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

What was the spark?

I’m the type of person who always has a plan B. For my entire working life, I’ve had a side hustle. It made perfect sense to me, then, that in 2006, while I was working as the Chicago editor of Flavorpill, I’d accept the challenge to be a local producer for Mortified, a grassroots comedy show started by Dave Nadelberg in Los Angeles five years earlier. Even though, at that time, I was more comfortable behind a laptop than on stage, the show’s premise — everyday people reading their childhood diaries in front of a live audience — had everything I liked in comedy and storytelling: It was awkward, cathartic, redemptive, and totally relatable to anyone who was once a kid. It turned regular people into comedy stars. I jumped at the chance.

Most memorable Mortified moment? (Say that five times fast...)

For this year's Valentine Schmalentine show, we surprised one of our favorite performers, Kerstyne Kromer, by inviting her childhood celebrity crush Eden Riegel to Skype in and read the part Kerstyne had created for her in one of her childhood soap operas. In the early 2000s, Eden played Bianca Montgomery, the first openly lesbian character on All My Children. Watching Bianca's struggles on daytime TV helped Kerstyne eventually come out to her family and friends. Kerstyne almost passed out from happiness.

For a decade, my friends and I have been "sharing the shame" in Chicago.

What keeps you going?

We just celebrated Mortified Chicago’s 10th anniversary, which is astounding to me. I never thought we’d be around this long, or that I’d still be co-producing six Mortified shows a year at big venues like Lincoln Hall and The Promontory while working at IDEO. (Or that Mortified, which is now 15, would expand into books, a podcast, a TV series, a film, etc.) What energizes and inspires me is meeting new people and helping them unearth long-lost stories from their childhood. It’s an incredible privilege to have total strangers open up to you and tell you amazing and sometimes painful stories from their past. The night of the show, I love to sit in the A/V booth, hear the waves of laughter, and watch as the audience falls in love with our performers. It’s immensely gratifying to know I had a hand in making that moment possible.

What lessons from your after-hours project do you bring into your day job?

Three things immediately come to mind: I’m a better listener, I’m more empathic, and I’m a stronger storyteller. Human-centered design is all about having empathy for the end user in order to design a more desirable product, service, or fill in the blank. I also draw on many of the same techniques I use on our performers to help our designers prep for big client meetings and public speaking opportunities. Although, in the case of IDEOers, I hope nothing about their experience will be mortifying.

Annette Ferrara has been publicly embarrassing people for a decade. As a producer of Mortified, a live comedy show, she spends nights and weekends coaching people on how to get up on stage and read from their deeply personal, purple-prosed, and yes, mortifying childhood diaries. We asked her about the side project, and how it has influenced her work.

For a decade and a half, the group has built a global reputation for pulling stunts like the Grand Central Terminal freeze. If design is about the capture and channeling of attention, Improv Everywhere has a lesson for us in how to achieve that. We spoke to founder Charlie Todd to get some backstory on his benevolent guerrilla art troupe.

How did Improv Everywhere start?

Charlie Todd: I totally blundered into it. I was 22-years-old, and moved to New York to be an actor in improv comedy. I said to some friends, let’s go play a prank in a bar tonight. We did it for five years, and then when YouTube was created, I already had a library of content. A thing we did in Grand Central Station got 10 million views in the first week alone. I’ve spent the last eight years following that viral breakout.

What’s the audience meant to take away from such stunts?

When a load of people turn up at Coney Island in eveningwear and jump in the ocean, and people ask why, the answer is that there is no why. We’re all conditioned to assess for some extrinsic motivation, like the thing was for charity or a comment on global warming. It’s okay to just do a thing because it’s silly.

So, it’s simple whimsy with no purpose?

Well, I’d like to think that having that experience maybe alters people’s perception in some small way. We’re encouraging people to express themselves in a public space, in an unauthorized manner. In this post-9/11 security world we live in, we’re trying to make people realize that they don’t have to ask permission to express themselves creatively.

Is it also important to be connecting people?

I grew up in South Carolina, in a small city. I was used to people making eye contact and smiling. Moving to New York, everyone is busy and has a smartphone. It was like the only time you made eye contact was if something bad was going on: a train being delayed, or a crazy person shouting. People would unify around shiftiness. So we thought: can we create something that is positive in nature, something so unusual and joyful that you have a positive connection with someone?

Do you always get a positive reaction?

During one of the No-Pants pranks we had some police trouble. An officer stumbled across the event, and didn’t like it. Our people stayed in character and said they had forgotten their pants. The officer took the train out of service. But everything was eventually dismissed. It turns out that there’s no law against being in your underwear. When we did the event the next year, the police were there, to help escort us and make sure people had a good time.

What do you do when you’re not freaking people out on the streets of New York?

I get hired by brands to create surprise moments or spectacles, or brainstorm ideas for a brand campaign. I get to direct and produce TV. Last year I was the show-runner for a show on MTV. I’ve also been at the Upright Citizens Brigade for 15 years, as a performer and teacher.

Tell us about the teaching. Can you teach someone to be funny?

All you can teach is for people to learn how to be themselves—to be honest, and react in a truthful way. Everyone’s unique personality and viewpoint is funny. It’s counter-intuitive: when trying to be funny, people often try to be something that they’re not, by imitating stuff they’ve seen on television and so on. Instead of trying to be something you’re not, you need to be more authentically connected to what you are. That applies to creativity too: instead of reaching outside and trying too hard, focus in on what truly inspires you.

Photos courtesy of Improv Everywhere.

