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

We’ve brought back thousands of photos and videos and hundreds of Post-its. As we stare at the sea of notes, I feel stuck and a little panicked. Are there answers in this data soup?

This messy moment in the design process is called “synthesis,” when designers start to distill all our research into tangible possibilities. Synthesis can feel ambiguous, stiff, and chaotic all at once; the secret is to keep moving forward any way you can.

My way of conquering the chaos is a method I call “sketch synthesis.”

Here's my sketching process for this project, which you can adapt for your own team.

Step 1: Pare it down

First, I put the notes from each research interview, observation, or experience onto separate poster boards. Then, I took a step back and distilled the information from each of these boards into just four or five sketched post-its.

These sketches are from our interview with an extreme commuter. The express his ideal travel experience: an environment that brings the outside in and serves as an extended coworking space.

Sketches can feature characters, icons, or graphs—anything that provides a helpful cue for you. You don’t need to be a great artist to sketch. The idea is to summarize what you’ve learned visually, even if those visuals are stick figures!

Step 2: Cluster it up

Next, I took another step back and turned my individual sketches from each poster board into a series of sketch clusters, grouped around emerging themes.

This cluster is focused on the theme of "place." It's a mind map of sorts, featuring images that represent a range of experiences, interviews, and secondary research we uncovered related to the theme.

Don’t be afraid to discard the ideas that aren’t standing out. The aim of this step is to sort and refine what you’ve learned, using sketching as a filter.

Step 3: Talk it through

I invited the rest of the team to review the sketch clusters with me. Working together, we turned the clusters into concrete design questions that could help us get tangible, fast.

The goal is to share your sense-making with others to figure out if you’ve captured the essence of the research, or need to go back to your original poster boards and find the missing thread that ties it all together.

These sketch clusters helped the team gather our thoughts and articulate the questions we hoped to explore with our client in the next phase of the project. They captured our research insights and pointed the way to new transportation innovations.

For me, sketch synthesis is a way of bringing clarity and momentum to tough moments in the design process. Plus, drawings are a natural starting point for design, which the team can build on and our clients can easily understand.

Sketching also creates a common language for designers to communicate. At IDEO, people come from all around the world. On this team, I worked alongside designers from Germany, South Korea, France, and the U.S.

While I’m drawn to sketching, you might have a natural inclination to express yourself through role play, writing, film, or data. There are no limits to the creative problem-solving skills that might help your team synthesize.

The secret is to keep moving toward the answers, even when things feel messy—and to have a little fun along the way.

This post was adapted from a talk I presented for Mixed Methods, hosted at Airbnb in San Francisco.

It’s Monday morning and our design team is back after three weeks on the road researching the future of shared vehicles. We've soaked up a ton of inspiration by talking to transport experts and observing commuters.

As someone whose profession is to design new experiences with technology, I find this thought-provoking. It’s a current and widely-experienced example of something that has always been true of new technology: It has as much potential to have negative impact as positive. Which way it goes has always been more about the path that we put the technology on than the technology itself.

When I was asked to speak at TEDxGlasgow this year, I took the opportunity to explain how design can help. There are straightforward things that we can do to make sure that our technology brings out the best in us. Watch my talk below.

David Webster speaks at TEDxGlasgow.

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We all have love-hate relationships with those buzzing bricks of aluminum in our pockets. On the one hand, they have the incredible power to connect us to people, information, and knowledge. But on the other, that constant access can become constant distraction, detaching us from real moments that matter.

As an org designer, my job is to use the tools of design to enhance organizational culture, boost collaboration and teamwork, improve structures and processes, enable learning and development, and create a sense of purpose and belonging. Then, I sleep.

6:30am: Morning run

If I’m going to help inspire other people, I need to start by getting inspired myself. For me, that comes from running in Prospect Park twice a week. Being near trees elevates my mood and restores me. It’s the only time during my day in urban New York City when I can actually smell plants and dirt.

8:30am: The Book-lyn Bridge

I take the subway from Brooklyn, where I live, to our New York City office. I don’t mind the commute because I can read two to three books a week. It’s often a chance for me to dive into new perspectives on culture, leadership, and collaboration. Reading Jake Knapp’s book Sprint sparked so many ideas, I asked him to speak with our clients—and he did!

