Looking to understand the role of instant noodles in middle-class Chinese life, the IDEO team conducted in-home research with consumers across a range of life stages and levels of attachment to noodle culture and convenience foods. The first finding was reassuring: Everyone kept instant noodles at home. The category still had a place in middle-class kitchens. But beneath that was a more complicated, emotional story—and an unmet need for convenience and quality to coexist in a single product.

The team discovered that instant noodles are more than just a quick, on-the-go meal; they are a nostalgic comfort food that evokes fond memories. But since their heyday, their role in daily life has evolved. Once a complete meal in itself, instant noodles now often function as a versatile flavor base or culinary accent in other dishes. Because they don’t align with the healthier, higher-quality, and more novel food choices that middle-class consumers aspire to, noodle shops, delivery noodles, or fresh-cooked instant options often win out. Yet, even these alternatives come with trade-offs. Delivered noodles lose texture during transport. Sit-down noodle shops preserve quality but offer limited flavors.  Cooking from scratch meets the bar for both texture and flavor, but requires a significant time investment. As one young mother said, “If I could get the texture of fresh-cooked noodles without turning on the stove, I’d buy that instant noodle for sure.”

The research inspired the creation of a new category, which the team termed “fresh-brewed noodles.” More than just a noodle or broth upgrade, Master Kong’s fresh-brewed noodles would offer the speed of instant noodles with the quality of freshly cooked options, plus flavors not found in traditional noodle shops. The strategic positioning was clear. Executing it by making fresh-brewed noodles mass-producible, affordable, and eventually profitable presented a category-innovation challenge. To get there, IDEO designed a series of dual-track co-creation workshops with the Master Kong team and consumers.

One track focused on prototyping the core product experience: noodles, broth, and toppings. IDEO and Master Kong’s R&D team began by studying the traditional craft of Chinese noodle-making, starting in Shanxi, a region renowned for its noodles. Through successive rounds of prototyping and consumer tasting, the team identified a critical insight: for “fresh-brewed noodles” to be convincing, the innovation had to be centered on the noodles themselves.

Texture alone was not enough. Consumers needed to see a meaningful difference before they tasted the product. IDEO translated this insight into a distinctive noodle profile: irregular, dimensional shapes designed to remain springy, hold sauce and broth, and mimic the resilience of freshly cooked noodles using only hot water. Because this visible shape represented the product’s core value proposition, it became a hero feature on the packaging. The graphic design made a bold visual statement about the noodle form, turning a technical R&D breakthrough into an immediately legible consumer promise: these are not ordinary instant noodles.

A parallel track explored the broader commercial experience: trend-forward and reimagined classic flavor profiles, light yet deeply satisfying broths, carefully selected toppings, and packaging that signals a new level of quality on store shelves. One key insight was that utensils carry meaning. Conventional instant noodles are often associated with disposable plastic forks, while higher-quality noodles are eaten with chopsticks. IDEO translated this cultural cue into the design of the bowl’s lid.

Instead of treating utensils as an afterthought, the team designed a solid, rounded, heat-retaining lid that embeds a pair of small wooden chopsticks. The gesture creates a small ritual of anticipation and reframes the product—not just a convenient instant meal, but a more considered noodle experience. Once opened, the product fulfills that promise with satisfyingly bouncy noodles, a rich liquid broth pouch that replaces the traditional oil-and-powder packet, and a vegetable packet reformulated with more premium whole ingredients.

The first batch of “Te Bie Te” Fresh-Brewed Noodles—Chinese wordplay that emphasizes “special”—launched in August 2025 with three trendy and tried-and-true flavors. Within just three days, sales exceeded 100,000 bowls. Within a week, “Te Bie Te” topped the instant noodle category sales ranking on Douyin, China’s domestic counterpart to TikTok. The outcome was bigger than a product launch—it served as proof that a mature, declining category could be fundamentally reinvented to meet consumers’ real needs. For Master Kong, the project became a North Star and a model for internal category innovation in beverages, ready-to-eat foods, and beyond.

Once a popular, affordable staple, the instant noodle category in China has been declining rapidly due to shifting demographics, rising food delivery options, and increasing customer demand for healthier, more nutritious meals.

