Increasingly, digital spaces are proving detrimental to youth mental health. By co-designing with youth, Kooth and IDEO set out to flip the script, creating a positive digital space for young people to safely explore their mental wellbeing. 

When Kooth, IDEO, and Blackbird, IDEO’s longtime development partner, first started working on the project, the window of opportunity was narrow, and the stakes were high. The group was up against a nine-week deadline to create a working proof of concept app. Also on the line: a $188 million contract with the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)—one that would open an entirely new line of business for Kooth. 

The app needed to do more than demonstrate functionality—it needed to prove its value. To ensure that they were creating an asset that truly fit the needs of young people, the team turned to an initial cohort of 13-25 year-old co-designers who explored early features, created video diaries, and shared their questions about and experiences with mental health. These young people often gravitated toward self-service tools that helped them take action based on their feelings. With their feedback, the team created new expressions of clinically-validated behavioral health tools like journaling, breathwork and white noise—and built novel tools, such as Starboard, an expressive drawing tool and a nod to art therapy. 

The team took inspiration from content the co-designers liked to consume, such as story-driven video games that enable freedom of exploration, deepened by a unifying mythology. That led them to a constellation theme, which made the experience more intriguing and playful. The co-designers also recommended a dark color palette, because they preferred exploring the app at night. 

With these insights, the team refined the proof of concept, and then conducted a one-week pilot with another 50 young people across California. Their positive feedback gave the State the confidence to invest in a $188 million, four-year contract for Kooth to bring the app to a platform at scale. 

Over the next year, the team engaged another 150 young people to help design, shape, and test the app. At the same time, Kooth and IDEO created a clinical oversight group, which included a pediatrician, therapists, and other clinical specialists. This group anchored the platform in the practices of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), cultivating psychological flexibility—the mindful acceptance of positive and negative emotions. Young people are invited to complete short reflections and surveys throughout their journey with the app, which includes rigorous, science-backed measurements to assess the therapeutic benefits.

Behind the scenes, the team developed a clinical-facing service and digital platform that empowers Kooth’s peer specialists, social workers, community curators, and clinicians to support the youth experience, all while protecting privacy and confidentiality. They also navigated a complex landscape of state requirements and government legislation, ensuring that the platform could cover topics like substance abuse and gender identity, and that users could access coaching within 24 hours, and choose from a diverse set of experts. 

The last step was to select a name that worked across multiple languages, trademarks, and competitor branding, and didn’t come off as a mental health service, something the youth co-designers believed was critical. IDEO and Kooth landed on Soluna, a name that alludes to the app’s presence in both the bright (“sol” for sun) and the dark times (“luna” for moon). 

Now, Soluna is available for free to all youth in California, and the state has set ambitious targets for reaching all young people at scale. Soluna is a living platform that will continue to receive product and design updates for years to come, all deeply rooted in youth co-design.

The US Surgeon General named mental health “the defining public health crisis of our time,” and cited social media, online bullying, and the isolation exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as major drivers that have significant negative outcomes for youth.
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In California alone, more than 284,000 youth cope with major depression. 66% of kids with depression do not receive treatment. Between 2019-2020, the suicide rate for kids ages 10-18 increased by 20%.
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In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Master Plan for Kids’ Mental Health set aside $4.6 billion to increase access to mental health and substance abuse support, the largest commitment to youth mental health ever made by a state.

94%

of proof-of-concept app users would recommend the Soluna app to a friend, and believe that engaging with the app would be a positive addition to their daily/weekly routine

6 million

young people in California had access to Soluna at launch in January 2024

Creating a better cervical cancer screening experience is an important mission, but also a challenging one. Not only would Teal have to address the regulations that face healthcare device companies, it would also need to build a comprehensive telehealth platform and a physical product—a wand that could easily collect an adequate cell sample, even in the hands of an untrained person. 

The first challenge was to create the wand. The device would need to do a lot: It’s impossible for a person to see their own cervix, so the user would have to be able to find the cervix blind, collect the sample themselves, and remove the wand from their bodies without contaminating it on other parts of their anatomy. Because this is something users are likely to do in their bathrooms, where there is no space to lie down, they would need to be able to use the device while standing—and with one hand. From the beginning, the IDEO team set out to design functional, testable prototypes to make sure the idea was viable, and incorporate diverse voices into the research process, including trans, minority, and disabled women. 

Because the product is meant for people who aren’t medical professionals, the team worked to design something as simple, intuitive, and unintimidating as possible. They used a 3-D printer to create multiples of every prototype, autoclaves to make sure that the designs they were creating were sterile, and leaned into shapes women are already used to, like the cylindrical shape of a tampon. The wand they created has that same basic form, but with a soft sponge that the user can deploy with the turn of a dial to collect the sample, then close to protect it from contamination on the way out of the body.

With working prototypes in hand, Teal set out to test their efficacy. In an initial study with 220 participants varying in age, race, socioeconomic status, and geography, Teal found that not only were participants able to successfully self-collect samples, they also preferred them over the speculum, the device doctors typically use during a screening. Some 92 percent said if they knew the results were equal they would prefer self-collection, while 87 percent reported they would stay current with screening if Teal Wand was an option. Self-collection took the vast majority under two minutes to complete, and 97% of study participants reported it was very easy or easy to use. The Teal Wand recently received a patent for its unique design.

The IDEO team also worked on the packaging and unboxing experience, which plays an important role in supporting the user through the self-screening process. The team built in thoughtful design cues to give users reassurance that they are using the wand correctly, and to provide the same level of confidence they would have in the results of an in-clinic screening. 

