Before Eat Real can advocate for better school meals,  it has to connect with school leaders—and donors. As the organization expanded its work beyond school certification, it needed an updated soup-to-nuts branding redesign that represents its purpose.

To get started on the five-week sprint, the IDEO team conducted a brand audit and interviews with Eat Real staff, board members, and donors. The team learned that Eat Real’s brand messaging and voice showed up inconsistently, and that board members wanted greater clarity around communication to prospective donors. Several people expressed a desire to change the original logo centered on a fork to a more culturally-inclusive symbol, and for the logo to be separated from the Eat Real Certified stamp, since the organization had evolved to do much more than just certification.

The IDEO team worked in close collaboration with Eat Real to deliver comprehensive brand guidelines, including Eat Real’s brand purpose and core values, positioning and personality, logo and wordmark, visual expression, verbal expression, and brand showcase. The brand’s new tagline, Nourish the Future, speaks directly to how real food access unleashes the possibility for a healthier society and a healthier planet. A new mark combines three elements that signify much more: a welcoming bowl (joy and ritual), the serving spoon (generosity and nourishment), and a sprouting leaf (a future where children and the planet flourish). The team also landed on an unapologetically vibrant color palette, to bring surprise and energy to the brand. From this foundation, Eat Real created a new website, completed a photo shoot with IDEO's art direction, and launched the brand with new messaging and collateral within a year. Now, Eat Real has the tools it needs to scale its operations and affect real change.

To scale its program and be at the center of sustainable food systems change, Eat Real needed branding and messaging to reach a new set of philanthropists.

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Almost 30 million US kids depend on public school lunches for more than 50% of their daily calories. These meals are frequently made up of ultra-processed, unsustainable foods that contribute to type 2 diabetes and obesity.  

2023 funding goals reached

with its new branding, beating its end-of-year fundraising goals, and putting the nonprofit on track to serve more schools in 2024

129M

meals served to 360,000 students every year at schools that have gone through the certification program

Most end-of-high-school experiences, like the Chinese gaokao exam, the global IB Extended Essay, or the US-based AP Capstone program, are focused on testing and academic, classroom-based activities. Yungu School, a private K–12 school in Hangzhou, China, founded in 2017 by Jack Ma of Alibaba and funded by Alibaba partners, wanted to take a different approach.  Yungu’s vision: combine the renowned Chinese National Curriculum with an international, competency-based learning mindset.

Designing a new capstone course that brought together the perspectives of Yungu School’s many stakeholders was a complex challenge. The solution? IDEO formed a “co-creation council” composed of eight Yungu School middle- and high-school educators who held different positions within the school, spanned tenures, and came from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds, including Chinese, European, and American. Bringing together educators from a range of backgrounds and points of view fostered alignment and sparked new ideas. In addition to the council, IDEO and Yungu educators gathered additional input from students and parents and crafted the objectives, design principles, and blueprint for the change-making 18-month capstone program.

The collaboration resulted in a tailored, insight-driven capstone course that progressively builds learners’ confidence and agency via five modules: “Get Inspired,” “Find Yourself,” “Dive Deep,” “Go Big,” and “Give Back.” The learning cycles, which range from one week to half a year in length, teach students how to move from ideas to impact in topic areas they are passionate about and which have a bearing on pressing issues like climate change, digital privacy, and reducing food waste, among other global challenges. The goal of this iterative approach is twofold. Equip students for “global citizenship” by identifying personal ways to make a positive impact. And foster “entrepreneurship” by learning to be critical, creative, and optimistic systems thinkers who embrace a growth mindset.  

To ensure a solid foundation for the new course, IDEO also created a week-long design-thinking training program for Yungu’s teachers. The professional development experience boosted their creative problem-solving and taught them how to move from being “expert instructors of curricula” to “encouraging guides” of capstone students who would need to demonstrate their proficiency through a final product, presentation, or performance rather than a final exam. The collaboration concluded with an immersive exhibition that allowed all stakeholders—educators, students, and parents—to experience the content modules and transformative course for themselves.   Since launching its capstone program in 2022, Yungu High School has added lectures from social entrepreneurs and workshops that teach communication skills to the innovative course, garnering awards from media outlets like Fast Company. Most importantly, the signature program has enabled The Yungu School to embody its noble and audacious mission—empowering students to become future innovators for social good.

Today’s high-school seniors learn how to memorize academic content and pass tests but aren’t prepared to make a real-world impact after graduation.