‍

According to the World Instant Noodles Association, between 2020 and 2023, China’s instant noodle consumption fell by 4 billion packs.

100,000+

“Te Bie Te” bowls sold in the first 3 days on the market

#1

on Douyin’s instant noodle category ranking within one week of launch

Taylor’s legacy began in 1969 with the founding of Taylor’s College and soon expanded to include Taylor’s University, one of Southeast Asia’s top private universities, as well as many other institutions that serve 35,000 students per year. The family-owned group also operates Taylor’s International Schools, Garden International School, and Nexus International School for students ages 4 to 18. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital city, annual tuition at premium private schools like these ranges from about $10,000 to $25,000 USD. Taylor’s wanted to do something different: provide the same level of academic rigor and immersive learning experiences at one-third the cost.

IDEO began by speaking with over three dozen students, parents, teachers, and experts across the capital to understand what was working, what wasn’t, and what was missing from such moderately priced international schools.

A few themes quickly emerged. Families, students, and teachers were worried about the stability of these new private schools, which tended to have higher-than-normal teacher turnover rates and were plagued by financial instability, negatively impacting talent attraction and retention, as well as student learning. Parents appreciated that the schools offered holistic learning experiences, such as field trips to rural areas, including jungles, but wished they were more consistently part of the curriculum. And now, the looming challenge of AI—how to use it, how to teach it, and how to teach with it—was in the background, a persistent cause for concern. The big unmet need? Reassurance that Taylor’s was thinking long-term and systematically about developing the skills, knowledge, and mindsets that would prepare students for an ever-changing world. Parents wanted a school that measured growth in academic, social, and character terms over generations, not just school semesters.

With these insights in hand, IDEO began developing a design Playbook for Taylor’s new brand—Lexel International Schools. A combination of “lexicon” and “excellence,” Lexel’s mission is “building what lasts, learning for life.”

The schools are centered around three key differentiators: 

• Always Ahead: Lexel schools commit to staying current with the topics and subject matter they teach, as well as the tools they provide to students, parents, and teachers.s.  
  ‍
• Learning That Builds for Life: The schools ensure programmatic, systemic, and consistent learning experiences from Pre-K to Year 11. Interested students can even continue their post-secondary journey in partnership with Taylor’s University and other higher education institutions within the Taylor’s ecosystem.
  
  
• Educators for the Long Run: These schools commit to ongoing investments in professional growth opportunities for teachers and stable learning environments for students.

Four Lexel Literacies—AI, Digital, Financial, and Nutrition—integrated into the Cambridge Curriculum bring the school’s vision and mission to life.

By systematically integrating AI literacy into its spiral education framework, in particular, an approach where major topics are revisited multiple times through a curriculum to build fluency over time, Lexel ensures parents that the school is thinking a decade ahead from Day One, setting the school apart. In addition to enhancing AI fluency, Lexel offers unique end-of-term experiences called Jungles & Junctions.

Combining three important strands of learning—community engagement, nature-based personal and interpersonal development, and career and university exploration—Jungles & Junctions leverages Taylor’s extended educational network and Lexel’s strategic founding campus within the Gamuda Gardens development in Selangor. Surrounded by tropical rainforests, the township’s residential neighborhoods, theme park, and various sports facilities, including an Olympic-length swimming pool, are transformed into an extended Lexel campus, with a GenAI-driven planner to help teachers streamline the organization of class outings. “The Township is Your Campus” became the tagline for this approach.

In September 2025, just months after IDEO’s collaboration ended, Taylor’s began classes at its first Lexel International School. By mid-year, the new school had achieved 115% of its year-one student enrollment target, with significant inbound demand for Year 2 already demonstrating the school’s market resonance.

The modern campus features spacious classrooms, science and technology labs, a library, a multipurpose hall, and a canteen. Annual tuition ranges from about $2,800 USD for pre-K students to about $6,100 USD for secondary students.

