The urgency of attending to our children’s mental health cannot be overstated.

Concern about their well-being was already on the rise in the decade prior to the pandemic. Alongside social inequity, the COVID era has seen soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts. Knowing that mental health is influenced by numerous systemic factors, we met with families of all income levels and heard from practitioners throughout Massachusetts. In some communities, mental health is candidly discussed, in others it remains a taboo subject. Through these conversations, we learned that mental health requires both individuals and their families to be educated, supported, and empowered.

HandholdMA.org helps families find services that work for them and gives them easy access to information on a range of mental health topics. It allows parents to learn from and support one another as they navigate the landscape of mental health together. We took special care to make resources feel approachable for those in communities of color, and curated new resources for everyone from preschoolers to teens—because mental health challenges do not discriminate.

In 2020, a coalition of the nation’s leading experts in pediatric health issued an urgent warning that the mental health crisis among children had become a national emergency.

The percentage of emergency department visits for mental health crises rose by 24% for children between the ages of 5 and 11, and 31% for those 12 to 17, compared with 2019.

87,000

site visits to to HandholdMA.org since launch

223,000

people reached in bilingual social media campaign

To help shift vivo’s thinking from a focus on products to a focus on brand-building, IDEO set out to help the company understand how young consumers experience fun—a core tenet of the vivo brand. The new concept store needed to convey joy and fun in a meaningful and memorable way. The project was about more than just designing the space; it was also about piloting into vivo’s future brand systems.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team conducted user research in four different cities in China, then shared the stories of young Chinese consumers with the vivo team. Their interviews revealed that young people value experiences that enrich their lives and create a feeling of positive personal transformation. They seek opportunities to discover new experiences, express themselves in different ways, expand and deepen their social connections, and build knowledge and skills. By leaning on this definition of “enjoyment,” IDEO helped vivo identify the value proposition of the concept store, helping consumers express themselves in new and different ways. The store would allow every visitor to see something unique and find a fresh perspective.

The vivo team took that value proposition into a design brief and later built out the space and interactive experiences. The second floor of the store is dedicated entirely to interactive experiences using photo booths, sound recording, and lighting technology, designed to provide consumers with the kind of enjoyment they seek. vivo launched the concept store in Shenzhen on March 22, 2019, marking an important milestone in vivo’s transformation from a smartphone maker to a consumer brand.

China consumes roughly 30% of the world’s smartphones—which presents a tremendous market opportunity for brands looking to capture young consumers’ loyalty.

Top 1

in China's smartphone market, topping both shipments (sale-in) and retail sales (sale-out), in the first half of 2024

260M active users

within two years of vivo Lab's official opening, with 70% of them young users

The program Tsinghua and IDEO created together consisted of six modules focused on creative leadership: Rediscover Design, Build Design as a Core Competency, Creating the Conditions for Creativity, The Financial Levers for Innovation, Designing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and Leading for Tomorrow. 73 Chinese and foreign experts helped teach the modules, including former Forbidden City Palace Museum director Shan Jixiang, the father of Japanese industrial design, Masayuki Kurokawa, and Jake Knapp, author of the book Sprint.

The program’s first cohort included more than 30 entrepreneurs from 20 different industries across nine cities. Participants completed the courses throughout the year, taking full advantage of holistic, interactive teaching and the opportunity to share their own practical experiences. Their feedback consistently demonstrated how the course had given them fresh approaches to problems their companies faced, whether improving internal communication or helping them see the clients they serve from a new perspective.

Liu Feng, the founder of a fast growing tourism development company, was particularly inspired by the Creating the Conditions for Creativity module’s six pillars of corporate transformation concept. Using these pillars, he not only refined the mission and value of his company, but also launched a series of measures to improve all aspects of its operations, from customer service to annual company gatherings. With a newly empowered team, he significantly increased the agility of the organization.

Ting Zhihong, the chairwoman of China’s leading logistics technology company, managed to double its profit during the course. She said her biggest takeaway from the course was how important it is to empower the team. Her company has now set up several platforms that give employees more room to experiment, create, and take part in frontline decision-making, bringing them closer to the company’s management.

Hu Chao, founder and CEO of China’s largest e-commerce platform for childcare goods, found that while other executive courses simply teach knowledge, Lead a Creative China taught him the importance of placing people at the center of what his company is doing.

The first cohort of the program graduated in December 2018. On April 8th, 2019, the Lead a Creative China program received an honorable mention in the education category as part of Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards, becoming the only award-winning Chinese project in the category.

After 40 years of rapid change, China has reached a pivotal point in its growth trajectory. Across the globe, traditional drivers of economic growth have slowed down, creating opportunity define the new economy.

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The Chinese government has laid out a wide range of ambitious policy plans to ensure that China successfully manages this transition, and that the country continues to grow and lead.

