For more than 40 years, Sage has helped businesses of all sizes navigate complex business environments. While many of its larger customers have the means and the structure to support climate initiatives, many of its smaller customers do not.

Sage wanted to help its SMB customers get ahead of future climate regulations and meet consumer expectations. And building carbon-footprint evaluation and mitigation tools would also dovetail nicely with Sage’s own climate aspirations: cutting its own emissions in half by 2030. Together, Sage and IDEO investigated how the company could leverage the data in its platform to calculate its customers’ emissions, both direct and indirect, and how that information could spur action as they aim to hit net zero.

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To get started, the design team went deep with customers running all kinds of businesses—from a taxi company to a champagne bar to a falconry center. Business owners shared that their focus often has to be on the day-to-day, a series of small decisions that, when added together, lead to business success. For many, tackling a problem as complex as climate change felt overwhelming. IDEO and Sage synthesized those insights and began working across verticals and products, bringing together experts from marketing, technology, sustainability, and operations to build out new concepts. With the help of two carbon accountants, the team worked to figure out how existing data could inform customers about both their direct and indirect emissions, which can be harder to track. Given how tight SMBs’ margins are, they focused on how that knowledge could fuel emissions-cutting changes that also save money, giving businesses extra incentive to take action. Together, the team created a roadmap of customer outcomes and experience guidelines to help shape future products.

Sage has taken that work forward, launching Sage Earth, a platform that aims to help businesses measure, manage, and mitigate emissions—even across supply chains. With carbon accounting now built directly into all Sage Accounting and Sage for Accountants products in the UK, Sage has made climate action practical and accessible for millions of SMBs. By automating emissions measurement and reporting, Sage Earth removes barriers of cost and complexity, empowering business owners and their accountants to stay competitive in supply chains where up to 95 percent of emissions occur. 

From co-developing the UK Voluntary SME Carbon Reporting Standard to launching a Carbon Accounting API, which gives banks, fintechs, and other platforms access to Sage’s Carbon Engine, Sage is embedding sustainability into the systems people already trust—helping hundreds of thousands (and rapidly increasing) small businesses turn climate ambition into everyday action.

Small- and medium-sized businesses—companies with fewer than 500 employees—make up about 90% of the world’s businesses, according to U.N.-backed SME Climate Hub.

Two thirds of small businesses don’t know how they’re going to reach net zero, and lack the resources to do so, according to a recent survey by SME Climate Hub. Still, the majority reported they want to act on climate, recognizing it can help them become a more resilient business.

Large companies may be the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses, but an estimated 80% of those emissions come from supply chains—often made up of smaller enterprises.

Scaling rapidly

in the three years since the launch of Sage Earth, which is now being used by hundreds of thousands of businesses

World's 1st

open-source hybrid emissions factors dataset, Carbon Commons, led by Sage, helps SMBs calculate carbon footprints using existing data

Menopause is much more than a biological transition—it is a profound shift that often arrives just when people experiencing it start to feel invisible. Because it has long been shrouded in darkness as an unmentionable female affliction, those going through menopause often feel unprepared and alone.

Recognizing that its customer demographic makes QVC uniquely positioned to surface conversations and provide support to those dealing with menopause, the video commerce retailer partnered with IDEO to figure out how it could not only meet customer needs, but also flip the conversation on midlife. To learn more, a team of female design researchers held in-depth interviews with folks experiencing it firsthand. The people they spoke to had limited information about what was going on with their bodies, and in some cases, it took years before they understood that symptoms they were experiencing were related to menopause. Respondents also reported that midlife brought a change in social status and the feeling of being boxed in by stereotypes.

QVC and IDEO worked together to design an integrated suite of offerings that could give customers a safe space to discover and share more about menopause. That included an on-air programming series called “Menopause Your Way,” where QVC could support those going through menopause in the privacy of their own homes, a digital landing page with useful solutions, and social media campaigns to help women share and learn more about each others’ experiences. Because people experience menopause and choose to manage it in many different ways, the team wanted to create an integrated ecosystem of content that women could access according to their unique journeys. The new offering helped QVC  reach its core audience with solutions and relevant products, and created a space where menopause is out in the open and part of an ongoing conversation. And in the process, QVC evolved to become a more customer-centric company, putting its audience and their needs at the heart of its offerings.

9/10 of British menopausal women say society and brands overlook them.

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1 in 2 women in the UK admitted they didn’t know what was happening to them during perimenopause.

