IDEO and Fotile have had a relationship since 2009, working together on projects including a unified design language for product offerings, retail environments, and IoT strategy. For the dishwasher, IDEO and the Fotile research team came together for design research, shadowing Chinese families in different cities as they prepared meals from start to finish. Together they discovered that unlike in Western cooking, where several kinds of cookware are used for different dishes, Chinese cooks tend to use the same cookware to prepare all of their dishes.

That meant that the cookware needed to be cleaned several times during a single meal preparation, rather than once at the end. In this context, the sink serves different purposes over the course of cooking—it’s a place to wash and store prepped ingredients, rinse the cookware, and deep clean the dishes used in food prep and during the meal.

Based on this insight, IDEO made a list of product design recommendations that became Fotile’s Sink Dishwasher—a counter-level, multi-purpose appliance that specifically suits Chinese cooking habits. IDEO’s design guidance gave Fotile the confidence it needed to launch its product into the market, and served as a blueprint for the future iteration of Fotile’s Sink Dishwasher.

On March 25, 2015, six months after the project ended, Fotile launched the world's first sink dishwasher designed for Chinese families. Eight months later, its market share exceeded 30 percent, setting off a wave of innovation in the Chinese dishwasher category.

In 2016, Fotile introduced a three-slot dishwasher with an added compartment for cleaning fruit and vegetables—a direct response to a research finding that Chinese families are concerned about food safety. When this new model hit the market, Fotile’s dishwasher market share jumped to 41.1%. In China, Fotile is now synonymous with “sink dishwasher,” and the company has a widespread reputation among consumers as a symbol of a safe and healthy Chinese family kitchen.

Since its founding in 1994, Fotile’s Chairman, Mao Zhongqun, has made it his goal to “do nothing but build a high-end Chinese family brand.”

30%

Fotile Sink Dishwasher’s share of the market in China, just eight months after launch

41%

Fotile’s dishwasher market share after it launched a three-slot version in 2016

#1 selling brand

in the mainstream price segment of the Chinese dishwasher market as of August 2023

BoAo Group’s idea to design a new baby car seat was fueled by a newly revised minor protection law, which made using child safety seats mandatory beginning June 1st, 2021. As ZUOWE and IDEO looked around China’s emerging car seat market, the team noticed a singular focus on safety and safety features across most international and domestic brands. There was a clear opportunity for a new product that could meaningfully differentiate itself by not only providing safety features but also meeting the needs of modern Chinese parents.

To kick off the project, the IDEO team needed to answer two questions: What matters to the new generation of parents in China? And how will their style and approach to parenting affect their expectations for baby car seats? Taking into account the potentially different consumer needs in different geographies, the IDEO team headed to Shanghai, a city with more than 25 million people, and the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, which has a population of 2 million. They conducted in-depth home visits to local families, visited many brick-and-mortar mom-and-baby shops, and interviewed people like specialized nurses, parenting experts, and child psychologists. 

Despite the differences between the two cities, IDEO discovered commonalities during consumer conversations. Young Chinese parents were experiencing a perceived identity gap. As individuals, they felt they had distinct personalities and a clear sense of self. They actively expressed themselves through their clothes and belongings. But when they became parents, this sense of self weakened or disappeared completely.  Their identities shifted to being someone’s mom or dad overnight. This new generation was eager to show their unique approach to parenthood as they used to express their sense of self. But many products were designed for children, with little regard for parents. 

This core finding helped set the direction for the new baby car seat design and brand Maple&Co. However, there were still two significant challenges to overcome. One, IDEO needed to design a product with stringent technical regulations and standards on a tight timeline—ZUOWE wanted to launch the new car seat at an important industry trade show within the year. And two, the team had to help the organization transform its thinking and ways of working to be more consumer-centric.

BoAo’s strength lies in its 20 years of experience developing and manufacturing car seats for major domestic and international automotive brands. This gave the company an edge in overcoming technical barriers and driving mass production. But its engineering and manufacturing mindset had become a barrier to transforming into a D2C brand. With such ingrained ways of working, pivoting to a more creative process can be hard. 

To address this hurdle, IDEO set up co-creation workshops, bringing together ZUOWE’s newly formed baby car seat team and manufacturing experts from their factories to discuss design direction and details early on. The benefits of the collaboration were clear: It was easy to share feedback in a timely manner and make product design decisions very quickly. When IDEO presented a design that emphasized natural textures during a workshop on brand positioning, a member from Bo Ao’s manufacturing team said, “This feels very different. This could become a major selling point,” and that they had “never seen” anything like it done by other baby car seat brands.

A year after working together, ZUOWE Technology launched Maple&Co and the new Maple baby car seat across its main e-commerce channels. Modern and minimalist in soft natural colors and wooden veneers, Maple appeals to the aesthetics of young parents in China. Despite a series of micro COVID outbreaks in China, within three months, Maple had already achieved better-than-predicted sales and received favorable comments about the look and quality of the car seat from parents. Fast forward two years, additional collaborations with IDEO have enabled the young startup to grow its child travel portfolio from a signature car seat into a more holistic offering that includes highly functional, fashionable, and adaptable car booster seats and strollers that thoughtfully address the needs of modern Chinese families across various life stages at home—and on the go.

China's minor protection law mandated the use of child safety seats beginning June 1, 2021.

‍

Despite incoming regulations fueling a surge in purchases, car seats on the market rightly prioritized safety but did not consider the emotional needs and lifestyle preferences of a new generation of Chinese parents.

