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

Taking this 2025 appliance from concept video to functional prototype meant creating a realistic experience of technologies that won’t exist for many years. Designers had to come up with a way for the system to see and recognize foods on table’s surface and respond accordingly—and they had to make it work reliably for more than six months while some 250,000 visitors tried it out at pop-up exhibitions at the Salone del Mobile and EXPO Milan.

To find out how they did it, I talked to IDEO London interaction designer Siri Johansson and developers David Brody and Kalyn Nakano of IDEO Palo Alto, who built custom software that borrows techniques from computer vision.

How did the need to build a prototype for real use affect the interaction design?

Siri: As soon you put something in a public setting, people are always going to try to break it, especially if they’re really excited about it. They don’t mean to break it, of course, but they want to play with it and see what it can do. We had to focus on a few key functions and figure out how to make them work well enough that it would be feasible for people to play freely with the installation. A key design principle was to keep the technology low-key and in the background, to preserve the warmth and tactility of the kitchen, so we focused on functions that demonstrate that intention and show how the table uses digital to free up your mind so you can engage with physical things. The table knows what I’m cooking and gently guides me through the process, so I don’t have to keep going back to my iPad to browse a recipe. I can focus more on my ingredients—how they feel, how they smell.

How did it affect the software design?

Kalyn: Knowing this was going to be a live prototype forced us to consider every scenario. With on-screen prototypes, predicting how a user might interact with the screen is a lot more straightforward. But here, adding another dimension and more objects to the mix challenged us to consider all the different ways people could position and interact with the items on the table. Once we started building, it became clear that the concept video for the design was really just a starting point. Testing all the different arrangements and permutations challenged some of our initial designs and software implementation methods, especially when we started thinking about transitions. Tracking objects while they were moved around on the table forced us to implement things more formulaically to achieve a display with smoother transitions between states.

How did people’s interactions with early versions of the table change the software?

Kalyn: With a live prototype like this, you give up control over the experience. You can’t send everyone down the path you want them to take. We started building and testing our software based on the interactions shown in concept video, but those interactions are choreographed, and when people in the office started playing with the prototype, we realized the behavior in the video—putting the veggies down on the table and sliding them from place to place—wasn’t natural for everyone. Some people would hold the vegetables in their hands or lift them off the table while deciding where to put them. These interactions weren’t wrong, but we hadn’t accounted for them in our initial designs. The need to accommodate for this forced us to reconsider our image processing techniques to make sure we could still recognize the objects no matter how they were being handled.

How did you adapt the CV software to the specific needs of the project?

David: Our approach wasn’t to make CV that could be used for anything, in any situation. The better route was to take advantage of our constraints for the exhibition and build a simplified version of CV (written with openFrameworks and OpenCV) that we knew could be tractable and provable in the time we had. The table has to consistently recognize three ingredients—broccoli, tomatoes, and rice—so that people can experience how it works. While more complex CV might create models of what generic broccoli looks like, our solution uses examples of broccoli that it has already seen, along with shape and color distribution. It compares those factors with what it’s seeing in order to distinguish between objects. The distribution of color helps it distinguish between broccoli and a blue bowl of rice, while comparing with previously seen examples help it distinguish between broccoli and a green shirt sleeve.

Why was this an efficient strategy?

David: A lot of conventional CV uses a “sliding window” approach: The computer identifies an aspect of an object, like its shape, and looks for that object within a larger image by sliding the window of vision until it recognizes something that matches what it’s looking for. The hard part is making it work in real time, because the computer compares every possible “window” that contains the criteria it’s looking to match, and each comparison takes time. Since our software is only looking at colors, it’s easier to identify which windows on the table might contain the objects it’s seeking. So the first thing it does is look for the points on the table where the intensities of color are the highest, and it says, “these might be objects.” It sends that information down the pipeline to the next step, and that’s where the color-recognition algorithm comes into play: It compares the histogram of a potential object with the histograms for broccoli, tomatoes, and rice, and determines which object it’s looking at.

What was it that excited you about this project?

