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.  
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• 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

‍

I kind of wish this really happened, but at the same time, I’m definitely glad it didn’t. The towering jellyfish was part of my imagination—sort of. It was in the 1994 IMAX film Into The Deep. This moment kicked off my life-long obsession with documentary films, and IMAX holds a nostalgic place in my heart. As a designer, I find immense curiosity peering into other experiences and worlds. Whether it’s spending an hour and a half shopping with a ninety-year-old fashion icon or exploring the complex, magical world of mushrooms, documentaries have the incredible power to make you see the world differently.

With the reality of COVID-19 and shelter-in-place orders across the globe, now more than ever, we need to stay inspired by people, places, and things—even if they are on screens. In 2016, we shared 12 documentaries that sparked our creativity, and now feels like an appropriate time to update that list.

Similar to our original post, this is a curated list of recommendations from IDEO designers. It’s a collection of classics and newbies. Some will make you laugh, others will make you cry—and we hope all will reignite that creative spark.

1. Between the Folds

“I grew up in Asia and origami was something I loved to do but I had no idea that this humble paper art form had both such artistic and scientific depths. This documentary blew me away with its beauty and passion, the scope and depth of its inquiry and its empathic glimpse into what for many people is a lifelong obsession. As my colleague Devin said: ‘Holy shit, I can't believe that is all paper.’” —Paul Bennett

2. Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World

“This documentary highlights the work of Bellingcat, a group of citizen-journalists that use social media to fact-check events and actually uncover the real parties involved. Their claim to fame: They identified the party that shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 people back in July 2014.

“It’s a film that highlights our new reality, where the truth isn't always simple and straightforward. This particular documentary also serves as inspiration for those of us that do design research. It hints at the research that can be done using social signals, buzz analytics, diary studies, data science, etc., where we get insight directly from people. It highlights how researchers often solve puzzles by exploring the extremes and see things through the eyes of the people who experience them.” —Marcelle van Beusekom

3. Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)

"This film follows a group of young girls as they build confidence in the classroom and within the walls of a skatepark in Kabul, Afghanistan. Part of their education on their skateboards is building resilience—to get back up and try again after you fall. During the uncertainty that surrounds them, the school and the skatepark become a place of refuge. You can see them transform throughout the film, finding their voices and their courage.

"In the work that we do with IDEO.org, we aim to create gender-transformative solutions—those which push the boundaries that are in place within the environment and systems to increase equity and opportunity for everyone. This film reminded me that transformation has to happen personally, for each individual, in order for change to be possible on a larger scale. During a recent project focusing on women's economic empowerment in rural Bangladesh, I kept asking myself, what's the skateboard for these women? How might we unlock the courage to imagine a prosperous future?" —Anna Zylicz

4. Jodorowsky's Dune

“We always say 'design loves constraints,' but Jodorowsky's Dune is a reminder that imagination (and ego) could care less about the restrictions of budgets, timelines, or even reality. It's a film about a movie that never got made, but the creators' dreams were so big they managed to change cinema forever without shooting a single frame. Some ambitious dreams fly too close to the creative sun. The cast of characters in this movie wanted to drill to the center of the sun and blow the whole thing up. How can you not love that?” —Brian Janosch

5. Still Bill

“The world recently lost Bill Withers, one of the greatest songwriters and musicians of the 20th century (“Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean on Me,” “Lovely Day,” “Grandma’s Hands”). This biopic is incredibly touching for many reasons, but I find inspiration in how Withers approached his own creative process. He was 34 when his first record came out (late bloomers are also a personal inspiration) and his career ended by the mid-1980s. He wrote these timeless, tender songs about life and connection and then when he wasn’t able to work the way he wanted, he walked away from the industry completely. He talks about being honest with himself and true to his own principles rather than being focused on impressing other people. Sometimes I feel that snag in my own creative process—I start thinking about an imagined audience, which distracts and dissuades me. This was a reminder to create just for myself.” —Meredith Adams