Most importantly, by combining Taylor’s deep academic expertise, Gamuda Land’s development prowess, and IDEO’s innovative design Playbook, Lexel brings quality, affordable international education closer to home for Malaysian families. According to one parent, “My daughter looks forward to going to school every day … and has a lot of opportunities to express herself. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give [Lexel] an 11.” Based on the IDEO Playbook, a second flagship campus in the Southern Klang Valley, which is scheduled to open in September 2026, has already exceeded its year-one target enrollment expectations, with plans to continue extending the Lexel network to other parts of Malaysia and the wider Southeast Asian region in the near future.

Malaysia’s private international school sector has grown significantly as parents seek quality English-language education. However, high tuition fees and limited access to reputable schools are continual challenges for those in the emerging middle class.

115%

of Lexel’s student enrollment target reached during the launch year of its first campus
‍

Year 1 enrollment target exceeded

at Lexel's second campus several months ahead of classes commencing

‍

The American news industry has long been a competitive and saturated market. This has only intensified with the emergence of social media outlets and AI-generated news. Even so, SAN’s rigorously unbiased, fact-based reporting style and rich video storytelling had enabled the ambitious startup to rise above the media fray in just three short years.

With a strong foundation to build on, IDEO sought to further differentiate SAN’s cutting-edge news product and build deeper engagement with a wider audience through a new user experience.

‍Collaborating closely, IDEO and SAN began by delving deeply into media consumption habits. They met with early SAN superfans, news consumers who spent hours a day absorbing content from traditional outlets like Fox and USA Today, and those who looked to their Ring doorbell app or Reddit for news. The takeaways? People were tired of clickbait and clunky interfaces. They sought clear, factual news that was easily accessible, with additional context to help them interpret events and understand their significance. They craved more than one perspective on important topics, so stories felt balanced rather than polarized. They also valued having control over how they consumed news, so making it easy to switch between text, video, and audio formats was crucial.

Together, IDEO and SAN created features across SAN’s website and app that put facts, trust, and transparency at the core of the product experience. Fact Cards distill key data points into clear, shareable units, while the Sources feature allows readers to trace information directly back to its original source. To make complex stories easier to grasp, Big Picture insights drill down into why events matter, surfacing underlying themes, historical parallels, differences in reporting, and common ground. The Why This Story Matters section provides readers with clear framing and sets the story within a broader context, while the Timeline illustrates how events unfold over days, months, or even years. An antidote to news polarization, See All Sides presents left, right, and center narratives for key topics side-by-side, and Media Landscape visualizations reveal how coverage varies across outlets. Finally, to ensure SAN fits seamlessly into readers’ daily lives, the redesigned Today Page is organized into three highly scannable sections: Latest News, Top Stories, and SAN Originals. The combined features create a balanced, clear, and non-polarizing news experience, making it easy for readers to delve deeper into the sources of their news.

SAN now delivers a news experience as modern, dynamic, and trustworthy as its journalism. A month after its debut, the SAN app’s page views increased 1,170 percent year over year compared to June 2024, while active users rose 700 percent. Readers also give the updated mobile experience a 4.8 rating on the Apple App Store. “Our team is delivering reporting that’s both deeply factual and accessible,” said Derek Mead, SAN’s Chief Content Officer. “This redesign is pivotal to the direction journalism needs to take and the leadership role Straight Arrow News is taking on as we help guide the news industry into a brighter future.”

SAN built a loyal readership and gained recognition for its unbiased reporting. To expand and stand out from legacy media, SAN  wanted a redesigned user experience that reflected its commitment to fact-based journalism.

1,170%

increase in app page views YoY 

700%

increase in active users

4.8 rating

on the Apple App Store

Sanofi was the first company to supply the polio vaccine worldwide. Because of the global fight against the disease, endemic wild poliovirus transmission is now limited to just two countries. However, attitudes toward vaccines and immunizations have shifted significantly. To ensure a smooth launch of Beyfortus in a time of increased vaccine hesitancy, Sanofi asked IDEO to conduct research across four important and very different healthcare markets: Germany, Spain, China, and the US.

IDEO worked with parents, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and healthcare administrators to identify potential barriers to vaccine adoption and understand the emotional needs of all stakeholders involved in the immunization process. Navigating cultural differences and diverse healthcare environments, the team uncovered a set of insights.