10:00am: Get the gears turning

Once I’ve settled into our studio in the West Village, I lead a quick morning standup in our project space with my teammates before our clients join us. We often work side-by-side with our org change clients, either by hosting them in our project space or by going to their offices (or both!).

11:00am: Disrupt your wallet

In this project, we’re helping our client organization launch an internal user-centricity team. This team will help train employees to better understand the way their customers feel about and use their products. Today we are kicking off a workshop with a new group of employees. To teach them about human-centered design, we’re doing an exercise where they split up into pairs and redesign each other's wallets. If you want to improve an object that people carry with them all day every day, you’ve got to listen closely to their needs and idiosyncrasies.

12:30pm: Lunchtime making

Every Thursday at lunch, the entire studio comes together for a craft project to engage our senses and inspire us. We call it “Maketime.” Today, our clients are joining us to do blind contour drawings. My colleague Loren is leading the session. We sit at tables facing another person. Loren asks each of us to draw the person across from us without looking down at our paper and without lifting up our pen. Then we share our drawings, laughing at the results. This technique helps build hand/eye communication.

2:30pm: Remote synthesis

So much of org design is about communication. But many companies have teams that work remotely. This client's core team is based in the tri-state area, but the extended team is farther away. So, this afternoon, my teammate Nili and I are leading a session with our extended client team to synthesize the research we’ve done together. We’ve designed a series of concepts and tested them out with employees in the organization. Based on that feedback, we’re positioning the concepts on a 2x2, where one axis shows how desirable the concept was for employees, and one axis shows how feasible the concept was to implement.

3:30pm: Meet them where they are

We head out to the client’s office to meet with the core team. In order to make sure we’re practicing the collaboration that we preach, we make sure to spend part of the week in the client’s offices, instead of always asking them to come to us. We request a reserved workspace so we can all sit together. We’re discussing how we’ll set up this new user-centricity team: who will be on the team, what roles and responsibilities will they have, how will they work together, and whom will they need to hire.

4:30pm: Getting physical

If you haven’t noticed yet, much of my day revolves around communication and inspiration. I love that organizational design involves getting deeply curious about how a company works (informally and formally) both by listening to teams as they collaborate and by watching for the intangible behaviors that come out in meetings and hallway conversations.

One of my favorite activities to do with clients is Creative Tensions. We put a slide on the screen that prompts them to make a choice. For example:

“Purposefulness: When it comes to meaningful change that leadership and employees want to make in the world…”

There’s lack of clarity or disagreement <------------> There is alignment

We ask people to move with their bodies to one side of the room or the other to articulate their answer. All of a sudden you can physically see all the spectrum of ideas and philosophies in the room. Then, we ask a few people to share why they are standing where they are standing.

5:30pm: Write it out

After a full day of collaborating, observing, and facilitating, I’m back at the office to write an article with my colleague Hailey. Since organizational design is a new field and can feel like a black box (even to other designers at IDEO), we are always thinking about ways to share how we work. We're working on an article about using metaphors to uncover organizational dynamics (a colleague snapped this photo for the cover of the emo rock band we’ll start one day).

6:30pm: Signing off

One more check in with the clients over Slack, and I’m headed home. Eat, Sleep, run, org design. Repeat.

When people ask me about what I do for a living, I say that I help people and teams do their best work. But that’s a little vague, so here’s the nitty gritty...

I didn’t start out working at an enlightened company—I started out working in the art world, in upscale art galleries, private art clubs, and various museums. My surroundings were beautiful, but I was miserable. The politics and sexism were intense. I never felt like I could speak my mind.

Luckily, I eventually landed at IDEO. For the past 10-plus years, I’ve helped create events, experiences, and rituals that keep our studio culture healthy and our designers happy. Now, I’m Co-Director of the experience team in Chicago. Our mission: Design for belonging.

My team and I use tools like our studio space, food, events, experiences, and rituals to help make everyone who comes through our doors feel welcome, supported, and empowered to do the best work of their lives. We do things like throw spur-of-the moment pop-ups that break up the afternoon, and plan group lunches so people will eat together—like a family—instead of having sad lunches alone at their desks. We even plan crafting sessions and inspirational field trips.

Not convinced that thoughtful extras like spa water and storytelling events can actually help fuel the ideas that drive revenue? Consider the case of Uber.