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Nearly 40% of menopausal women are being prescribed antidepressants to help manage their symptoms, despite 4 out of 5 describing the treatment as “inappropriate.”

Season 2

a series focused on menopause is now in its second season

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Healthcare is a complex web of institutions, interaction, relationships, and services. In England, the National Health Service consists of thousands of separate organizations spread across the country. This fragmented structure means that rolling out digital tools and using them to their full potential can be difficult.

NHSX approached IDEO and Public Digital, IDEO’s sister company, for help designing user-centered resources that would empower Children and Young People’s Mental Health (CYPMH) practitioners to use digital tools more effectively, shifting service design from a reactive to a proactive process, and allowing each regional organization to create the best digital services for their children and young people.

The team took a human-centered approach, tapping into the perspectives, challenges and needs of NHS practitioners and leaders across the system over months of research. They then designed a set of accessible, straightforward online resources, courses, and templates that would enable a practitioner to start their own local service transformations. These included everything from practical advice on improving users’ experiences of CYPMH, to teaching methods for service design, to content focused on achieving digital transformation at scale.

The resources were easy to implement and replicate, allowing mental health practitioners across the country to seamlessly integrate physical and digital, create firebreaks in the system, and better bridge the gap between seeking care and receiving it. They were designed to evolve over time, and the work is replicable across the NHS, with the potential to touch millions of lives.

By empowering practitioners to utilize these digital tools to ease the burden of care, NHSX plans to create a positive ripple effect across the entire NHS, its partner organizations, and the country at large.

In a study undertaken in July 2020, the first summer of the COVID pandemic, the NHS found that clinically significant mental health conditions amongst children had risen by 50% compared to three years earlier.

More options, more access

digital resources are helping children and young people access more options for their mental health care

It’s not easy to shift the paradigm for an entire industry. But when a company comes along that promises to reinvent air travel, it opens up a blue sky of opportunities. That’s the flight path for Boom Supersonic, which is thinking big about how passengers arrive at their destination not only faster, but also with a greater sense of wellbeing.

To really comprehend the experience of flying in the unique contoured profile of this ultrafast jet, and to help Boom make key decisions about the design of the plane, the IDEO team believed that you had to go beyond algorithms and schematics—you needed to actually board it.

Using a “build-first” approach, the team quickly constructed a full-scale mockup of the fuselage from plywood and foam core. That became a prototyping platform to test multiple seating configurations, galley and lavatory size and placement, luggage storage solutions, and other concepts that would differentiate and add value to the passenger experience. For the first time, the Boom team was able to set foot in its own aircraft and truly understand the experience from the perspective of its clientele. The exercise allowed the Boom team to confidently make decisions by comparing multiple cabin configurations and options in full-scale.

Throughout the project, Boom and IDEO invited future travelers aboard to interact with the prototype and offer feedback. That input culminated in a more refined model, with augmented windows, moonroof, in-flight entertainment screens, and sound design—all further augmented by a Virtual Reality component to allow our future travelers to fully immerse in this new experience.

Together, Boom and IDEO brought a sneak peak to the Farnborough International Airshow, a biannual exhibition for the aerospace, aviation, and defense industries. The event was an opportunity to give the industry and potential customers a preview of Boom’s innovative new jet. In collaboration with the client, an exhibition architect, and a digital production agency, the team created an immersive environment designed to make the Overture experience feel tangible, eliciting the wonder of this revolutionary plane.

Boom’s presence at Farnborough not only underscored the Overture’s progress but provided an inspiring glimpse into the future of air travel. During the air show the company announced the production Overture design, a market-expanding alliance with Northrop Grumman, and agreements with tier one suppliers Collins Aerospace, Safran, and Eaton. Not long after, Boom received its largest order to date, this one from American Airlines. 

The prospect of getting to London in time for dinner just got a little closer.

Boom plans for Overture to get from New York to Frankfurt in just over four hours instead of the eight hours spent on a commercial jet today.

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The Overture supersonic jet has a cruising speed of Mach 1.7, about twice as fast as today’s commercial planes. Overture is built to fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

20 Overture deposits

made by American Airlines, joining current customers United Airlines and Japan Airlines

For decades, women’s health has been underfunded, overlooked, and too often reduced to reproductive care. Medical research has been built around male bodies, while the complexity of women’s biology and lived experiences has been treated as a problem to simplify rather than an opportunity to understand.