196 college offers

and $1.442 million in scholarships received by over 40 graduates from Yungu High School’s class of 2023

2023 Finalist

Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards, Learning category

Design thinking was embedded in the creation of Omada Health from the earliest phases, and Omada has taken that forward as a strategy for success.

Over the past decade, the digital health company has grown from a couple of early career IDEOers testing concepts at the very frontier of digital health, to a company with nearly 2000 employers on its customer roster and more than one million users of its healthcare products.

Omada’s origin story began at IDEO in 2011, when its now CEO, Sean Duffy, an MD/MBA student at Harvard, joined IDEO as an intern, after a partner found his resume on the copy room floor. What was supposed to be a summer internship led to an exploration of the potential impact of digital tools on chronic health problems. IDEO partner Dennis Boyle gave Duffy and his co-founder and fellow IDEOer, Adrian James, the time and funding to do human factors research, meeting with people with prediabetes and metabolic disease in their homes to learn more about the care they were getting. What they heard was that no product or service was meeting the realities of their daily lives.

Five months after he landed his internship, and with the company’s blessing, Duffy and James spun Omada Health out of IDEO. Together, they raised a seed round, and continued to lean on design thinking methods, prototyping early versions of their product, then testing it with real patients. Duffy himself even served as the company’s first health coach. By sticking with the mindsets they had learned at IDEO, they avoided the pitfall of falling in love with the popular approaches to digital health of the era—like detailed food tracking or bluetooth enabled pill bottle tops. Instead, they stayed focused on creating what patients were asking for: a digital product that provided support, accountability, and evidence-based solutions. 

Today, Omada Health is a virtual-first, integrated care solution that provides patients with clinical care plans using digital tools and one-on-one, personalized coaching. It helps users manage chronic conditions including pre-diabetes, diabetes, hypertension, joint and muscle health, and behavioral health. More than a decade after its founding, it counts nearly 2000 employers as customers, has more than one million users of its products, and has published 24 peer-reviewed studies on its outcomes. Not to mention a $1.3 billion IPO in June of 2025. But it’s still going after its North Star: to bend the curve on preventable chronic diseases nationwide.

About 60% of adults in the US live with a chronic disease. According to the CDC, 90% of the nation’s $4.1 trillion annual healthcare expenditures are for people with chronic and mental health conditions.
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Diabetes is the country’s seventh leading cause of death—and the most expensive. Diabetes accounts for $1 out of every $4 in US healthcare costs. In addition to the cost of care, diabetes costs employers $90 billion annually in lost productivity.

Nearly 2,000

employers now partner with Omada

1 in 10

commercially-insured Americans have access to Omada through their health plan or employer coverage

$1.3 billion

valuation at Omada's IPO

Finding the right beauty product online isn’t easy, as shoppers are deluged with choices.

On top of information overload, our research unearthed varying emotional and functional needs when exploring beauty products. When looking for makeup, for example, shoppers are interested in self-expression and open to exploration. But when buying skincare products to fix an acne problem, say, people feel a bit more vulnerable. That insight led to rethinking the retail environment as a space that offers both free range exploration and trial spaces along with engagements that address the individualized needs of customers at different life stages.

Acknowledging that entering a new phase of life can make people feel insecure about their looks, we asked research participants, What does “beauty power” mean to you? Responses suggested a lack of trust in unbiased voices online about how to look and feel powerful. Digital shoppers are continuously bombarded by ads and influencers who are incentivized to push brands who hire them. Shoppers love Sephora for being a neutral space that showcases multiple brands, so we leaned into that strength, designing displays that offer product reviews and details that enable consumers to make informed decisions.

Those displays started as prototypes in a Sephora concept store that filled an entire floor of IDEO’s Shanghai office. In our bright, modern space, consumers of all demographics explored a self-led experience designed to delight. A “Play Table” allowed visitors to freely explore products, using digital platforms to access product details and reviews. Beauty consultants were close at hand to offer assistance. At another pitstop, the “Sephora Beauty School,” offered a spectrum of classes and community activities, providing hands-on guidance and enabling participants to test out beauty bloggers’ techniques. The “Care Table” addressed more personal skincare needs, providing a semi-private setting for individuals to remove makeup, try out products, and consult with experts. Here, digital tools helped consumers understand their skin type, facilitating personalized consultations akin to professional medical care. These innovative features aimed to create a unique, exploratory experience, blending digital convenience with concierge in-store service.