For healthcare professionals, the team discovered there was no one-size-fits-all approach to immunization training across Sanofi’s 20-plus global markets. While consistency of key information was important, trainings needed to be flexible and customizable. This way, regardless of whether the vaccine was administered by midwives, OB-GYNs, nurses, or doctors, they could  confidently discuss the pros and cons across cultural contexts and administer the drug correctly.
‍
For new parents, receiving information about a new immunization immediately after giving birth could be too stressful. But simply leaving pamphlets about Beyfortus in waiting rooms didn't address their real concerns, either. Caregivers needed to engage in conversations earlier in their pregnancies and continue them after leaving the hospital, when they might have additional questions.

IDEO translated these research insights into a highly accessible global communication toolkit that uses simple, straightforward language, metaphors, and illustrations to support informed conversations between healthcare providers and parents before, during, and after a child is born. IDEO then conducted a series of market-fit co-design workshops with representatives of Sanofi’s global immunization business to iterate on the print and digital tools, make them more resonant with regional customers, and ensure compliance with local regulations. IDEO handed the toolkits over for development to support the launch of Beyfortus in January 2024, just in time for RSV season.

Beyfortus saw enormous demand in its first year, demonstrating strong efficacy in real-world applications and achieving blockbuster status as a $1.8 billion therapy. Sanofi’s global launch team credits the patient-centric toolkit with increased requests for communication materials from its regional markets as well as from healthcare and government organizations that have typically been hard to reach, key goals of its global-local launch strategy.

Since its development, Beyfortus has received swift regulatory approval from the US, EU, China, and Japan, with patient demand causing Sanofi to triple its worldwide manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of the 2024-25 RSV season. Ahead of the larger global distribution of Beyfortus, IDEO and Sanofi partnered with equity expert consultants, Fearless Futures, to conduct a DEI review and worked with doctors and nurses who participated in the initial drug launch to make the materials even more accessible, relevant, and successful for 2025 and beyond. To date, six million babies—and counting—have been immunized with Beyfortus.

Worldwide, childhood vaccination hesitancy among parents fluctuates between 25-45%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a trend it considers one of the biggest global threats to public health.

85.9%

‍reduction in hospitalizations for infants who received Beyfortus compared to those who did not (2023–24 RSV season)

$1.8B

in first-year sales of Beyfortus

‍

During the project shareback, one of the designers held up a piece of paper with this quote:

“Interacting with legal was one of the worst experiences of my life.”

Full stop.

Maybe the commenter was talking about me. Maybe she was talking about another lawyer. Maybe she was commenting on the legal process generally. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my career, I thought about the impact I have on the people I interact with in my role as a lawyer, and how that impact might be quite negative.

We never discussed anything like this in law school. Instead, we focused on “making cases,” “winning arguments,” and “clerking for the right judge.” Later, as Biglaw associates, we talked about “billing hours,” “closing deals,” and “working with the right partner.” But I don’t recall ever being asked, “How did your client feel about how you handled that matter?” or, “How did the lawyer on the other side of that call feel about the interaction?” Or, for that matter, “Are you providing a colleague or client with one of the worst experiences of his life?” We talk about these issues all the time at IDEO when it comes to our clients and their customers, but they aren’t things I ever talked about with fellow attorneys.

In that moment, I made a decision: There was no reason I couldn’t do my job — and do it well — and care about the experience of the people I was affecting.

Fast forward to 2014. I took my mother to see a neurologist at Stanford University. He confirmed our family’s worst fears: My mother had Alzheimer’s, and it was advancing. Rapidly. This was devastating, hard to hear news. And yet, in the car on the way home, I felt strangely positive. Why? Because the doctor took the time to translate the complexity of her disease into language we could understand as non-medical professionals. He walked us through very difficult territory with honesty and compassion. He was respectful of her even as she repeatedly asked him the same questions. And he highlighted the factors we could control. We couldn’t change her disease, but we could approach it proactively and honestly, while giving her as much dignity and comfort as possible.

What if the experience of working with a lawyer felt more like this?