Kalyn: This was a great example of building to learn. Creating a live prototype introduced a lot of interesting interaction design questions into the software development process, and it got us to solve technical challenges that wouldn’t normally come up during a screen-based prototype. It generated a new excitement for designing dynamic and thoughtful off-screen experiences, and watching people’s reaction to it was inspiring. When we set the table up in Milan, we came in the next morning and found construction workers playing with it, saying, “bellissima!”

The IKEA Concept Kitchen 2025 was on display at IKEA Temporary, a pop-up exhibition at Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy, April 14-19, 2015 and can be seen at EXPO Milan, May 1-October 31, 2015.

Read more about Veggie Vision and the entire Concept Kitchen on Tech Insider and at IDEO.com.

What will kitchens be like a decade from now? IDEO recently helped IKEA envision some wild ideas that will likely be entirely plausible—someday. Usually, predictions like this exist only on screens, as concept videos and digital renderings. But this time, IKEA asked IDEO to build a working prototype of one future concept: the Table for Living, a cooking and work surface that recognizes the foods you place on it and projects customized recipes and cooking tips right onto the tabletop.

On a recent visit to the lab, I got an early look at Monster Moves, a new app that lets kids choreograph moves for a team of dance-happy monsters. If that conjures images of elaborate 3D creatures, think again: At first glance, Monster Moves appears to be completely flat. Any single frame of the game looks just like a simple 2D illustration.

But when one of those 2D monsters does a twirl or flip, suddenly (and pretty magically), you see that each one has a complete three-dimensional physiology, from the top of his head to the booty he’s shaking.

It might seem hardly noticeable, but think about it: if the image was truly two dimensional, there would be no top or bottom, no back or sides. To make the monsters look flat, but still have the ability to rotate 360°, the team used 3D modeling to create the characters, and then stripped down the art to make the monsters look two dimensional. Even though they appear flat, all the monsters have skeletons and skins, and they can turn to any angle.

So why bother making them look flat?

Toy Lab’s Michelle Lee explains that the 2D look of the game is crucial to its function. The mission of Monster Moves is to help kids understand that they are the choreographer, and that there is a direct connection between their choices and the monsters’ dance steps, which develops an awareness of creative control. The designers wanted kids to focus on the dance moves, so it was important that the art not distract them with too much 3D detail. That’s why they stripped away all the fancy shadows and shiny curves and kept the monsters as simple as possible.

The early version (left) has a 3D look, which the designers thought was still "too much." They chose to eliminate all shadows except for the drop shadow beneath the character (right).

Curious to check out the monsters for yourself? Learn more about Monster Moves and the entire portfolio of IDEO Toy Lab apps at IDEOToyLab.com.

Just like the rest of IDEO, the Toy Lab is dedicated to building creative confidence. Admittedly, they have a bit of an edge when making kids’ products—children have natural creative confidence, so the Toy Lab’s job is to encourage them to preserve it and show them new ways to apply their innate creativity.

We built a light pipe, which, in principle, can be viewed as a fiber optic cable. All the sides are polished to a clear finish so that the light can be reflected internally inside the pipe. If the light hits a section of pipe where the surface is not perfectly reflective, like if it’s gouged or scratched, it will use that section as an "emitter" and attempt to escape the pipe. We take advantage of this by covering the bottom surface of the pipe with dimples. To make the path consistently bright, we arranged the dimples in a gradient with fewer dimples closer to the source, where the light from LEDs is brightest, and more dimples to catch the light farther along the light path (where the light is dimmest).

This step-by-step guide describes our process of quick experimentation and prototyping to achieve good illumination without having to run extensive light bouncing simulations. The design is created in Illustrator using blend modes, and the light pipe is manufactured with a laser cutter on 1/4" thick clear acrylic.

Please note that results will vary depending on many factors. The optical design, LED brightness, and beam angle are important factors to consider.

1. Open a new Illustrator document and draw a rectangle. We chose 8" x .5".

2. Make a guide and space it roughly 1/4" away from the edge of the rectangle. This is where the dimple pattern will begin. (Leaving a 1/4” margin allows us to later mask off the area to prevent seeing excessive LED brightness near the source in the light pipe.) Now draw a circle with a .005" diameter.

3. ALT + Click and drag the circle to duplicate it, and move it to the other side of the rectangle. The two circles mark the two ends of the dimple pattern.