6. Advanced Style

“Advanced Style, the documentary based on photographer Ari Seth Cohen's blog of the same name, highlights the signature fashion styles of New York women ranging from 62 to 95 years old. As someone who fully embraces the notion that clothes are an outward expression of the creative inner self, my own fashion sense has been deeply influenced by these ladies. The hats, the sunglasses, the furs, the florals, the feathers are just...all next level. But more than their impeccable fashion sense, they are living examples that women can be stylish and fabulous at any age.” —Tracee Worley

7. Shirkers

“I love the movie Shirkers. It's an exploration of memory, following filmmaker Sandi Tan as she tracks down a film she made with her friends in Singapore in the early 90s, learning that their mentor wasn't really the person she thought he was. Everything about the film, from the vintage footage to the slow revealing of the story, is enigmatic and dreamy, reminding me that we don't have to escape reality to find ourselves in a fairytale. As the director starts to understand her past, the present becomes even less clear—and there's just something really beautiful about how this film shows that process.” —Ali Cottong

8. Fantastic Fungi

“The movie and its subject matter—the healing and potentially planet-saving abilities of the fungus beneath our feet—walks the line between science and spirituality. It's a refreshing, joyful, and thought-provoking take on what we might learn by better listening to the unseen world around us.

“I'm also reading Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, so it was fun to see one of the key players in that book (Paul Stamets) come to life on the screen.” —Sally Sosa

9. MATANGI / MAYA / MIA

“An unapologetic, energetic, and wonderfully unpolished look at the life and career of musician Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, also known as M.I.A. I was lucky to see the premiere of this film at Sundance. I walked into the theater expecting to see a profile of a ‘controversial’ pop star, but instead witnessed a portrait of an immigrant, an activist, a mother, and a groundbreaking artist with human vulnerabilities and flaws that makes M.I.A. even more compelling to me.” —Devin Peek

10. Beauty is Embarrassing

“What drew me into Beauty Is Embarrassing is, well, puppets. Specifically, the bizarre, crude, and comedic puppets of Pee Wee's Playhouse. That show was more formative than I ever realized as a kid, but I recognize now that that my creative happy place is right there in the hazy, hilarious middle ground between being "too adult for kids" and "too childish for adults." This documentary revealed that Wayne White, the artist at the center of it, has built his entire career on that middle ground. His creative spirit, to me, is exactly what he says in the film: "so beautiful it hurts my feelings.” —Brian Janosch

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I vividly remember the first time I met a 50-foot, translucent jellyfish. The free-floating creature fell toward me as I gazed, locked in a state of paralysis. Its tentacles were hypnotizing.

Tight regulations have often stymied innovation, but one of the bright spots of this moment is realizing that regulations aren’t the real problem—they are more often a perceived roadblock that shuts down innovative thinking before it grows into real-world solutions. The fact is, regulations should set the baseline for what must be considered, rather than restrict the height of what can be achieved.

Right now, regulations in healthcare are seeing rapid, radical shifts. Processes that have historically taken years—like launching telemedicine platforms and adapting insurance coverage—are now taking weeks or days. Scientists are working to develop vaccines in record time. Companies outside of healthcare are jumping in, too: Manufacturers whose only products included car parts are now making ventilators. 3-D printers are being thrown into service to create PPE. As one client told me, “Every rule that can be broken is being broken. Every regulation that can be waived is being waived.” The world doesn’t have time to wait.

In this moment of crisis, failing systems are confirming what we already knew: The healthcare system is brittle, and it wasn’t built to handle a global pandemic. How leaders move now will dictate the kind of progress we can make, in the short- and long-term.

Here is a guide to innovating within regulations—no matter the industry—at a time when we need it most.

Take a wider view

Healthcare professionals spend so much time putting out the fires immediately in front of them that they have little time or mental space to widen their lens and focus on long-term priorities. Leaders need that time to create a vision of their future—even in times of crisis.

When Dr. Michael R. Jaff, former president of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, a community hospital in the Boston area, started his tenure, he spent the first six months listening to staff all across the organization. “There's a lot of time that has to be spent to really dig through where you are, what challenges you face as an organization, where you want to get to,” he says. “That's got to be clear.” His listening tour informed what would become the vision for his term as president: to compete and win against competitors by delivering the best patient experience. To get there, he had to usher in a new era of innovation at the hospital, and empower those around him to go after radical solutions to entrenched problems.