1 year

after the project ended, a new, differentiated baby seat product and brand, Maple&Co, launched

Top 6

during the 2023 “Double 11” shopping festival, Maple&CO secured the 6th spot on Tmall's new brand pre-sale list

‍

“Over a year ago, I had to take my cat to the vet for an unexpected and expensive surgery,” says one Card Member. “To be honest, I still don’t know if I’ve paid the bill off.”

Many crave the flexibility to pay for large purchases over time, but also want to avoid the pitfalls of debt. Others rely on debit or cash for small items—no one wants to accumulate interest on a cup of coffee, lunch with a friend, or box of Kleenex—but then miss out on valuable rewards.

American Express worked with IDEO to help them attract new customers by understanding what financially stable young adults wanted in a credit card. The team began by interviewing more than 120 millennials to understand their payment behaviors around debit and credit, and how they think about borrowing and spending.

One person described the monthly panic of receiving his bill—described as “statement shock”—and his habit of making multiple payments before his billing cycle closed to ease this anxiety. Others were wary of credit because of a large veterinarian bill or financial mistakes made in their 20s, and relied on debit because it felt safer than accruing a balance to pay off. Overall, the team learned that many consumers experience anxiety about paying their bills. And while financial products that offer more flexibility and control have been needed for years, they are especially valuable in times of economic uncertainty like today.

Based on this research, IDEO prototyped, iterated, and refined two concepts, with frequent feedback from users and the client. Called Pay It Plan It, this feature offers financially responsible consumers more transparency, confidence, and control.

Pay It allows Card Members to quickly pay for small purchase amounts under $100 with a few taps in the American Express mobile app. When that purchase shows up on their account, they can choose “Pay It” and still earn rewards on the purchase. This ensures Card Members can take advantage of rewards while lowering their monthly bill by paying for smaller items throughout the month.

With Plan It, Card Members can split up larger purchases of $100 or more—like an emergency trip to the vet or a new sofa—into equal monthly payments, with a fixed fee and no interest. When the purchase appears in their account, they can select “Plan It,” and will be offered up to three monthly payment plans, ranging from three to 24 months. Each plan comes with a fixed monthly fee and no interest. Card Members know exactly how much they have to pay each month, so there are no surprises. And if they pay the purchase off early, they no longer have to pay any future plan fees.

The design of Pay It Plan It did not come without challenges: Bill pay is critical, complex, and highly regulated. Pay It Plan It required a significant internal financial and technical investment, which was achieved after IDEO shared many of the emotional, compelling stories from credit card users with leaders at American Express.

The team worked closely with the American Express regulatory and digital teams to ensure compliance and seamless integration into the mobile app and website’s user experiences and interfaces. To heighten the sense of competence, control, and transparency for users, the designers focused on small interactions like status animations, proactive suggestions, and straightforward language. These interactions help Card Members anticipate upcoming payments and clearly understand Pay It Plan It.

Plan It was designed with transparency, control, and accessibility in mind: The payment plan fee is displayed in dollars to give the customer certainty over their total costs.

Initially, the team set out to create a new credit card with the needs of young adults in mind. But IDEO and American Express realized that Pay It Plan It could be scaled across existing credit card products to ultimately benefit and attract more Card Members. Now, almost all U.S. American Express Consumer Card Members have access to Pay It Plan It through credit cards, co-branded cards, and the well-known Green, Gold, and Platinum Cards. Since launching in 2017, Card Members have created nearly 5 million Plans, totaling nearly $4 billion in purchases, with an average Plan size of $789. Millennial and Generation Z Card Members have created approximately 44 percent of these Plans.

The flexibility and control offered through Pay It Plan have earned American Express positive press, including a call-out in The New York Times for being among solutions that “make it easier for their customers to borrow money, and to manage their monthly cash flow.”

At first glance, design-led innovation may seem difficult to achieve in large, established organizations like American Express, operating in a highly regulated and deeply rational industry. But the IDEO and American Express team successfully found ways to introduce new behaviors like rapid prototyping, cross-discipline collaboration, and leading with emotional customer stories within the existing organizational culture and structure. American Express has since established a permanent Pay It Plan It team dedicated to evolving the feature. Made up of employees across departments, this points to a new and collaborative team structure for the company.

By seeking to understand the human behind the Card Member, American Express has transformed credit and financial services for the better, helping both to be defined by empathy, utility, and transparency.

For more than two centuries, The Times held a strong reputation as a storied British newspaper. Then came the digital deluge. Publication after publication began adopting a relentless online publishing schedule aimed at capturing eyeballs and subscribers, and guarding against waning advertising sales and print readership. But The Times and its sister publication The Sunday Times thought there might be a different way forward.

As Editor John Witherow explains, “the power of an edition” had long endured at The Times, but began to erode amid a round-the-clock breaking news cycle. Witherow didn’t want to do away with editions, but rather to update the model for the digital age. Times owner News UK approached IDEO in 2014 to explore exactly that: what the edition of the future might look like and how its design could drive revenue and subscribers.

IDEO’s research and design phase included interviews with readers, journalists, editors, and marketers at News UK. The team found that people’s reading modes vary—some reflecting new digital behaviors and others adhering more closely to paper-reading styles.

Readers, the team learned, chose The Times for its editorial opinion: a perspective that cuts through the overwhelming flood of information. They viewed the daily Times and weekend Sunday Times as one paper, despite the organizational distinction. And they were proud of their choice, valuing the papers’ consistency, trustworthiness, balance, and authoritativeness. Readers wanted these qualities distilled in a digital edition, whether on a smartphone, tablet, or on the web.

