Obesity exists at the complex intersection of a clinical condition and a cultural force. Clinically, it comes with a diagnosis and treatment plan. Culturally, it is influenced by beliefs, identity, and self-worth, making it deeply personal and often taboo. Families, healthcare providers, and experts tend to avoid the fraught “o-word,” opting for euphemisms instead. For families on Medicaid, these challenges are even more pronounced. Award-winning health-tech startup Clarity Pediatrics, together with designers from IDEO, IDEO.org, and with support from Rise Together Ventures, sought to uncover the obstacles to healthier lifestyles and create a free report for US pediatricians who want to bend the curve on the childhood obesity epidemic.

Research with kids and parents on Medicaid in Dallas, Texas, and California’s Bay Area, along with interviews with healthcare providers and experts across the country, uncovered stories of stigma and frustration. Parents spoke of the daily challenges of balancing multiple jobs, sourcing affordable healthy food, and finding time to make necessary lifestyle changes. They described rushed pediatric visits that left them with unclear next steps and feelings of blame. Provider conversations echoed these struggles, noting time constraints and limited follow-up options.  

Ultimately, food had become a daily torment for these families. Eating was unavoidable and also one of the few affordable indulgences low-income parents were able to provide. Once kids left their own homes, they were surrounded by unhealthy temptations, making it feel impossible for parents to maintain control. The popularity of costly new weight-loss medications and surgical procedures added another layer of complexity for families who had been underserved by—and therefore distrustful of—America’s healthcare system. With so much of the responsibility placed on parents to self-direct care, inequities deepened, adding to the burden of families already at a breaking point.

To design a path forward, IDEO and IDEO.org mapped a family’s needs before, during, and after pediatric visits. This work revealed critical parts of the journey where families needed more support: recognizing early signs of obesity, navigating provider conversations, and sustaining healthier habits at home.

These insights informed a theory of change framework that provides actionable guidance for stakeholders involved in obesity care. Grounded in three opportunity areas along the patient journey—building awareness, confidence, and capacity—the framework highlights how trust, dignity, and systemic support can lead to lasting outcomes.

IDEO and IDEO.org also developed 10 user-centered concepts spanning digital, physical, and service offerings to reduce stigma and empower families to sustain healthier lives. These ideas address dignified diagnoses and structural inequities, among other pressing issues. Complementing these concepts, IDEO created a short documentary of a mother discussing her family’s experience navigating childhood obesity to help pediatric providers—many of whom have had very different lived experiences from the families and patients they serve—better understand the realities of the daily struggles of many families on Medicaid.

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Designed for the public good, the interactive website and free downloadable report, Reimagining Childhood Obesity, contain research findings, design recommendations, and a theory of change framework. The goal: provide practical, actionable guidelines for pediatricians, educators, healthcare organizations, and innovators to meet families and kids where they are and support them as they move toward a healthier future.

21% of US children are obese. 40% of Latino youth are either overweight or obese.

26% of kids on Medicaid experience childhood obesity, compared with 11% on private insurance.

525,600 minutes: Total time per year parents spend caring for their children. 17 minutes: Average time a pediatrician spends with a child during their annual exam, a small window to address a complex chronic condition such as obesity.

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user-centered ideas to help pediatricians reduce the stigma of childhood obesity in an accessible report

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opportunity areas for building trust with young patients and providing family support

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With its reach, Acer saw an opportunity to power positive choices in the billions. ‍

But new products and services won’t succeed if consumers don’t want them, no matter how sustainable they are. A few years go, the Harvard Business Review’s report, "The Elusive Green Consumer," found that about two-thirds of those surveyed said they wanted to buy brands that advocated sustainability. But only a quarter actually did.

Meanwhile, the market for climate era products is only growing: In 2022, Forbes found that nearly 90 percent of the Gen X consumers they surveyed said they’d be willing to spend more on sustainable products, compared to just over a third two years before. The desire was only higher among Millennials and Gen Z; they just didn’t like what was on offer.

To drive sales and growth, and meet its sustainability commitments, Acer needed to capitalize on desirability, deepening the connection between Acer’s sustainable options and consumer needs, lowering the barrier to purchase. To that end, Acer and IDEO created the Acer Climate Lab, a cross-organizational team and initiative, to launch the company on a transformative journey to deepen the connection between Acer's conscious technology and the realities of people's lives and needs across four strategic areas.

