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.

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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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Having already used acrylics, oil paints, graphite, and finally moving on to digital art, there was not much left to experiment with to broaden my artistic arsenal.

Or so I thought.

It was 25th of September, 2016, when my artistic alter ego was born. During that period of my life, I was searching for a way forward, having just returned from university without a job. I spent most of my time ideating and planning my next move.

That afternoon, I sat down to take a break and illustrate my state of mind. I started what was meant to be a 20-minute drawing session with a 0.5mm fine liner. That pen, plus an old notebook that I had used back in university, became my weapon of creativity.

When I was done, I had a character that I named “the relentless dreamer”—a tiny figure with a peculiar helmet that shielded his wandering heart from reality as he knew it, granting him the ability to see far beyond the clutches of a life he deemed to be limited. This tiny figure reminds me that it is crucial to be idealistic, ambitious, and forever creative.

Drawing this character gave me an emotional release unlike anything I had experienced before through art. Though I was often plagued with a sense of anxiety around what my drawings would mean or stand for, this time, I felt weightless.

I began focusing on these black and white ink drawings, and the experience was cathartic. Each one entwined with the stories that brought them to life. Even though most of the figures I drew were imaginary, I was taking my life and experiences and expressing them through my illustration. I would envision part of the figure in my mind and let the rest appear.

My intention was for viewers to move their eyes constantly as they looked for meaning in the drawing or simply made out the shapes.

Some of my work is dark, some full of mystery—a mystery I hoped that others would try solve as they navigate the intricacies of the line work.

Amidst all the visual chaos, there was one constant: A human element. The figures would serve as my connection to the pieces, and I hoped they would resonate with the audience, too.

These days, you will probably find me seated in the corner of a cafe with a fine liner pen. To many, I am just an artist, ardently sketching away. But what I’m actually doing is getting a little dose of sanity, as I move the images in my mind onto the pages of my book.

And in that very moment, I am dreaming… relentlessly.

Want to see what other IDEOers are drawing and doodling? Take a peek inside more designers' notebooks.

Two years ago, after spending most of my life mimicking artwork that appealed to me, I assumed that I had reached my artistic peak. I had been drawing since 1999. I still enjoyed working on portraits and surrealist compositions, but creatively, I felt stuck. After starting university, my product design work proved to be quite fulfilling, but my personal work was feeling uninspired.

Creativity Challenge # 6: Warm up a group

Creativity thrives amidst free-flowing social discourse. To get a roomful of strangers to innovate, you may want to begin by breaking down some social barriers. When this exercise is done right, the room will be abuzz with chatter and laughter, and participants will be more open to what comes next.

Tool: Speed Dating
Participants: Pairs in groups of any size
Time: 15-20 minutes total, 3 minutes per round
Supplies: Paper printed with a set of questions for each participant. Several different sets of questions will be needed to accommodate the entire group.

Instructions

Step 1: Give each person a list of open-ended questions. Several different sets of questions should be spread throughout tables in the room so that people aren’t continually being asked the same questions.

Examples of possible questions:

• How would your closest family members describe you?
• If you had a million Euros to spend in a way that benefits humanity, what would you do?
• What do you wish your parents had told you?
• What was a live performance or show you really loved, and why?

Step 2: Ask each person in the room to pair up with someone they don’t know very well or have never met. This may involve getting up and moving seats.

Step 3: Have one person in each pair ask a question from the list. Allow three minutes for the other person to answer.

Step 4: Have each pair switch roles and repeat, asking a different question on the list

Step 5: Tell everyone to find a new partner and repeat the process for a couple more rounds.

Tips from the field

You want to keep people moving to create a well-orchestrated round-robin. Be proactive about timekeeping. Assign someone to be a facilitator or timekeeper. To add a little fun, use a buzzer or gong to announce that time is up.

Depending on the nature of the working session that will follow the Speed Dating exercise, you can tailor some of the open-ended questions to be inspirational and loosely related to your topic. For example, if the objective of the meeting is to discuss the future of workspace for the organization, one of the prompts may be, “Describe an inspiring space you have worked in.”

Give a little thought to the type of questions you use. Meaning-of-life questions and superlative questions (the most, the best, the worst) can cause people to stall out or draw a blank. The whole purpose is interaction. So if your question stumps your partner for even a handful of seconds, it’s not quite right. Try the questions out on someone before you use them in a group setting.

If your group might be uncomfortable with an activity that includes the word “dating” in the title, call it Speed Meeting—which we have found works with Nobel laureates.