Those insights led to strategic recommendations spanning digital products, editorial, advertising integration, online membership offers, and social sharing. But the boldest among those was a publishing strategy that seemed to run counter to media trends: abandoning a real-time approach in favor of publishing separate digital editions.

The Times in March 2016 introduced an editions-based publishing schedule, with new editions available across all platforms four times each weekday: overnight, 9am, noon and 5pm; the weekend schedule shrank to three editions. A year in, they had broken that schedule fewer than a dozen times—making exceptions for major moments like the terror attack in central London and David Bowie’s death—but even in those cases, The Times refrained from incessant updates, instead resuming its regular pacing.

“The way we’re publishing now, taking our time over news...taking a more considered view of the world, it’s helped us offer something different from everything else,” digital news head Alan Hunter told Digiday in 2018. Readers demonstrated that this different approach was something they’d been wanting.

In the first half of 2016, new paying-subscriber sales were up 200% as compared to the same period in 2015. At the end of June 2016, there were 413,600 subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times, up 3.4% from a year prior. Of those, 182,500 were digital-only subscriptions—a 6% rise and a notable figure given how much online news can be obtained for free.

Through collaboration with IDEO, News UK's own digital teams capabilities grew, enabling them to implement and evolve their new digital strategy. The capabilities of the newsroom grew, too: “The decision to move to four editions a day has freed up tremendous resources to focus on big stories,” says Emma Tucker, Editor of The Sunday Times—the kind of stories that "supercharge engagement." The approach is working: By August 2019 digital subscriptions had increased 19% year-on-year to 300,000, showing the progress the legacy publisher has made in attracting readers to its online proposition. Total subscribers for the two titles' print and digital products now stand at 539,000, and their websites total five million registered users.

More than 230 years after its first edition was published, the new Times has established solid footing in the digital age and designed its own future—one based not on the habits of its competitors but on its legacy and the reading behaviors of its audience.

A decade ago, Rodríguez-Pastor asked IDEO to help him realize a unifying, human-focused, mission: to leverage the power of its business to uplift Peru’s middle class.

Beginning with a single engagement in 2011, IDEO and Intercorp’s work together grew into an unusual entanglement of organizational cultures, brimming with stories of mutual influence.

Since then, IDEO’s work with Intercorp has touched more than two dozen different companies across the group as the business grew from $2.9 billion in revenue in 2011 to $8.5 billion in 2021. Intercorp now employs more than 80,000 people and its revenue represents more than 3.5 percent of Peru’s gross domestic product.

Yet the greatest change has been in the minds of Intercorp’s leaders. In looking back on 10 years of collaboration, a key theme emerges: Working with IDEO on dozens of projects has taught Intercorp’s teams new capabilities, and that has snowballed into a new way of thinking for this broad-reaching company.

The following oral history recounts how the organization has transformed over the last decade through a series of leaps: imagining a more human-centered future, using digital experiments to gain confidence, and changing mindsets across the company to ensure resilience over the next decade.

I. Building belief: I can see what we need to do

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor was born in Peru, and educated in the United States after his father became a political exile in 1969. The family returned in the 1990s, and Rodríguez-Pastor’s father began building a banking business, which became known as Interbank. When he died suddenly in 1995, Rodríguez-Pastor himself became the bank’s chairman, a position he used as a beachhead for growth in Peru’s liberalizing economy. With the founding of Intercorp in 1997, Rodríguez-Pastor charted an audacious path beyond banking, with its unifying force being the well-being and prosperity of Peruvians. It was a far-reaching ambition that bridged people and profit—but to pull it off, he needed help.

Rodríguez-Pastor asked IDEO for help with two distinct projects: a new school system that would be affordable for the emerging middle class; and a new customer experience for Interbank, Intercorp’s flagship bank.

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor: “We had a big goal—to make Peru the best place to raise a family in Latin America—which was both a moral obligation and an opportunity. We saw that if you make the pie bigger, then we’re going to help a lot of people, and our businesses are also going to do better. Our education system was struggling and we wanted to help change it."

Sandy Speicher, CEO of IDEO: “It was really a brave moment, both for Carlos and for us. Carlos knew how important it was to create opportunities for people by securing their educational foundation. But Peru, at the time, was one of the lowest ranked countries on an international survey of education systems."

The new school system, known as Innova Schools, was a success on its own terms: In 2020 it enrolled 42,000 students across 68 locations in 3 countries (Peru, Mexico, and Colombia); boosted 4th grade students’ math and reading test scores 2x compared to local public schools; and saw 99 percent of graduates go on to higher education or actively prepare for college. For Intercorp and IDEO, this formative project suggested broader possibilities—for organizational change across Intercorp, which could in turn inspire societal change across Peru.

Interbank presented a different type of challenge. Peru’s history of political instability had left a consumer banking environment controlled by security concerns. IDEO and Intercorp prototyped an experimental space called Interbank Explora, which brought the staff out from behind bulletproof glass and into the middle of the banking hall, making for a more welcoming experience.

Luis Cilimingras, Partner at IDEO: “We realized the intimidating environment wasn't welcoming for customers, and also meant that branch employees and managers were out of touch with the customer's day to day experience. We asked, ‘How could you redesign the banking experience so people would feel good about going inside?’”

Luis Felipe Castellanos, CEO of Interbank: “Before, everything was done on the basis of surveys or a focus group, at the most. IDEO gave us a different way to understand our clients, and get involved in their day-to-day lives. We almost lived with them."