Now, AI could change that. Designed intentionally, AI could unlock new kinds of evidence that close historical data gaps and inform better care. But if we aren’t careful, we could be scaling systems that were never designed for women and build the next generation of healthcare on the same broken foundations as the past.

The stakes are high. The opportunity is massive. This is where design matters most.

Introducing the Women’s Health × AI Exchange

We believe design can help us embrace AI’s healthcare possibilities while recognizing and mitigating its risks. And we believe the most promising futures are shaped collaboratively, by bringing different perspectives into conversation and making those possibilities tangible.

That’s why we’ve launched the Women’s Health * AI Exchange, an open, design-led exploration of one important question: How might AI meaningfully transform women’s health, and what would it take to ensure that it does?

To frame this exploration, we crafted six provocations about possible futures at the intersection of women’s health and AI. Futures where AI could:

• Reframe women’s biological complexity from a healthcare liability to a scientific asset and create new pathways for better care.
• Transform the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients, translating qualitative data into clinically actionable evidence.
• Connect the dots across a woman’s health journey to enable more proactive, preventive, and life-stage-specific care.
• Drive innovation in women’s longevity, helping researchers understand what most influences how women age.
• Flip the economics of clinical research, incentivizing exploration at the deprioritized edges and intersections.
• Put data back in women’s hands to help them find their own insights around issues where institutional research has not been prioritized.

Imagining what AI could do is only half the work. We also need to consider the shifts required to make these futures possible. And so, each of these provocations ends with the same challenge: What would it take to make them real? 

We’re inviting you into this conversation to help us collectively sharpen a point of view and co-design a landscape of opportunities. Here’s how to join.

Go to the Women’s Health x AI Exchange and choose a provocation that resonates with you. An AI facilitator will ask thoughtful follow-up questions to help you frame your point of view and articulate what you believe needs to change. Your thoughts will be posted anonymously. As more people participate, their contributions will help reveal where perspectives align, where tensions remain, and what new opportunities are emerging.

Turning tension into possibility

This conversation is just the beginning. We’ll synthesize themes and share emergent opportunities. We’ll bring together people across healthcare, research, technology, investment, and design to help us prioritize opportunities for further exploration. And we’ll translate the most compelling ideas into tangible prototypes that help people see, experience, and shape what desirable, viable, feasible, and responsible AI-enabled healthcare could look like.

We’re approaching this as an investigation in motion, not a finished thesis. Our intention is to work openly so the perspectives, provocations, and possibilities we generate can inspire and inform the people already working to move women’s health forward.

And while women’s health is at the center of this exploration, the conversation we want to have is even bigger. It is a conversation about the future of healthcare data and power. A conversation about how AI might help close the gaps that decades of underfunding have left behind, and what we can all do to ensure it does.

Whether you’re a clinician, researcher, technologist, entrepreneur, investor, designer, or simply someone who cares about the future of healthcare, we invite you to help us reimagine what healthcare could be, for everyone.

Explore the Women’s Health * AI Exchange and add your perspective.

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AI is transforming healthcare at a remarkable pace. But our understanding of women’s health has a lot of catching up to do.

During a recent meeting with a pharma client, we played a YouTube video of GLP-1 users that left the team slack-jawed. Sitting around a conference table, they watched people crack open an auto-injector and pour the contents into a vial so they could titrate out a more precise dose of the drug themselves. They heard several patients admit to using a family member’s prescription because they didn’t have their own. Others lamented that they weren’t in range for their preferred direct-to-consumer delivery platform. The realization was stark: patients knew what they wanted from their GLP-1s, and if the manufacturer didn’t provide it, they would find a way to make it themselves. In that moment, this particular pharma company understood it was not at all prepared for a future where patient expectations would remake the drug market. 

The introduction of Ozempic and new access models for GLP-1s like Lilly Direct and Hims & Hers have fundamentally shifted the pharmaceutical industry in the last five years, unleashing more self-directed therapy journeys and a new kind of healthcare consumer. Patient expectations about what pharma companies can do—and the experiences available to them in a healthcare setting—have been completely rewritten. This revolution is making traditional pharma commercialization processes that push patients and providers through a few preferred channels a thing of the past. Especially as consumer-facing startups come for their market share—and create an even larger pie.  

If pharma companies are going to meet this new wave of consumer expectations for everything from GLP-1s to hair loss and erectile dysfunction medicines, supplements to fertility drugs, they need to prioritize designing exceptional experiences that come along with their therapies. That requires building an entirely new set of skills and behaviors that can support product pipelines. Here are four crucial steps to get there.