Together, the combined team conducted extensive research to better understand consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainable products, and identified everyday areas where Acer’s conscious technology might be able to have the most significant impact: living, working, moving, and learning.

• Living: Envisions homes as hubs of energy efficiency and climate resilience, leveraging technology to optimize energy use, enhance air quality, and enable proactive climate management. These concepts include technologies like smart energy systems, adaptive air solutions, and integrated home management platforms explore how technology can support sustainable daily living.
  
  
• Working: Reimagines the workplace with flexible, sustainable technology solutions that prioritize resource optimization and circular practices. Concepts such as Acer Loop could provide a subscription-based model that ensures access to the latest technology, supports remote work, and reduces electronic waste through effective recycling and rehoming practices.
  
  
• Moving: Focuses on the transformation of urban mobility by integrating technology into systems that promote sustainable transportation. Concepts could include e-mobility hubs that highlight how urban spaces could offer seamless access to shared, low-emission travel options, reducing reliance on traditional carbon-heavy methods.
  
  
• Learning: Explores pathways to sustainable education by imagining environments where technology supports circularity and accessibility. This includes ideas like refurbished devices for students, repair and reuse programs, and educational spaces designed with climate-positive principles, nurturing eco-conscious habits in future generations.

Together with Red Peak and Sid Lee, the team launched the culmination of the work at COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, positioning Acer as a pioneer in climate positive technology. The exhibit included immersive experiences and interactive displays demonstrating how Acer's sustainable solutions seamlessly integrate into everyday life. Visitors could engage with scenarios depicting sustainable living, working, moving, and learning, emphasizing the practical benefits of Acer’s innovations.

Acer's journey through the Climate Lab project underscores a commitment to sustainability that goes beyond mere compliance. With this new cross-business team tackling the real-world barriers faced by consumers, Acer is paving the way for a more inclusive, sustainable future. This initiative not only aligns with global climate goals, but also sets a precedent for the tech industry, demonstrating that with the right approach, sustainability and innovation can go hand in hand.

In a survey, 65% of respondents said they want to buy brands that advocate sustainability, yet only about 26% actually do. 

Nearly one in two consumers say they either don’t know what information to trust, or that nothing can influence how much they trust a business’s commitment to sustainability.

1 cohesive strategy

for climate era products across 6 different fields

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With the introduction of generative AI, Ethiqly and IDEO saw a unique opportunity to help teachers, by cutting down the time it takes to provide each student with feedback on their writing assignments. But to get there, they had to learn from the experts themselves. To kick off the project, the team headed into the classroom to co-design with students and teachers.

One of the first problems they discovered? Traditional methods of grading essays are laborious and inefficient for high school teachers, who are already notoriously busy and overworked. What teachers really wanted was to spend time giving each student the personalized feedback that helps them grow. Meanwhile, students really struggled to get started on their writing assignments, overwhelmed by looking at a blank page.

Together, the team started to think about how it could harness AI to make personalized instruction more accessible for all students, helping teachers provide better feedback at scale, and giving students the support they need to not only get started on their writing assignments, but improve their work. 

With insights directly from students and teachers, the IDEO team built working prototypes, allowing them to beta test the product in schools, and demonstrate value to investors. They also developed a brand identity and style guide for launch, which came to life in a pitch deck, landing page, and other brand expressions.

The resulting product is a sophisticated blend of AI technology and user-friendly interfaces that empower teachers and inspire students. The goal isn’t just to get to a finished essay, but to assist students in developing critical thinking skills. Ethiqly's tools help students organize their thoughts and get writing by providing contextual prompts and suggestions—without doing the work for them. And the AI assistant supports teachers by suggesting comments based on evaluation criteria they have set, and teachers choose which feedback is relevant for their individual students. Students never see it without teacher approval.

As one teacher told the team, “With leveraging AI more in education, there’s this fear that it’s deprofessionalizing the field or it’s a direct replacement of a teacher in a classroom. I think it gives us meaningful data, so that we can actually teach the way that we want to in order to support our students.” Now, Ethiqly is in use in classrooms in 25 countries, positively impacting students across the globe.

