves, we fitted stepper motors with smaller, 3D-printed gears.

Inputs

For the main shandy mixture-control system, we settled on a large hand crank.

We machined a shaft and attached an encoder to the end. We added some detents to the wheel to make sure the crank had a nice hand-feel and gave solid feedback so people could precisely dial in their desired mixture ratio (the detent mechanism is equivalent to putting a baseball card in the spokes of a bike tire).

We used a 3D-printed gear and flexible plastic leaf to engage the gear. We had to play around with some adhesive foam in order to damp the vibrations and get just the right sound and feel we were looking for. We added a covered, mission control-style toggle switch to start the cycle and a cancel button to round out the inputs.

Feedback

The main source of feedback on the machine is the large analog meter on the top of the machine. We searched online in vain for a large meter that would fit our steampunk style, have an appropriate measuring range, and could be controlled by Arduino. In the end, we found an old automotive meter that measured voltage from 0-16v.

We replaced the scale with one designed by our colleague Joe Graceffa and added a custom housing around it.

When we were testing the Mix Master 2000, we found ourselves staring at the Arduino serial output a lot to figure out where the machine was in its cycle. To make this easier, we added a small OLED display with an onboard SD card slot. Simple serial commands trigger bitmap images that signal Startup, Ready State, Beer Filling, Lemonade Filling, Pouring, and Error State.

Electrical layout

An Arduino Mega controls the shandy machine. This diagram shows how all of the components are connected:

To drive the meter, we needed to boost the 0-5v PWM output of the Arduino Mega to 0-16v. We built a simple, non-inverting amplifier circuit to increase the voltage. A fine-adjustment potentiometer allowed us to fine-tune the maximum voltage and made the meter read full scale.

Code

When the Mix Master 2000 is first powered on, we can’t be sure that the valves are in the correct position. Each motor is stalled against the valve hard stop to establish a home position (the valve hard stop is in the dispense position so there’s no risk of keg leakage). Once the machine’s ready, the crank encoder state is polled and the meter PWM is updated to reflect changes in the shandy-mixture percentage. As soon as the start switch is thrown, the pour cycle begins. During our early testing, we figured out how long it would take to fill a glass with each liquid (the times turned out to be different because of varying carbonation levels). The parameters for beer and lemonade fill times are used to calculate the on times for both valves using the selected shandy ratio.

The cycle sequence starts by opening the beer valve and filling the beer vessel for a predetermined amount of time. When the beer valve closes, the lemonade valve opens for a predetermined amount of time. Finally, both valves move to the dispense position to allow liquid to flow from the two vessels and into the person’s glass. A built-in wait time prevents the start of another cycle, ensuring all the liquid is dispensed.

If necessary, a cancel button throws an interrupt, immediately moving both valves to the safe home position and halting program execution until the Arduino reset button is pressed.

The final touches: steampunking & aging

We’re big fans of steampunk, so from the beginning, we knew we wanted the Mix Master 2000 to look quasi-Victorian. First, we used as much copper and brass as possible, then, drawing on John’s background as a Hollywood set designer, we “antiqued” it using various scenic techniques.

We started by stripping everything off the main body of the machine and painting it all silver. After that dried, we sprayed it again with black paint. While that was drying, we took Scotchbrite pads and scratched the corners, edges, and anywhere else we thought needed a little character. After the black paint layer dried completely, we started to reattach all the other pieces. We painted them copper or brass and scratched them up here and there to add wear and tear.

Once the whole machine was reassembled, we decided it should look a bit dirtier. To do this, we mixed different brown-toned acrylic paints with denatured alcohol. We brushed this onto key places like the corners of the motors so it looked like dirt had accumulated and it was streaked with rain (we wiped off the paint before it dried so the effect didn’t look too heavy handed). For sanitation purposes, we didn’t paint the drain tray or the stainless tubes that dispense the shandy.

What’s next

We think the Mix Master 2000’s pretty cool as-is, but there’s always room for improvement. One issue we’d like to address is foaming. The balloon we added on top of the beer vessel helped, but pouring a lot of shandies in succession caused major foam build up. Increasing the amount of back pressure in the vessel could improve this situation, so we’re experimenting with adjustable pressure-relief valves. Coupled with the relief valve, a low-pressure aquarium pump could help to push out the foam more quickly, avoiding a buildup.

While we’re using the Mix Master 2000 for shandies at the moment, it really could be used for any number of two-part drinks: Black & Tans, mixed drinks, or custom non-alcoholic concoctions are all ideas we’re toying around with. As beer geeks, we’re particularly keen to brew two similar beers, one with a bland base and another that has a lot of hops so we can all dial up the perfect hoppy pour.

Parts List

• Main housing — ?” ABS
• Ball valves — McMaster # 4757K52
• Valve gears — FDM
• Valve housing — FDM
• Crank — McMaster #6020K35
• Stepper motors — Lulzbot #817752011303
• Stepper drivers — Sparkfun #ROB-11699
• Arduino Mega
• Display — 4D systems 128x128 Sparkfun #LCD-11377
• Power supply — 12V 5A, 5V 12A
• Meter — salvaged autometer 16v range
• Glass vessels — found in shop
• Glass holders — FDM
• Meter housing — Laser cut acrylic
• Start switch — Sparkfun #COM-11310

We couldn’t have made the Mix Master 2000 without the help of Joe Graceffa’s graphic design skills, Aaron Ferber’s awesome lemonade-making abilities, and Momo Miyazaki's amazing video. This post was co-written with John Grimley.