Related video: How listening to patient voices inspired Newton-Wellesley Hospital to redesign their culture.

Offer pathways & permission to do things differently

In a typical day at a hospital, healthcare workers don’t have the time or mental space to think creatively about new approaches to care delivery. If hospitals want their workforce to embrace and embody the spirit of innovation, employees need not only the permission to think differently, but also the structures and roadmaps that make action possible.

Dr. Jaff understood clearly that for employees who’ve been acculturated to a certain way of working, it’s not sufficient to simply say they can approach things differently, or that the organization wants to move in a new direction. “You have to design what it is that you're trying to do,” says Jaff, “You have to empower people to believe that in fact, it's a key goal of the organization. You have to permit them to try and fail and try again all within boundaries.”

Jaff and his leadership team worked with IDEO to set up multiple nodes for learning and prototyping. The program they created focused on delivering a better patient experience. It began with a pilot project in the Women’s Imaging Center and then a deeper engagement with the Outpatient Surgery Center. As part of an executive education program, another set of internal teams learned to identify user needs, like an improved discharge experience; and to develop prototypes to help address those needs. Ultimately, staff were empowered by taking their ideas from concept to real-world testing and implementation.

Jaff also made his commitment to innovation clear with a designated lab space in the hospital’s old coffee shop, a much-coveted location along the main hallway. Dubbed the Department of Tomorrow, it offered a standing invitation to all employees to stop by and learn more about all the work happening across the hospital. The stories from this work became a kind of currency: Leadership shared big and small examples of change in meetings, at events, and in conversation, as evidence of Newton-Wellesley’s evolution.

No one’s clinical or administrative workloads were decreased to make this work possible. Managers scheduled shifts and breaks differently to allow teams time for focused collaboration. Everyone taking part knew that failure—something that usually has dire consequences in healthcare—was a form of learning in this context. They were driven by the chance to make change.

Seek new perspectives

In healthcare, where expertise is celebrated, seeing the medical experience through a patient’s eyes can be hard.

Long before teaming up with IDEO, the imaging department at Newton-Wellesley had a reputation for being patient-centered and achieving consistently-high industry survey scores. It would have been easy to assume that everyone on the team really understood what patients go through when they get mammograms—the fear, the discomfort, the worry over getting a life-altering cancer diagnosis. But it wasn’t always clear. To deepen empathy for the patient experience, the IDEO team designed an exercise for the care providers that evoked anxiety and uncertainty. They brought in a tarot card reader and, like patients awaiting news in a waiting room, members of the imaging team had their fortunes read, many for the first time. They felt the discomfort, uncertainty and vulnerability of receiving a verdict on their lives from a person they didn’t know well. Though it was a staged experience that doesn’t directly compare to the patient experience, it generated a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play and how they could be improved.

To help the Newton-Wellesley Hospital day surgery team see their work from a new angle, the IDEO team led them on an expedition to the JetBlue terminal of Boston Logan Airport. Similar to a surgical team, where diverse team members all connect with patients asynchronously, the staff of an airline provide continuous customer service for passengers, from ticket purchase to check-in to security to boarding to flight. This sequence of interactions comprises the overall experience of the traveler. In both circumstances, a human is at the center. By viewing the analogous process in a different industry, it was possible to return to thinking about healthcare delivery with fresh eyes.

Allow discomfort to be part of the process

No matter the industry, it can be highly uncomfortable to do things differently, even when everyone is aligned on the ultimate goal of innovating and creating change. So much of healthcare is about following protocol. Billing. Process improvement. Hierarchy in healthcare adds to that discomfort. Often, there are big divides between roles and status, and people are more often judged on their mistakes, rather than their successes. Can department chiefs and front desk receptionists work as peers on a team? Can we prototype a new service experience with real patients going in for surgery?