Luis Cilimingras: “With the new branch experience in place, Interbank’s employees told us ‘Now some of my customers kiss me goodbye!’”

In Interbank Explora’s first sixty days, sales increased by 30 percent, customer satisfaction improved, and profitability grew by 32 percent. Building on that success, the changes were rolled out across the bank’s 2,200 branches.

Luis Cilimingras: “The investment and the participation of the leaders in the process made them realize: ’we need to be working in this way.’ They were just immediately converted.”

II. Launching an innovation engine: We can do this

Intercorp and IDEO began considering ways to extend their collaboration across the group—meaning to more of Intercorp’s diverse holdings—by building an internal innovation lab in Lima.

Luis Cilimingras: “Carlos [Rodríguez-Pastor] was like, ‘Okay, first time, with Innova: Lucky! Second time, with Interbank: It seems I have a partner!’ Intercorp saw us as somebody who can help them imagine the future, who is going to help drive change.”

In 2012, Hernan Carranza, then a young executive at Casa Andina, Intercorp’s hotel company, spent a summer working in IDEO’s Munich studio. Afterwards, he pitched Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor on the idea of an in-house digital innovation shop. That idea evolved into building a human-centered design team that could work across Intercorp’s companies. Rodríguez-Pastor seized on the idea, and made Carranza Intercorp’s first Chief Innovation Officer.

Hernan Carranza, Chief Innovation Officer of Intercorp: “That's when we said, ‘Hey, why don't we have a design team—a mini-IDEO—in Lima?’ That would put it much closer not only to the Peruvian family, which is who we design for, but also to the executives of the Intercorp group, who are the people with whom we co-create the solutions for the families.”

Luis Cilimingras: “We were bringing a new set of techniques and approaches to solving problems and they were bringing operational expertise and local talent who understood the context in which we were working. But these were far from what I had imagined as the 'ideal conditions' to set up an innovation team. It was jarring to realize how much I had to learn to be effective. With a product mindset, you have this vision of what the end result will be like. I had to scrap that and embrace what I didn’t know as the key ingredient for success.”

Hernan Carranza: “If Intercorp and IDEO had a child, that would be La Victoria Lab. But even a love child isn’t easy! We found a way to have our own voice that is authentic to us. But what we conserve are the foundations of IDEO’s approach: being highly experimental, being truly curious, being intuitive. All those mindsets that we learned from IDEO are the cornerstone of what we do.”

Watch "It's Up to Us", a short film about IDEO's 10-year partnership with Intercorp and how it transformed the organization.

La Victoria Lab (LVL) opened in 2014 in a converted house a few blocks away from Intercorp’s headquarters. Their first project was a deep ethnography of the Peruvian middle class, presented in a way that would engage executives across Intercorp.

Maria Paula Loayza, Portfolio Lead at La Victoria Lab: “We turned our own office into a small exhibition, so people could walk around and experience the research, as if they are dropping into someone’s house.”

Luis Cilimingras: “We invited leaders from across Intercorp, and we shared these stories with them. And that built La Victoria Lab’s brand within Intercorp—you can come to us when you have a human problem. Don't come to us with an efficiency problem. Come to us when you have something that has a deeply human need.”

In its first two years, La Victoria Lab grew to over 20 designers and launched multiple initiatives across Intercorp with a single objective: to build belief and confidence in their ability to design impactful services and experiences for Peruvian families. Given the vast scale of the conglomerate, this early work was just a start, but it was consequential in its ability to inspire Intercorp’s leaders.

III. Unleashing a digital transformation

With La Victoria Lab on its feet, its designers homed in on a “theory of change,” a method by which their small team could create work that inspired innovation across Intercorp. For years, Rodríguez-Pastor had been pushing for a company-wide digital transformation, but there was little progress. The businesses had a vestigial brick-and-mortar mentality and didn't see digital as something that would take hold in Peru for another decade. LVL saw this as their challenge: to become a hotbed of digital experimentation, executed in a way that built confidence and capability across Intercorp. Conceived to be highly visible, this category of projects became known internally as “beacons”, digital products whose design and launch would convey to the organization what it needed to change in order to scale digital ways of working.

Maria Paula Loayza: “The beacons were conceived to shine back to the organization everything that needed to change.”

Hernan Carranza: “We were not thinking of ourselves as the scalers of innovation. We were more like igniters. We were always like, ‘how do we inspire the leadership?’"

Maria Santolaria, Program Director at IDEO: “Our thesis was that by injecting something—a team that worked differently, or a digital product that was built and launched in a different way—the organization could mimic that behavior and change organically.”

The most popular of the early beacons were for Inkafarma, Intercorp’s consumer pharmacy chain, and Interseguro, their insurance company. Inkafarma’s project became a model across Intercorp for a digital-first strategy. By making it seamless and convenient for Peruvian customers to get medications delivered to their door, Inkafarma’s mobile platform predicated many of the features that would become essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. The app now drives up to 20 percent of Inkafarma’s business in urban areas.

Hernan Carranza: “In creating Inkafarma’s delivery app, which considered the needs and pain points of the consumer first and foremost, the team started designing and implementing on the fly, with the goal of putting functional products in the hands of users—in order to capture real reactions.”

Maria Paula Loayza: “At first, everybody at Intercorp was kind of looking at us weirdly, because what we were putting in the hands of consumers was crude. But we were able to apply our learnings as we went, and show how these small projects could be like proof points—prototypes that build confidence and begin the complex process of transforming organizations.”

