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

Since we moved in, Andy Deakin and I have teamed up to build out our displays. As industrial designers, we’re not trained in the art of window displays, but we’ve developed our own principles, drawing on our work creating physical exhibits or immersive experiences—and the rules set by the Port Authority.

Unlike traditional window fronts, ours comes with an elaborate set of constraints. The building is owned by the Port Authority of San Francisco, which has strict guidelines for what can be put on display. No direct advertising, no big logos, and nothing that looks too much like retail. The location also presents its own challenges: We have to create something strong enough to compete with the towering Bay Bridge above, and the bright sunlight along the Embarcadero. And every design has to do double duty—it needs to have meaning for people walking by on the street, as well as our coworkers and clients inside the building.

Our latest window design centers on a new line of cycling bags IDEO created with Brooks England. This time, the biggest challenge was showing off the gear without making the window feel too much like a store. We pulled inspiration from displays and exhibitions we admired, then brainstormed and sketched different iterations as a team before landing on the final concept: a bright yellow bike strapped with a mountain of boxes, which act as shelves for the bags to perch on.

Here are our seven rules for window design.

1. Set the Focus

What is the central focal point of the visual story you’re telling? Distinguish between primary elements and stage-setters. Try using only one material throughout, or in the case of the Brooks window, dip everything in one color to simplify the backdrop and create a neutral stage for the centerpiece—the bags.

2. Exaggerate Scale

Playing with scale helps create a big impact—especially if you want to amplify small objects to fill an entire window. We loved the Selfridges window display of giant flowers for the Apple watch, and employed this trick when we built a display for the launch the launch of Tom and David Kelley’s Creative Confidence. For that project, we created a six-foot-tall stack of books to fill the window.

3. Repeat a Theme

Whether it’s boxes, sticks, chairs, or lightbulbs, selecting one item and repeating it to completely fill the space is a simple trick to create an impressive sense of complexity. Aesop is a master of this and we’ve borrowed the technique for numerous exhibits.

4. Create Depth

Many windows create the illusion of depth when they’re actually quite two-dimensional. Using layers and forced perspective—similar to the tricks of theatrical set design—helps to draw the viewer in. Thomas Brisebras’ MAKE installation was a great example. Seemingly random floating sticks transformed into the word MAKE as you walked past the window. His was certainly the most Instagrammed window we’ve created so far.

5. Add Momentum

When they're composed in a particular way, static compositions can feel almost like they are in motion. Objects can be suspended in midair or positioned to make it seem like they're flying through the scene. When we created our 2020 event window, we installed multiple Steelcase Node chairs to give the impression they were jumping in the air.

6. Design for Duration

Our window budget often limits the types of materials and construction methods we can use. But keeping the duration of the display in mind can help guide the choice of materials. If it is only intended to last for a few weeks, exploring what you can do with cardstock might make the most sense. Unionmade, a San Francisco store, does a nice job of repurposing everyday objects and designing with lo-fi materials to suit their quick refresh rate.

7. Above All, Entertain

And don’t forget inject some play and humor into the mix. Watching people on the street look up and get the joke is half the fun.

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When the IDEO San Francisco studio moved its office to Pier 28, we landed a whole new design challenge: a massive, floor-to-ceiling front window along the Embarcadero. For the first time, we had a public display case to highlight our events and projects, and we had to figure out how to best activate it, while sticking to some pretty strict rules.

Last year, about a month before the con, I came across a Bender Badge project by AND!XOR—a group of hackers from California—on Hackaday. The Bender Badge is a nod to the robot character from Futurama and it comes packaged with games and flashy lights in the shape of his head. It’s also designed to be hacked (the barrier to entry is low—it can be programmed using the Arduino IDE). It seemed like a good place to focus my excitement.

For years, I have been looking for an opportunity to design something for DEF CON that interacts with sound. Networking and parties are a big part of the con, and often these events feature live DJs and music. I also wanted to create a design that relates to Bender's personality—he's often drinking and smoking, so a cigar seemed appropriate. Optimal choice: a cigar-shaped microphone.

The Bender Badge comes equipped with a standard set of hardware components (buttons, LEDs, and a display). Since the project was still in development, and I didn’t know which parts would be in the final version, I decided to build an add-on. The badge kit features an STM32F103 microcontroller, which includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This allows the microcontroller to receive analog audio data by sampling it at high speeds and converting it into digital values. My goal was to use a microphone to capture the surrounding audio data and then convert that data into frequency components via Fourier analysis—specifically, using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The results of the Fourier analysis can be displayed as a bar graph. This is commonly referred to as a spectral analysis, and in this case, it would focus on frequencies between 20 and 20,000 Hz (the range for human hearing).