Teachers know 1:1 interaction is key to student success, but an EdWeek survey found only 46% of teachers’ time is spent teaching, while 25 hours/week goes to other tasks like grading and making lesson plans.

25 countries…and growing

Ethiqly’s reach in classrooms around the world

Designing a piece of a city, like a park, doesn’t start with a blank slate. There are always traces of the past and the present, and the lived history of its residents.

To create a full picture of that story, the IDEO team built workshops for the community centered around questions about the unique experiences of living in Frisco. They invited them to reflect on the communities they grew up in, the city of today, and the public spaces that have played formative roles for them. 

From their answers, a common value emerged: heritage. Frisco is a rapidly growing city, with residents whose families have lived there for centuries living side-by-side with more recent neighbors from diverse cultures and ethnic groups. Participants shared a vision of Grand Park as a unifying, shared space, a backdrop where many families can form foundational memories in Frisco.

Next, IDEO brought in multisensory design prompts to help participants further conceptualize the park. How did they want it to feel, sound, and smell? In the built-up, suburban city of Frisco, residents imagined a space that was less planned, enabling guided wandering and exploration. They also hoped that the park would inspire loved ones and descendants to feel a sense of curiosity and wonder.

At the end of workshops and sessions with community groups, the IDEO team took Polaroids of participants, asking, “What’s one word you want to describe Grand Park in the future?” Those words informed the collective vision that IDEO delivered to the city of Frisco, which included spatial concepts, user journeys, and branding for the park, all designed to showcase its unique landscapes. In January 2024, Frisco City Council approved the vision statement, and officials expect to break ground in the second half of 2025.

The population of Frisco is growing rapidly; its population is up 516% since the year 2000.

At more than 1,000 acres, Grand Park in Frisco is even larger than Central Park in New York City.

Less than 1% of Blackland Prairie soil remains in the region, and some of it is in Grand Park.

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Frisco residents were engaged in the process, from City Council members to high school students

200+

respondents shared anonymous feedback on what they imagined the park should be

Some of these you may know, but others may surprise you. These six hard and soft skills are not just things to look for in a data science hire, but are also things to cultivate in yourself to prepare for a successful and fulfilling career in data science. We made this list to help identify ideal students for our data science bootcamp, people who will make great students and great hires.

1. Statistical thinking

Data scientists are professionals who turn data into information, so statistical know-how is at the forefront of our toolkit. Knowing your algorithms and how and when to apply them is arguably the central task to a data scientist's work. However, to do this well can be an art and a science.

A good data scientist can model any data he is given and implement a toolbox full of algorithms to make statistically-informed predictions and recommendations. A great data scientist can smell something 'fishy' in the results she gets, senses that he needs to ask the client or stakeholder a few more questions before retreating to the code cave, and can make the difference between a game-changing insight and an expensive blind hunch.

Cultivating statistical thinking: Quantitative thinking sinks in the fastest when it is relevant to you. At Datascope, we keep our statistical thinking sharp by calling each other out on our bold claims, sometimes making friendly bets, and figuring out how to resolve it with statistics. For example, here’s one you can try on your friends: how many wikipedia articles contain the word “the”? All of them? Nearly all of them? We put the over-under at 90%, wrote a script to calculate the wikipedia document frequency of the word “the”, and shocked ourselves to find out the word “the” only appears in 85% of wikipedia articles.

2. Technical acumen

Data scientists write code and work with teams to produce tools, pipelines, packages, modules, features, dashboards, websites, and more. We write code on the back end and the front end. We do structured and unstructured. We sift through unfamiliar formats and legacy code, and "roll our own" tools when we can't find the solution we need.

A great data scientist has a hacker's spirit. Technical flexibility is as important as experience, because in this field the gold standards change with an alarming rate. Data scientists work together, love open source, and share our knowledge and experience to make sure that we can move at the speed of demand. If your data scientist is a quick study, you've made a sound investment beyond the current trend cycle.

Cultivating technical acumen: Write code, every day if possible. Learn about the tools you want to use, but don’t just read about them, try them. Follow a tutorial. Change it and see what happens. Break it. Check out someone’s projects that are written in a language you don’t know. If you read about a new tool or service that interests you, start by just making a “hello, world”. Work in small bites.