The creators of the Mix Master 2000, Chris Gold and John Grimley.

Here at IDEO Chicago, we like beer. A lot. And we don’t just love drinking the stuff, we like brewing it, too. Our ChIDEO Brew Crew started about two years ago and since that time, we’ve made more than 60 gallons, mostly for studio events like Rocktoberfest or St. Paddy’s Day, but sometimes just because it’s Tuesday and we feel like it. We even have a customized kegerator in our kitchen to showcase our drafts.

Perhaps one of the most iconic objects Bill designed was the GRiD Compass, the world's first laptop computer. Bill's design was the original clamshell design that all current laptops have descended from. We wondered if we could use a GRiD as a way to collect stories about Bill from around the office.

The result is this GRiD Laptop that has been modified to house a Galaxy Tab. It renders everything in orange and black similar to the original GRiD, boasts a working keyboard, and can be plugged in to charge at the base behind the original door that housed the ports.

We are using this laptop as a way to add content to billmoggridge.com which has been created to honor him by sharing our favorite moments, Moggridge-isms, photos, videos, songs, and more.

I hope this puts a smile on your face, just as Bill has done for so many others during his lifetime.

As per usual, I tried to document and share all the details of the build process for others to learn from. Click through for the full details of what went into this build:

Parts:

• Broken GRiD 1720 from Ebay
• Refurbished Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 w/ dock and keyboard

Before we start taking things apart, look at this! Things may not have changed as much as we think...

Taking apart the GRiD:

The Display

I wanted to have the charger on the base of the computer and not in the screen. For that we would need to make an extension cable that will work like the original cable that connected the screen. Luckily I have the dock and the keyboard dock to hack. I end up using both.

Here is the dock taken apart:

All we need is this part. This will connect to the bottom of the tablet:

This is the part inside the keyboard dock. I use this as the port to glue into the base of the laptop:

First I de-soldered the connector that originally would have plugged into the tablet. Then I connected the dock part to this keyboard part. Now I can use the multimeter in conductivity mode to probe the connections to learn which pad on the keyboard part will need to go to which pad on the dock part:

Then I (very carefully) soldered everything up with an ample length of cable to make my extension cable:

Once I verify the connections are sound, I blob on some 5 minute epoxy to lock everything up so it won't break later.

I couldn't have asked for better luck on fitting this in there! This is the bottom of the connector touching the base of the screen housing:

Lastly, there was no way to wake up the tablet once I put it in the housing, so I put a bolt in the lathe and turned a button that sits in the casing and allows you to press the button from the outside:

Lastly, I had to cut a hole in the display window so you can touch the screen of the tablet. I tried doing this with an x-acto and failed miserably. Luckily, our model-maker extraordinaire, John Grimley, came to the rescue and laser-cut / backpainted a replacement bezel. Thanks!

The Keyboard

Now on to the keyboard. I used a bluetooth keyboard from Motorola. The Samsung one that came with the tablet was too small. I was pretty lucky to find one with almost the exact size of the original GRiD keyboard:

I took all the keys off the GRiD and sanded them down so I could glue them flush to the bluetooth keyboard:

I used hot glue, a steady hand, and a lot of patience:

Now we have a proper keyboard, we need to wire it up. I wired the pairing button to the original power button of the GRiD because you have to press the pair button every time you power on. One reason I made that cable using the keyboard dock circuit board earlier is because the board breaks out power and ground which I can wire to power the bluetooth keyboard. This way there are no batteries to replace.

The Bluetooth Board:

Wired onto the keyboard dock:

Now everything is wired together, so I just place the connector in the original slot for the parallel port:

The Software:

This was actually the most difficult part to figure out. I wanted to have the display be yellow-orange on black like the original GRiD. I started poking around on the Android XDA-developers forum to dig up information. I won't go through all the steps in detail, but after trying versions of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, Cyanogen Mod, etc. etc. I found that I had to re-install Android Honeycomb (which was on there in the first place!) and install Chainfire 3D:

This app calls itself “an intermediary OpenGL Driver“ so it sits in the middle and can mess with commands going to the GPU. This requires a rooted device. There's a guy on YouTube who does an awesome walkthrough on how to root a Galaxy Tab 8.9. If you are looking to do something similar.

Chainfire 3D has a “Night Mode“ that allows you to mess with which colors function and to what degree:

However, it still wasn't changing the color! It would change only during screen transitions when there was some sort GPU task happening. I decided to try some hacks to force the GPU to constantly be running letting Chainfire have the ability to intercept things. I had seen some other “screen tinting“ apps that on their own didn't accomplish what I wanted, but added a level of something going on so Chainfire could do it's job. The one I used is called “Screen Adjust.“

Before:

After!

The Website

While I was working on the GRiD, IDEOers Arjun Mehta and Katie Clark—along with several others including Lance Birtcil, Ben Booth, Francis Tseng, Ivy Hu, Danny Stillion, Tom Hardin and Tim Brown—were putting together the tribute website that the laptop was built to access: billmoggridge.com.

It's really beautifully done, so go check it out to see what kinds of fantastic stories have been shared.

With the passing of IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge, we have been reflecting on the ways he has influenced our lives and made the world a better place. Bill has had an enormous impact on the field of interaction design and professed the importance of making interactions delightful.

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.