The feedback garnered from that prototype helped the team iterate quickly and gave Sephora the confidence to launch its first “Asia Store of the Future” in Singapore in 2022, followed by a second store in Shanghai in 2023. The Singapore store, situated in Raffles City, offered consumers a free-flowing, interactive beauty playground with a blend of digital and personal services, much like our early prototype.

The success of these two shops validated Sephora’s “Store of the Future” strategy. But experiences must evolve to stay fresh, so the team set up an “engagement indicator” tracking customers’ interaction with digital touchpoints to provide Sephora with valuable insights. Based on those insights, Sephora can continue to iterate its in-store experience and foster loyalty as its customers’ preferences shift.

As hoped, Sephora’s revitalized storefront blends digital and physical experiences in a way that gives every person who enters the store the feeling that they are stepping into their own “beauty power”.  By getting close to its customers, building early prototypes, and learning as it goes, Sephora has redefined the in-store experience, ensuring its relevance and appeal in a rapidly transforming retail landscape.

E-commerce has created tremendous challenges to companies whose core business revolves around retail stores.

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Online consumers struggle to make informed decisions with the deluge of choices online.

2

“Stores of the Future” launched

107%

traffic increase within four months of Shanghai store launch

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business.

The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.

In this revised and updated edition of Change By Design, Tim Brown reintroduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem-solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.

Change by Design is not a book by designers for designers; it is a book for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.

Purchase

Know someone who might love this book? Purchase Change By Design here.

Our checklist made all the difference when the Wellcome Trust tasked us with designing a way to cut down on unnecessary antibiotics use in middle-income countries. The world’s antibiotic misuse has staggering implications: By 2050, antimicrobial resistance is expected to kill 10 million people every year. That’s more people than we lose annually to cancer.

What became known as Project Marvelous took us to Kenya and India, where we encountered patients who self-diagnose and prescribe for themselves and their friends, community health workers with very little training, and pharmacies that dole out antibiotics without a prescription in order to make a sale.

As far as complex systems challenges go, it was an extreme one, but after testing several rounds of concepts rooted in behavior change, we found an intervention with real potential. Smart Prescriptions, as we called it, was an endpoint that varied drastically from where we began. The original hypothesis was that the intervention should be designed for pharmacists. But after following the checklist, we found we had to start with doctors.

Here are the five steps we followed to address this complex systems challenge:

1. Define your ecosystem

We can’t claim to have reached an understanding of the whole ecosystem by a longshot—the sheer number of stakeholders involved is what makes it such a complex problem. So at the outset, we defined our ecosystem, drawing a line at pharmaceutical companies, which seemed beyond the scope of the design challenge Wellcome had set. We then set out to interview antibiotic users, doctors, and pharmacists. In doing so, we realized there was a category we had overlooked: India’s tens of thousands of registered medical practitioners (RMPs). They typically aren’t licensed to prescribe antibiotics but have studied Ayurvedic medicine. Being willing to pivot and expand (or contract) the ecosystem is key: We began interviewing RMPs after realizing the huge impact their population has on antibiotics consumption.

2. Adopt a beginner’s mindset

In interviews, we positioned ourselves as people who didn’t know much about the topic. We were there to learn about them as people—their motivations, their struggles, their day-to-day. We listened. We made sure our questions were free of judgement and left our assumptions at the door. What we came to understand is that a primary motivator for doctors is to succeed as a business. They depend on patients coming back.

This insight made it through to the final design. Smart Prescriptions is, at its core, a tool to improve the doctor-patient relationship. Features like automated advice for patients and medication reminders increase the personal interactions doctors have with patients. The antibiotics recommendation is a Trojan horse, tucked inside the features doctors were really clamoring for.

3. Lead with empathy

Continually put yourself in your user’s shoes and make sure you’re seeing the situation from their perspective. We quickly came to understand, for instance, that many people working in pharmacies aren’t actually pharmacists, and that their financial motivations eclipse any duty of care. They dole out antibiotics without a prescription because refraining from doing so means sacrificing a sale and possibly losing a customer to a rival. Rather than slapping a “bad” behavior label on this, we accepted it as their reality and used it as a design constraint.