Honorable Mention

education category, Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards

China’s digital landscape is dominated by highly integrated mobile apps like WeChat and Alipay that seamlessly combine messaging, shopping, bill payment, and finance management. This shift toward digital-first interactions that are hyper-convenient, personalized, and intuitive has significantly shaped consumer expectations for experiences like finding, booking, and staying in a hotel. To stay competitive and meet—or exceed—young guests’ expectations, Huazhu needed to redesign its Membership App 3.0 to prioritize guest needs across all touchpoints of the hotel journey.

Through in-depth research and member feedback, IDEO discovered the true pain point the Huazhu membership app needed to address: seamlessly integrating the hotel brand’s online and offline experiences. The Huazhu Membership App 3.0 adopted “simple, stable, and real” design principles, simplifying user operations, optimizing the interface, fixing lingering experience issues, maximizing page load speed, and reducing crash rates.

The IDEO team discovered users have different functional needs. Sometimes, users want to search for hotel information quickly. Other times, they prefer to explore and browse content slowly. To meet both needs, the app needed to be optimized for efficiency and exploration. So, the IDEO team upgraded the interface of the Huazhu Membership App, adding quick operation modules and information blocks on the main page, as well as a downward scrolling interface that gradually slows the experience, offering channels for detailed exploration.

Customers also had different needs at different points in their travel journey: before, during, and after their stays. IDEO designed the language and user interface to provide personalized service information for each stage, from booking to post-stay. The app’s content adapts to the user’s travel phase, showing the most relevant service experiences at each point. The content displayed on the app also changes based on user habits, helping the app flex to meet their needs. The design aligns with the Huazhu Hotels Group’s mission to provide personalized service to a diverse clientele.

The team also worked to inject Huazhu’s brand characteristics by offering an upgraded experience in booking, stay, dining, and member benefits and adding features like a 30-second, automatic check-in experience. These thoughtful, personalized updates integrate Huazhu Hotels Group’s meticulous service philosophy, providing customers with a welcoming, human-centered hospitality experience. The updated Huazhu Membership App 3.0 is now available in major app stores, shaping a new generation of user experiences for Huazhu Hotels Group.  

Young travelers in China expect the first touchpoint with a hotel brand to be digital.

5% increase

in monthly active users after the launch of the App's 2.0 version in 2021

While beautiful textiles (and now prints!) are Block Shop’s most recognizable output, there’s a good deal more going on behind the scenes. The duo created Block Shop in partnership with a family of printers and dyers in Bagru, Rajasthan to keep the artistry and craft of Indian block printing alive. (They donate five percent of their profits each year to building and implementing community healthcare programs.) If their reverence for craft and respect for humanity isn’t enough to make you weak in the knees, this interview should do it.

In one sentence, who are you?

Hopie Stockman: Josephine March with an MBA.
Lily Stockman: Gertrude Bell on a camel after too much coffee.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

HS: I run Block Shop—a textile and design studio—with my sister, Lily. In reality, I work seven days a week, but five of them take place in our 11th floor downtown Los Angeles studio. I design everything from rugs to public murals to business strategy and Grand Central Market lunch orders for Block Shop.

We both went to grad school; I went for for business and Lily for painting. Rather than dividing our work rigidly between business and creative, we’ve found that it works best when we share responsibilities.

A lot of our education happens in Jaipur, India. In 2010, Lily was living in there and apprenticing under master Indian miniature painter Ajay Sharma when she first met our printers. Since then, we've gone back to Jaipur twice to year to work with them on new designs and products. Everything we know about wood block printing we've learned on the ground while prototyping with our team, lending a hand in all aspects of the process, from dye-mixing to block registration on the fabric.

On the business side, the most valuable advice has all come from the (mostly) women running their own small and successful businesses here in LA. For example, our friend who runs a candle company helped us build our wholesale strategy. When we started out, we thought we wanted just a few huge department store-style accounts to streamline our operations and provide reliable cash flow. She helped us to understand the marketing power of wholesale: that smaller, well-aligned shops could be better storytellers and champions of our brand, and likely wouldn't discount as aggressively.

Another friend who has an independent furniture line shared invaluable advice on how to collaborate with large companies, emphasizing the importance of control over the design and fabrication process. Megaretailers actually need the cool factor of small, independent brands in order to be relevant. The question for small brands is whether the paycheck and promise of exposure is worth the potential chargebacks, brand dilution, and even customer alienation. For us, we've learned that it doesn't work unless we're making the products ourselves and have control over the storytelling.

What are your 3 favorite possessions?

HS:

1. Otto, our bearded mutt.
2. A painting of a rabbit that my great grandfather painted 60 years ago.
3. The Kishore Kumar Bollywood poster that my now-husband and I bought together at the Chor Bazaar in Mumbai, when we had only been dating a few months. It sort of signified that leap into a shared life—jointly owning things.