3. Multi-modal communication skills

When the analysis is finished running, most of the time the results aren't pretty. That's not to say they are unhelpful, but they are often trapped in opaque readouts, or in plots that are sensical to the expert's eye but hieroglyphics to the rest of the team and stakeholders. Algorithmic output has to be interpreted and communicated to make the leap out of the data science team and into the hands of the rest of the company to be put to service in alignment with their usefulness.

A great data scientist can contextualize and translate a problem and its solution to interested parties of wildly varying backgrounds using common ground, metaphor, skillful listening, and storytelling. This includes the written communication that goes into a statement of work or a report, visual communication for clear and intuitive plots and visualization, and spoken communication for presentations, project specifications, check-in meetings, and iterative design. If your data scientist can stop a meeting when it's clear that not everyone is on the same page, draw a sketch on the whiteboard and elicit consensus from a diverse team, you have a deeply valuable person on your team.

Cultivating multi-modal communication: Practice writing and talking about your technical projects to “normal” people. Edit yourself down to the important parts. Learning to edit yourself is key. Practice visual communication with “crayon wireframes”—we use these all the time, and they help us to think visually and iterate quickly. Sketches are also a great way to gut check if everyone is on the same page. If the words you’re saying seem to match each other, but the pictures don’t jive, you may have nipped some future problems in the bud.

4. Curiosity

So your data scientist is a technical and statistical whiz who can explain a Markov chain to a supermarket checker. What else separates the elite? The first of our trio of invaluable soft skills is curiosity. Many who are drawn to data science find most alluring the opportunity to work on a constant stream of new and challenging puzzles. They are people who have been asking "why" and "how" since their mouths could form the words.

A good data scientist will take a request, implement it, and deliver the prediction or analysis with confidence. A great data scientist will come back asking for access to more data, or to interview users, or to try something new in the next iteration, because something he did triggered that curious itch. Curious data scientists might have a disdain for machine learning competitions because they can't access all of the levers and choice points to ask questions and dig deeper. Masters of curiosity are quick to question their own assumptions.

Cultivating curiosity: Are there stupid questions? Actually, probably… yes. But who cares? In our experience they are largely indistinguishable from really great questions that no one has bothered to ask yet. So we don’t discriminate, and we ask many many questions that may or may not be stupid. Ask enough stupid questions and eventually you’ll land on something brilliant. Seek out people different than you to talk through ideas. Let your mind wander. Raise your hand and ask questions. And never assume that the experts see everything that you do -- don’t ignore that inner voice when it’s telling you something isn’t adding up. You might ask a stupid question (and learn), or you might ask a brilliant one (and discover).

5. Creativity

Creativity goes far beyond the obvious applications in communication and project design. Of course, a data scientist who can create an attractive and easy-to-grasp report or visual out of results that would take a couple of master's degrees to fully understand is a skill with enormous returns. Creativity provides the fuel for skillful communication, and that is not a hard sell.

Beyond aesthetics and communication, however, the best data scientists are creative problem solvers and have a peculiar relationship with the word "no." Your data scientist really wants to include those user-level data sets in the algorithm, but they are locked down in another silo within the company? She figures out a way to model their effects from the population statistics, or she generates a simulated report using dummy data to convince the c-suite that building a bridge between departments is well worth the risk or effort. The client wants to know how much foot traffic their potential new outlets will see, next Friday, and those data don't exist or aren't available? He uses publicly available transit data to build informed estimates and proposes a small and inexpensive sample-gathering project to build a turnstile-count-to-total-pedestrians conversion heuristic.

Great data scientists get annoyed by “no,” so annoyed that they find a way to get around it, over it, or through it, or they back up and take another path altogether. Design constraints are infuriating and intoxicating. A data scientist who says "no," followed quickly by "wait, hold on… let me think," just might be a great creative thinker.

Cultivating creativity: When you have an idea, do it, and let go of judgment. Foster an environment that invites questioning, thinking outside the box, and a “yes, but” conversational atmosphere. Creativity is ingrained in culture: give people around you the safety to “fail,” without judgement or criticism, and they’ll likely grant you the same. When you’re surrounded by people thinking and working creatively, you’ll find your own creativity flourishing, too.

