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

I’ve always loved drawing. I had cool, encouraging parents who’d do things like let me draw an invitation to my 6th birthday party, then go make copies of it so that I had personalized cards to send out.

I remember discovering my mom’s college sketchbook in the basement when I was a teenager, and feeling like it gave me a window into who she was at that time of her life. I started keeping sketchbooks in 10th grade, and have managed to hold on to almost all of them since then.

In my career as a programmer, I live and work inside my computer screen. My professional body of work can sometimes feel so ephemeral—everything I’ve ever made could be wiped out by a really strong magnet. So it feels really nice to have some solid, double-layered bookshelves and bins full of sketchbooks to step back and look at sometimes.

Lately, I’ve been drawing complicated women in the evenings. A woman’s physicality is so much more political than a man’s—and to me, this makes it so much more powerful. A woman has more expectations placed on her physical looks—her clothes, her hair, even her expression—and that only makes it that much more of a provocation when those expectations are thwarted.

When I was a kid, I’d spend hours drawing Ariel from Disney’s A Little Mermaid. I'd sometimes catch myself unconsciously copying her expression with my own face. Even at 9 years old, I’d feel a little embarrassed when I felt a big, fake grin on my face. I liked Ariel and her gadgets and gizmos aplenty, but I wasn’t like Ariel. I was faking it.

Then in high school, when it was time for my exciting locking-myself-in-my-room-and-drawing-self-portraits period, I had to shift into thinking intentionally about what my face was doing while I drew from the mirror. I found that whether I was trying to make a specific kind of face, whatever came out ended up feeling like a character. And that somehow felt instantly more powerful than just the image in the mirror.

The women I like to draw now capture some element of that feeling. They may not be the definition of self-possessed, they may or may not be confident and composed, but they are self-aware, and in control of what they are putting out into the world. They may be performing a little, but they're doing it on their own terms, for their own benefit.

They’re from noir movies and punk bands. They’re artists, journalists, wastoids, and dweebies. I like to think they lived for themselves and as themselves—the most provocative act there is for any human. I admire them and want to see myself in them

“I have been drawing complicated women in the evenings lately.” Cambridge software designer Ashley Holtgraver reveals the secrets of her notebooks.

In Lima, Peru, people who give out free newspapers or sell water and snacks on the on-ramps to the highway use these little wooden crates to sit on or put products on. To avoid carrying the crates home every night, they tie a rope between the box and the railing, then drop it over the edge overnight. This keeps them from getting cleared or taken because they're virtually invisible from the other side. The crates aren't that valuable, but it's probably a hassle for vendors to carry them around or find new ones every day.

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions thoughtless acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire the invention of new products, services, and experiences.

Bringing new design to the way we die—what we see, touch, feel, and hear—is an idea with a strong tailwind. Advocates like BJ Miller, who was profiled in the New York Times this week, are spreading the message that we can do better for people who are dying if we pay close attention to human needs.

Sen, who gives Miller a nod in her video (see below), felt this firsthand when she was hospitalized for an illness. As a musician who started playing the piano when she was 3, Sen found the sounds of the emergency room traumatizing, and left committed to do something to save others from having the same experience.

We became instant fans of Sen’s work when she submitted it to our OpenIDEO challenge on end-of-life care, and gave a talk during Re: Imagine, a subsequent citywide conversation about death. We caught up with her in Washington D.C., where she’s a fellow at the Halcyon Incubator, a program that supports social entrepreneurs, and asked how she’s planning to bring beautiful sound to the people who need them most.

IDEO: WHY IS MUSIC SO IMPORTANT AT THE END OF LIFE?

I would say sound is important at the end of life, which includes, but is not limited to, music. For instance, a lot of people mention nature sounds as something they want to hear at the end of life; other examples are voices of loved ones, laughter, etc. You can hear people's responses here.

Sound is important because some people say hearing is the last sense to go when we die. I believe it has a profound effect on our sense of dignity, not just for the person dying, but also for those around them.

IDEO: HAVE YOU SEEN EXAMPLES OF THIS?

Morgan, a palliative care nurse in NY, got in touch with me after she saw the idea on OpenIDEO. She said that her team started to play a song moments before a patient's death to liberate them from the ventilator, with the expectation that they would die in the next few moments. The question inspired her to use her own iPhone to play music for the patients. One cancer patient she became very close with shared his favorite music, and she played that for him. People’s preferences are different, so it’s tough to find something that’s universal. It’s very awkward to say, “I’m assuming you’re going to die soon, what kind of music do you like?” I got the impression that it was helping her team and the family members as much as the patient. You can’t interview the patient after they’ve passed away—“how was your dying experience?”—but you can talk to the family and the nurses. I heard from cancer nurses at Sibley that when a cure is not possible, they are empowered to heal in other ways—do something seemingly simple that makes a big impact.

A couple of people mentioned that they played music when their grandparents passed away. “I had a sense that she could hear the music or my voice even though she couldn’t react to me,” or “I have faith that she could hear me.” It’s a story that we create for ourselves, but, as those who are left behind, feeling that we have made a positive impact gives us a sense of peace.