4. Select both circles and create a blend.

5. Open up the blend options to fine-tune the blend.

6. Change the spacing to "Specified Steps" and set the number to 700.

7. You should see 700 evenly spaced dots! In order to get them to start off sparsely spaced and then get closer together, we'll modify the path of the blend. Select the Anchor Point Tool (Shift + C).

8. Use the white arrow to select the first point and drag it until you see the spacing start to change.

9. Create another guide halfway along the path, and then drag the anchor point (with the white arrow selection tool) just past the guide. Repeat the same process with the last circle, but move its anchor point about half an inch to the right.

10. You should now have a gradient spacing of 700 circles becoming more closely spaced as you move from left…

11. …to right.

12. Once you are satisfied with the blend, expand it.

13. ALT+Click and drag the blend to copy it, and place it at the bottom of the rectangle.

14. Select both blends and then use the instructions from Step 4 to create another blend.

15. Use the instructions from Step 5 to fine-tune the new blend.

16. We chose to give our pattern a little bit of randomness, so we ALT+Click-ed and dragged the blend down and to the right ever so slightly.

17. With that, we’re ready for the laser cutter! This process is pretty quick to prototype (roughly 15 minutes from start to finish), so explore different gradient patterns and techniques, and try light pipes that are curved or bent (just keep in mind the critical angle).

18. Next, we raster the dot pattern on 1/4″ thick acrylic. Be sure the acrylic surface is clean and scratch-free.

19. Different laser cutters have different settings for varying materials and thicknesses, so keep that in mind when choosing your settings. We used a speed of 80, power of 50 and maximum PPI for the raster. For the vector cuts, we took 4 cuts at speed of 4, power of 95, and maximum PPI.

20. Now take your light guide and examine the edges. Make sure the material is transparent; otherwise you’ll need to do some hand-polishing.

21. The slightly bumpy yet clear finish the laser leaves after a cut works great for our purposes. You’ll want to surround all clear surfaces with white reflective paper or tape, and mask off the quarter inch where the light first enters the pipe.

22. Here are the results with a super-bright LED! You can see that the light starts to drop off a little toward the end of the pipe.

23. We could come back to tweak the blend pattern (reducing the number of dots at the beginning of the light pipe and increasing it toward the end).

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Light guides are physical tools that transmit light along a path from an illumination source while maintaining constant brightness. They’re often used in products to create a line of light that is consistently bright and dynamic-looking, even when it comes from a single source. Unfortunately, there is no simple how-to guide available for making them. The process is kept tightly guarded by optical engineering companies. We came up with a quick process to make our own light guides, and now you can too.

IDEO has decades of experience with automotive work, which has brought keen insight into the trends and technologies that will define the vehicles of the future. This presents an important design opportunity: If we visualize today the way we’ll live in decades to come, we’ll be better prepared to make smart decisions when the age of autonomous vehicles arrives.

The Future of Automobility is an online visualization of how life with driverless cars might really look and feel. It considers four scenarios: “Moving People,” which looks at how commutes will change when we can look away from the road; “Moving Things,” where we examine automated package-delivery fleets; “Moving Spaces,” where we envision mobile offices meeting people where they live and parking in underused areas of our cities; and “Moving Together,” which explores how the interior of future vehicles will be customized to meet our personal needs during ride-sharing.

The experience is as emotionally compelling as it is feasible, combining radical innovation in transportation concepts with immersive storytelling. It expresses not just our vision of the future, but also how we work, how we think, and what we value.

Want More?

IDEO alum Jonah Houston continues the conversation in a Medium article on how the horse can provide inspiration on designing modern driving interfaces.

Press‍

A Fascinating Glimpse at How We'll Carpool in 2027, WIRED
Imagining A Future Where Autonomous Cars Let Everyone Carpool, Fast Company
IDEO envisions ride-sharing car concept for 'the future of moving together', designboom
IDEO Visualizes the Role of Autonomous Vehicles and Ride Sharing, Core77

Awards

‍2015 Webby Awards

Once our hands are off the steering wheel and more vehicles are shared rather than owned, what will change in our lives?

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.