Leaders who want to affect change need to explicitly acknowledge and address that discomfort. An example from another industry: Three years ago, Bowdoin College teamed up with IDEO to rethink its admissions process. Much like healthcare, college admissions abide by certain regulations as well as administrative policies. How colleges read and assess applications may be unique to each institution, but they are driven by stringent protocols and standards. Bowdoin admissions officers conducted very thorough and thoughtful readings of each application. But that thoroughness led to redundancy and sometimes delayed final decisions. At the same time, the idea of changing the process made the admissions officers fear they would compromise what they valued most: giving each hopeful applicant full consideration they deserve. To interrogate different methods, the team implemented highly-structured A/B testing of different ways of reading applications. The result? The team discovered that they could make decisions earlier in the process and still come up with the same results. The testing gave the team confidence, and ultimately changed their long-held beliefs of how applications “should” be read.

Given that A/B testing proved that some variables had little effect on the team’s final admissions decisions, IDEO redesigned the reading process and included a system called “magic sort,” which helps parse groups of applications based on a new set of counselor assessments to route each to its next round of reviews more efficiently.

In healthcare, as in many tightly regulated industries, expertise is held sacred, which means nobody wants to feel like—or appear as if—they don’t know how to arrive at a solution. But the purpose of using design to solve problems is to allow uncertainty and open questions to drive new thinking. The point is to explore possibilities through prototyping and learning.

Use regulations as a springboard for innovation

Working in highly-regulated environments can put a damper on creative thinking. However, regulatory change, especially in healthcare, is providing new opportunities for innovation. Revised reimbursement policies are enabling telemedicine to grow. The reduction of certain HIPAA guidelines temporarily offers some flexibility in care delivery. And permitting doctors to practice medicine beyond the state where they are licensed enables more care in disease hotspots.

Still, these regulatory shifts alone don’t create innovation. They are a starting point, often enforced through compliance or penalty. Innovation is about delivering beyond this baseline and aiming for what is aspirational. Changes in healthcare delivery, for instance, enable us to ask the question of how best to deliver patient-centered care through video chat.

Even in the business of regulation itself, there is room for innovation. When the US Congress set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, they established a system for taking complaints from consumers who had been scammed and were seeking resolution. The CFPB also took on a financial education mission: to make people smarter about their finances. But rather than structure the agency in a traditional way, by siloing complaints, financial education, and industry regulation, the CFPB’s collaboration with IDEO pointed in another direction: that these three domains can work together in useful harmony. By thinking of them holistically, the agency could be more effective than its predecessors in serving the public. For instance, by pairing financial education and regulation, the agency was able to create new loan disclosure requirements that make the terms more clear and understandable. The CFPB’s complaint data helped the agency prioritize areas to investigate; a spike in the number of people complaining about improperly-opened accounts at Wells Fargo Bank led to a discovery of widespread fraudulent practices. The agency eventually ended up blowing the whistle on the bank, leading to the largest fine in the history of financial services.

When it comes to innovation, having the right mindset is more important than the process: the mindset is what leads to new ideas, resilient responses, and openness to trying things differently, even at the risk of failure. People drive change. For Newton-Wellesley Hospital, according to their Chief Quality & Experience Officer, Dr. Jodi Larson, it was this change that helped employees go “from being idea generators to being change-makers. That was a big deal for us.”

And this has translated in their response to COVID: Within 24 hours, testing tents were procured and set up; workflows were designed and integrated into their electronic medical record system; PPE protocols were established. “Everyone jumped in with great ideas," says Larson. "The valets, nurses, docs, food services. It’s created a new bond and trust among colleagues. People are working in areas they’ve never worked in, and working in parts of the hospital they never had before. Different minds are coming together.” COVID has accelerated the change that was already underway. “We are making decisions and making things work that we never had the courage to attempt before. This is who we are now.”

Illustrations by Lisk Feng

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While COVID-19 has caused worldwide devastation, it has also revealed broken aspects of many critical systems, and raised the urgency of fixing them. In healthcare in particular, we are seeing that entrenched ways of delivering care have left us ill-prepared to respond to a crisis of this magnitude.