In January 2023, Teal raised an $8.8 million seed round from Serena Ventures, Emerson Collective, and Metrodora, and later that year, launched a nationwide clinical trial with leading health organizations including Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, the University of Colorado, Washington University, and others. In 2025, The Teal Wand became the first FDA-authorized device for at-home cervical cancer screening, with virtual medical provider support. Today, it's available in all 50 states. i’s an enormous step toward its North Star: catching cervical cancer earlier and saving lives.

Cervical cancer is nearly 100% preventable when it’s caught early, yet one in four women in the US are not up to date on their screenings.
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More than 12,000 people in the US are being diagnosed with cervical cancer every year, and more than 4,000 people die of the disease, which disproportionately impacts Black, Asian, and Hispanic women.
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More than half of cervical cancer cases are found in women that are not up-to-date on their screenings.

97%

of clinical study participants said the Teal Wand was very easy or easy to use.

87%

of participants said they would be more likely to stay current with screening guidelines if Teal Wand was an option.

94%

of participants said they would choose to collect their own sample from home rather than the current standard of care where a clinician collects it in-office.

2025

The Teal Wand becomes the first FDA authorized device for at-home cervical cancer screening, with virtual medical provider support.

Cities United already had a strong foundation with its stated mission, vision, and values. IDEO brought those to life with a new visual and verbal brand identity system that celebrates Cities United’s inclusive approach to building relationships and reimagining public safety.

To help Cities United with its verbal identity, the IDEO team defined the organization's voice, tone, and key messages, making it easier to tell its story more consistently and clearly, a crucial step toward engaging stakeholders.

To define the new visual identity, the team created a new logo, a letter C composed of interwoven shapes that represent the three tenets of their vision—“safe, happy, and hopeful;” a new design language that references city grids; and a typographic system anchored by the typeface VTC DuBois, inspired by W.E.B. DuBois’s own custom lettering and designed by the Black-owned Vocal Type Co. The team also designed a color palette that embodies the textures of city life with hues reminiscent of asphalt, sunrise, and brick. 

To amplify the refreshed branding, the team designed a new responsive website, citiesunited.org. The intuitive site shares the organization’s mission, resources, ongoing projects, and partner network, inviting stakeholders to join in their transformative work. IDEO also created a video to humanize Cities United’s mission and showcase its nationwide impact. It underscores the unity, resilience, and hope embodied by the organization through a chorus of voices.

This comprehensive rebranding widens Cities United’s reach and impact, helping the organization share its goal of creating safe, healthy, hopeful communities for young Black men, boys, and their families, and reintroduces the organization to a national audience. 

The Cities United work was supported by IDEO’s Racial Justice Impact Fund, part of a commitment IDEO made in 2020 to ​​address systemic racism and advance equity within our own organization, our client work, and beyond.

Cities United is committed to reducing the epidemic of homicides and shootings among young Black men and boys ages 14-to-24 by 50%.

Between 2009 and 2019, the number of Black children who “did not go to school at least one day in the past month because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school” increased by 84%, according to Cities United.

Homicide is the leading cause of death for Black men and boys from birth to age 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

2023 SF Design Week Award

In recognition of IDEO’s brand work with Citizens United

Sleep is a critical resource for shift workers—and their employers, too. Together, IDEO and Somni worked directly with people with acute and chronic sleep challenges to create concepts that could support their sleep goals, and provide employers with the means to improve employee health.

When IDEO and Somni first partnered, the startup was an early-stage company, so the team started small, with focused sprints and workshops to redesign the core aspects of the company and product offerings. The team interviewed shift workers about their sleep patterns, which can vary quite a bit. Even when people keep to a specific schedule on work days, they often have to change their patterns on days off to spend time with family and friends, leading to a very disruptive sleep cycle. Research revealed that many third shift workers were dealing with sleep and health issues, but also a pervasive “machismo” culture,  pressure to “tough it out,” and a reliance on energy drinks to deal with lack of sleep. 

To address those issues, the team designed a digital experience for sleep cohorts, support groups where members could share their experiences and sleep strategies, and work with a coach and sponsor who already had been through the program. The platform analyzed workers’ data, and provided AI-enabled recommendations for improving their sleep. The big takeaway? Data by itself wasn’t necessarily helpful, and could be confusing for folks who were less digitally-fluent. Providing context, like a calendar that displayed sleep experiments at a glance, was crucial. 

The IDEO team also created a new user experience for a genetic testing program that could uncover factors associated with sleep issues. Somni aims to use a saliva-based genetic test to monitor for DNA damage caused by circadian disruption, then leverage its sleep improvement program to prevent further damage. Because biomarker testing is a differentiating offer for Somni, it was extremely important that the team get it right, both to make sure that users could understand its utility, and for Somni to provide real value. The design challenge was unique—and not just because of data privacy concerns. Presenting data about DNA damage in a non-human-centered way could increase the anxiety workers had around their sleep.

At the end of the project, Somni leveraged the insights the IDEO team surfaced to improve products like its sleep coaching service, and to refine its biomarker testing offering. Based on this work, Somni has also created a pilot with a Fortune 100 company, which is currently in progress, as it works to mitigate the ill effects of disrupted sleep for employees and the companies they work for.

In the short-term, circadian rhythm disruption leads to an array of jet-lag-like symptoms, and in the long-run, it may contribute to weight gain, obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

It also impairs people’s ability to work, affecting productivity, creativity, and the overall work environment. Productivity loss can lead to employer baseline healthcare costs that are 26% higher, and over time, insomnia can result in an average cost of $4,267 more per employee per year.

In June 2019, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified shift work as a probable carcinogen.

75%

user retention in Somni's sleep program

$2,450

savings per year per employee for users who complete the program

33%

improvement in sleep quality, and 41 more minutes per night

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.