Proof of Concept

I built the microphone circuit to make sure it was configured properly before creating the printed circuit board (PCB). The circuit starts with the microphone to capture surrounding audio. Next, the signal from the microphone is amplified so that the microcontroller can receive a wider range of data from the ADC, which results in better definition from the Fourier transform. Lastly, the amplified signal goes through a low-pass filter to suppress any frequencies above 20,000 Hz that could interfere with the analysis.

The greatest challenge during this stage was implementing the DFT on the STM32 microcontroller. Thankfully, there is an algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) that speeds up the computation for the DFT, but it's still a complex and time consuming calculation. Performing the FFT and then updating the display is a time-sensitive task. If the display is updated too slowly, it will look choppy and less responsive. Luckily, I came across a library developed by STMicroelectronics that was already optimized to work with my specific microcontroller.

Circuit Board Design

One of my biggest hurdles in designing the PCB was board size. I didn’t know the exact size of the Bender Badge, but I attempted to scale everything based on the buttons and the screen. From there, I figured out what size I wanted the circuit board to be so that it looked proportional to the badge. I was able to make the badge look like a cigar by adding silkscreen to the top layer (the label, paper edges, and ash at the end), and by cutting the PCB into a cigar shape.

I placed most of the surface mount parts on the bottom of the circuit board to keep them hidden. The microphone stayed on the top layer to efficiently capture surrounding audio. (It also fit nicely as part of the cigar label.) I also added orange LED "ash" to the end of the top layer to make it look like the cigar was lit. These LEDs were meant to be triggered by acoustic activity, so that they would flicker and look more like embers than a solid light.

Firmware Finalizing

Two weeks before DEF CON was set to start, I submitted the PCB design for fabrication, and I created a prototype of the board. The majority of the leftover work involved converting the FFT output into something that could be shown on the display. The FFT outputs an array of frequency groupings, known as bins, where the size of a bin (or frequency grouping) is based on the audio sampling rate and size of the FFT. The bin size can be thought of as the output resolution of the FFT, and for the cigar mic the bins are about 39 Hz (40,000 Hz/1024) wide. Bins are important because they contain information on the amplitude of frequencies within each group. If the cigar mic does not pick up any surrounding audio between 1-39 Hz (the first bin), the value for that bin will be close to zero; but if there is activity within that frequency range, there will be a value greater than zero relative to how loud that frequency source is.

The FFT bins are grouped to create a bar graph that displays frequency data logarithmically (fewer bins grouped together at lower frequencies, and more bins grouped together at higher frequencies) in an effort to resemble human hearing. The display consists of 32 individual bars that are 4 pixels wide.

Assembly and Debugging

Once the circuit boards came back from fabrication, the first step was to assemble and test one. I connected the output of the PCB (the connection that sends the captured audio data to the microcontroller’s ADC) to an oscilloscope to see if the microphone was capturing audio and if the preamplifier was increasing the amplitude. I encountered two errors in my design. First, the microphone was incorrectly oriented, and second, I had flipped two pins on the preamplifier, which resulted in significant distortion. Both were easy fixes, but added extra time to the assembly process. As a result, I was working up until I got to DEF CON, and then some.

Shortly after I arrived in Vegas, I met up with the AND!XOR guys and showed them my addition. They loved it, and within a few hours, I had my cigar wired up, and my code running on their Bender Badge. It was awesome (and relieving) to see it all come together. Now I just have to figure out what to do for DEF CON 25.

If you want to learn more, check out my GitHub page for the project, which includes PCB files and badge firmware.

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Every year, it's hard for me to contain my excitement as DEF CON approaches, so I try to focus that enthusiasm into various projects. (For the uninitiated, DEF CON is one of the world’s largest hacking conventions. The days are long, the sleeping is limited, and it’s Vegas in the middle of summer.) In the past five-plus years, designing and programming custom badges to share at DEF CON has become increasingly popular.

Strolling down the Porto’s Rio Douro in the bright, spring sun, a Thoughtless Act caught my eye. A man selling knock-off sunglasses had thoughtfully—or instinctively—used the bench he'd been sitting on to display his wares.

It was the perfect display stand: the slats provided a neat grid format to lodge the glasses into so they could be fully admired from all angles, while the greyed wood gave a neutral backdrop to assess the color and design.

From a design research perspective, observing the way people exploit the objects and environments around them can provide fruitful and culturally-relevant inspiration. Taking ownership of public space and repurposing it for a transient commercial opportunity was natural to this street seller. We see other examples of nomadic, 'pop-up commerce' with things like food trucks and busking musicians.