The biggest challenge to businesses right now isn't uncertainty, but ambiguity—a condition in which the future is unclear, the past is no help, and we don't even know what we don't know. There's no predicting when the pandemic will end, nor what “business as usual” will look like when it does.

Late last month, Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, acknowledged the unparalleled challenge leaders face trying to buoy their organizations in the absence of any familiar strategies. Though Slack is one of a handful of companies experiencing massive growth right now, Butterfield and his team are still struggling to predict the future. Other companies are not this fortunate, and have had to halt operations, let go of employees, and make other painful decisions.

Understanding that organizations are facing a broad range of challenges and have varying capacities, the question becomes, how might businesses create new ways to push ahead intelligently? Human-centered design can offer leaders an alternate set of mindsets and methods for navigating ambiguity. Here are four ways forward, along with inspiring examples and questions to drive action.

Lead with people and the business will follow

Perhaps the most well-known design thinking model suggests that innovation occurs at the intersection of consumer desirability, business viability, and technical feasibility. Many leaders are currently mired in thinking about what’s possible in this new world (technical feasibility) and what the economic impact of COVID-19 might be (business viability). While a business model pivot or reapplication of technology may be critical for some businesses to stay afloat, it’s important not to forget to lead with people (consumer desirability).

Focusing on customers’ needs is a way to rally a company and employees around a purposeful cause. It also offers focus and clarity operationally and strategically, and points to a clear path forward that can deliver value.

Restaurants were one of the industries immediately and dramatically affected by the pandemic. Many dining establishments have had to lay off employees or shut down entirely. Canlis, a fine-dining restaurant in Seattle, chose early on to shift their business in a way that leads with customers. Throwing out the rule book, Canlis turned their restaurant into three distinct offers: large family meals, CSA boxes, and to-go cocktails and wine. These options make it easy and efficient for customers to get what they need, while keeping many of their employees working. Restaurants around the world are now taking similar actions, driven by real attention to people’s current needs.

Questions to inspire action:

• How are our core customers’ needs changing right now? How can we deliver on those needs during the pandemic?
• Who can we learn from in our organization that is closest to the needs of our people, partners, and consumers? Better yet, how might we engage with our people, partners, and consumers directly to learn from them?
  

Forge unexpected partnerships to meaningfully pivot

Part of what makes the current changes so complex is their scale. In travel and hospitality, for example, metrics like trips and bookings are unmoored: What will travel mean in the wake of a pandemic that doesn’t have a known endpoint? CPG companies have been hit with destabilizing shocks to demand that not only put pressure on supply chains, but raise existential questions about what people will value after the crisis. The meaning of “essential” across products, services, jobs, and needs is evolving in real time. We must simultaneously grapple with the abstract and tactical, and the immediate and the indefinite.

It’s inspiring to see examples of companies redirecting their capabilities toward urgent needs—distilleries using their alcohol to produce hand sanitizer, automakers shifting to produce ventilators and respirators. But this kind of quick adaptation isn’t simple and the opportunity isn’t always clear. Stepping outside of our own domains and even our companies to connect can help.

Coronavirus has sparked rare collaboration between some of the world’s biggest business rivals. Apple and Google recently joined forces to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, and pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi are teaming up to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

Pivoting in this moment calls for collective processing aided by viewpoints from different departments and types of thinkers. Some companies are relying on open innovation, which can be used internally to break down silos, or externally to find new partners to bring ideas to life. IDEO’s open innovation portfolio recently launched the COVID-19 Business Pivot Challenge to help organizations wrangle the present complexity and adapt at various scales through collaboration. The Challenge is open to anyone involved in business adaptation, from C-level executives to business students, and startups to global corporations. Participants are working together to find partners, develop new offerings, and secure funding.

Questions to inspire action:

• What points of view are we missing on our team and how might they help us uncover opportunities and identify blind spots?
• Who can we partner with right now to deliver something unique or previously impossible to our teams, business, or society?
  

Experiment today to strengthen the business for tomorrow

The time has never been better to experiment. This means considering fundamental changes in business and operating models out of necessity, while also prototyping new channels, offerings, pricing structures, and value propositions.