1. Uncover the needs patients want pharmaceuticals to meet

Pharma companies need to do research with real patients to get a clear view of the full therapy journey—from diagnosis to long-term use. In that process, they can identify the highest-risk moments, like confusion over instructions, frustration over delivery methods, and potential misuse, and prioritize opportunities to improve real-world adoption and adherence. 

Lilly understood this early on. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the pharma company had several new, life-changing medications and two big challenges: Its primary drug—insulin—had to be self-injected, which patients were hesitant to do. And its drug-delivery device platform lagged behind the needs of insulin users.

Lilly approached us to design the next-generation auto-injector platform. Early in the partnership, a team of IDEO designers and Lilly leaders met with diabetes patients around the globe to better understand how they lived with the disease. They quickly realized there was a need for a device that met the needs of a broad range of dexterity-challenged and injection site-specific patient populations (including rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis patients). As the development of multiple candidate molecules was still underway, the team focused on creating an injection experience that would work for these more challenging patient populations, knowing that a design that worked for them would also deliver a better experience for a broader swath of future users. 

While we carefully considered every feature of the autoinjector itself (from grippy labels and a stable, twist-off base to large, clear unlock tabs and injection buttons), we also designed packaging that fit in a standard-sized refrigerator, created a set of highly visual instructions, and took into account the involvement and support of family members and caregivers. 

Fast forward to 2026, and Lilly is still leveraging the design we made together to not only support pre-diabetes treatments like Trulicity, but also psoriasis therapies like Taltz, migraine therapies like Emgaility, and GLP-1 molecules like Mounjaro and Zepbound. The latter accounted for the majority of the company’s annual revenue in 2025. Taking the time to create a comprehensive drug delivery experience has yielded an invaluable delivery toolkit that Lilly and the patients they serve still benefit from today.

2. Design the experience around the therapy

As more and more pharma companies create consumer-style experiences, it’s crucial they build services and tools that support onboarding, adherence, and ongoing use. Standing out is no longer just about drug efficacy. It’s about how well patients with all kinds of needs and circumstances can access and adhere to the therapy—and how well pharma companies can deliver against their competitors. 

When Sanofi launched Beyfortus, the first-ever RSV immunization for newborns, in 2024, it was a milestone in the fight against the virus, which had resulted in the death of 445,000 babies worldwide in 2019 alone. But the company knew that growing anti-vaccine sentiment might prevent parents from giving their children the potentially life-saving immunization. 

Together, we conducted research with parents, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and healthcare administrators in Germany, Spain, China, and the US to identify barriers to adoption across cultures. The team quickly discovered that no single approach would work across Sanofi’s 20-plus international markets. Training for medical professionals needed to be flexible and customizable. They also discovered that discussing immunizations right after a baby was born was too stressful for new parents.  

Ultimately, the team created an accessible global communication toolkit with straightforward language, metaphors, and illustrations to support informed conversations between providers and parents before and after a child is born. Then they held a series of market-fit co-design workshops to make the tools more resonant with regional customers and ensure compliance with local regulations.

In its first year on the market, Beyfortus became a $1.8 billion therapy, and more than six million babies have been immunized. 

With a growing funnel of information about drugs, therapies, and even supplements, pharma companies must cut through the noise to support patient understanding and adherence. 

3. Define how you show up beyond the drug

To have an even greater impact on patient outcomes, pharmaceutical companies should explore new roles, partnerships, and models. That could mean creating new offerings that combine a given therapy with support and services, building partnerships with payers, employers, or platforms to extend reach, or creating models that tie therapies to long-term outcomes and value.

Japanese pharmaceutical company Otsuka is perhaps one of the most diversified pharma organizations in the industry, focusing on above-molecule interventions including companion diagnostics, digital technologies, and other tools that enhance the effectiveness of chemical or biological treatments. With a business that spans traditional drug development and manufacturing, digital solutions, and even consumer products such as Pocari Sweat, an electrolyte drink, Otsuka has bet that diversity and go-to-market pathways will lead to better experiences for patients. Not to mention these touchpoints also provide deep insights into the needs of the people Otsuka serves. 