6. Grit

In all of the characteristics and skills above, we've talked about technologies that appear, demand attention, and fade faster than songs on the top forty, messy data that should but don't quite fit into the model the client had in mind, dead ends, wrong turns, roadblocks, and red tape, teams full of mixed agendas and personalities; budgets, deadlines, clients, teams, and contractors; and the unicorn-magician-programmer-statistician who is supposed to bring it all together. Those who survive have a healthy inner store of grit.

All of these challenges and roadblocks could drive a reasonable person to an unplanned leave of absence. Grit is that inner drive that pulls us over obstacles, recasts setbacks as design constraints, propels us through fear of failure, keeps us walking through actual failure, helps us to resist the impulse to take things personally, and brushes that dirt off our shoulders. When grit is working, we’re less competitive so we can encourage and learn from each other. We get the taste for tackling the new and the unknown.

Cultivating grit: Let go of perfectionism. We encourage ourselves to think of quick and dirty ways we can resolve problems or test solutions. We share our early efforts and listen to the feedback we get. Keep in mind that every expert has to start as a beginner, and a beginner trying to masquerade as an expert fools no one but himself. Don’t be afraid to let your warts show—what seems like a weakness, handled properly, is a powerful tool for leadership and growth.

What does it take to be a great data scientist? We thought long and hard about this while we were designing a data science bootcamp for Metis.

Read the article online at Harvard Business Review.

Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process.

~Tim Brown

Want to dive deeper? Learn more about design thinking with IDEO U.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, IDEO CEO Tim Brown shows how thinking like a designer can transform the way we develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.

“While I had done a good deal of research and was familiar with evidence-based design in an academic setting, I had little knowledge about design-related career paths,” she explains, a scenario she sees as typical for a lot of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) students. “I think there are only certain paths presented to you as viable,” she says, “which is unfortunate because I think a lot of the systems and things that need redesigning disproportionally affect people of color.” And yet less than three years later, the public health and sociology major would find herself working on an IDEO design-research team.

She got there viaColor by Design (CxD), RepresentEd’s newest fellowship designed for BIPOC in partnership with IDEO. The first cohort of design-research fellows will finish the program in June, and the experience has been groundbreaking: for IDEO and, we think, for the fellows, fewer than five of whom came to the fellowship with any previous design experience. That’s, well, by design.

“The program is about increasing access to design—not just to IDEO but the design industry as a whole,” says RepresentED CEO and founder Rashida Hanif. “CxD has served as a proof of concept that someone can go from zero design knowledge to designer and bring value from day one.”

After completing a three-month part-time professional training course that ran from September through November 2021, the 14 fellows have been integrated as full members of the IDEO community during their six-month fellowship. They’ve been working alongside IDEO employees on key client projects, among them engagements with a major tech company, projects around access to abortion, and the reimagining of the student experience at colleges like NYU.

They’re a month away from wrapping up, and IDEO had planned to keep the ball rolling by launching the application process for the next round of fellows this month. But we’ve decided to take a beat and will be postponing the next cohort until 2023. It’s not hesitation, it’s preparation. Together with RepresentED, we have a shared eagerness to keep growing and expanding, but that’s paired with a shared commitment to scale the program in a thoughtful way.

So many rich learnings have emerged since September. Rather than try to synthesize them and make adjustments in real time, we want to spend more time with our questions and give ourselves space to put our insights to work.

One of the biggest ones is that the fellows only participated in design research. We want to expand and scale CxD to other disciplines—perhaps communications design and experience design—and other divisions of IDEO have made it clear that they’d love to welcome fellows of their own. The opportunity is there, but it’ll take some additional work to put the pieces in place.

We’d also like to finesse the bootcamp aspect, the three months of training that precede the paid, full-time fellowship. As it stands, the bootcamp is largely focused on design thinking as a whole, with modules about design research, methodology, etc. We realized some of our fellows need deeper design research support, and we’d like to get ahead of that earlier in the bootcamp.

Getting the foundation right is important, and we are glad to be able to provide it. One fellow in this cohort was a freelance graphic designer who worked as a bartender. He told me CxD has changed the trajectory of his career and his life—and that’s a real gain for the industry. The fellows may not have deep design backgrounds, but they bring rich and varied experience to the table. Another worked as a doula and felt ready for a career change. Yet another worked on the White House’s National Economic Council. Others did content marketing for international fragrance companies, spearheaded community initiatives to inspire change, and co-founded creative agencies.