The pandemic has caused some organizations to challenge the status quo of legacy industries, questioning fundamental beliefs and paradigms that have long been held sacred. Film studios, for example, have historically resisted releasing movies straight to online platforms, in the interest of preserving their relationships with movie theaters and maximizing everyone's financial gain in the film ecosystem. But with theaters shut down, many studios have been forced to either delay blockbusters or experiment with online releases, putting pressure on the previously sacred release window. Paramount’s The Lovebirds was set to release in theatres on April 3, but will now debut on Netflix. And Disney released Frozen II on Disney+ three months ahead of schedule, giving many parents a much-needed break.

Experimenting doesn’t have to result in a full-scale business model transformation or a polished new offering. This is a moment of extreme leniency: Customers will forgive scrappiness and even mistakes, and they’ll appreciate effort and vulnerability from organizations who try. Moreover, experimenting in low-fidelity ways allows teams to quickly iterate, minimize costs, and preserve optionality. In other words, there’s little investment required for potentially high return.

Airbnb, like all travel and hospitality businesses, has been hit hard by COVID-19. But they have worked to respond quickly: First, they mobilized their rental marketplace to offer units free of charge or at subsidized rates to healthcare providers in need, waiving their own fees in the process. In the meantime, Airbnb has launched online experiences that provide new things for customers to do while stuck at home and an alternative source of income for hosts. Their email announcing the offer read, “Let’s try something new together.” Airbnb transparently recognizes that this won’t replace the travel experiences that customers wish they could be doing, but we can try to make the situation a bit better, together.

Whether through major shifts or small trials, experimentation not only serves as a response to the current times, but can also pave the way for future strategy. While some companies are testing by necessity, organizations with the means to do so can consider how prototyping today might strengthen their value propositions and capabilities tomorrow.

Questions to inspire action:

• If we’re in an all-hands-on-deck moment, is there a group of employees that can start to think about how we might operate differently during COVID-19? What are simple experiments we could run in the next few days?
• If we’re able to dedicate time and resources, how might we use this moment to challenge the fundamental assumptions of our business and industry? What are simple experiments we could run in the next few weeks?
  

Leverage scarcity and constraints

It’s understandable to feel an overall sense of scarcity right now. Organizations are inundated with legal, health, social, and operating constraints. It may seem counterintuitive, but these perceived limitations often create generative circumstances for growth and innovation. A recent study on innovation in crisis found that during the Great Depression, while the total number of patents decreased, the average level of quality increased, mitigating the quantitative decline with more innovative impact overall. In many ways, today, we are witnessing this same jump-start in business innovation in light of COVID-19.

OpenTable, a company that allows diners to make restaurant reservations, is using today’s constraints to find new opportunities. Since many restaurants are no longer allowing customers to dine in, OpenTable’s core offering is no longer relevant. But rather than become obsolete, they used this constraint to make a quick shift and repurpose their platform. The team developed a new tool that leverages their core offering by partnering with grocery stores, allowing customers to select shopping times at supermarkets and to avoid overcrowding.

History has shown us that scarcity can be the mother of invention. Take the beloved hazelnut spread Nutella. The product was created due to a cocoa shortage during World War II. Italian confectioner Pietro Ferrero decided to make a new paste using hazelnuts, sugar, and a smaller amount of cocoa. The rest is sweet-tooth history.

Questions to inspire action:

• How might we turn these new constraints into the cornerstones of our business?
• What is the core promise or value we provide to customers? How might we repurpose the assets that we still have to keep delivering on this promise or value?

We are in challenging times. Leaders are being called to make difficult decisions around their business’ strategy, operations, and people. As we continue to navigate these uncharted waters, we can find ways for ambiguity to be an aid, rather than an impediment, to progress. Design-led mindsets like empathy, collaboration, experimentation, and even scarcity can be guiding lights along the way.

