The IDEO team quickly discovered that the challenge of designing a Digital@FEMSA super app for tens of millions of customers was matched only by the operational complexity of bringing together different teams that had already created various apps with separate value propositions. Not to mention the 22,000 stores specifically tailored to local communities.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team built on FEMSA’s already deep understanding of its customers by meeting them in their homes and communities. The team discovered that users didn't care about long-term rewards; instead, they wanted everyday help to thrive long-term. Connecting omnichannel rewards to regular spending would allow them to save time and money—something they said was particularly important. Along with market research, insights like these directly informed the app's design, ensuring that it was compatible with users' everyday habits and preferences.

Meanwhile, the project team also worked to ensure the app fit the priorities of the various teams inside Digital@FEMSA, designing a comprehensive process for testing joint value propositions. Together, the team created a new design system, iconography, and set of unifying principles. IDEO also worked closely with the Digital@FEMSA teams to ensure that the app's design was in line with their strategic goals and technical capabilities, and built the app's initial information architecture. They incorporated secure transactions, effortless coupon redemption, personalized offers, and a cohesive loyalty program.

From there, the IDEO and Digital@FEMSA teams quickly transitioned into the design and development phase, producing prototypes of the new app, dubbed Spin Premia. With the help of user testing, they were able to continuously iterate to improve the app's features and functionalities, creating a user experience that was both seamless and intuitive. In just 10 months, they went from a small digital team with an ambitious idea, to a 150+ people product organization and an MVP launched in one region. And thanks to a tight partnership, the teams were able to seamlessly integrate Spin Premia into Digital@FEMSA's existing systems, resulting in a scalable implementation nationwide just a few months later.

The introduction of Spin Premia was a milestone in FEMSA's digital transformation path. Following a true ship and iterate model, just a few months into the project, the company released a smaller, focused version of the app in just one city in Mexico to quickly learn from customer experience before expanding to new regions. Since then, the Spin Premia app has quickly gained popularity, offering a safe and user-friendly platform that millions of Mexican consumers have embraced. It has also allowed FEMSA to broaden its digital portfolio and extend its customer base throughout Mexico, elevating customer satisfaction and fueling business expansion.

13 million Mexicans visit FEMSA’s OXXO convenience stores every day. But the company had ambitions to leverage digital experiences to increase customer engagement.

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To get there, Digital@FEMSA needed to deliver exceptional digital products with the agility to serve an entire population.

4.7 stars

Spin Premia’s app store rating

22.8 million

active Spin Premia program users

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Midscale hotel brands are the fastest-growing hotel segment in the US, attractive to both travelers and hotel owners. But often, their messaging feels repetitive, and travelers have a tough time differentiating between them. With a warm, thoughtfully designed midscale brand, IHG had an enormous opportunity to distinguish itself in a crowded market. 

IHG’s goal was to deliver a guest experience that felt genuinely unique and resonant—and quickly. With costs on the rise, many owners were motivated to turn toward conversion brands, which allow them to refurbish hotels under a new brand rather than invest in construction, a way to grow their portfolio in a tight financing market. Meanwhile, IHG’s competitors were set to introduce new conversion brands of their own. The company was looking for a partner that could work swiftly and iteratively to deliver a distinct brand.

For the IDEO team, the answer lay in communicating the brand’s value, starting with a custom logo rendered by hand. Inspired by vintage sign painting and modernist typography, the team sketched different versions of the letterforms, reviewing them with IHG until they had a set that brought to life the generosity and sense of invitation associated with the hotel’s spaces. They also worked to ensure the wordmark was visually balanced and would translate well across a variety range of scales. From there, they built an expansive brand world, including bespoke navigation icons, a full interior and exterior signage system, and a video to support the Garner launch.

The result is a hotel brand that stands apart in its category for both travelers and owners: thoughtful and well-designed yet affordable. As competition in the midscale segment continues to increase, Garner has been central to IHG’s growth strategy. Launched in the fall of 2023, Garner opened 100 hotels worldwide in just 16 months, making it the fastest-ever IHG brand to scale globally. The brand’s increasing popularity among owners and developers is driven by the growing demand for conversion properties, which accounted for 52% of IHG’s room openings in 2025. Garner plans to continue its rapid expansion with nearly 80 additional hotels in 12 key markets, including the US, Mexico, Italy, and Japan.