LS:

1. My baby Olympia.
2. My dog, who I bought from the pound for $85.
3. My gold bangle bracelets given to me by our surrogate grandmother, collected from her travels around the world.

What does a typical work session look like?

LS: On design days, we hide our laptops and put the screens away. No phones, no nothing! Out come the old art books on Anni Albers, Arp, Matisse, and Sheila Hicks. We put some Grateful Dead on, get the watercolors out, and swap sketches back and forth across the table. The result is so much better when we do it together. We’re always improving each other’s work. We try to design like this for two-to-three hours once a week, which is pitiful, but that’s the reality of running a small company; the actual drawing sessions take up only a small percentage of our time.

When it comes to our work, we have a simple design rule: Everything Block Shop touches must hold up as a holistic composition. That means it needs to have balance and a sense of quiet. My favorite painting teacher said, "You know a painting is done when it's quiet. Nothing on the canvas is yelling at you." And if it doesn’t look good hanging on the wall, then it doesn’t go into production.

How do you get over creative block?

HS: Take Otto for a walk past the old movie palaces in downtown L.A. to remember that inspiring design lives everywhere in architecture. On a recent prototyping trip to India, I started panicking that we’d exhausted all geometric patterns—THAT’S IT, WE’RE FINISHED! WE’VE USED EVERY ITERATION OF CIRCLES AND TRIANGLES! Then we went for a walk to get chai with our sketchbooks in hand, and boom! All sorts of ideas emerged from the marble latticework and archways in the old city. We simply needed to look.

What was the last item on your to-do list?

LS: Plan a Texas road trip starting in Marfa, where our friends run the El Cosmico.

How do you see the world in 2078?

HS: A degree or two warmer. Governed by data and manufactured by robots, with no boundaries between advertising, entertainment, and politics. Hopefully, I’ll be with the people who’ve returned to hands-on, empathy-based, slow living….off with my grandkids somewhere outside making pinch pots.

What's your number one bucket list item?

HS & LS: Design a boutique hotel.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

HS: Katja Blichfeld, co-creator of High Maintenance. (If you’re out there, hey.)

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There are creative crushes and then there are girl crushes. This qualifies as both—squared. Sisters Lily and Hopie Stockman are the founders of Block Shop, a textile company based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. I discovered Lily and Hopie a few years ago through an online web of women makers, and have been feverishly following their work ever since.

As a Third Culture Kid, I took pictures to trace my changing worlds. These days, capturing and reflecting on images is how I feed my sense of wonder. This creativity challenge uses a dash of intention to keep your curiosity engaged throughout the day.

1. Morning Capture

In the morning, take a picture of something or someone around you.

Make a mental note of why you photographed the subject. What caught your attention? Then, examine the image. Identify one element or aspect of that image that strikes you. It can be anything—an object in the frame, a color, a texture, a mood. What sparks your curiosity? This is the kernel of inspiration for the next picture you’ll take in this short series.

Write down and complete this sentence: In my next picture, I’m curious about exploring ______.

2. Midday Capture

In the afternoon, take a picture inspired by the kernel of inspiration you wrote down earlier and reflect on what you appreciate about this new capture. Then, look at the image, studying it to identify a new kernel for the next picture you’ll take.

Write down and complete this sentence: In my next picture, I’m curious about exploring ______.

3. Evening Capture

In the evening, take a picture inspired by the kernel of inspiration you jotted down in the afternoon.

Then, look back at the first and last images you captured. Compare them. What’s their relationship to one another? What do you make of their juxtaposition?

Did your curiosity take you far from where you started? Did you circle around a single idea? What does that say about you in this moment of your life? Even if the setting didn’t change much, noticing details in your everyday environment can be a worthwhile exercise—especially in an era of selfies.

I hope this challenge was an easy way to observe what's around you. It can also be compelling if done over a week or month. Instead of taking multiple pictures in one day, take one picture per day and identify a kernel of inspiration to steer your focus for the photo you snap the next day, and repeat. Compare your first image with your very last, and reflect on the journey.

One last provocation: Pass this creative challenge to someone you know. Just copy and paste the instructions and, in the spirit of generosity, give them your last image to help inspire the first image they might take—like a visual chain letter.

Creativity isn’t a state of being—it’s a practice. So Fast Company created a 14-day challenge, tapping some of the most intriguing and productive minds in their community to provide exercises to help their readers reach their creative potential. One of their contributors is our own Roshi Givechi, partner and executive design director at IDEO New York. Here’s her recipe for discovering inspiration in the every day.