Illustration by Kateryna Romanova

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The coronavirus pandemic has generated tremendous uncertainty for businesses. But while the scale of the crisis is new, uncertainty itself is not—it's a natural condition of doing business, and numerous tools exist to quantify and mitigate it. Most strategies rely on accumulated knowledge from the past—there's a precedent on which to make sense of unknowns. COVID-19 breaks all that. There is no precedent for how to respond to this moment, much less steer ahead.

The primary question in this moment should be: How might we each play our part in bringing this pandemic to an end? But it's a moment, too, for reflection on the future. Who do we want to be when we emerge from the worst of this? What do we want our organizations to stand for? These are questions of strategy—of what it means to win.

How does your organization define winning? What is that challenging shared goal that gets your people out of bed each day, excited to play their part? If your organization is like most I’ve worked with, you may struggle to answer that question. Despite all the time and resources poured into strategy work each year, few organizations have a widely understood definition of winning that goes beyond making money for shareholders.

Fifty years ago, in The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, economist Milton Friedman argued that the purpose of a business is to serve its owners. The leader’s role, he wrote, is “to conduct the business in accordance with their [owners’] desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society.” This notion, which is the foundation of the doctrine of shareholder value maximization, is now pervasive. But it’s showing considerable signs of wear and tear as we become more aware of the negative consequences of putting profits ahead of people.

Solely prioritizing short-run outcomes for shareholders does little to bring meaning to our work; it stymies innovation; it reduces our business fitness; and it makes much, much harder the real work of strategy. Meaning comes from creating real value in the world, which means we need to think broadly in terms of who we’re winning with (and for). Innovation requires a long-term perspective, so we need to think about winning beyond this quarter or even this year. Business fitness (the financial and strategic resilience of a company over time) depends on being attuned to things that shareholders may not see. To ensure our viability, we need to seek out signals as to what customers, employees, and societies care about. Strategy is about building a firm that can win both now and in the future, so we need to be more holistic in our approach to making choices.

If it is time to move past shareholder value, how might we define winning in a more useful way, that spurs rather than stops innovation? How might we set aspirations that don’t suggest a win-lose frame? How might we seek instead to create value for customers, for employees, and for investors?

Find the right language

In the process of developing a strategy for kyu, the collective of organizations that includes IDEO and SYPartners, some leaders rejected the notion of “winning” entirely, recoiling at a word that felt tied to a scarcity mindset. If we’re winning, they asked, who is losing?

Tim Brown and Susan Schuman, the kyu vice chairs who co-led the strategy discussions, thought hard about how to navigate that challenge. As Brown notes, they came to see that “we’re really creating a community at kyu—a collective that aims to unleash creativity and to help people flourish.” He goes on: “What we realized is that communities don’t win or lose, they thrive or falter.” The kyu strategy focuses on what it would mean to create a community that can truly thrive over time. Thriving may not be the term that resonates with your organization, but language matters. To redefine winning to be more inclusive, work with your team to find a mental model for winning that works for you, then build shared definitions of the models you choose.

Shift the timeline

Another way to push on current, unsustainable definitions of winning is to publicly shift the time horizon so that sustainability, both economical and ecological, can be integrated into our aspirations. Unless we look further out, we will continue to plunder the future to fund the present and to degrade the planet to drive profit. For inspiration on what is possible, look to Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever.

In an interview for my book Creating Great Choices, Polman explained how he set out to change the time horizon at Unilever: “One of the things I had to do was to move the business to a longer-term plan,” he said. “We had become victims of chasing our own tail, cutting our internal spending in capital, R&D, or IT to reach the market expectations. We were developing our brand spends on a quarterly basis and not doing the right things...We were catering to the shorter-term shareholders.”

Polman decreed that the company would stop quarterly reporting and stop giving guidance. He embarked on a far-reaching environmental sustainability effort, and he reinvested in R&D, talent development, and brand building.

Polman believed that shareholders whose interests were aligned with Unilever (i.e. long-run profitability and environmental sustainability) would eventually buy into his plan. Taking a long-term perspective on winning not only let Unilever invest in innovation for customers and in development for its people, it let leadership focus on the fundamentals of the business rather than managing short-run expectations. As a result, it created lots of shareholder value too. In the decade Polman headed Unilever, its stock price increased 170 percent, creating more value for shareholders than most companies in the FTSE 100. This is a win-win-win solution, and it was powered by a willingness to show up differently in the world.