4. Consider your language

Systems challenges are often as sensitive as they are complex (consider homelessness or mental illness). As designers we are outsiders, so in designing Smart Prescriptions, we needed to make sure doctors were upheld as the experts. We weren’t creating a diagnostic tool, but rather an intervention that offers a recommendation based on their diagnosis. The tool doesn’t actually change the way they prescribe, it just offers guidance. It’s tough to remember every antibiotics guideline, especially as they update. The language that was used was consciously designed to be light and supportive of their expertise.

5. Generate unlimited ideas, then co-create

Don’t fall in love with your first good idea. Every assumption we made was challenged in our first trip, which ended up being more exploratory than we expected. We made a point to talk to every stakeholder and actor about our sacrificial concepts—early ideas we put in front of people to spark reactions. We gauged whether they had a positive or negative response, then iterated accordingly. After the discovery phase, we came up with seven concepts to test with participants and gauged their reactions. Smart Prescriptions was the clear standout, generating the most interest and excitement. We refined the concept back home, then returned to India and Kenya to gather more feedback. This allowed us to design something that spoke to doctors’ primary motivation, and to add features that the doctors felt would make it even more useful.

Unlike pilots, we don’t have the benefit of a known destination. Our checklist doesn’t just guarantee a smoother ride, it plays a major role in mapping the route itself. When the ecosystem is unfamiliar and the complexity is vast, it is a must.

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Every time we board an airplane, we assume our pilots aren’t going on instinct alone. They’ve worked their way through a checklist—fuel levels reviewed, the flap setting confirmed—to ensure the plane is ready for takeoff. They may be pros, but they’re human, and the complexity of the job makes it easy to forget a step.

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While I occasionally geek out over numbers, I spend most of my time going deep with clients, sketching business models, and building prototypes to test our ideas with real people.

I’m currently working on a project to create a new taxi experience for Japan. We’re working to help our client, a taxi equipment supplier, stay relevant when taxis themselves are being disrupted.

There’s really no typical day for me at IDEO, but here’s a little peek at what a recent one looked like.

8:30am: Commute

On nice days I walk to work through Yoyogi Park, one of Tokyo’s largest. It’s hard to believe that I live in a concrete jungle with views like this! Most days, though, I take the train. It’s exactly 16 minutes to get to work. (Perk of living in Tokyo: Trains run like clockwork.)

10:00am: Team stand-up

Our team has daily morning and evening stand-ups. We’re supposed to plan the day, but we get sidetracked and spend most of it playing with our taxi prototype.

10:30am: Business model review

I sketch out our current idea using our Business Model Tiles. They’re a quick, visual way to bring our plan to life, and they make it easy enough for anybody to come in and iterate with me. (The team liked this version.)

12:00pm: Monday lunch meeting

The entire studio gets together every Monday for lunch. The food is amazing—we have different caterers provide freshly cooked, seasonal dishes every week. Usually, we share silly photos from the previous week and studio/project updates. Everybody takes a turn as host, and shares personal inspiration. This week it's Ryo, introducing one of our new D4V (Design for Ventures) portfolio companies, Tabi Labo, to the studio. (More on that later!)

1:00pm: Crash course in graphic design

Outside of work, I run a pop-up curry shop with some friends. We make curry with a Japanese twist, using seasonal ingredients or flavoring that you might not usually find in curry. I’m lucky to be surrounded by talented graphic designers who helped me transform my very analogue potato stamp logo into a digital masterpiece.

2:00pm: Video shoot

We’re making a short user journey video to showcase what our taxi service might look and feel like. As a business designer, making things tangible is important, because it makes the service feel real, and empowers clients to take risks and launch new businesses. Our client got really into it, and even starred in the video as the taxi driver!

5:00: Design sprint

IDEO Tokyo is co-located with D4V (Design for Ventures), our in-house venture capital fund. I really enjoy working with the startups, which have different needs from our typical clients, and move really fast. Here, we’re helping Famzon (a company that makes shoes with interchangeable heels) create its first pop-up store in the Haneda Airport.

6:30pm: Heading home

It’s been a long day. Can’t wait to go home, eat dinner, and recharge for tomorrow.

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When people ask me what I do for a living, I say, “I find innovative ways for companies to transform and grow.” I think a lot about the intangible parts of creating a new service. How do we make money? Who do we partner with? What resources do we need to begin?

IDEO organizational designer Mollie West Duffy doesn’t buy it. “By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk preventable mistakes,” she says. “We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to make work meaningful, and we are more likely to burn out.”