It wasn't quite enough to persuade me to part with my euros, but it was a lovely example of Thoughtless Acts in action, nonetheless!

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 the invention of new products, services, and experiences.

My husband always writes me a little bit of Valentine's Day Code. The image above is one of my favorites—Charlie was learning 3JS, a 3D web development framework, and made me my dream: an exploding pink disco ball floating in space. He's made a 3D simulation of Big Sur (where we took our first road trip together), a "Charlie Bot" (forking off of hubot, creating a fake Charlie for me to talk to when I was traveling a lot) and an Adventure-style text based game, where I got to achieve my dream of meeting Prince with my dog Hudson.
—Ashley Holtgraver, IDEO Cambridge

As a Biodesigner + Cardiologist at IDEO Palo Alto, I led three classes of 5th graders at Covington Elementary School (Los Altos, CA) in their annual sheep heart dissection this Valentine's Day. I introduced them to the fundamentals of cardiovascular anatomy and physiology, including the structure and function of each chamber and valve, their relationships to surrounding conduits, and the hemodynamics and electrophysiology that drive the system. You know, just the basics. All of the kids experienced a hands-on exploration of the heart’s surface and texture, then under the supervision of volunteering parents, dissected their ways into the depths of the organ. Accompanying me was my rockstar hostess and sidekick Celia Wedner, future doc and daughter of Palo Alto’s Grant Wedner.
—Farzad Azimpour, IDEO Palo Alto

I’ve been doing cross-stitch for more than 10 years. Cross-stitch is an ancient form of embroidery that’s very intricate—it takes a long time to finish a product! The time I spend making a pattern is one of my favorite ways of expressing love on Valentine's Day.
—Christina Shen, IDEO Shanghai

For our third annual Galentine’s Day gathering, we started by designing postcards to send to our district representatives. This was followed by whiskey tastings and a fancy dinner hosted in a room decorated with posters of inspiring power-women. Everyone left with a "treat yo-self" care package, complete with home decor, "Make Your Mark" to-do lists, homemade biscotti, and soothing teas.
—Rohini Venkatraman, IDEO San Francisco

At IDEO London, we held an office-wide Valentine’s Day celebration with activities and treats under the theme of Random Acts of Love. We set up areas to collect clothes and food for those more in need, and a station to create a heart chain of messages to people across IDEO locations, hoping they’d continue the chain. Prior to the event, we asked everyone to send us one song they’d take to a desert island and why. Over a selection of strawberry daiquiris and fresh cupcakes, we filmed people talking about their chosen song. We had tears and goosebumps. Interestingly, most people chose songs to remind them of someone they love dearly. Three others chose songs that have helped them get through life.
—Bobbie Brightman and Ryan Lovett, IDEO London

This is a fortune my boyfriend and I got on one of our first trips together, before we were "officially" dating. Something told me to hold onto it. Later, he had this greeting card printed for me for Valentine's Day. He actually had to print a minimum of 100 so somewhere we have a hefty stack of personalized greeting cards of ourselves. Over 3 years later, I still have the fortune.
—Becky Lee, IDEO San Francisco

I used to work for a company that was pretty hardcore about celebrating Valentine's Day. We would exchange gifts, play games, have a big party, etc. One year I made this clock for my good friend and former colleague Irene Pau. The design is inspired by an inside joke that's probably not worth going into here. But the main goal was really just to make something weird that would creep her out, and also help her get to meetings on time. Mission accomplished?
—Griffin Thomson, IDEO Palo Alto

I love giving people Spanish Sweethearts for Valentine’s Day. They’re unique (read: hard-to-find) and everyone learns some Spanish from my gift!
—Katie Clark, IDEO San Francisco

Kiley was our New York front desk concierge for a couple of years, and she decided to leave last year to head to Arkansas and pursue writing and graduate school. She always put a lot of work into making the office feel special, so we decided to throw her a big going away party to show our appreciation. The base of the K was cut from scrap foam core on the laser cutter. The colored fringe was created from discarded Post-it pad slivers that were collecting in the hallway, which were stuck onto the K then cut vertically. Try your own letter piñata for Valentine's Day!
—Njoki Gitahi, IDEO New York

Header image by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash.

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When choosing a gift for your Valentine, why settle for a store-bought card? Drop that box of chocolates and steal these IDEO designers' crafty, hacky, wacky ideas for celebrating the holiday of love. Or better yet, try dating a designer! There’s bound to be a good gift in it for you.

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.