In 2018, Otsuka joined forces with Click Therapeutics to develop digital health services to accompany one of its leading medications, aripiprazole. The antipsychotic is used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder (MDD). By 2024, the company had developed an app featuring activities aimed at treating MDD. The partners chose a challenging but potentially impactful area for their pilot program: four primary care sites within the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK with a high caseload of MDD patients, where a digital solution combined with antidepressants could significantly reduce the burden on these sites.

Depression is widespread across the UK, and the treatment demands on the NHS are considerable. However, the system lacks the resources to provide every patient with the necessary services to treat their conditions. This digital companion to antidepressant medication aims to improve treatment effectiveness, and if the pilot is successful, it could significantly ease strain on the NHS while helping patients achieve better outcomes. 

4. Create a human-centered R&D pipeline

Creating more human-centered packaging or instructions to help people better understand a drug is an effective step forward, but exploring new internal capabilities that make your innovation pipeline more future-fit and human-centered can be transformative. 

That work can take many forms: building a beacon project that upskills product and team leadership on methods to better understand the decisions consumers are making today and in the future, introducing futures-thinking to help your team look beyond the next five years, or reinforcing purpose and culture to empower employees to make patient-centered decisions. 

In 2020, as Moderna raced to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic, the company needed to grow exponentially—and rapidly. However, by hiring employees from traditional pharma giants, it risked losing the unique entrepreneurial culture that made it successful in the first place—one that embraced speed and accepted risk. This shift could have limited its future ambitions of developing breakthrough products to combat other viruses and diseases, and even cancer. 

Together, we worked to codify the company’s culture and values into a set of Mindsets that would empower employees to move quickly, evaluate risk, and make the right decisions. The team met with Moderna veterans to gather stories about key cultural moments, like when a crucial piece of equipment didn’t fit in the door, and employees knocked down the wall to keep vaccine production moving. Insights from these stories became Mindsets, like “Act with urgency: Action today compounds the lives saved tomorrow” and “We behave like owners: The solutions we’re building go beyond any job description,” that were then tested with new hires, employee resource groups, and others across the company.

The Mindsets were more than a tagline: they set the stage for continued progress and future breakthroughs. Today, Moderna is working with Merck on a cancer vaccine that just completed a successful Phase 3 clinical trial.  

This sea change in consumer expectations for medicines and therapies can feel disorienting for traditional pharma companies—but it also offers enormous opportunities for those that think outside tried-and-true drug delivery channels and embrace human-centered design. By truly understanding patient needs, finding new and inventive ways to support them, and building the capabilities to empower your people to create a human-centered R&D pipeline, organizations can distinguish themselves in the market. These behaviors can not only drive the market, but more importantly, radically improve patient outcomes. 

“This sea change in consumer expectations for medicines and therapies can feel disorienting for traditional pharma companies—but it also offers enormous opportunities for those that think outside tried-and-true drug delivery channels and embrace human-centered design."

A pioneer of human-centered design at IDEO, Jane Fulton Suri joined one of IDEO's predecessor firms, ID Two, in 1987. With a background in psychology and architecture, she gained early experience as a researcher at the renowned former Institute for Consumer Ergonomics at Loughborough University of Technology. At ID Two, and later at IDEO, Suri introduced social science principles to the design industry, which had not yet fully embraced them. Her contributions would go on to reshape the field.

Suri’s influential 2005 book, Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design, features a collection of snapshots that highlight the subtle, instinctual ways people interact with the everyday world. It’s a love letter to observation as a design discipline with real-world impact. Her work in human factors at IDEO has influenced products people use every day, from rubber grips on Oral-B toothbrushes to redesigned Evenflo strollers. In recent years, she’s expanded her focus beyond human-centered design to explore how patterns found in nature and living systems can inspire more sustainable solutions—what she calls life-centered design.

Now a Partner Emerita, we were so glad to welcome Jane back to IDEO earlier this year for a conversation with our design community. 

Mike Peng (MP): If you don’t mind, Jane, tell us about your origin story and how you came to IDEO. 

Jane Fulton Suri (JFS): I started out in psychology because I was really interested in people. And then I got really interested in people in the everyday world. I brought that mindset into design: Let’s get out there and see what people really do. 

I found myself working with manufacturers to help them understand why people didn’t do what they expected them to with power tools, motorcycles, and other dangerous things. A lot of my work was mitigating disaster. And I thought, this is crazy. Why aren’t these conversations happening while things are being designed? Problems are easier to remedy at the design stage than when they’re on the market.