Conversions account for 12% of the global hotel pipeline, enabling hotels to switch brands and refurbish, boosting revenue without expensive construction.
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The US midscale hotel segment, valued at $14B, is expected to reach $18B by 2030.

100 new Garner Hotels

in less than 3 years—the fastest-scaling brand in IHG's history

500 Garner Hotels

planned in the next 10 years; 1,000 over the next 20

Alzheimer’s and dementia are notoriously difficult to treat—and scientists estimate that some 50 percent of people who have dementia are undiagnosed. Recognition of symptoms and early intervention are key. Together and IDEO set out to conduct user research to inspire new products that would help patients with cognitive decline take charge of their brain health.

The first priority was to expand the reach of the Moving Together program, which combines group movement exercises with mindfulness techniques, led by a trained group instructor. The IDEO team conducted remote and in-person interviews in Florida, where one in five residents is age 65 and older, and rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia are among the highest in the country. One of the key insights the team discovered was that many older adults didn’t understand how behaviors like smoking, exercise, and diet can be risk factors for cognitive decline. Their input inspired a new design principle for the program: “No naked feedback.” Any time participants received health coaching advice about modifying their lifestyle, they would also be given resources on why and how to do it, so they would have a pathway to boosting their brain health. 

The IDEO team folded insights like this one into the design for four new product offerings, including personalized brain health education, new online community engagement tools, partnership programs, and health coaching services, as well as a new user interface to illustrate them. Along with Together they also developed an implementation roadmap of next steps to bring the new digital product offerings to market, such as hiring a brain health coach and creating a new course curriculum. Now, Together has enrolled 165 people in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial, which is looking at outcomes such as reduced risk of Alzheimer's and maintenance of cognitive function for the Brain Health Together program. With trial completion in Q3 2024 and product launch in early 2025, growing numbers of people with MCI will have access to this exciting program. Together incorporated almost all of the elements from the IDEO roadmap into the final curriculum, and the team often refers back to insights the team gathered as guiding design principles.

Fighting barriers to diagnosis

With its online program growing, Together wanted to take on an even bigger problem: dementia underdiagnosis. Co-founder Dr. Deborah Barnes had recently developed an algorithm that uses patients’ health records to calculate their risk of undiagnosed dementia, called the electronic health record Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR). Together was looking to find creative ways to equip and empower providers to use risk scores like eRADAR in primary care settings.

One piece of the puzzle? Many primary care doctors are unaware that better management of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia can have a positive impact on other chronic health issues—like diabetes, hypertension, and depression. So by encouraging providers to prioritize dementia care, they can help support the overall health of older adults with cognitive decline. The IDEO team recommended a curriculum for continuing education courses for doctors that make that link clear—another step toward increasing dementia diagnosis and improving overall health.

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Better help, sooner

To understand the patient experience, Together and IDEO decided to work directly with patients and caregivers to uncover what was stopping them from asking for dementia screening. The IDEO team quickly learned many patients were afraid of facing a diagnosis that signified a loss of agency and control, especially when they didn’t believe there were good treatment options. Often, they were unaware that there were things they could do to improve their brain health. They needed to know what steps to take after a diagnosis, and who could provide actionable advice. In response, the IDEO team designed a digital activity toolkit and physical booklet to guide patient families through the early stages of a dementia diagnosis, including recognizing the signs and symptoms, having better conversations with their doctor, and getting connected to support groups and programs like Moving Together.

Solving the problem of dementia underdiagnosis involves complex systems-level thinking and designing for the entire health ecosystem of patients, providers, and insurance payers, and solutions for Alzheimer’s and dementia care are still in their infancy. But already, this work is empowering patients and doctors to prioritize brain health and get screened sooner, and Together, which has since been acquired by Linus Health, is still working to move dementia care forward.