Even though law and legal processes are designed by humans for humans, the reality is that most interactions with legal professionals don’t feel very good.Interactions are often harsh, transactional, and bereft of transparency, emotion, or humanity. Touch points are filled with frustration, confusion, and disempowerment. Lawyers may resort to aggressive tactics as a way to navigate conflict or out of fear they will be taken advantage of in a given situation. Worse, many lawyers I talk to seem to accept this status quo. That’s just the way law is practiced. That’s just the way it is.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Instead, we can practice what my colleague, IDEO partner Chris Domina, in 2011 termed “human-centered” lawyering (when he asked me if I knew “any human-centered lawyers outside of IDEO?”). Human-centered lawyers are those who can treat legal problems as human problems, translate legal complexity into relatable frameworks, and navigate tension and conflict with skill, patience, and respect for all stakeholders involved.

In working toward becoming more human-centered, I’ve come to understand the value of making emotional connections with individuals I’m interacting with and not treating legal matters and the people connected to them as purely transactional. Empathy, the key to human-centered design, is the same key that opens the door to human-centered lawyering.

For example, instead of being frustrated that opposing attorneys are “rejecting” my proposals or “not seeing it my way,” I’ve learned to try to put myself in their shoes. If I were representing their client or working for their in-house legal team, what would I be most concerned about? What problems are they trying to head off, and what problems have they had in the past in these types of situations? Are they frustrated because this is just one of too many things they have to deal with today? From this very human place, I can be a collaborative problem solver, rather than someone engaging in an argument to win a point or “push back” because that’s what lawyers are “supposed to do.”

In being human-centered, am I any less firm when it comes to working through difficult legal challenges? No; my colleagues generally refer to me as “strong” and “confident.” Do I “just give” on issues during a challenging negotiation? Not at all. IDEO doesn’t compromise its people or its business, no matter how big the deal or how aggressive the opposition. But neither do we compromise our compassion.

Most legal professionals I know have had interactions with other lawyers who use anger, hostility, power tactics, aggression, and rude or belittling behavior to try to navigate legal situations (and most of us have also been guilty of the same at times). In addition to harming the relationships their clients are trying to build, those behaviors leave their mark on people. They leave people fearful or resentful of lawyers, and of course they tarnish the profession’s reputation. That’s not the kind of impact I want myself or my team to have on the world.

Is the legal team at IDEO perfect? Do we succeed in making every legal interaction with people inside and outside of IDEO positive? Of course not. But as a team, we have a clear purpose: to provide human-centered legal support and solutions to the IDEO community and to the broader legal industry.

Stay tuned—and stay human—lawyers.

This story was originally published on Medium. For more on the subject of human-centered lawyering, read this story by legal designer Sean Hewens and this interview with IDEO's general counsel Rochael Adranly.

‍

Not long after I began working with IDEO, I had the privilege of taking part in a project to design how its new internal legal group would operate. For those unfamiliar with IDEO’s process, each project begins with a “looking in” phase in which the design team interviews project stakeholders and shares their feedback.

Because usage is tied to a period of time, a digital calendar with interactive feedback seemed like the perfect way to represent a year in the life of the Chicago studio. There would be three elements to it: a milled piece of wood whose undulating shape would represent changes in energy usage over time; an interactive display that would show usage in more detail; and a set of buttons that would let users call up specific data on the display.

The Code

This is a tricky project for someone who doesn’t know anything about coding let alone a programming language. I had to figure out how to manipulate the usage data using tools from my life as an industrial designer. I started with Grasshopper, a visual programming language and a plugin for the 3-D modeling software Rhinoceros that I learned how to use as an undergrad. Instead of writing code, you connect boxes of different abilities to each other. By connecting the boxes with each other, I was able to pull in the data from my Excel spreadsheet and convert it into 3-D shape; then it was ready to work within Rhinoceros. Because Grasshopper is a plugin for Rhinoceros, you can see what you’re doing as you go. After some long nights, I figured out how to display the data in a 3-D shape.

Prototyping

With the code all set, I moved on to creating the touchable surface. I made some quick 3-D prints of the data I created in Rhinoceros, then made a low-fidelity video prototype to display how the installation would look and work. The idea was to let the user feel the changing data via a touchable surface, and give him/her a visual representation of the data on the screen.