Patricia Conterno, VP of Digital and Analytics at Interseguro: “Interseguro was not then a company centered on the user. When we developed a new product, we just did what we thought was right and hoped people liked it. Our beacon with LVL helped change that. Now we're constantly experimenting, testing with users, and trying to solve any friction they might have. To do so, we’ve now put 15-20 percent of employees in digital transformation roles. Once we launch a product, it is never finished.”

IV. Changing mindsets: This is us now

As La Victoria Lab’s reputation grew within Intercorp, IDEO’s role shifted. Intercorp had the ability to tackle core business opportunities in-house, so IDEO turned to guiding critical, strategic programs (like climate change and DEI initiatives); industry deep dives in sectors like health care; and continued support for leaders as they embraced new mindsets and ways of working.

Hernan Carranza: “A specific behavior we developed with IDEO is what we internally call ’tunking,’ which is when someone leading a creative project looks to others for honest feedback. I remember Luis Felipe Castellanos, the CEO of Interbank, once called me and said, ’Hey, can you send me six, seven more tunkeros to look at and tune my five-year vision?’ I thought that was fabulous. It's a sign that this leader is becoming a more vulnerable person, a more open leader who wants to listen to other perspectives.”

Luis Felipe Castellanos: “Leadership is not about having all the answers, it's about having the right questions. Working with IDEO has made me a much more human leader, focused on understanding the human being behind all of our solutions and all of our offerings.”

Fernando Zavala, CEO of Intercorp: ”What IDEO and La Victoria Lab have done is to permanently push us to think differently, to open our minds, to confront our ideas and, based on that confrontation, to get the best out of it.”

Hernan Carranza: “IDEO infected us with this little bug of permanent curiosity. To be constantly learning all the time—but, even more importantly, constantly unlearning. For Intercorp’s leaders, La Victoria Lab has become a stone in the shoe, always looking to discomfort, to challenge, and to take solutions to the next level."

After a decade, IDEO and Intercorp have come to an unusual understanding of what they have most meaningfully created together: not projects and businesses, but people and culture. It has been a transformation not only of design and efficiency, but also of mindset and approach.

Hernan Carranza: “I think my main learning in this last decade is that the transformation of a conglomerate of 80,000 people starts with the transformation of oneself as a leader. If you are able to start transforming your mental model, that makes another leader, another leader, and leadership begins to cascade.”

Sandy Speicher: “They’ve built this massive organization of learning. They’ve taken this model that we designed with them, and built an organization that continuously learns, and continuously designs, and continuously evolves.”

Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor: “Ten years into our relationship with IDEO, Intercorp is a totally different company. We are a much more customer-centric company. I think we have more empathy. We want to become the best place to raise a family in Latin America. I think that's achievable within the next 10 years. It's really up to us.”

Illustrations by Stephanie Sizemore

When the public sector falls short, should business step in? That question was top of mind for Carlos Rodríguez-Pastor, President of Intercorp, a Peruvian conglomerate with an expansive range of companies from banking to education to health care to retail.

This is what it’s like to drink liquids in space. Ugh, right?

In space, a pouched drink is a simple and functional solution that prevents liquid from spilling and floating around the station. However, drinking coffee isn’t just a means to hydrate—it’s an experience. And for some astronauts, that experience has been lacking.

In 2008, Don Pettit, a NASA astronaut on his second mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), casually prototyped a cup by folding an overhead transparency film he found aboard. Taking advantage of the behavior of liquid in zero gravity, he calculated the folding angle so that the coffee climbed up the transparency to the edge of the cup. The result was a teardrop-shaped Zero Gravity Cup that provided a familiar drinking experience, this time with a magnificent view of Earth.

Until now, space agencies have worked to maximize safety and minimize the cost of crewed missions. But as private companies begin to send civilians to space, they’ll need to provide a better experience for their customers and double down on adding curiosity and delight to our explorations into the unknown.

Designing a space travel experience

Imagine that you’ve just won a ticket for a three-day trip to the ISS. Once aboard, you feel thrilled to float around in zero gravity and gasp at the majestic view of Earth beneath you. But after a few days of bumping into walls and your fellow travellers, eating packaged meals, and using tube toilets, your precious out-of-this-world vacation starts to feel like an ordeal.

Inspired by Don’s playful curiosity, a team of colleagues at IDEO decided to tackle the zero gravity environment through some out-of-this-world design exercises to explore the untapped potential of the burgeoning space travel market. Here are some of the guiding principles we’ve come up with to create unforgettable experiences that elevate the everyday in space.

1. Lead the way through play

Zero gravity—technically microgravity— is a stressful and even harmful environment for earthlings. Simple movements require you to use your body in a completely different way. To enable a truly delightful visitor experience, visitors need to acclimate and relearn how to use their bodies. By helping people navigate this new environment through the lens of play, they can get creative about hacking their bodies to befriend zero gravity.

As children, we all learned through play. Creatively confident, we embodied a curious mindset that empowered us to explore and push the edges of what we were capable of. Remember when we played lava in our living rooms and decided that the floor would burn our feet? Imagine what the emotional foundation for space travel would look like if we returned to these playful mindsets.

2. Elevate the whole journey

The climactic moment of space travel might well be the very first moment you reach orbit. But that also implies that the excitement can diminish over the course of your stay.