IDEO: ARE YOU PILOTING SEN SOUND IN HOSPITALS?

Yes, we are already working with Sibley Innovation Hub (part of Johns Hopkins Medicine)—though not necessarily focused on "end of life"—to test our ideas to transform the sound experience for patients.

As for the "end of life" sound—for now it's an art/conceptual project. I record the voices of people sharing stories of the sound they wish to hear at the end of life, to raise awareness on the importance of sound.

I also believe that it is a way to build resiliency in the community, by allowing us to approach the taboo subject with a somewhat light-hearted, playful way. It's dreadful to imagine death itself, but by imagining the sound, it's somewhat more approachable.

I would love to continue exploring ways to implement the idea with hospice and palliative care centers, and we are in conversation with a couple of facilities. I have done this as an artist and will always continue to do that, but I’m at the point where I’m transitioning to trying to inspire a team to do this.

It’s going to take time: Any medical conference you go to is about winning the fight [against death]. But this is a project to build resiliency in the community. There’s no wrong answer. If a young person says to me “I don’t like to think about how I’m going to die,” that’s okay. But I want to help people build a sense of community, to create music or sound or jam with the person with the same illness but not the same geographical location—connecting people who really need it through music and art.

For more about Yoko's work check out her piece in the OpenIDEO End of Life story collection.

Humans really like the sound of the ocean. We like it so much, the lapping of waves top the list of last sounds we wish to hear before we die. That’s one thing you’ll learn from Yoko K. Sen, an ambient electronic musician whose project, Sen Sound, aims to transform what we hear at the end of life, replacing shrill alarm bells and bleeping machines of the hospital with a soothingly oceanic sonic environment.

I have three. Instead of writing in a journal, I want to summarize each day in a creative drawing. I also plan to listen to more podcasts. And, whenever someone asks me, "How are you?", I will try to never to say "good," and instead use a more descriptive adjective.
—Katie Kirsch

I really want to work on being in the moment—which means putting down the phone, and being delighted by who and what is around me.
—Amy Bonsall

My creative resolution: Write, draw, or create more physical letters and postcards for friends and family (at least one per month!). And use more of the Airpost service that we helped design out of IDEO Tokyo!
—Mike Peng

I have two. One, to be more aware of what contexts and situations work in favor of my creativity. And two, to inspire others around me to be creative.
—Michaël Harboun

I plan to sew a new outfit and wear it, turn my photos into different series and make a portfolio website, and to read a Poem-A-Day.
—Rebecca Lee

I'm going to try to dedicate the first hour after waking up exclusively to creative pursuits, rather than looking at email, social media, or cat videos. This will require getting up early every day, so fingers crossed.
—Neil Stevenson

My resolution is inspired by Julia Cameron's morning pages. But since my practice is choreographic (I'm a dancer/choreographer outside of IDEO), I'm resolving to create a movement phrase everyday. I’m not sure yet what the dance equivalent to three pages of writing is, but I'll figure it out.
—Eileen Farrell

Slackline (or highline in this case) is both a new habit and skill. I find that balancing on a line is a powerful way of coming to terms with fear and a kind of forced meditation, counterintuitively creating fear and calm at the same time.
—Jonah Houston

I want to learn to lathe wooden baseball bats. I'm looking to make an art piece to show in a gallery.
—Samuel Bertain

I plan to find a living space that inspires me to do good work; to sign up for a class so I can make arts around other people and osmose creative energy (and hopefully give back too?); and to be more intentional about my passwords (I don't have a method to my madness, it's just madness).
—Momo Miyazaki

I am pushing my modern calligraphy for 2017. I did a class this year and for Christmas have ordered books and more pens. I am hoping to also try out brush lettering. I follow Seb Lester on Instagram and he makes it look so easy... even though it’s not.
—Bobbie Brightman

I will download and use the Headspace app.
—John Ravitch

I want to channel Charlie Rose and learn how to host better video interviews on Creative Confidence. I also want to rock climb more.
—Suzanne Howard

In 2016, I did the 100 day project, which got me going on weaving and watercoloring. In 2017, I want to create my first large-scale tapestry. Who knows if it'll happen... we'll see!
—Emma Scripps

I want to to start writing again. I used to write a lot, both for fun and as a freelance advice columnist, but have gotten away from it in recent years. Doesn't matter to me if this manifests in jokes, stories, reflections, whatever—so long as pen meets paper and my brain is flexed regularly.
—Adam Moulter

I want to do at least one thing each week to celebrate the ubiquitous creativity in New York City. It can be a concert, a class, or just a walk around a new neighborhood to explore the graffiti and architecture. I moved here a year ago and have so much more to explore!
—Shauna Carey

I want to say "I don't know" more, so I learn something.
—David Good

Illustrations by Matt Avallone.

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After the ball drops and the champagne is gone, we have 365 days ahead of us to be more creative people, with new and better habits, mindsets, and skills. Seeking inspiration? Here are some of IDEO designers’ resolutions for 2017.

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.