Approximately 12-18% of people aged 60 or older live with mild cognitive impairment, while memory loss, Alzheimer's and dementia affect more than 50 million people around the world.

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An estimated 50% of people living with dementia are undiagnosed.

165 enrolled

in the Boost Your Brain Health Clinical Trial

Many companies view culture-building initiatives as nice-to-haves. At Moderna, Mindsets are a business imperative, crucial to its plans to develop breakthrough products quickly.

For companies working on solutions as vital as a COVID-19 vaccine, delays and mistakes don’t just mean missing a product launch date—they’re life-or-death, and on a large scale. Moderna had to ensure that its employees knew how to make the right decisions, evaluate risk, and move quickly—even if they came from organizations with more bureaucracy and less risk tolerance. In 2021, IDEO sat down with longtime Moderna veterans to hear stories about moments that exemplify the company's culture, like the day a critical piece of equipment arrived but was too big to fit through the door. Taking it apart would have added days to their timeline. So employees took sledgehammers to a wall instead. Stories like this one fed into the crafting of the list of Mindsets, such as “Act with urgency: Action today compounds the lives saved tomorrow” and “We behave like owners: The solutions we’re building go beyond any job description.”

To gather feedback, the team shared the draft Mindsets with a diverse set of employees—new hires, veterans, folks already closely aligned with the culture, folks for whom it wasn’t the most natural fit, and a plethora of employee resource groups. CEO Stéphane Bancel and the leadership team took crafting and iterating on the Mindsets very seriously, wordsmithing and tweaking them with the team until they were ready to share them officially. Now, new hires learn about the company’s Mindsets in Moderna ONE, an onboarding process that IDEO helped revamp, while existing employees attend a workshop to ensure everyone at the company knows not only what to do but also how to do it effectively. In a matter of weeks, IDEO helped Moderna codify its culture for employees and set the company up for continued success. Moderna continues to embed these Mindsets across the entire employee lifecycle to systematically scale its culture.

For employees new and old, the clarity of the Mindsets has made it easier to understand expectations and to understand the company itself. Long-term veterans responded with comments like, "These really help explain why we're working this way,” while one newbie said, "It feels like a homecoming to hear the culture that we’re trying to bring through.” But more than just solving a cultural issue, the new Mindsets have fulfilled a business imperative: Holding on to the secret sauce that made Moderna successful to begin with, setting the stage for its next five years of breakthroughs.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 health crisis a pandemic in March of 2020, Moderna had fewer than 1,000 employees. Four years later, it’s more than five times the size.

Ranked #1

BioSpace Best Place to Work, large company in 2024

Ranked #6

Boston Consulting Group’s 50 Most Innovative Report in 2023

Ranked #4

Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 List in 2023

During the project shareback, one of the designers held up a piece of paper with this quote:

“Interacting with legal was one of the worst experiences of my life.”

Full stop.

Maybe the commenter was talking about me. Maybe she was talking about another lawyer. Maybe she was commenting on the legal process generally. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my career, I thought about the impact I have on the people I interact with in my role as a lawyer, and how that impact might be quite negative.

We never discussed anything like this in law school. Instead, we focused on “making cases,” “winning arguments,” and “clerking for the right judge.” Later, as Biglaw associates, we talked about “billing hours,” “closing deals,” and “working with the right partner.” But I don’t recall ever being asked, “How did your client feel about how you handled that matter?” or, “How did the lawyer on the other side of that call feel about the interaction?” Or, for that matter, “Are you providing a colleague or client with one of the worst experiences of his life?” We talk about these issues all the time at IDEO when it comes to our clients and their customers, but they aren’t things I ever talked about with fellow attorneys.

In that moment, I made a decision: There was no reason I couldn’t do my job — and do it well — and care about the experience of the people I was affecting.

