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

If it was that easy, we wouldn't have the problems we do. But there is one standout case study of a renewable system that can go on endlessly and at any scale: the forest.

The nutrients created through photosynthesis are interoperable. Anyone in the system can use them. An underground mycorrhizal network connects individual plants so they can transfer water, nitrogen, and carbon based on the needs of the system. The big trees feed the little trees knowing those little trees are going to be big trees one day, and what's most important is the overall health of the system. It’s generous and collaborative and ingenious. It’s a circular economy.

Those principles that nature uses to create abundance can be hugely guiding for us. No one wants to be told we're heading toward a place where we will have less. And less is not IDEO’s vision—abundance is. But it’s a different definition of abundance, one that’s the outcome of a truly circular economy where the whole system is healthy, regenerative, and sustainable, where we’re not just exchanging value all the time, we’re building value.

Circular Design + Sustainability | IDEO

Data point after data point make clear that solutions are needed now. IDEO has long been working to surface some of those fixes, and through that process, our approach and view on how design can and should be part of the climate solution have crystallized. This marks our first piece in a series on climate, our chance to share how IDEO is thinking about and actively working on this challenge.

Since IDEO’s start we have seen the power that comes with having design in your toolkit across all industries. Design enables the development of purpose and strategy, can bring both like-minded and disparate partners together, and is proactive to change coming down the line. Its human-centered nature, tangibility, penchant for prototyping, and optimism allow it to cut through big, abstract challenges—exactly what we are staring down right now. The change that is required is a dramatic one: We need to move as a society into a state where we start living within our planetary boundaries. Circular design can help get us there by making the circular economy vision real.

The role of circular design

There are models for living in harmony with nature, and models that extract as much as possible from it. The problem is that many of our policies, governments, businesses, and lives have been based on that extractive model. We’ve long operated under a linear system: you pull resources, you sell, you consume, you dispose. Value ends. Waste is built into the system. Circular design is the antidote. You're designing with a continuous loop in mind, with the idea that value doesn't have to end. We don't extract as much from the Earth. We keep the products we use in the system.

For businesses, the circular economy is fundamentally about adopting a different kind of operating brain—one that doesn't focus on profit at all costs but instead looks at different ways in which we can create and share value. What if, instead of making money at the point that you sell something, you make it when you buy something or when you repurpose it? What if we give more weight to the people and communities who've been doing this for a long time, resurface what has been designed out by the dominant model, and find new pathways forward together?

But we still see a lot of businesses taking incremental steps towards sustainability. We'll cut a little bit of plastic off our packaging. The mindset is let’s make things less bad. That’s a model that deals with consequences rather than redesigning upstream. We aspire to be part of deeper, more foundational change. At its most successful, circular design can lead to creating a system of abundance because resources are regenerated and remain within the system. It’s a system that is not designed to be less than but greater than, and IDEO is actively working on moving us toward that greater-than future.

How we get there

Embedding circular design into your business requires transformation, which is something we as humans and organizations tend to fear. One way to circumvent that fear is to maintain a people-centric view. Who are the people within your company at this very moment who you can motivate and activate to start working toward climate solutions? IDEO helps companies and organizations take the first step by simply showing them they already have resources who can start to unlock gnarly problems like climate change, but we do so with empathy—acknowledging the pressures at hand and any current limits to their capabilities.

From there, you can begin to build awareness and understanding around what circularity means in the context of your organization and your leadership. What are the possibilities? What might change and how? What’s the first move that you can test? By doing that, you take a staggering question and start breaking it down into addressable parts.

It’s something we’ve done with the overwhelming question of how to end our dependence on single-use plastic bags. The planet uses one trillion of them annually despite their average use of just 13 minutes and lifespan of 400+ years. As the innovation partner of the Beyond the Bag Challenge we are working with major retailers, environmental organizations, start-ups, and individuals to prototype reimagined ways to easily and conveniently transport goods as plastic bags have done.

It’s an optimistic view: that there absolutely are answers that we can bring to life when the questions are global ones and the scope is hard to comprehend. We’re comfortable navigating in contexts with a high level of uncertainty and ambiguity and providing people with the creative confidence to come on that journey.

This optimistic view is a lens that is common in playful conditions. The curious and adventurous attitude that children possess is one that easily lends itself to engaging with complexity, as is needed now, rather than running away from it. While play can sound or feel frivolous in the context of the big questions we are facing and the large ecosystem of players, it’s a valuable design and collaboration tool. When we are immersed in playful conditions, barriers begin to lower, trust begins to build, and we become less adversarial and more cooperative. Play allows us to set aside our assumptions and engage with our imaginations. It allows us to imagine a future that does not yet exist.