Define your purpose

A third way to redefine winning productively is to connect our aspirations to a larger purpose. Think of purpose as the human “why” that explains the reason a company exists. The best purpose statements are very human: they connect the work of the organization to real people, to real needs, and to real problems to be solved. By defining a meaningful purpose, companies can demonstrate to employees and customers what they stand for and why. The purpose can then set the context for the strategy; we can define what winning means in service of our overall purpose.

One company that demonstrates the power of connecting purpose to strategy is Orbia. Until 2019, Orbia was called Mexichem and it was mainly known as a chemical company. Last year, along with a new brand, Orbia unveiled a new purpose: To “advance life around the world,” tackling some of humanity’s biggest shared challenges, like food security, water scarcity, and livable cities.

Had it continued to define itself as a chemical company, Mexichem could have followed a path to near-inevitable commoditization. Instead, CEO Daniel Martinez-Valle and Orbia’s leadership team worked with IDEO to define a higher bar with a bold new purpose. Now the team is working to connect its strategic choices, its resource allocations and its employee incentives to that larger purpose. Doing that means reorganizing the structure of the company into five business groups, each aimed at addressing a unique global challenge, defining meaningful sustainability targets for each business, and investing in innovation in significant new ways. That’s really the power of purpose: it can align the organization, motivate employees, and promise customers something they can believe in. No wonder purpose-led companies tend to have higher employee engagement, happier customers, and better overall performance. They win on multiple dimensions.

Winning isn’t easy. It’s tempting to define winning narrowly, to make the task seem easier: winning means increasing the stock price this quarter. But as the last few months have demonstrated, a shareholder-led definition of winning is not only hollow, it can leave organizations with nothing to fall back on in a time of crisis. We need a far richer, more aspirational understanding of what it can really mean to win. To get there, ask how we could define a winning aspiration, using language that fits our organization, push out on the time horizon, connect strategic goals to a larger sense of purpose and give ourselves room to dream big.

In a moment of crisis, it can be difficult to think beyond the next hour, the next day, the next week. The global COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult for each of us, as we grapple with our duty of care to our employees, to our communities, to each other, to ourselves. The unprecedented disruption created by this crisis should be seen first and foremost in humanitarian terms, connecting to the very real personal toll of this disease—serious illness and lives lost, isolation and fear, worsening unemployment and economic precarity.

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.

In this bonus episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast, storyteller and strategist Catherine Connors returns to answer top questions from our IDEO U community. We explore what it really means to lead with story—beyond frameworks and formats—and how storytelling can be used to build culture, scale ideas, and drive meaningful change. Catherine shares her take on how to build storytelling capacity inside teams, how AI is reshaping the narrative landscape, and why co-authorship is the future of leadership storytelling.

In this conversation, IDEO CEO Mike Peng shares what it really takes to foster creative collaboration on teams. From designing for trust and tension to navigating ambiguity and divergent thinking, Mike offers a clear-eyed look at how leaders can create the conditions for breakthrough ideas. Originally aired on August 8, 2019, this episode is full of timeless guidance for today’s fast-moving, complex world.

What makes a story powerful enough to shift culture? In this episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast, Catherine Connors—former Head of Content at Disney Interactive and founder of storytelling consultancy StoryQuo—shares five key shifts that can help leaders use story as a tool for transformation. From rethinking traditional formats to embracing play and shared authorship, Catherine challenges conventional ideas about storytelling and invites us to create stories that people want to carry forward.

How are creative professionals actually using AI today? In this Asked and Answered follow-up episode, Google DeepMind’s Matthieu Lorrain and IDEO’s Savannah Kunovsky respond to questions from the IDEO U community. They cover real-world examples of AI-powered co-design, how to maintain creative control with liquid content, designing for neurodivergence, and what it means to make nature a creative collaborator.