In the dead of winter, 2001, a woman riding the New York subway looked up from her book and saw a passenger wearing no pants. She was puzzled, but ignored him. At the next stop, another pantsless passenger joined him. And then more. By this time, she had put her book away. A hidden camera captured her reaction as it evolved from confusion to delight. She traded looks of amazement with the other passengers—a group called Improv Everywhere was responsible for breaking their routine.

1. A deeper understanding of 3D relationships

These puzzles teach how different shapes fit together in three-dimensional space. M. C. Escher would have no advantage: there is no cheating the puzzle, and all the rules of physics and gravity apply. In order to solve the puzzle, you have to understand how the shapes fit together. This is important for designers, especially when so much is being designed on a computer. If a product is being designed for the physical world, it needs to play nice with the rules of physics.

2. Forward and backward problem solving

Once you understand how the pieces are supposed to fit together, you actually have to make it happen. Often this involves both forward and backward problem solving. The internal monologue might go something like this: “So I am going to start with this piece because it is the biggest and is easiest to deal with, if I work around it. This smaller piece is probably the second half of the left side. And this piece has to be the last piece."

Sometimes you know the last step first. Sometimes you know step 1, 2, and 5 but then have to solve for steps 3 and 4. That can be scary in a linear world, but as designers that is sometimes the reality we face. It’s helpful to have the confidence that steps 3 and 4 will become clear, even if initially they are hard to see.

3. Hand-eye/Hand-brain problem solving

There is something very rich about holding a problem in your hand as you work with it. By holding the puzzle, you have a deeper understanding of the spatial relationships that must be solved. While it is possible to understand these things on a computer or on paper, being able to physically handle an object allows you to reach conclusions and iterate solutions in different ways. Fluency across mediums can only help us arrive at these solutions faster.

Others lessons might include balancing the details with the big picture, and reading context clues. But I found that I had an even deeper appreciation for these puzzles when I learned how to make some. I would encourage any interested designer with access to materials and tools to try making one for themselves.

For most of the puzzles, the pieces seem very simple. The simplicity is deceptive, however. Take the star puzzle: a configuration of six roughly rectangular identical pieces with two “triangular” notches cut out of each that slide together nicely (when you know how to do it.) But the pieces aren’t exactly rectangular. The notches are not simple triangles. In fact there are 12 faces, and only a handful of right angles. Plus, most commonly these pieces are only a few inches long—not safe to cut on most power tools without jigs—but which jigs? And to add to all that, they have to be precisely made in order to actually work, especially if you want them to look good. Again, there are simple solutions to all of these problems, but it takes some figuring to make it work. But that’s the point of a puzzle, right?

Maybe it’s their old school charm or the fond memories I have of solving them at Cracker Barrel, but I am a fan of wooden block puzzles. And after learning how to make them, from my wizard-like teacher at North Bennet Street School, I have come to appreciate the true elegance of these puzzles, and the lessons they have for designers.

Dix, a photojournalist, got on a plane for what he thought would be a 10-day trip. He ended up staying for four years, working at the United Nations to help find food and shelter for 300,000 displaced locals. It was during that time that Dix first came across Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel charting Spiegelman’s father’s experience in the Holocaust as a Polish Jew.

Before Maus, Dix’s only exposure to comics came from reading Calvin and Hobbes and Asterix. But as he huddled in bunkers during air raids and artillery fire, Dix was struck by how simply and powerfully Spiegelman was able to render the complexities of identity, memory, and trauma in graphic form.

With violence between government and Tamil forces intensifying, the Sri Lankan government ordered the UN to evacuate the region in September 2008. Dix returned to London with post-traumatic stress disorder and a fierce determination to tell the stories of those he’d left behind.

He travelled to meet refugee families and record their experiences, and worked with illustrator Lindsay Pollock to conceptualize them into a graphic storyline. Dix also embarked on a Ph.D. in anthropology to systematically research the production of the comic. The result of all his work? The Vanni, a 200-page graphic novel about the conflict, told through one Sri Lankan family’s eyes, and an accompanying thesis on the methodology and ethics of producing such a complex piece of graphic literature.

Dix has since brought to life stories about crack-cocaine addicts in Guinea Bissau, a Nigerian woman trafficked to London (Abike's story, below), and the plight of African and Asian migrants in the Persian Gulf. At every stage, Dix works alongside his subjects to ensure he’s best reflecting their experiences, and their stories have become a powerful educational tool, illustrating complex, often abstract issues including migration, human trafficking, and drug addiction at the most human level.

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A chance meeting with an IDEO designer led Dix to our London studio, where we collaborated on a three-day long pro bono sprint to develop his stories into scalable, interactive teaching tools for classrooms. We designed and prototyped a WhatsApp-based multimedia story about Merha, an Eritrean refugee fleeing to London to escape persecution, as well as an app-based version of Merha’s story, including buttons and swipes on each frame of the story, so readers could learn more.

Dix’s next step is to secure funding to build out the app and develop lesson plans to roll out across schools internationally. But in the meantime, he’s not standing still. Dix is already testing a lo-fi version of the educational tool—an interactive PDF—in 300 schools across 26 countries including Brazil, Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic Of Congo, the UAE, and many others. His next comic? Capturing the story of the Yazidi community fleeing ISIS in Syria.

It was Boxing Day 2004 when Ben Dix, founder of British literary comic publisher PositiveNegatives, got the call. A university friend, stationed in the Tamil Tiger-held region of Vanni in northern Sri Lanka, was asking if he'd come and help. It was the day of the tsunami that killed 230,000 people, one of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded.

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.