Fast forward to 2014. I took my mother to see a neurologist at Stanford University. He confirmed our family’s worst fears: My mother had Alzheimer’s, and it was advancing. Rapidly. This was devastating, hard to hear news. And yet, in the car on the way home, I felt strangely positive. Why? Because the doctor took the time to translate the complexity of her disease into language we could understand as non-medical professionals. He walked us through very difficult territory with honesty and compassion. He was respectful of her even as she repeatedly asked him the same questions. And he highlighted the factors we could control. We couldn’t change her disease, but we could approach it proactively and honestly, while giving her as much dignity and comfort as possible.

What if the experience of working with a lawyer felt more like this?

Even though law and legal processes are designed by humans for humans, the reality is that most interactions with legal professionals don’t feel very good.Interactions are often harsh, transactional, and bereft of transparency, emotion, or humanity. Touch points are filled with frustration, confusion, and disempowerment. Lawyers may resort to aggressive tactics as a way to navigate conflict or out of fear they will be taken advantage of in a given situation. Worse, many lawyers I talk to seem to accept this status quo. That’s just the way law is practiced. That’s just the way it is.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Instead, we can practice what my colleague, IDEO partner Chris Domina, in 2011 termed “human-centered” lawyering (when he asked me if I knew “any human-centered lawyers outside of IDEO?”). Human-centered lawyers are those who can treat legal problems as human problems, translate legal complexity into relatable frameworks, and navigate tension and conflict with skill, patience, and respect for all stakeholders involved.

In working toward becoming more human-centered, I’ve come to understand the value of making emotional connections with individuals I’m interacting with and not treating legal matters and the people connected to them as purely transactional. Empathy, the key to human-centered design, is the same key that opens the door to human-centered lawyering.

For example, instead of being frustrated that opposing attorneys are “rejecting” my proposals or “not seeing it my way,” I’ve learned to try to put myself in their shoes. If I were representing their client or working for their in-house legal team, what would I be most concerned about? What problems are they trying to head off, and what problems have they had in the past in these types of situations? Are they frustrated because this is just one of too many things they have to deal with today? From this very human place, I can be a collaborative problem solver, rather than someone engaging in an argument to win a point or “push back” because that’s what lawyers are “supposed to do.”

In being human-centered, am I any less firm when it comes to working through difficult legal challenges? No; my colleagues generally refer to me as “strong” and “confident.” Do I “just give” on issues during a challenging negotiation? Not at all. IDEO doesn’t compromise its people or its business, no matter how big the deal or how aggressive the opposition. But neither do we compromise our compassion.

Most legal professionals I know have had interactions with other lawyers who use anger, hostility, power tactics, aggression, and rude or belittling behavior to try to navigate legal situations (and most of us have also been guilty of the same at times). In addition to harming the relationships their clients are trying to build, those behaviors leave their mark on people. They leave people fearful or resentful of lawyers, and of course they tarnish the profession’s reputation. That’s not the kind of impact I want myself or my team to have on the world.

Is the legal team at IDEO perfect? Do we succeed in making every legal interaction with people inside and outside of IDEO positive? Of course not. But as a team, we have a clear purpose: to provide human-centered legal support and solutions to the IDEO community and to the broader legal industry.

Stay tuned—and stay human—lawyers.

This story was originally published on Medium. For more on the subject of human-centered lawyering, read this story by legal designer Sean Hewens and this interview with IDEO's general counsel Rochael Adranly.

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Not long after I began working with IDEO, I had the privilege of taking part in a project to design how its new internal legal group would operate. For those unfamiliar with IDEO’s process, each project begins with a “looking in” phase in which the design team interviews project stakeholders and shares their feedback.

Because usage is tied to a period of time, a digital calendar with interactive feedback seemed like the perfect way to represent a year in the life of the Chicago studio. There would be three elements to it: a milled piece of wood whose undulating shape would represent changes in energy usage over time; an interactive display that would show usage in more detail; and a set of buttons that would let users call up specific data on the display.