Then I met Bill Moggridge, one of IDEO’s three cofounders, because a friend of mine was his client. He was a myth and a legend. After our conversation, he asked me, “What do you want to do now?” And I said, “I’d like you to offer me a job!”—which was very, very uncharacteristic of me. I had no clue what I was getting into.

I quickly realized I needed to understand what my teammates were doing and value that, then add ideas about going out, meeting people, and watching what they do.

So instead of having the answer, I realized the point was about discovering together how to make the design brief better. That became the practice—getting away from the desk. And now that means teams getting away from their screens and going into the world together.

MP: Now user research and ethnography are common practice in design. What were the early days like?

JFS: When we started out, we had no budget for anything I wanted to do. I had to convince my colleagues it would be exciting and interesting, and that we’d have good stories to tell our clients. Then it became a bit of a sales story about why it might take an extra week or two, or even a month, to do the project.

What we were doing was more like exploration; we didn’t know what we'd find, and afterward, we would probably want to do something different from what we’d promised when we wrote our proposal. 

MP: If you had to sum up a few of your most memorable projects while you were at IDEO, what are some of the ones that really stood out to you?

JFS: Early on, Supercuts invited us to bid on an innovation-focused job. At the time, we were essentially a product design company. David Kelley, Tom Kelley, and others weren’t sure what we might do for a company like Supercuts.

So with one of the other early human factors researchers, we went out and got haircuts. Then we went around the city just looking at different hair stylists’ establishments. We started putting together a story of how customers make decisions from the moment they think about wanting a haircut to deciding where to go, making their first appointment, then all the behaviors that follow, like primping a bit before you leave the shop. 

We had a lot of fun engineering this great crazy clipper. But I always believed our best ideas were these little moments throughout the experience, like getting a cape that made you look good, or a mirror that said “Supercuts” so you’d remember where you were. That was our first customer journey map.

MP: Are there other memorable moments that really stick out to you?

JFS: One of the most moving ones for me was at IDEO Chicago, years and years and years ago, when colleagues of mine were working on the LifePort Kidney Transporter. The project was all about how precious a kidney is. The team described their experience in the operating theater, seeing the surgeon take this living element and cup it so gently, like a baby bird, as he transferred it to where he needed to place it. That recalibrated the team’s thinking about designing the carrying system, because we’d just been thinking about it functionally and mechanically. But it also let them tap into what it really means to design for a living passenger. 

MP: Let’s dive into the craft of design research. How do you know when a research insight is truly great?

JFS: Insight, for me, is a change of state in our understanding. There's an epiphany of sorts, a new recognition. You get an insight by being a sensory human being, observant and absorbent through all your senses…and then discovering you are excited about something new. Design and innovation take a lot of personal energy. That human emotion has to come from you.

And that’s what happens when clients get really drawn into ideas, too—they feel you’re changing the way they see things. 

MP: What fundamentals do we need to continue to embrace to do research well?

JFS: Nothing beats being an aware, sensory human being who is curious about other people, places, and things. Research doesn’t have to be expensive. Even a conversation with one interesting person, or exposure to an unfamiliar place, will do.

Sometimes we're reluctant to put something in front of the client that we think is a really cool idea, but nobody has said they wanted it. Perhaps the research didn’t show that it was a really good idea yet. But sometimes we have to have conviction about our own perspectives and the confidence to share innovative ideas, even without hard evidence. I’ve always felt that. 

MP: One of the most important phases of IDEO’s design-thinking process is synthesis—taking the messy materials we’ve gathered during research and making sense of them. How do you approach synthesis?

JFS: I once wrote a piece about how what happens in the design process isn't the same as how we formally describe it. One story stands out. I call it “the black shoes.”
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‍Annette Diefenthaler, now Professor and Executive Director of the Munich Design Institute, was an IDEO researcher working with a global bank trying to set up a presence in Russia. The team had done loads and loads of interviews with people about banks. Late one night, on the way back to their hotel, Annette saw a big shopping center. She asked the driver to stop, because she realized they'd had no time, other than doing their interviews, to absorb much about the culture.

So she went into this big mall, and Annette was stunned by how simply the department store had arranged its products. One wall was just black shoes all lined up, all the different kinds of black shoes you could have. It was all really obvious and not very exciting because there were only black shoes—no glitz at all.

What she took from that was: this is a culture where trust is built by showing what there is. It was so honest and direct. And here we were, talking to all these people about banks and trying to understand how to build trust in an alien brand. She had a flash of insight that suddenly made sense of what the team had been hearing. The bank needed to be so much more straightforward and transparent about its services. “Black shoes” became a mantra for that project and shaped how they designed the bank’s interior and described its offer.