Remember Travis Kalanick, the former CEO?

The deposed chief executive set the tone for the company’s culture. Under him, Uber flouted local laws and criticized competitors in its quest for success. Thanks to the company’s pervasive “bro” culture, sexual harassment and discrimination were rampant. Employees were pitted against one another, and management turned a blind eye to infractions from top performers.

Contrast Kalanick’s approach to leadership and culture to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who took the company’s reins in 2014. He inherited a company lacking innovation—and relevance. Microsoft’s stock performance was flat. His goal was to shift the culture from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all.” “Microsoft’s culture had been rigid,” he wrote in his book, Hit Refresh. “Each employee had to prove that he or she was the smartest person in the room. The culture change I wanted was centered on exercising a growth mindset every day.”

Three years later, not only are employees happier, more innovative, and empathic, but the company has generated more than $250 billion in market value—more than Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, and WeWork—combined.

As an experience director, I’m laser-focused on making sure employees feel safe to fail and explore, that they feel connected to others, and that they have what they need to solve problems and come up with innovative solutions. My job is to set the conditions for great work.

So how do you actually do that? Here are five ways to jump-start your company culture.

1. Define and build on your company’s cultural values

Values are the compass that an organization uses to select staff members, reward current employees, and make business decisions. If you’re just starting a company and need to define your values from scratch, Greenhouse, the company that designed the recruiting software IDEO uses, has a helpful culture mapping exercise to help get you started. Need further inspiration? Check out Google’s values: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” “Fast is better than slow.” “Great just isn’t good enough.”

2. Leverage naturally-occurring behaviors

Put on your anthropologist hat. What interesting or unusual things are people already doing around the office that you could build on? (It’s faster and easier to build on existing behaviors than to encourage new ones.) At one company, I noticed people were wary of talking to strangers. Unfortunately, since it was a co-working space, almost everyone was a stranger. I also observed that people would use the kitchen as a shortcut to the bathroom, and that it was a neutral zone—no one group owned it. High foot traffic + no ownership = opportunity to spark casual conversation and community! You can do what I did—look for unused spaces in your own workplace and use questions on Post-it Notes to spur random conversations—or move shared resources like printers or snacks to the middle of the space instead of tucking them away in a corner.

3. Identify and empower cultural mavens

As an experience director, I’m always look for new collaborators. Though some cultural experiences can come from the top down, others work better when they come from the bottom up. They feel more authentic. I’m always trying to identify new cultural mavens within our organization, and I empower them by giving them some time, money, or resources to bring their ideas to life. For example, at IDEO, we noticed a few of our designers were natural teachers and always went out of their way to show others how to learn a new skill. This aligned perfectly with two of our company values—“Learn from Failure” and “Make Others Successful”—so we gave those designers a budget and set them free to build on their ideas. Now we regularly have Nerd Nights where people learn to code, and Shop Class where we make things like concrete planters and leather wallets.

4. Prioritize face-to-face interactions

Digital tools are efficient, sure, but the only way to build authentic, human relationships is face-to-face. Period. When you find yourself using a digital tool to communicate with an individual or a group, think: Could this be done in person instead? Am I hiding behind this tool, this emoji? Encourage others to get out from behind their screens, too. One easy way? Get people to eat their meals together.

5. Design meaningful rituals

We participate in rituals in institutions, politics, and religion all the time. But they’re not commonly talked about in the world of business, even though they’re a simple way to make cultural values tangible. At IDEO, I was part of a team that started IDEO Stories, a Moth-like live storytelling event designed to help teach our designers how to tell better project stories. After the first event, it became clear it wasn’t just a good way to learn a new skill—it was a way to celebrate an individual’s unique backstory and unite the community.

For the last seven years in Chicago, we’ve also held an Annual Studio Awards party, an Oscars-inspired evening where the community votes on award-worthy project work from the past year. Categories are tweaked each year to incentivize emerging behaviors that are beneficial to our business.

Have ideas for rituals of your own? Share them with us on Twitter, so we can inspire each other.

Often, people want to write culture off as a slew of perks you might find at tech companies. But really, culture is about creating an environment that makes it possible for people to work together to come up with innovative products and ideas—the same products and ideas that drive revenue.

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.