And when it comes to that future view, a company’s individual climate concerns are almost never siloed, and that means they can’t be solved in isolation. Our bird's eye view across many different industries also has us putting a premium on collaboration. Our answer is to bring together coalitions of people, multiple stakeholders across the ecosystem who may not have collaborated together before but really should in order to design circular solutions for the future.

With the Circular Economy of Food CoLab, for instance, we work together to explore challenges the food system is facing with companies that include Danone, Kroger and Electrolux, as well as many experts and NGOs and foundations and others who are working on making a better food system. Together we are driving towards making some big systemic changes that address the big systemic questions that cannot be solved by any one organization, like how might we make circular behaviors the default in home kitchens? How might we leverage corporate procurement to mainstream regenerative agriculture? How might we increase biodiversity by encouraging a generation of new supply chains?

We envision moonshots and bold ideas, and we use the design process to break them down into actionable steps. We build to learn, to see, to think. Using design sprints, for example, we can make faster, more informed decisions with lower investment. In iterative loops, we test solutions in context, giving people tangible prototypes to use, so we can understand what's working and refine what's not.

The way forward

Humans never set out to design a climate crisis, but we did. We designed linear, extractive systems that have created the conditions that we are all facing right now. Can design have a positive impact? Absolutely, and that's what gives us hope.

Our process of design thinking has for decades helped us connect deeply with consumers and translate those insights directly into opportunities. But the scale and scope of this problem goes far beyond just individuals. We’re applying the same depth of human-centered design to the industries ranging from food to mobility to consumer products and retail, using the same processes to understand the needs, desires, and constraints of everyone from farmers to boardrooms.

That allows us to see the intervention points with the highest potential—because while acknowledging just how complex and urgent this challenge is, we believe design’s ability to get tangible quickly, to hold both individual needs and the big picture at once, is what’s needed to change the system.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. A circular economy or a sustainable economy isn't just going to happen. We've got to make it. That's what drives us.

—A collaborative piece by global IDEO

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In the midst of our climate crisis there’s a desire for certainty. Show me a case study where a corporation has solved this. The thing is, they haven’t.

Alight, a non-profit that provides humanitarian assistance to people on the move, made the introduction to help us learn more about the refugee experience.

After the Russian invasion, Yulia’s family traveled to her parents’ home just outside the capital. But upon learning that friends had been killed while driving nearby, she decided the family needed to leave Ukraine.

Adult males are required to stay back and defend the country, so Yulia said goodbye to her husband and father and headed toward the Polish border with no destination in mind beyond “out.” She had very few friends to assist her; everyone she knew was in the same situation. At the Medyka border crossing, Yulia, her mother, and her children stood in line through the night to gain entry, then boarded a bus to a hotel in Krakow. It was there that she learned about Alight.

*name changed to protect privacy

Address the Human Need

Alight has spent 40 years working with displaced people, from distributing food relief during the Somali famine to building emergency shelters for Burundian refugees in Rwanda. Since February, the organization has been in Ukraine and neighboring Poland, where millions fleeing the war have headed.

Within weeks of being on the ground at the border, it became clear to Alight that refugees were encountering a lack of credible guidance on housing in Poland. Alight quickly partnered with Airbnb, which was offering Ukrainians free housing for up to 30 days.

Alight’s Housing Guides—easily identified by their vibrant yellow vests—assisted with bookings. But it was a person-to-person effort, done at the border crossing, at train stations, and in conversations over text and social media. Alight knew it had to greatly scale its ability to get Ukrainians into safe and free accommodations—they needed a tool that could be accessible in varied and rapidly changing contexts. And they wanted to make sure that tool was designed to be useful from day one. “The goal was to learn what Ukrainians needed from the moment of arrival at the border to when they settled in stable housing,” says IDEO Design Director Karen Hentschel.

As an organization that has long applied human-centered design to emergency situations, Alight knew that amidst chaos and uncertainty, designers are able to zoom out, spot underlying human needs, and work quickly to prototype, test, and iterate a solution with the intended audience. Alight worked with our teams at IDEO and IDEO.org to make that happen.

Move Fast and Fix Things

Alight knew that Yulia and her family represented thousands urgently in need of housing and support services. Because we work in IDEO’s Munich studio, we were able to deploy to Poland within days, and IDEO.org designed the initial digital tool within weeks.

Once on the ground in Krakow, IDEO’s Alex Eaton, Tilo Krueger, and David Sjunnesson shadowed Alight’s guides—Ukrainians who had undergone the same journey as the people they were helping and now served as experts in the field. Observing them as outsiders allowed us to spot patterns.