As we grow older, we learn to optimize the path between places and forget to enjoy the journey itself. However, many other unforgettable moments await you on your journey around Earth. Moments such as watching the sunrise every 90 minutes, soaring over different continents at an incredible speed, or witnessing the Aurora Borealis from above. Let’s take a nod from game design and storytelling crafts, which skillfully utilize pacing to create a sense of adventure and build narratives that stick with visitors. Or from experience design, by proactively asking how visitors might be emotionally transformed by their journey. There are opportunities to build continuous excitement over the course of the journey, gracefully transitioning from each experience into the next, from launch to landing.

3. Default to designing inclusive experiences

The world’s first all-commercial astronaut mission to Earth’s orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon includes passenger Hayley Arceneaux, a childhood cancer survivor with a prosthesis in her leg. While traditional astronaut exams preclude her, private spaceflight allows more flexible requirements. Soon, people with different physical and mental abilities will visit space, and some conditions might even be advantageous, such as deafness, which typically makes people immune to motion sickness.

Even those considered able-bodied on Earth should expect to experience their abilities differently during space travel. We are not made for zero gravity environments. As Miriam Kramer aptly put it in her article for Axios, “Designing spacecraft for people with disabilities would make life easier for all astronauts, even those considered able-bodied.” Through designing from the lens of human experience, we have a chance to reset expectations and intentionally create moments where more of us feel welcome into the experience.

Our increasing ability to travel in outer space is already changing people’s mindsets around stewardship of the Earth, and we need to design travel experiences to align with and spotlight this paradigm shift. While initial access to space may be limited to wealthy people, designing an enjoyable and impactful experience ensures long-term prosperity of the space tourism industry, and paves the way for more of us to bring world-changing learnings back to Earth.

In space, our earthly common sense no longer holds true. As the music band OK GO elegantly put it, “Gravity is just a habit.” Up there, we must fundamentally change our approach to design. Up there, the lack of gravity exposes the true human value of an experience and every experience is now ours to reimagine.

Before you start reading, make yourself a cup of coffee. Got it? Great. Now dump it in a plastic bag, and try to drink it with a straw.

But Damian Thompson, then a cashier, approached the man without thinking twice. Thirty years ago, Thompson was the first Black teller at the bank where he worked, and sensed that certain customers did not want to be served by him. That experience taught him the value of ensuring that everyone was included and given the same service.

Over time, by listening to that customer’s needs and gaining trust, Thompson managed to secure a major investment for the bank. This habit is something that he carries with him today as the Group Managing Director of Retail at UK-based Aldermore. He is always looking for ways to improve the bank's service.

Thompson’s practice of listening is an art, and one of the most undervalued skills in business. Soft skills may seem inessential when compared to tangible ones, like product development. But when organizations actively listen, they gain insights about customer needs that can make the difference between a resilient, future-fit organization and one that withers on the vine.

To heroize employees who listened well and went the extra mile with customers, Thompson launched an “Experts with Empathy” campaign at Aldermore, asking teammates to nominate each other to win prizes. He regularly picks up the phone to heap praise on high performing representatives. The bank has become known for lending to those with less than perfect credit, earning it high NPS scores and loyal customers. Understanding how stressful owing money can be and listening with compassion, Thompson argued, must always come before slapping someone with an overdue penalty.

Carlos Rodridguez Pastor, President of the Peruvian conglomerate Intercorp, admires Thompson’s style of leadership. Pastor has long encouraged all ranks of his organization, from top executives to front-line workers, to stay close to customers. He, too, models active listening tactics, like welcoming and serving customers, and walking the aisles of stores. So, when the time came to send Intercorp’s top brass on an annual inspiration trip—which, until COVID, took executives to faraway locales—Intercorp asked IDEO to create a remote experience on the theme of Escucha Activa, or Active Listening.

In May, 2021, 30 CEOs, 12 board members, and 130 other leaders signed onto Zoom for a four-day global “tour” to learn from some of the best listeners in business. Damian Thompson was our first speaker.

As the future of work becomes increasingly remote, putting employees at a greater distance from customers, active listening will become increasingly important. Here’s how to design your own remote learning experience on active listening:

1. Never waste a crisis

While COVID prevented us from climbing aboard tour buses and trying new foods in distant locations , the remote learning experience removed other constraints, allowing us to bring Active Listening luminaries from around the world to Peru. We tapped our networks to bring in guests from Nigeria, China, the UK, Brazil, and Denmark, as well as the US. C-suite speakers joined from Pillpack (Amazon), Lloyds and Aldermore banks, African fintech startup Piggyvest, and established retailers like IKEA and LEGO. Our IDEO team was distributed as well: based in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, and Munich. It was simultaneously the most ambitious and least expensive business trip the two companies had ever put together in their 10 years of collaboration.

2. Over-prepare

To make the experience of learning how to listen better feel like traveling to visit distant oracles, we prepared each leader for the main event with several pre-session interviews to fine-tune the stories and wisdom they imparted. The prep work paid off: zeroing in on a clear message for each session helped participants follow each step of the learning journey.

3. Design for immersion

No matter how good a listener you are, a two-and-a-half hour Zoom call can feel like an eternity. Knowing that, we tried to strike a balance between learning and entertainment—quick exercises that focused on employee listening and longer, immersive talks. We used travel metaphors to keep the pep in our step and kept the experience to two consecutive weeks, on Thursday and Friday mornings (Peru time). The time limit allowed executives to put aside their phones and truly take in the content, knowing they’d have the balance of the day to get work done.