This insight came from a moment that was completely off script. I love that. You can’t always get to an insight by staring at your interview notes. You get it because it’s somehow gotten into your viscera.

MP: Are there any moments where you found creative ways to present research to clients to help them make decisions?

JFS: Instead of personas and customer descriptions, a team once created a series of packed suitcases that represented the different types of travelers they interviewed. The client loved that one.

MP: How do you find the courage to decide to deliver an installation of suitcases instead of a more traditional research deliverable, like a presentation?

JFS: You need to tune in to what your client needs to absorb and what you want to communicate, and be ready to experiment with how you do that. You need to get good at failing. You try things, fail, and learn how to gauge what might work better the next time. 

MP: You’re an incredible artist—I’ve seen your woodblock prints. You’re also an amazing rock climber and swimmer. I’m curious how these activities helped you develop your craft as a researcher and a designer.

JFS: There’s something very elemental about all of them—they’re direct experiences of the world. You give your weight over to the rock. You trust the water. Even with woodblock printing, what I love is how material it is. I use sharp knives and gouges to carve the wood, then I learn how much water and ink to use and how the brushes work. 

That’s the thing I find really exciting. The fact that human beings have evolved to make beautiful things, that connection of making and place is a crucial motivator.

MP: You are one of the authors of the first edition of The Little Book of Design Research Ethics. I’d love to hear your perspective on the ethics of the discipline, and what we should keep in mind as we increasingly rely on technology. 

JFS:  I have a problem with the term research, partly because I think it connotes things like clipboards and taking notes—that we’re documenting other people’s lives. I’m happier when it all feels more like co-discovery, exploring together. We are together, engaged in this space, noticing things about your behavior as well as what I’m thinking about your behavior. And it's more collaborative.

 Co-discovering with other humans is a much nicer place to be.

MP: Looking back, knowing what you know, what advice would you give young Jane? 

JFS: I think I had imposter syndrome for about five years or so. I could have moved along a lot faster if I’d had a little bit more confidence and maybe a few more people telling me that it was okay. 

MP: Are there any insights from your human factors work that you apply to the broader scope of life-centered design, and how we can learn from that?

JFS: A human being is a living thing in a living system of other living things. Observation and curiosity are key—we should keep asking the same kinds of questions about the inherent behavior of those systems, as we would ask about people: what they really do, what motivates them, and how we can gain insights from them. This goes back to your question about how rock climbing, swimming, and art come into it, in the sense that we can think more broadly about the elements that matter to people. There’s a whole living world out there with great examples of elegant systems we can learn from.

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This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

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“Insight, for me, is a change of state in our understanding. There's an epiphany of sorts, a new recognition. You get an insight by being a sensory human being, observant and absorbent through all your senses."

When category-defining challenges like disruption, the accelerating pace of change, and the need to rethink how organizations work are on the table, looking back on the current year and fighting for the same budget won't work. That's why many of the leaders we partner with are massively rethinking their priorities and where to best focus their resources. 

It’s a lot to balance, but the process doesn’t have to feel like guesswork. For several years, we’ve been using a tool we call the Planning Canvas, which provides a clear, strategic, and uncomplicated way to reflect on what has changed, what you’ve learned, and what matters now before planning for the coming year. It’s a simple way to help you evaluate where you are, and what levers you might pull to get your organization where you want it to be.

Download the Canvas

Our 2027 Planning Canvas walks you through three effective steps: 

1. Reflect on what’s changed
2. Imagine the impact you want to have in the near future
3. Decide what to double down on, reform, let go of or pursue as a new bet

We recommend using it for individual reflection ahead of annual planning, before team sessions and leadership decision meetings begin. It will help you arrive with a clear point of view on what has changed, what matters now, and the choices worth putting on the table. At the same time, don’t hesitate to adapt it to your needs. If facilitating a collaborative conversation across your team aligns better with your organization's culture, this tool can help with that, too.

The goal isn’t to predict the year ahead perfectly. It’s to enter planning conversations with a sharper point of view and the confidence to make impactful choices together. We hope you find it useful. 

Looking for more help with strategic challenges? Get in touch. We’d love to connect.

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At a time when uncertainty feels like a constant, leaders across categories can find it tough to make confident planning decisions for the year ahead.

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.