“Alight is very focused on the person in front of them. We were able to take a step back, look at the journey, and see how Alight could support in more places,” says Sjunnesson. "One big part of that was creating a journey map of the first 30 days that identified moments of indecision and decision.”

Build Trust

In an emergency, people need more than food and shelter. They need to feel safe. The border is replete with resources, but not all are trustworthy or reliable.

And Alight isn’t a household name, so establishing trust in the organization and its resources was key. We knew that replacing text-based communications with a professional looking, resource-rich digital portal would help.

Thoughtful curation was also key. “You don’t want to have a million different options, you want to have three good ones,” says Sjunnesson. The design team found that information overload compounded people’s sense of overwhelm and recommended that Alight recruit additional guides to travel across Poland to gather data on housing, schools, workplaces, and job boards that the organization could vouch for.

Design for Clarity and Compassion

The digital prototype, which was refined over a six week period, initially featured three cities where Alight had a presence, could provide support, and could guarantee safety and a quality experience. But the way that information was delivered was equally important, says Alight Engagement Guide Leah Combs. The organization hoped for “a softness and a gentleness and a simplicity of navigation, a place where people could land and feel immediately comfortable.”

The resource was also designed to be nimble, with Alight able to make updates to the site within minutes. “The urgency of a humanitarian crisis lends itself to a design process anchored in rapid prototyping and continuous iteration,” says IDEO.org CEO Shauna Carey. “But it’s not just about making something that works well—a human-centered approach helps ensure we’re creating a product that is also responsive to the emotional context of the situation."

Impact

The site gave Alight the ability to scale beyond time and place. Alightguides.org logged roughly 150,000 views within the first month. With its added reach, Alight provided 25,555 days of safe housing through Airbnb. Ukrainians now have access to Alight in moments when its expertise and assistance might otherwise be invisible: in an apartment, on a bus, or in any of the many moments prior to their arrival at the border.

Aside from tangible support, the tool offers something Yulia told us she desperately needed: The peace that comes from knowing where one’s family is going to sleep that night.

Support Alight's humanitarian efforts here.

—This article was written in collaboration with IDEO Europe, Alight, ideo.org, and our partners.

We met Yulia*, a Ukrainian mother in her 40s, at our hotel in Krakow. She had fled from Kyiv with her teenage daughter and toddler and was eager to tell us her story.

Design thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit—taking a human-centered approach to translating ideas into tangible strategies and offerings. Design thinking accelerates innovation, helping create better solutions for the challenges facing business and society.

ExperiencePoint, in collaboration with IDEO, created the simulation game ExperienceInnovation to provide a direct experience with design thinking. Teams compete to solve a realistic and complex challenge while engaging with the terms, techniques, and thought patterns of successful innovators.

Built for designers and non-designers alike, ExperienceInnovation creates an energizing, practical, and relevant learning experience that supports tangible business objectives using leading-edge technology. The workshop is optimized for a half- or full-day experience and is available as an in-class exercise, or online for remote teams. To date, over 15,000 people from a variety of companies and industries have completed ExperienceInnovation experience.

Learn more about ExperienceInnovation.

ExperienceInnovation is a workshop in innovation, giving teams meaningful experience with design thinking.

「プロトタイピング力」とは、大きく分けて２つある。それは、その課題を解決する上での「WHAT（何を作るべきか）」と「HOW（どう作るか）」である。この２つを両方使いこなし、自ら解決策を試作できるようになった時、自己効力感（Self Efficacy）が「ぶち上がる」のである。そんな自己効力感のマインドセットについて書かれているのがクリエイティブ・コンフィデンス日本語版ではクリエイティブ・マインドセット)だ。クリエイティブ・コンフィデンスに満ちた個人はどのような課題に直面しようと、自らの創造力とモノづくりの技術で何らかの解決策を提供できると確信し嬉々としてアクションを起こすことができる。それこそがデザインの持つ力であり、これからの時代に不可欠な能力だ。

理系も文系も、言い訳のできない時代

これまで数多くの中学、高校、大学でデザイン思考を教えてきた中で一つ問題に感じるのは、多くの学校で「WHAT」と「HOW」を分けて考えてしまっていることである。文系の学校の場合「WHAT」の議論には熱を入れるが、文系だからという言い訳をしてなかなか「HOW」に触れようとしない。理系や工学系の場合は、「HOW」のトレーニングは積むが「WHAT」は別の誰かの仕事と考えている。しかし、ECサイトを誰もが数分で立ち上げることができ、アプリだってスプレッドシート一つでノーコードで作れて、どんなノウハウもYoutubeを通して無料で学べる昨今において、理系だ文系だ、はもはや言い訳にはならない。思いついたアイディアを、誰かに作ってもらうのを待つのではなく、自らの手でプロトタイプするマインドセット、それこそが現代の教育の目指すべき姿だ。