The reality is that if not for a program like this, IDEO would have probably overlooked their applications. There are so many barriers to entry within the design industry, and Sasha puts it so well: “It’s not that the fellows don't have experience that would make us successful designers, but that what is seen as relevant experience is often so narrow.” RepresentED has an uncommon ability to take a wide view, which has in turn allowed us to welcome folks whose perspective is missing.

The design industry has long been a homogeneous one (IDEO is no exception, with a U.S. community that is still only 5 percent Black, less than 1 percent Indigenous, and less than 7 percent Hispanic/Latinx.) We needed to expand access, and RepresentED excels in recruiting non-traditional candidates and among communities of color.

“Our sweet spot is people who studied the social sciences and humanities, the ones always told, ‘What are you going to do with that major?’ The ones who are told they have to get a graduate degree, or go into academia,” says Rashida. “They often aren’t aware of how vast their options are and how to present their skills to the job market as viable candidates. English students are incredible writers. Anthropologists understand people and culture. Transfer students bring an amazing life context to the table. We teach them how to use human-centered design to their advantage.”

She thinks of these candidates in a striking and insightful way: “I often feel like we live in a society where we like to throw away the beautiful things. I see them as this collage of beauty. There’s more of that than there is of the status quo.”

And CxD is proving to be a viable way to shift that status quo. It has also shifted things in IDEO’s internal structure. The program touches so many different parts of IDEO—the marketing team; team building, which oversees project teaming and staffing; IDEO’s Research and Insights cohort; and IDEO U, IDEO’s online learning platform. In the process of building up the program we’re learning how to create more equitable structures and thinking about how we onboard employees differently, too.

The fellows very intentionally have a strong network of support. In addition to their interactions with the CxD leadership team, each is assigned a manager and a craft mentor as well as a steward, an IDEO designer who holds a non-evaluative role and creates a safe space for the fellow to take any challenges to. As Sasha puts it, “It helped with building creative confidence. The attitude is, ‘You’re supposed to be here, but if you have a question you know where to go.’”

As for Sasha, she spent 14 weeks on the IDEO design research team that partnered with a major baby retailer to reimagine the registry experience. “The video of a Zoom interview I led with a parent—the first interview I had led—was used continually throughout the project,” she recalls. “That always felt like a rewarding moment: being reminded that those were insights I helped to uncover and the affirmation it provided that I had done a good job.” She moves to a new project this week.

“I’ve developed confidence in myself as a designer. I’ve been equipped with this toolbelt of skills that will be useful no matter where I end up,” Orewa says of her experience. “Last week I had a call with someone who saw I was a part of CxD but had a background in public health and reached out on LinkedIn to ask questions. That makes me excited, that there are people like me who are learning that the opportunities are out there. It’s the ripple effect.”

The next CxD cohort will launch by the end of 2023. We will share updates as we get closer to the recruitment season. If you have any questions, please contact info@representedleadership.org.

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By the time Sasha Orewa graduated college in 2019, she had been exposed to plenty of things. Design research wasn’t one of them. Ditto UX, interaction design, or experience design.

What should a passenger’s experience feel like? How much space should be allocated to each passenger? What were the tradeoffs? The folks in marketing had one idea, while the folks in engineering had another. Spreadsheets were involved, but we weren’t making much progress.

Our project team didn’t have all of the answers either, but we thought of one way that we could help. We took over a section of our San Francisco studio and spent a week building a full-scale shell of a plane out of wood, foam core, and cardboard. Our intention was to create a dynamic space for physical and digital experimentation. We then invited our clients to host their next meeting inside the “plane.”

Once inside, the trade-offs were clearer. The team could picture what different seat configurations might feel like; they could move things around as they visualized various options. Prototyping revealed a level of granularity and specificity the team simply couldn’t access over Zoom or through conversation. What started out as a series of abstract questions suddenly became tangible.

When you work in the mobility space, the projects you work on are big—literally. It’s not just the size of a car, but the size of a train, an airport, even a city. While creating low-fidelity prototypes of products and systems of this magnitude might seem impossible, prototypes are a tried-and-true tool for learning about your customers and refining your product design. They are also equally valuable for learning, aligning, and collaborating as an organization. When it comes to larger-than-life challenges in the mobility space, here are three ways prototyping can help.