4. LEGO the learning

Our sessions were set up to build on each other like LEGO sets. Each day kicked off with leaders sharing stories. They explained what it takes to “Commit to Active Listening,” like asking high performing employees about their listening methods and sharing with others at the company. Day 2 was about “Scaling Active Listening,” from individual initiatives to company-wide movements, like a weekly survey that gathers feedback about how close you feel to customers at any given time. Day 3 was spent on “Expanding your Toolkit for Active Listening,” by adding new tactics to the mix, like listening to customers on social media and responding quickly. The 4th day concluded with a lessons on how to “Use Listening to Drive Decisions,” or to act on what you hear in a continuous cycle of improving business offers, like allowing customers more flexible payment plans during financial distress.

5. Create a meal out of bite-size chunks

Sending participants into breakout rooms of 5-10 people allowed us to design activities that brought home the day’s lessons. One favorite was to write and collage a “Postcard From the Future” about a new product or service your business might launch based on an insight gleaned from active listening.

6. Make the stage bigger

Here’s one thing you could never do in person: travel from China to Nigeria to Peru within minutes. It was morning in Lima, evening in Lagos, and 11 p.m. in Shanghai, but we were all listening and learning from each other as if we were sitting side by side.

When we stood up this learning experience, Peru was in the midst of a political crisis and had suffered the largest dip in GDP in the world the previous year. It was a very tense moment that had stretched out for months. After the tour wrapped, feedback from participants suggested that it had an enormous positive emotional impact, giving leaders the injection of inspiration and optimism they needed to overcome burnout and mental distress. It came just in time.

Beyond the morale boost, we learned a lot about how to listen better ourselves. One of the best bits of wisdom came from a lovable bear who has never worked a day in his life. “If the person you’re talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient,” said Winnie the Pooh. “It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

If the person you’re talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

- Winnie the Pooh

To make sure we’re listening for how we can make our work better, we must continuously remove fluff—not only to close the gap between companies and customers, but also to allow for the free flow of listening-based insights inside organizations.

Why? Because insights are only powerful if put to use. When employees feel empowered to act on what they hear, marshalling resources and prototyping new ways to deliver great service, you can be sure no one will be left alone in the lobby.

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The bank reps had seen the man lingering in the lobby more than a few times. No one ever thought to ask if he needed help. He looked a bit rough, honestly. The seams of his jacket hung low. His hair was an angry cloud.

For more than two years, with the help of a group of designers from IDEO, we and our colleagues from the Drucker Institute had been planning and developing Bendable, a lifelong learning system that would allow the 100,000 residents of South Bend, Indiana—regardless of their age or background—to acquire new knowledge and skills through online courses as well as in-person classes. The goal was to foster a significant increase in better jobs, civic participation, and overall well-being for the community.

In June 2020, we finally unveiled the system. And month by month, backed by an aggressive marketing campaign, we watched the tally of unique local visitors to the Bendable digital platform steadily climb: from 2,161 to 5,160 to 8,040. Our plan to tackle the first order of business—bringing eyeballs to Bendable—was working. By mid-November, we’d crossed the 10,000 mark.

But as we headed into 2021, we began to notice a different trend taking hold: Growth was slowing.

This wasn’t totally surprising. We’d launched Bendable in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, rendering a nonstarter our elaborate plans to supplement the online learning with a slew of face-to-face events. But Covid-19 couldn’t explain everything. In this way, we found ourselves in the same situation that many organizations do when they bring a new digital product into the world: a meteoric start that quickly fades. To try to reverse the slide, we needed to look in the mirror. And that meant getting more serious about how we’d leverage the metrics we were collecting.

Over the past nine months, we have implemented what we call a 4-D approach to continuous improvement: data → decision-making → design → deployment. Now, our team from the Drucker Institute and the St. Joseph County Public Library—our key partner in South Bend and the home of Bendable in the community—gets together every four weeks or so to dig into the metrics, discuss what they mean, figure out what we should do about it, and assign a champion to be accountable and follow through.

To be sure, the numbers alone can’t give us a fully rounded picture; we always temper the quantitative data with what we are observing and hearing from Bendable stakeholders on the ground across the city. But the stats have become the place to start, giving our team a common way to frame whatever situation we are sizing up. We have used the data to shape our strategy for attracting new users, as well as for making Bendable stickier for those who've checked out the platform—goals that every digital product team can relate to.

Tracking the right data

Before we could take full advantage of the data, we had to make sure we were scrutinizing the right stuff.

Our first instinct—and likely the one many teams lean into—was to pull in all of the data that we could from Google Analytics and our own platform. What we ended up with was a mountain of metrics, but not a lot of meaning.

It didn’t take long before we realized that a better place to start was to sharpen our objectives for the program and then find the specific metrics that would shed light on whether we were getting there. We eventually landed on four overarching goals for Bendable in South Bend: to activate learning, drive a depth of learning, cultivate in people a habit of learning, and ensure that Bendable is inclusive of the whole community.

Today, we track statistics across 13 different areas (through Google, along with a few add-ons put together by our own software developer and key performance indicators passed on by our content providers). Each is organized under one of our four main goals.

These include things like the number of South Bend residents coming to Bendable both for the first time (activating learning) and returning (cultivating the habit of learning). We pay close attention to how much progress they are making through content providers’ courses, as well as through Bendable Career Collections—employer-backed learning pathways intended to prepare people for some of the most in-demand jobs in South Bend.

We also analyze the range of resources that people are clicking on. One of our theories is that if people are able to rely on Bendable to unearth all sorts of content, it will help instill in them the habit of learning. And so we assess how many South Bend residents want new work skills and how many are looking to enhance other aspects of their lives (by finding a class on, say, personal finance) or fulfilling a passion (like music or art).