そのために必要なのは、なるべく早い段階から、小さい成功体験を積み上げることだ。最初からSDGsのような巨大な社会課題に挑むのではなく、まずは目の前にいるたった一人の誰かのために「最高の贈り物を届ける」だけ。そのくらいライトな捉え方でデザインを行うことが大切である。成城大学のキャリアセンターから「デザイン思考をベースとした授業をやってもらえないか」というお誘いを頂いたのは、そんなことを考えている最中だった。

DESIGN THINKING LABという6週間の実験

「DESIGN THINKING LAB―モノづくりを通して、世界の見方を変えるー」というタイトルの元に実施することとなった6週間の授業では、「どのようにして、コロナ対策下のキャンパスライフをより一層楽しくできるだろうか?」をテーマに約20人の有志の学生たちに課題を発見し、解決策を考え、プロトタイプを作り、それを学内で実装してもらった。デザイン思考のいわゆる5つのステップのようなビジネスライクなフォーマットでは学生たちはすぐにそっぽを向いてしまうため、あくまでも「たった一人の同級生のための最高の贈り物」を作るための6週間であることを強調した。

その結果、僕がこれまで行ってきた数々の授業の中でも格別に素晴らしいアウトプットが文系の学生たちの手から次々と作り出されていった。中でも、食堂の券売機の見づらさに嫌気が刺したとある3年生の学生が、より見やすいデザインのラベルを作り勝手に券売機に貼り付けた結果、食堂スタッフに大ウケし、成城大学の公式のインスタグラムアカウントにも取り上げられ、公式運用されたケースには度肝を抜かれた。これこそが、本当の意味での課題の発見および解決能力であり、小さくも大きな成功体験なのである。

言葉の議論に逃げない、プロトタイプは現場に持っていく

今回の6週間の授業を設計する上で特に意識したことは2つある。まず一つは、言葉の議論に逃げないことである。大企業の役員であろうと、メーカーのエンジニアであろうと、大学生であろうと、得てしてヒトは抽象的な言葉の議論が大好きな生き物である。脳内で妄想を膨らませてるときは楽しいし、言葉の定義の議論などは夜な夜な続いてしまう。しかし、具体的な解決策を実装しよう、という時には、決して言葉に逃げてはいけない。描いて、作って、見せて、頭の中にふわふわしたイメージに残酷なほどに具体的な形を授けないといけないのである。これを習慣付けるトレーニングを積んだ人は、世界中どこに行っても必ず事を成すことができる。

もう一つ意識したのは、作成したプロトタイプを、少し無茶をしてでもゲリラ的に現場に実装してみる、ということである。せっかくプロトタイプを作っても、それが机の上に置いてあっては無価値だ。券売機の例のように、正規のルートで許可をとらなくても勝手にやってしまうことで、却って早く受け入れられることは往々にしてある。今回の授業では、他にもゴミ箱の見つけづらさを解消するためにゴミ箱アイコンを各所に貼り付けてみたり、殺風景な部室棟の至るところに可愛いキャラクターのイラストを張り巡らしたり等というアウトプットがあった。IDEOではマントラのように「Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness （許可をもらうな、許しを乞え）」というが、大学生であっても少し背中を押せば意気揚々とそれをやってのけた。（当然、裏で大学の事務局の方々のサポートは沢山あったのだと思い、最後まで献身的にサポートしてくださった姿勢には頭が上がらない。）

もちろん、今回の授業のやり方が完成形だとは全く思っていないし、6週間という期間が十分だったとも思っていない。ましてや、今年の5月に経済産業省が出した「未来人材ビジョン」レポートにあるように、こうした探究的な授業には我々のような企業がどんどん参画していくべきにも関わらず、現段階では企業側の水準にあった予算を学校側が捻出できている訳でもない。まだまだ課題はあるが、それでも、たったの6週間でも、美大生でなくても、デザインというツールを通して学生たちのクリエイティブ・コンフィデンスを（少しは）ぶち上げることができたという事実は、これからの教育のあり方の一つの取っ掛かりを作れたと思う。

僕たちの日常は問題にあふれている。悪化する国際情勢から、数日前に僕のウェットスーツに突如空いた穴まで、事の大小問わず、問題ばかりである。そういった問題を、自らの手で解決していく志と技能を育むことが、本来の教育の目的であると思う。現に、多くの教育機関のビジョンステートメントには、課題の発見および解決能力の育成という趣旨が多種多様な文言で書かれている。しかし、実際に率先して課題解決に向けて動く人材になるために欠かせないと思うスキルが一つある。それは、「プロトタイピング力」である。

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.