Prototyping breaks down barriers

Many established mobility companies have spent decades developing processes that have allowed them to build safe, high-quality products at scale. But those methods don’t always work when adapting to a rapidly shifting market. When it came time for our team to work with a leading automaker to rethink the future of the commercial van, we all knew it would demand new ways of working. Together with their team, we built a new collaboration space in the heart of their engineering building to shake people out of their usual workflow. The walls were covered with pictures of vans in action, quotes from potential users, and in-progress work. In the middle of the space sat “the rig,” a purposefully unfinished prototype van made from modular aluminum and hand-cut cardboard parts. This was far from the polished models of car shows.

Instead of putting this space under lock and key, the team put up posters throughout the engineering building inviting folks to join them. When that effort didn’t get much traction, a member of the team proposed an idea. He simply wedged the door open and posted a sign that declared: “open door policy.” The message was simple. We wanted people to build with us. And the people, and the ideas, followed.

Unfamiliar faces started to pop into the space and populate the prototype van with new mirrors, door handles, and smart sensors while other groups debated strategy across the room. What started with a single project space grew, eventually morphing into a dedicated innovation lab that is collaborating across the organization to tackle the future of mobility.

Prototyping challenges assumptions

Several years ago, IDEO worked with Toronto Pearson International Airport to revitalize the airport’s operations from the passenger experience to the baggage handling process. Baggage handling operations are particularly important, as they’re a key metric for measuring airport efficiency, service quality, and performance. They’re also very complicated. Baggage handling involves multiple organizations, thousands of contract workers, and even more suitcases, moving between planes and carousels all around the world.

As contractors, baggage handlers aren’t often brought into the process to help redesign operations. But their perspective is invaluable. So together, IDEO and Toronto Pearson decided to hold a “baggage olympics” for operations employees, passengers, and baggage handlers to test, build, and improve prototypes of early baggage handling ideas. They landed on a simple but effective solution: color-coded signs, clear iconography, and guidance on where baggage should be placed. Not only did the exercise streamline airport operations, but it also changed everyone’s idea of how different groups of people could work together and how operations should work in the future.

As Darin Juby, Director of Baggage Services, told IDEO: “The work to reimagine baggage handling taught us how to prototype and collaborate—it reprogrammed us with a new mindset and way of working. When the pandemic hit two years later, because we had laid the groundwork, we were able to pivot quickly and cost-effectively in the midst of an unforeseen crisis."

Prototyping reveals unexpected needs

Bringing in potential customers to test out prototypes is a pretty common practice among design teams. But often in the automotive space, users do not have a chance to interact with prototypes until much later in the design process. Even then, they are often restricted to testing out highly refined models in tightly controlled sessions.

It’s far more rare to bring parents and children into your design space and invite a range of stakeholders with different perspectives, hypotheses, and critical questions to watch them play in an early prototype firsthand. But that’s exactly what we did with our partners at one of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers.

While we had been talking about bringing people into the lab, it wasn’t until families were engaging with our designs that we realized just how eye-opening it was. In one session, we watched alongside marketing, design, strategy, and product development leaders as a family played a game in the front of the car. Halfway through the game, a child pulled her mom to the back for some one-on-one time, pretending they were looking out at stars.That seemingly simple interaction inspired our team.

The team renamed the prototype Stargazer, and it helped changed the conversation about these vehicles. Decision-makers for this vehicle portfolio were bringing an empathy for the lives of these users into meetings, and talking more about how to foster quality family time than vehicle features and functions. Seeing our prototype in action extended customer empathy and understanding beyond marketing execs, ensuring that teams across the multinational organization were considering user needs from the outset.

Prototyping unlocks possibilities

Throughout my work on mobility projects at IDEO, prototyping has been the best tool for shaking up entrenched thoughts about how teams should work together. It not only provides teams with an opportunity to test assumptions and generate radically new ideas, but it also helps spark alignment and build confidence across disparate stakeholders. In some projects, embracing prototyping has even led to the development of new ways of working and labs that live on far beyond the launch of a product.

For those tackling challenges within the mobility space, and are eager to experiment with prototyping, start small. Take over a conference room, invite different voices in, construct a cardboard model, and watch your organization transform.

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Late last year, we sat on a Zoom call with executives at an organization redefining commercial aviation. They had some critical decisions to make about their first commercial aircraft.

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.