We also pull information from our account sign-ups and parse which zip codes Bendable learners are from, which helps us make sure we’re reaching traditionally underserved areas.

Turning insight into action

From the data, we’ve learned that marketing matters—a lot. When the library lets up on its social media posts about Bendable, traffic to the platform falls, sometimes precipitously. When it leans into social media, traffic swells.

This is a crucial lesson: You have to sell a social innovation not unlike the way you would sell toothpaste; just because something meets a genuine need doesn’t mean that interest in it will magically materialize. It takes a real push.

As we delved into the data with the library, we discovered that to have the greatest impact, Bendable must be timely, which caused us to adjust our plans. One way we do this is by highlighting various Community Collections—personal learning playlists put together by local residents on a wide variety of topics. For instance, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, the library promoted a Community Collection titled “Discerning fact from misinformation online.” More than 100 residents clicked on it that week, nearly nine times more than the next-most-opened Collection. As the weather started to warm this spring in South Bend, the library put the spotlight on a Community Collection called “Getting started as a gardener,” and it became the most popular.

Thanks in part to this insight, we have started to see our unique visitor growth pick back up, rising from its nadir of 481 in March.

“It’s the combination of pushing trusted learning content along with its relevance to our community's day-to-day life that brings more value to our patrons and translates to more engagement," says Norah Alwalan, who oversees the library’s Bendable outreach.

Turning visitors into regular users

The data also turned our attention to another challenge: getting people to sign up for a Bendable account. To date, about 1,500 have done so—just 10 percent of the nearly 15,300 unique local visitors who have now come to the platform.

Account sign-ups are tricky terrain for many digital products. You want to give a certain amount of freedom so that users can get a taste without potentially alienating them by coming on too strong and asking for their personal information. But you need that information to follow up with them and maximize their experience.

In the case of Bendable, this tension is especially pronounced. We want people to have friction-free access to much of the content on the platform so they can jump right in and begin learning. And yet if they don’t sign up for an account, we can’t communicate with them through email or text, making it difficult for us to support their efforts. What’s more, without an account, Bendable users can’t obtain course seats that have been pre-paid with philanthropic dollars, including a lot of the meatiest content that can help them advance in their careers.

So, how can we inspire more people to sign up for a Bendable account?

Thus far, we’ve tried several tactics, including an email blast to library patrons, urging them to make an account. In March, we added a welcome video to the top of the Bendable homepage, helping onboard new users to the platform and encouraging them to create an account from the get-go.

The pace of account sign-ups has shot up since April. But we know that we need to do much more.

Getting out into the community

As South Bend residents have gotten vaccinated and things have started to open back up, we have been working with librarians to get those walking into the 10 branches around the city excited about Bendable. We ask these people about their learning dreams, and then put their aspirations up on the branch wall, along with each person’s photo. (At the LaSalle Branch recently, we heard from men and women who were eager to re-learn math, become proficient in Photoshop, start a business, see their houseplants flourish, and more.) We then ask them to sign up for a Bendable account and give them guidance on how they can use the system.

Of course, we know that the toughest thing for many of these learners and any others who use Bendable will be persistence.

It’s not that Bendable users aren’t committed to learning. According to several of our content providers, including GCFGlobal and LRNG, those coming from Bendable.com consistently spend about twice as much time on their sites as do those who find their way there through a general search engine.

But it’s a different story for the courses that require hours of dedication to get all the way through, including those offered by Penn Foster, edX, and others that can lead to industry-recognized credentials or college credit. Of the 340 or so of these classes that have been started, fewer than 20 percent have been completed.

If the data has proven one thing above all, it’s that learning is hard.

On some level, we knew this going in. Adult learners face myriad barriers, including juggling work and family responsibilities; anxiety about being back in “school,” even if they are now in an alternative learning environment; and struggling with childcare and transportation.

But seeing the numbers has reinforced the fact that to drive a depth of learning—one of our four strategic goals—we need to get beyond the digital platform and equip the community to support Bendable learners. It’s a good reminder that the most important thing that a piece of technology can do is connect people in a meaningful way.

And so, we are now collaborating with stakeholders across South Bend—employers such as Beacon Health, the big hospital system in town; nonprofit organizations like Goodwill; government agencies, including a summer youth jobs program run by the city parks department; educational institutions, including the public schools; and others.

With our help, these partners are weaving Bendable into their everyday activities, seeking to further their own missions by assigning specific courses on the platform to their employees, clients, students, and so forth. To help these cohorts of learners get through the material successfully, we are now running a bunch of experiments that have been designed with input from a social science researcher. Among them: sending out text messages to nudge learning along; making available online coaching; using local university students as in-person coaches; and sharing data so that organizational leaders have visibility into learner progress.

In the end, building a better Bendable—as with any initiative trying to have a deep social impact—will be neither fast nor easy. We anticipate that it will take five years or more before we have a good sense of whether we’re getting anywhere toward our paramount goal: making South Bend more resilient by building a true community of lifelong learning.

Meanwhile, we will also be expanding Bendable through a partnership with the Maine State Library. Although Bendable will be hyper-localized for the people of Maine, with content and features that meet their particular wants and needs, our long-term aim remains the same: boosting the resilience of residents throughout the state.

Which is why we will, once again, rigorously track the most pertinent data. “The idea of resilience can be nebulous,” says Lex Dennis, the Drucker Institute’s director of lifelong learning. “That’s why focusing on the metrics as we go along is so critical.”

From the outset we monitored the numbers—and, at least at first, it was hard not to feel kind of giddy.

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.