This post was taken from Chapter 7 of Creative Confidence. Purchase the book for more on how to use creativity to solve problems, or view more from this series of creative exercises on the IDEO blog.

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Everyone is creative. This belief runs through everything we do at IDEO, and in 2013, it led my brother David and me to write a book that would help others—even those who don’t think of themselves as “creative types”—to unleash their creative potential. Creative Confidence has inspired thousands of people to adopt a creative mindset and apply it to the diverse real-world challenges they face. In this series, we’ll share some exercises from the book that can help you approach your challenges from a new perspective.

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1. Design for human capabilities

We are in an uncomfortable place at the moment. Technology has connected us all more than ever, but we are feeling less substantive connection with one another. Human interaction has been reduced to lowest common denominators. Unhappy people click more. Now technology is starting to displace us. In the next few years, deep learning-based AI will take over human activities, from driving to medical diagnosis. The discomfort is increasing as society faces mass redundancy, increased inequality and a crisis of meaning. We can all feel it coming. Design can help.

The amazing thing about good design is that it looks at ambiguity and disruption and sees fertile ground. There is huge opportunity when we focus on things that humans are uniquely equipped to do—empathy, creativity, care, love.

If we do it right, we can conceive and shape new roles for humans in a layer on top of the efficiencies that machines can achieve. We can use those uniquely human traits to re-find and enhance community and depth in our relationships with each other. We can go from Artificial Intelligence to Augmented Intelligence.

—David Webster, Partner, IDEO Palo Alto

2. Design for emotional wellness

The uncertain state of the world is having clear consequences for individual health. You see it in the headlines everyday: Kids paralyzed by anxiety. Suicides by gun. Addiction to opioids. We live in the most technologically connected times, yet our rates of loneliness are increasing. If you dig deep, the common root is an absence of emotional and mental well-being.

I’m not talking about the well-being that’s branded through luxury experiences, like wellness retreats. I’m talking about what Maslow missed at the very bottom of his hierarchy: that sense of inner well-being that is absolutely necessary for our survival as humans.

What’s exciting about our moment now is that science has surfaced the myriad ways we can cultivate emotional and mental well-being—all of which are new channels for design.

Designing ways to get better sleep is also a way of designing for resilience to stress and better ability to manage our emotions. Tackling loneliness and designing for meaningful social connection is also a way of designing for a stronger immune system and brain protection. (Conversely, enabling chronic loneliness is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.) Designing ways to help people find their sense of purpose and meaning in life is an incredibly powerful way to design for healthier mind and bodies.

More and more, designers will realize their superpowers. Doctors and nurses are key players in facilitating wellness, but let's not forget that designers can be healers, too.

—Ann Kim, Portfolio Director, IDEO Cambridge

[This portion was also featured in Fast Company.]

3. Design for circularity

While it's easy these days to lament the state of the environment and the need for change, there's some hope to be found in the increased momentum towards a more circular economy. Collaborations between industry and design have yielded smart, feasible ideas for redirecting waste streams and reconnecting key stakeholders.

Businesses are investigating new product and packaging design that enables materials to be used again and again; they're asking how to leverage logistics in more efficient ways; and they're conceiving of new ownership models that could extend the lifecycle of the products they make.

The next questions on the horizon revolve around the economic systems that need to be in place to support these circular innovations. For example, we can design buildings so that they can be deconstructed—a circular engineering idea—but the cost of labor makes that reality prohibitive. In 2019, it's time for more applied circularity, leveraging emerging technology, organizational design, human insights, and social networks to create the conditions for the circular economy to take hold.

—Lauren Yarmuth, Portfolio Director, IDEO New York

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With 2018 fading into the distance, we're looking with hopeful eyes toward what the next year may bring. Our ongoing projects and client work help us hold up a mirror to reflect on what’s been happening and make informed predictions about what’s to come. Here are a few forecasts from IDEO leaders on prospective trends in design and tech.

If you know what we’re talking about, you could well be one of the world’s frustrated changemakers. You can see that change is essential, but you’re struggling to light the spark because your business’s indicators are all annoyingly positive. If this is you, what can you do? Should you hope for—or, even, engineer—a crisis?

This was one of the questions a group of business transformation leaders took on recently, at our Make Change Happen event in Munich, Germany.

“It would be a lie to say that a good crisis or a good disruption doesn’t help,” said Roman Lentz, Chief Digital Transformation Officer at global building materials firm Heidelberg Cement. “Because if you honestly look at organizations that change the fastest, they’re the ones with their backs most strongly against the wall… And frankly, that’s my challenge, because we’re not in crisis. We’re producing healthy margins. We’re not seeing cement being disrupted any time soon.”