Build Phase

Step 1: Milling the wood

The touchable interface was the main piece of my installation, so it was crucial to get it right.

I bought one long piece of walnut and used the table saw to cut it to the length I needed, then glued the resulting pieces together. I created the undulating surface with a CNC table mill, which took roughly 10 hours. It was loud and dusty, but worth it. To get the perfect finish, I had to sand it — a lot. I probably could have stopped earlier, but I wanted to have a perfect piece. Then, I rubbed it with Danish oil to protect the surface and bring out the wood grain.

Step 2: The visual feedback

To create the visual feedback, I used a Raspberry Pi, a capacitive touch board (MPR121), a 7” HDMI screen, wires, and some copper rivets. With no experience with Raspberry Pi or electrical engineering, I had to catch up quickly. To display the data on the screen, I used a handy piece of code I found on the internet called PiPresents. For input, I used capacitive touch buttons, which I linked to specific images that display the data.

Step 3: Panel assembly

This step was one of the harder parts. I had to bring all the different pieces together and create the framed panel. I started with a cheap frame from an art supply store, then created an acrylic, laser-etched back panel, spray painted it black, and sanded it to make it matte. Next, I attached the wooden panel to the screen, and connected the 12 capacitive touch buttons, one for each month, arranged along the long axis of the wooden surface. Once everything was in place, users could feel the wood to get a sense of our changing energy usage, then touch the buttons to see a drilled down explanation of the data by month. About a month and a half after I first came up with the idea, it was finally ready to present to the studio.

A big thank you to the whole studio, especially to Chris Gold for helping me during the milling process, Rob Rehrig for giving me a Raspberry Pi 101, and Sophie Feng for taking awesome final pictures and video. Want to recreate the project? Check out the code on Github.

As an industrial designer, I’m always eager to bring together the digital and the physical. So when I discovered that the Chicago studio was collecting data about their energy usage, I decided to create a project that would make that information feel real, teach me more about other disciplines, and serve as a gift to the studio that had hosted me as an intern for half a year.

"Arrivo!," I shout to the taxi driver as I close the gate of the building with my foot. I speed walk towards his car, parked 50 meters down the road, drag the suitcase on the back seat and ask the driver to take me to the airport. My holiday in Napoli—my hometown—is over. I'm already shivering at the idea of setting foot back in London.

Halfway through the trip, my eyes catch on an unusual detail. A tennis ball cut in half to fit the top of the taxi's gearstick. I can't help but investigate.

"Ascolta (Listen)," he says in the gruff voice of a longtime smoker, "with this heat, my job gets very challenging." Despite air conditioning, he explains, the sun makes the gearstick slippery and hot, which makes for a rather unpleasant driving experience.

To tackle this problem, he decided to carefully slice a tennis ball in half and place over the gearstick's handle. "It's a precise job," he explains. "You need to make sure it won't move once it's placed." The texture of the tennis ball allows for a better grip, and doesn't get hot in the sun—ta-da!

He brakes lightly to come to a stop at the departures terminal. As he rummages for my change, he surprises me with a Steve Jobs-style "And one more thing ..."

"You know, it's not just about the function of the tennis ball, it's also the excitement of getting a new one every year. That bright yellow marks the start of a new season—it's something I look forward to!"

I gently close the cab door, roll my suitcase to the entrance and, out of the corner of my eye, catch him smiling in the dense, departing traffic.

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.

In one sentence, who are you?

A queer, shapeshifting, creative cat mama with a big heart.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

I am currently an illustrator and a textile designer. When I was a kid, I used to draw little doodles on dinner napkins and give one to everyone at the table. I loved sharing my art with everyone.

When I was around six, my mom enrolled me in a summer program at The Baum School of Art in Pennsylvania. There, I learned all the technical aspects of drawing and painting. I went to Baum every summer for 10 years. Then I got an academic scholarship to Pratt Institute.

The next thing I knew, I was living in Brooklyn and working my ass off. During my senior year, I focused my thesis on textile design. I always liked the idea of bringing my designs off the page and applying them to T-shirts, pillows, hats, chairs, bedding, etc.