I came up with the concept years ago, when I realized that I had grown up so dependent on Google maps in London that I could barely recognize a street two blocks from my house. I’ve always liked to do mental exercises, pinpointing different places in the world I wanted to visit, or figuring out which direction I would need to go to get home.

IDEO projects rely on a brief and constraints. But I decided this project would be boundless. I wasn't going to rely on it financially, so I could take risks and experiment without worrying about money. It would also put me in the shoes of the very people for whom I often design. We work with startups a lot, so building my own to learn the struggles and nuances of a project like this would give me insight into what founders go through.

Over the last couple of years, our team has had many failures and successes. We’ve learned that it’s tough to keep a team motivated to work on a side project. We managed to build the prototype and the campaign in a very short time, but when the harder, darker part of the development began, momentum slowed and problems took longer to solve, causing delays.

Today, we are four weeks away from shipping the first units, and have around 2,000 people waiting for Haize to arrive, so I answer a ton of questions by email every day. No matter how good your intentions, there will be both positive and negative feedback.

Here’s what I have learned—and relearned—from this startup phase:

1. It is all about the team, and users are part of that team. Make sure to consider them as you make decisions for your company and your product.
2. Coming up with an idea is fun, but actually figuring out how to make it work is longer, harder, and darker. Get ready for it.
3. Show your face. Revealing the people behind the work gives the project and services a deeper dimension.
4. Storytelling can be as important as the product itself. It keeps the team excited, leading to better and more efficient work. It also helps users feel more personally involved in the process and the product.
5. Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a strategy until they get punched in the nose." Many of your strategies will probably fail. It’s a very humbling experience. But it helps you grow and learn.

Above all, though, this project has let me do something that is really important to me as an interaction designer: empower people with technology without substituting their own skills. Haize doesn’t tell people where to go—it just helps them find their way. To me, it’s a great metaphor for the work designers do everyday.

What have you learned from your side project or startup? Reach out to IDEO on Twitter.

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When I learned that I would have to wait for a visa before starting my job as an interaction designer at IDEO, it felt like the perfect moment to do something I’d always wanted to do: develop a product from initial concept to final production and delivery. I went after an idea I’d had for a long time: A smart compass for bikes that points you to your destination, without giving you full-on directions. I named it Haize.

To get him on board with what we need to do next, I turn all of our actions into play. When I want to leave the house quickly, I play "who can get a toy to take with us faster" game. When I want to put him to bed, I start “gotta sleep otherwise a monster will come and get you" play. It doesn’t always work like I want it to, but it’s still much easier to convince my son to move on to the next action of play, rather than asking him to follow my instructions.

Children develop skills through play. They repeat things when they’re fun, which helps them master things, and gives them the confidence to attempt the next challenge. This is the way we all grew up. But we tend to abandon that as adults.

As we get older, play starts to feel improper. We’re not supposed to be curious about things that are considered normal or ordinary in the world of adults. Sometimes, even something as simple as going to the movies can start to feel lazy; you have to start to push yourself to do things that are fun and without practical purpose.

In Japan, where I live, the pressure of the adult world is particularly strong, and people who are interested in things that no one else is interested in are often labeled as “Kuuki ga yomenai hito.” The exact translation is “people who can’t read the air.” It is widely used in the office environment when someone disagrees with others, or in casual conversation, if, say, you and your friends go to a restaurant and you are the only one who orders something different.

Because of this strong social pressure, we stop doing things just because we like them, and agree with others as much as possible to avoid standing out. Another Japanese proverb offers a similar sentiment: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered in.” In this kind of cultural environment, we start looking for the logical reasons for everything we do, and stop following our intuition.

Thanks to my son—and probably my job as a designer—I'm aware of that pressure and try not to be swayed by it. I’m a curious person. I would rather make time for playing or plotting small pranks—like putting googly eyes on street signs, playing connect the dots with a pen and the moles on my skin, or creating random D.I.Y. bento events with friends.

To keep my childlike impulses intact, I’ve made three rules for myself to stick to:

1. Purposely do things without purpose. We are trained to make goals, meet deadlines, and get things done. Doing something with no end goal helps you listen to your instincts.
2. It is OK to not understand. There are so many unknowns in this world, and you will not be able to understand everything, even when you are old and wise. Sometimes the way you feel is better than a definitive answer.
3. Let yourself be a curious animal. We all are interested in different things—that is what makes the world interesting. No matter how weird or useless or off the wall your interest, embrace it.

Follow these basic creative principles and it will supercharge your imagination, allowing you to see the world in a more playful, childlike way. I know of no better way to set the stage for creativity, design, and inventing something new.

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Since I started my life with my son, the way I plan my day has totally changed. He’s an imaginative child who talks to invisible friends and turns the bathtub into a racetrack. He loves to play, and he does not like to stop, even when I am in rush to get to a meeting or it’s already way past his bedtime.

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.