Sandra Schiller, Head of Product Management for Valves and Automation at Georg Fischer Piping Systems, agreed. A crisis, Schiller noted, “can force through faster changes.”

But this doesn’t mean you should wait for a crisis, as London’s black taxis discovered, a few years too late.

“Black taxis were untouchable,” said Ben Terrett, CEO of Public Digital, a firm that partners with IDEO and specializes in digital transformation. “So untouchable that some of their services and ways of operating were protected by regulation. They have special parking spaces in London, special streets only they can go down… certain roads only they can pick up from.”

But then wave after wave of digital disruption flooded in as they sat behind the wheel, watching their dominion ebb away. First, GPS meant that the traditional cab drivers’ knowledge of London’s labyrinthine streets was no longer the golden ticket it had once been.

Then Uber arrived, and its bookable, predictable, low-cost rides started to eat into the black taxi business. So how did London’s cabbies respond?

“Their defense has ended up being reputation,” said Terrett. “That’s basically their only defense: ‘But we’re the black cabs!’”

Turns out customers weren’t as attached to the reputation of London’s cabs as cabbies were—and they couldn’t compete with the convenience and cost-cutting of on-demand services. Now the London Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) wants to sue Uber for the earnings its 25,000 members lost in the first five years they were operating in the city. The LTDA estimates that cabbies lost £10,000 each per year, and has been taking legal advice to sue for £1.25 billion.

It didn’t have to come to this.

“What’s interesting is that people have been trying to help them—by building services on top of their service,” said James Higgs, Executive Director for Digital Transformation at IDEO London.

In 2011, the year before Uber launched in London—Hailo, now MyTaxi, tried to bring the predictability of a booking app to the black cabs.

“Taxi drivers didn’t even want that,” Higgs said. “They would charge you an outrageous minimum fare… they even resisted companies trying to help them deliver a better service!”

We don’t want to pick on London’s iconic cabs and their drivers. They’re not even employees of a centralized company that one could point a finger at—they’re self-employed. But we think there are lessons here for us all.

“The black cabs are a good analogy for a lot of businesses,” said Terrett. “I can see lots of industrial-era companies who, when digital organizations go after their market, their defense is ‘well, we’re us, we’re the number one brand in this market.’ That’s no longer a good enough defense.”

Here are three key takeaways for businesses looking to inoculate themselves for potential disruption:

1. Don’t wait for a crisis

Just as you shouldn’t wish for a crisis to happen, so you shouldn’t wait for a crisis to happen before you change.

“It’s really nice if you start in a safe environment in order to secure your future business,” says Georg Fischer’s Schiller. “It’s not about securing your business tomorrow, it’s about the business for the next few years. And as we are a 200-year-old company, we really would like to be around for another 200 years: And so we have to start working now.”

2. There’s an Uber for your industry, too

The leaders of large industrial companies like Heidelberg Cement and Georg Fischer are investing in digital transformation programs now—because, while there may be no Uber for cement or pipes or any of their other product lines yet, there’s probably an entrepreneur somewhere pitching an idea that sounds something like that to an investor right now.

And because, however unlikely it might seem to some today, it’s certain that digital transformation—defined by Tom Loosemore, a partner at Public Digital, as “applying the culture, practices, processes, and technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations”—is going to disrupt every industry, including the one you work in.

3. Digital is your friend

Instead of thinking of digital disruption as a threat—you’re better off picturing it as a friend.

OK, so it’s a friend who needs a lot of hand holding at first. But as long as you’re prepared to invest the time and approach it from a human-centered point of view, digital transformation will make many things a whole lot better. It will increase your productivity, your pace of innovation, your rate of learning, and your customers’ expectations—and it’ll help you deliver on them.

When Georg Fischer’s design teams, for instance, began creating digital prototypes, so they learned new, more flexible, agile ways of working. And they started producing a new, digitally-enabled ‘smart part’ that alerts machine operators to problems in the system, so their customers now have more control over operations.

So, don’t sit by the curbside, your legacy engine idling, as you wait—hope even—for a crisis to come. Instead of clinging to what is, use digital to prepare for what might be. Welcome change in now, from a position of safety, and maybe you can secure your business’s long-term future—and save a cool £1.25 billion.

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Strange as it sounds, the main challenge for some people today is that their business isn’t in crisis. No blockchain or platform or AI startup is threatening to disrupt their market—yet.

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.