I graduated in 2015, and a few of my friends from college and I started Fem Foundry. One of the best things about art school is getting your work critiqued by your peers, and the Foundry lets us continue that. Plus, we do a lot of other fun things, like organizing drink and draws, having gallery shows, and tabling at art fairs.

Like many other twenty-somethings, I had to start paying rent after school. I worked a few odd jobs—did branding for local restaurants, taught painting classes, designed event posters, and helped out at an animation studio. There were many times when I had no idea what I was doing, but I’m a big believer in fake it 'til you make it.

About a year after graduation, I landed a job as a textile designer at Deborah Connolly Designs, a small company in Midtown Manhattan. I went into the interview clueless about the industry, and now, two years later, I can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about designing bath towels, beach towels, kitchen towels—really any kind of towel.

3 favorite possessions?

1. The first and only quilt I ever made
2. A white gold locket my mother gave me with our pictures in it
3. My black denim Fem Foundry jacket that I decked out with pins and patches and my eyeglass collection

What does a typical work session look like?

Right now, I’m designing beach towels for next summer. There’s usually some sort of inspiration or color story for the designs, and then it begins! I work primarily on a Wacom drawing tablet with either Photoshop, Illustrator, or Nedgraphics. Most designs go through a few revisions before I send them out for production.

When I’m illustrating at home, I like using traditional mediums like gouache paint and charcoal pencil. I also enjoy playing around on my iPad in Procreate. It’s exciting what technology is bringing to the table for creative people.

I’m a total podcast junkie while working. Some of my favorites are Reply All, Freakonomics Radio, On Being, Revisionist History, Lovett It or Leave It, Nancy, Death, Sex & Money. If I sit in silence, I tend to overthink things; listening to something keeps my momentum going, and it’s a great way to track how long I’ve been working on a project.

How do you get over creative block?

At work, I’ll just start a new design in order to keep the juices flowing, and then when I’m in my groove, the trickier designs come more easily. With painting and illustrating, I try to step away and come back to it later, or sometimes I flip a drawing backwards or upside-down so I can see it from a new perspective.

What was the last item on your to do list?

Buy cat food at the bodega.

How do you see the world in 2078?

Technology is going to change everything. Hopefully, by 2078, old, white, male Republicans won't be calling all the shots in politics, and there will be peace and happiness among all races and religions.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

Oooh… Lauren Callaghan is amazing. She’s such a talented illustrator, I’m very into her use of patterns and bright colors. The designer Ramey Masri is mind blowing, he runs the Instagram @space.ram. Everything is rainbows— everything. I bought some silkscreen prints from Natalie Andrewson at MoCCA Fest a few weeks ago and hung them by my desk. It makes me happy to look at them. I also love Oliver Hibert. His graphic, funkadelic paintings are amazing. But honestly, I’m constantly creative crushin’ on all the talented members of Fem Foundry. I’m so thankful to have them as my friends; they are such an inspiration.

Check out their work on Instagram; or on Facebook.

Cassandra and I first met when we were young, poor, and living in Bed Stuy. As I floundered, she settled into what would become her long-term home. Her art connected her to the people around her, first as a student, then as a freelancer painting murals and business logos for neighbors, and, most recently, as a founder of a local women's art collective called Fem Foundry. Cassandra's work is unflinchingly bright, peculiar, and accessible, even when life and Brooklyn are not. I'll let her take it from here:

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.

Mina Seetharaman speaks with Clay Parker Jones, Director of Organizational Design at Airbnb and author of Hidden Patterns, about six practical patterns for building a more agile, adaptable, and human-centered organization.

In this replay, bestselling author Daniel Coyle explains how high-performing teams channel friction into forward motion, why vulnerability builds trust, and how leaders can turn tension into energy, learning, and innovation.

Mina Seetharaman sits down with Ben Swire, co-founder of Make Believe Works and author of Safe Danger, for a practical Q&A about hidden barriers to trust, why feedback can feel risky, and what leaders can do when trust begins to erode.

Mina Seetharaman speaks with Ben Swire, co-founder of Make Believe Works and author of Safe Danger, about building trust, psychological safety, and creative collaboration by helping teams practice productive risk-taking before the stakes are high.