The Code

This is a tricky project for someone who doesn’t know anything about coding let alone a programming language. I had to figure out how to manipulate the usage data using tools from my life as an industrial designer. I started with Grasshopper, a visual programming language and a plugin for the 3-D modeling software Rhinoceros that I learned how to use as an undergrad. Instead of writing code, you connect boxes of different abilities to each other. By connecting the boxes with each other, I was able to pull in the data from my Excel spreadsheet and convert it into 3-D shape; then it was ready to work within Rhinoceros. Because Grasshopper is a plugin for Rhinoceros, you can see what you’re doing as you go. After some long nights, I figured out how to display the data in a 3-D shape.

Prototyping

With the code all set, I moved on to creating the touchable surface. I made some quick 3-D prints of the data I created in Rhinoceros, then made a low-fidelity video prototype to display how the installation would look and work. The idea was to let the user feel the changing data via a touchable surface, and give him/her a visual representation of the data on the screen.

Build Phase

Step 1: Milling the wood

The touchable interface was the main piece of my installation, so it was crucial to get it right.

I bought one long piece of walnut and used the table saw to cut it to the length I needed, then glued the resulting pieces together. I created the undulating surface with a CNC table mill, which took roughly 10 hours. It was loud and dusty, but worth it. To get the perfect finish, I had to sand it — a lot. I probably could have stopped earlier, but I wanted to have a perfect piece. Then, I rubbed it with Danish oil to protect the surface and bring out the wood grain.

Step 2: The visual feedback

To create the visual feedback, I used a Raspberry Pi, a capacitive touch board (MPR121), a 7” HDMI screen, wires, and some copper rivets. With no experience with Raspberry Pi or electrical engineering, I had to catch up quickly. To display the data on the screen, I used a handy piece of code I found on the internet called PiPresents. For input, I used capacitive touch buttons, which I linked to specific images that display the data.

Step 3: Panel assembly

This step was one of the harder parts. I had to bring all the different pieces together and create the framed panel. I started with a cheap frame from an art supply store, then created an acrylic, laser-etched back panel, spray painted it black, and sanded it to make it matte. Next, I attached the wooden panel to the screen, and connected the 12 capacitive touch buttons, one for each month, arranged along the long axis of the wooden surface. Once everything was in place, users could feel the wood to get a sense of our changing energy usage, then touch the buttons to see a drilled down explanation of the data by month. About a month and a half after I first came up with the idea, it was finally ready to present to the studio.

A big thank you to the whole studio, especially to Chris Gold for helping me during the milling process, Rob Rehrig for giving me a Raspberry Pi 101, and Sophie Feng for taking awesome final pictures and video. Want to recreate the project? Check out the code on Github.

As an industrial designer, I’m always eager to bring together the digital and the physical. So when I discovered that the Chicago studio was collecting data about their energy usage, I decided to create a project that would make that information feel real, teach me more about other disciplines, and serve as a gift to the studio that had hosted me as an intern for half a year.

"Arrivo!," I shout to the taxi driver as I close the gate of the building with my foot. I speed walk towards his car, parked 50 meters down the road, drag the suitcase on the back seat and ask the driver to take me to the airport. My holiday in Napoli—my hometown—is over. I'm already shivering at the idea of setting foot back in London.

Halfway through the trip, my eyes catch on an unusual detail. A tennis ball cut in half to fit the top of the taxi's gearstick. I can't help but investigate.

"Ascolta (Listen)," he says in the gruff voice of a longtime smoker, "with this heat, my job gets very challenging." Despite air conditioning, he explains, the sun makes the gearstick slippery and hot, which makes for a rather unpleasant driving experience.

To tackle this problem, he decided to carefully slice a tennis ball in half and place over the gearstick's handle. "It's a precise job," he explains. "You need to make sure it won't move once it's placed." The texture of the tennis ball allows for a better grip, and doesn't get hot in the sun—ta-da!

He brakes lightly to come to a stop at the departures terminal. As he rummages for my change, he surprises me with a Steve Jobs-style "And one more thing ..."

"You know, it's not just about the function of the tennis ball, it's also the excitement of getting a new one every year. That bright yellow marks the start of a new season—it's something I look forward to!"

I gently close the cab door, roll my suitcase to the entrance and, out of the corner of my eye, catch him smiling in the dense, departing traffic.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

In one sentence, who are you?

