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

On a recent trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, I spotted a baby kangaroo (or wallaby; it was tough to tell) fast asleep in a unique pouch.

Young marsupials, including kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas, spend the first part of their lives inside their mother’s pouches, but baby joeys raised away from their mothers—babies that are orphaned, for example—need substitutes.

When three wallaby joeys arrived at the Safari Park in April, keepers put them into little cloth sacks. But this joey was lounging inside a woman’s fleece sweater, with the bottom sewn up and the arms tucked in to prevent a sideways escape. Keepers had cut a hole in the front and hung the sweater at just the right height for the joey to hop in and out.

Sweet dreams, little one!

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

IDEO designers surround themselves with creative people for exactly this reason—when you’re stuck in a rut, sometimes the best way to dig yourself out is to steep in other people’s genius for a while. Here are 6 people whose work inspires our own.

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1. If your podcast library is overflowing…

Graphic designer, musician, podcaster: Hrishikesh Hirway is a creative jack of all trades. In this interview, Hrishikesh goes deep on how this versatility helps and hinders his creative process.

READ: Get to Know the Creator of Song Exploder

2. If coding is your form of art…

Matt Fargo is on a quest to make Japanese culture more fun for everyone. Learn how he draws from the coder’s toolkit to build unexpected weirdness into his digital projects.

READ: Code-Based Eye Candy from a Tokyo Renaissance Man

3. If Mother Nature is your muse…

When New Yorker art director Rina Kushnir's not designing layouts, she can be found painting leaves she collects in her Brooklyn neighborhood. Find out how this meticulous project helps her meditate and stay creative.

READ: How an Art Director at the New Yorker Unwinds

4. If you’re an art enthusiast…

Illustrator Cindy Derby creates imaginary worlds for children’s books, but her unique characters and experimental style capture the imagination of adults just as easily. Get to know Cindy and her made-up worlds in this interview with the artist.

READ: Why This Illustrator Makes Her Own Tools

5. If you’d rather be at a museum right now…

As curator of Architecture + Design for SFMOMA, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher puts the world of design on display. Find out how she stays inspired by constantly considering the now, questioning the promise of future technology, and looking back on the designs that made history.

READ: Meet the Woman Who Spots Great Design for a Living

6. If you’re a film buff…

Nomadic filmmaker Brandon Li uses film to express the beautiful madness of urban life. See how his creative process adapts to whichever city he’s in.

READ: These Eye-Popping Videos Capture the Madness of Cities

Let’s keep the inspiration flowing! Tell us who’s inspiring you right now using the hashtag #CreativeCrushes on Twitter.

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Creativity begets creativity. When you witness or consume brilliant work by someone you admire, it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to dive head-first into your own creative pursuits.

Back in May, I saw an exhibition at the National Art Center Tokyo that delivered unexpected brilliance from start to finish. Hearing other visitors remark, “I really wasn’t expecting this!” as they walked through the gallery space, I knew I wasn’t the only one.

How do you go about creating something unexpectedly brilliant? What triggers that kind of experience? Here are some learnings I had from visiting the show:

1. Disarm your audience with familiarity

This installation was created between renowned textile designer, Reiko Sudo; exhibition designer, Adrien Gardère; and Seiichi Saito from Rhizomatiks. The creators are famous, but the exhibition title, Koinobori Now!, communicated something common and familiar, with a hint of pop. Koinobori is the Japanese word for the carp streamers that appear as part of Children’s Day celebrations in Japan every spring. Nau is the Twitter-bred Japenglish word used for anything happening ‘now.’ The title Koinobori Now! is so direct it almost sounds like a children’s exhibition; everyone thought they knew what to expect. It was also a rare instance where NACT hosted a show for free, welcoming an exceptionally diverse audience.

2. Reference conventions with disruptive edge

In reality, the show was much more than just a seasonal parade of modern carp streamers. Rather, the streamers served as inspiration and as a medium for presenting the textiles designed by Sudo and her company, Nuno. Gardère mentioned in an interview that as with any textile exhibition, the challenge was to showcase the works in a way that brought them to life in the absence of the human body. He looked for inspiration in the ways in which textiles lived and breathed in Japanese traditions—on this occasion, carp streamers. But instead of following the structure and styling traditionally used in koinobori, he reinterpreted it to be more structured. From the flat fish shape, he removed the fins, tails, eyes, and scales, and added backbones and rib cages so the carp would hold their shape. The resulting koinobori was something that looked familiar yet novel.

3. Give your audience the freedom to engage

This was the first time that the NACT took down all its partitions to create one large space for the installation. Everything was kept open between the work and audience.

A school of white carp streamers floated by the entrance like phantoms beckoning people into the exhibition. Following them in, the room opened up to reveal over 300 textile carp swimming through the air in a sweeping gradation of colors. The mesmerized audience was free to wander, take photos through the carp streamers, and lay down on Muji bean bags to absorb the show at their own pace.

4. Let your theme go beyond objects to permeate the space

A lot of thought also went into the less noticeable parts of the exhibition. Saito from Rhizomatiks contributed to the environmental design by leveraging air flow and light sources. Small fans were set up on the ceiling, with shifting spotlights positioned alongside to create shimmers and ripples on the translucent fabrics The lights also cast shadows of the carp streamers onto the wall and floor.

It was a subtle gesture that made the audience register a dynamic flow throughout the room, and gave the carp streamers a current to swim in. Together with the ambient soundscape by Softpad, the exhibit came to life.

5. Interlace sensory experience with informational storytelling to trigger curiosity and imagination

The exhibition could have easily ended here, but a small space at the back revealed the backstory behind the show. Video monitors played interviews of the three main collaborators as well as Nuno’s beautiful production videos. A make-your-own-carp workstation held fragments of patterned paper for people to craft their own streamers. And a long rack of textile samples lined the walls.

Here, all 300-something textiles designed by Sudo for the installation could be seen up close, touched, and read about in detail. Each textile had a background story. Here were two of my favorites:

I learned through reading these stories that Sudo is famous for reusing and repurposing unconventional materials to create textiles that challenge the existing conventions.

Once you uncover these stories and return to the larger exhibit space to make an exit, the same installation begins to take on different dimensions.

6. Work in collaboration with others

One final learning from this exhibition—what made it so unexpectedly brilliant—was the way the collaboration between the creators materialized as a sort of alchemy, elevating each individual contribution into a magical whole. Sudo’s textiles, Gardère’s exhibit design, Saito’s space design, and NACT’s curation reacted to and considered one another, orchestrating a holistic experience beyond single objects, addressing themes beyond individual expertise, and creating something relevant and surprising for everyone.

*Exhibition flyer taken from Studio Adrien Gardère. All other photos taken by the author with permission from NACT.

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What separates a great cultural experience from a truly memorable one? An element of surprise. Unexpected brilliance sticks in your mind, and the memory becomes something you can return to for inspiration.

It doesn't look like much, but this spoon/bowl combo was a satisfying dining experience. Not long ago, I visited a college cafeteria that had several different stations, each with a different kind of plastic cutlery. Someone suggested that I use a plastic spoon from one station with a bowl from another, because they had observed over time that the inside radius fillet of this bowl perfectly matched the outside radius curve of the spoon. This way, your spoon always scraped the corner of the bowl clean. They had gone so far as to make sure there was always a supply of spoons at the the other counter, to make sure they could use them with the mis-matching bowl.

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

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.