Last month, West and her coauthor Liz Fosslien released No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed, which argues for harnessing emotions to push your career forward. “Most of us have never learned how to do this in our professional lives, let alone been allowed to admit how much feelings at work matter,” she says. IDEO’s Anna Moore Silverstein sat down with Mollie to learn more.

What inspired you to write this book?

The inspiration for this book came from the fact that when Liz and I started our first jobs, we thought professionals did not fail, did not fuss, and certainly did not feel. But we soon realized this view was not only unrealistic, it stood in the way of our sense of fulfillment—and of our success. Our goal as we began researching No Hard Feelings was to better understand our emotions—when are they useful and when are they just noise? Can we mold them to change how we experience work?

Can you explain the concept of an emotional work culture?

Emotional culture is how and to what extent employees of a company express feelings at work. Every office has one, though few companies talk about emotional norms. Emotional culture affects how much we enjoy our jobs, how stressed we might feel, and our ability to do work well and on time.

To instantly get a sense for a particular office’s emotional culture, Wharton professor Adam Grant suggests you say to an employee,“Tell me a story about something that would only happen here.” For example, at IDEO’s New York studio, Thursday lunches are dedicated to Make(believe) time. Creative activities like aromatic fingerpainting, writing group haiku poems, and blind contour drawing help employees get goofy. You can also look for more subtle cues that indicate what kind of emotions are acceptable in a work space. Do your coworkers seem more comfortable expressing frustration or joy? Are there tissues in meeting rooms (which might indicate it’s okay to cry)? Is it cool to respond to emails with a funny cat GIF?

Why does emotional culture matter so much?

When we feel supported and motivated by our colleagues, we are happier, more productive, and stick around longer. We’re also healthier and better able to cope with job stress. And when our bosses respond to our mistakes with patience instead of fury, we trust them more.

As an org designer, you help people design and scale change in their organizations, and change can be challenging. How do you account for emotions in client work?

Something we say a lot at IDEO is “Change is beautiful.” But change is also uncomfortable, and can be an emotional roller coaster

To help with this emotional journey, we try to set time for weekly check-ins. On my last project, we had a retrospective every Friday that included the client team. We asked everyone to go around and share one thing that went well, one thing they’d like to change, and their overall feelings about the week. This helped us all share our feelings in a dedicated time, so it felt less awkward.

I also have had to work on my own emotions with clients. I tend to be an under-emoter, which means I process my feelings inside. (You can take our emotional expression tendency assessment to see if you are an over-emoter or an under-emoter). So I’m working on trying to warm more quickly. I try to verbalize how excited I’m feeling about a project and a team, to help get our energy up. I also try to verbalize when I’m feeling overwhelmed and I need more help. It’s an ongoing process!

Are there other exercises you would recommend to help a company build a better emotional culture?

Awareness is a really powerful communication tool. Many of the CEOs interviewed by New York Times columnist Adam Bryant create “user manuals” or “how to work with me” guides to make collaboration easier. It’s one of the best ways to pre-empt potential misunderstandings—or hurt feelings. To achieve the same with your team, Adam recommends blocking off an hour to answer the questions below.

What everyone should know about you:

1. What are some honest, unfiltered things about you?
2. What drives you nuts?
3. What are your quirks?
4. What qualities do you particularly value in people who work with you?
5. What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?

How to work with you:

1. What’s the best way to communicate with you?
2. What hours do we want to work together? Where and how do we want to work (same room, what kinds of meetings, what kinds of file sharing, etc)?
3. What are our goals for this team? What are our concerns about this team?
4. How will we make decisions? What types of decisions need consensus? How will we deal with conflict?
5. How do we want to give and receive feedback (one-on-one, in a group, informally, or during a specified time each week)?

For me, answering these questions was about revealing that I warm up to people slowly. Once people get to know me, I think they find that I’m warm, generous, and even silly. But I can come across as more reserved and serious at first. For Liz, it was about showing people that she loves to be left alone when she works. For people who enjoy frequently emailing or messaging one another, her behavior could come across as antisocial, but she’s a person who needs to put her head down to work—cognitive switching is a productivity sinkhole.

Exercises like these make it easy for people to be honest up front, and set an emotional tone for your team or office. By sharing early, you can make it easier to meet people where they are, and set the stage for sharing of feelings and preferences throughout the process.

Emotions affect so many parts of work, from collaboration to decision-making, motivation, and communication between employees and managers. But in American work culture, “emotional” can be a dirty word. There’s a misconception that expressing feelings is unprofessional or out of place in the office.

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.