A queer, shapeshifting, creative cat mama with a big heart.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am currently an illustrator and a textile designer. When I was a kid, I used to draw little doodles on dinner napkins and give one to everyone at the table. I loved sharing my art with everyone.

When I was around six, my mom enrolled me in a summer program at The Baum School of Art in Pennsylvania. There, I learned all the technical aspects of drawing and painting. I went to Baum every summer for 10 years. Then I got an academic scholarship to Pratt Institute.

The next thing I knew, I was living in Brooklyn and working my ass off. During my senior year, I focused my thesis on textile design. I always liked the idea of bringing my designs off the page and applying them to T-shirts, pillows, hats, chairs, bedding, etc.

I graduated in 2015, and a few of my friends from college and I started Fem Foundry. One of the best things about art school is getting your work critiqued by your peers, and the Foundry lets us continue that. Plus, we do a lot of other fun things, like organizing drink and draws, having gallery shows, and tabling at art fairs.

Like many other twenty-somethings, I had to start paying rent after school. I worked a few odd jobs—did branding for local restaurants, taught painting classes, designed event posters, and helped out at an animation studio. There were many times when I had no idea what I was doing, but I’m a big believer in fake it 'til you make it.

About a year after graduation, I landed a job as a textile designer at Deborah Connolly Designs, a small company in Midtown Manhattan. I went into the interview clueless about the industry, and now, two years later, I can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about designing bath towels, beach towels, kitchen towels—really any kind of towel.

3 favorite possessions?

1. The first and only quilt I ever made
2. A white gold locket my mother gave me with our pictures in it
3. My black denim Fem Foundry jacket that I decked out with pins and patches and my eyeglass collection

What does a typical work session look like?

Right now, I’m designing beach towels for next summer. There’s usually some sort of inspiration or color story for the designs, and then it begins! I work primarily on a Wacom drawing tablet with either Photoshop, Illustrator, or Nedgraphics. Most designs go through a few revisions before I send them out for production.

When I’m illustrating at home, I like using traditional mediums like gouache paint and charcoal pencil. I also enjoy playing around on my iPad in Procreate. It’s exciting what technology is bringing to the table for creative people.

I’m a total podcast junkie while working. Some of my favorites are Reply All, Freakonomics Radio, On Being, Revisionist History, Lovett It or Leave It, Nancy, Death, Sex & Money. If I sit in silence, I tend to overthink things; listening to something keeps my momentum going, and it’s a great way to track how long I’ve been working on a project.

How do you get over creative block?

At work, I’ll just start a new design in order to keep the juices flowing, and then when I’m in my groove, the trickier designs come more easily. With painting and illustrating, I try to step away and come back to it later, or sometimes I flip a drawing backwards or upside-down so I can see it from a new perspective.

What was the last item on your to do list?

Buy cat food at the bodega.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Technology is going to change everything. Hopefully, by 2078, old, white, male Republicans won't be calling all the shots in politics, and there will be peace and happiness among all races and religions.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Oooh… Lauren Callaghan is amazing. She’s such a talented illustrator, I’m very into her use of patterns and bright colors. The designer Ramey Masri is mind blowing, he runs the Instagram @space.ram. Everything is rainbows— everything. I bought some silkscreen prints from Natalie Andrewson at MoCCA Fest a few weeks ago and hung them by my desk. It makes me happy to look at them. I also love Oliver Hibert. His graphic, funkadelic paintings are amazing. But honestly, I’m constantly creative crushin’ on all the talented members of Fem Foundry. I’m so thankful to have them as my friends; they are such an inspiration.

Check out their work on Instagram; or on Facebook.

Cassandra and I first met when we were young, poor, and living in Bed Stuy. As I floundered, she settled into what would become her long-term home. Her art connected her to the people around her, first as a student, then as a freelancer painting murals and business logos for neighbors, and, most recently, as a founder of a local women's art collective called Fem Foundry. Cassandra's work is unflinchingly bright, peculiar, and accessible, even when life and Brooklyn are not. I'll let her take it from here:

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.