Since its founding over a century ago, Tokyo College of Music (TCM) has trained countless world-class musicians. Despite its well-established reputation, however, the school was feeling a pressing need to reconsider its role in order to remain relevant in a changing world.

The college had plans to build a second campus in Daikanyama, a prominent area of Tokyo known for being a hotbed for new global trends. Taking advantage of this opportunity, TCM leaders asked IDEO to help them develop a new concept for the school, and to redesign the learning experience while preserving a focus on classical music.

To kick off the research phases of the project, IDEO designers interviewed TCM students, and traveled to London, New York, and Boston visiting educational institutions, music schools, and arts facilities.

The team observed that students at music colleges outside of Japan were giving serious consideration to their career plans at an early stage in their studies, acquiring a variety of skills and mindsets through a well-rounded education. By contrast, TCM students were focused on learning and performing classical music, but tended not to have a clear image of future career opportunities.

IDEO proposed four specific directions for TCM’s new campus, based on an overarching theme of “culture, fields, and people collaborating across boundaries.” The first aim was to foster a business mindset and entrepreneurial spirit among the students that surpassed their classical music training. Next was to increase opportunities for actual performances, collaborations with professionals outside the school, and joint projects. The third aim was to position the college as a platform that would encourage the spontaneous creation of communities within and outside the school. The final aim was to develop students who were digitally savvy and fluent in new technologies, enabling them to continue evolving in response to developments in the real world. These goals are reflected in the various spaces of the school, as well as in the design of the experiences that occur in those spaces.

The most symbolic of these spaces is the Creative Lab. Originally intended as a library, the space now functions as a platform where people from within and outside the school community can collaborate and generate innovative ideas. The open layout, which encloses a cafeteria for students and faculty, can be altered depending on programming needs. The Creative Lab provides a venue not only for live performances in which the students can polish their improvisational skills, but for holding workshops and other events on topics such as cultural exchange, business, and new technologies.

New furniture and objects were carefully selected to inspire spontaneous encounters and conversation between students from different departments and staff, creating a flow of activity.

Even the landings on the staircases, which tend to be dead space, were designed with this concept in mind. One student commented that the space facilitates meeting new people and creates “opportunities for deeper interaction with students from other departments.” This intentional, open design has transformed the space into a hub within the school and the local community.

Through the new environment and educational opportunities at TCM's Daikanyama campus, students now have stronger opportunities to apply their creative talents in numerous fields worldwide, creating impact informed by the various perspectives, skills, and relationships they have developed at TCM.

Georgia is among the most populous states in the American South. It’s a place with a storied past and promising future—on the rise economically, and continuing its powerful cultural impact on music, TV, cuisine, and tourism. Over 10.4 million people call Georgia home, and nearly all of these people will at some point navigate the state’s websites for securing everyday services. Ideally, this online platform would provide unifying and accessible government resources for everyone, whether they’re renewing their vehicle registration, seeking a fishing license, or looking up tax law updates.

Georgia’s Office of Digital Services (DSGA), part of the Georgia Technology Authority, was challenged with designing a platform to modernize the collective and individual online presence of 80+ state agencies, many of which used visually disconnected formats and color palettes that could leave the public feeling confused. DSGA recognized that they could provide more efficient and higher quality service to the public if they simplified the language, designed the site from the user's point of view, and created a more cohesive look and feel across agencies.

IDEO worked with the DSGA to identify the priorities of Georgia residents who use the various agency websites. On a road trip from Savannah to Atlanta, with stops in Macon and Dublin, the IDEO team immersed themselves in the rich culture of Georgia, connecting with social workers, low-income residents, state agency leadership and civic organizations to learn how Georgia’s digital properties could better address their disparate needs.

The design research underscored that there isn’t just one Georgia—it’s a tapestry of people, geographies and political orientations. Yet several common themes emerged, including:

Georgians want their government to “give it to them straight.” On the redesigned Georgia.gov platform, the people of Georgia can easily search popular topics to get the information they need. This includes learning how to apply for food stamps, renewing a business license, or simply finding out the location of a local office in their area. If a user has remaining questions, they can connect directly with a real human for further assistance, balancing direct information with warmth and a personal touch. User feedback on the site provides the opportunity for continuous design improvement.

Georgians want to take pride in the legacy and the future of their state. IDEO developed an entirely new design system with new navigational elements, fonts, and a color palette inspired by Georgia’s landscapes, all of which can be modified for individual agencies while remaining consistent with the state brand.

A distillation of the original Georgia seal adds authority, and new icons anchor the site’s menus and bring more clarity to the search function. The platform was designed to be Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 AA compliant, providing clear and accessible page content that adheres to federal laws and international web standards. To instill trust in Georgia’s online presence, each page also has a header that indicates it’s an official Georgia State website and outlines the uniform features constituents can use to identify this.

With improved navigation and easy-to-access prioritized content, Georgia.gov is a much more efficient platform for addressing requests from citizens. The site projects a happy-to-help, citizen-centered approach that aims to empower all Georgians so that they feel confident, informed, and prepared.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes, almost 10% of the population. The vast majority of these diagnoses are type 2, which is commonly treated through a combination of medicine, diet, and exercise. Today, one of the major barriers to better outcomes is access to trusted information. As little as 15 percent of people with diabetes receive adequate education from their healthcare providers on managing their disease and making recommended lifestyle changes.

Ascensia Diabetes Care, a global healthcare company, has been a leader in diabetes treatment for over 70 years, known primarily for producing blood glucose meters. IDEO has worked with Ascensia for more than a decade, helping develop and design their CONTOUR NEXT ONE meter in 2016. In 2017, Ascensia engaged IDEO with a new goal of moving the company beyond physical devices. Ascensia envisioned a first-of-its-kind approach to educating and monitoring diabetes patients. In partnership with IDEO, they wanted to build a comprehensive solution—one that would not simply take glucose readings and document food intake, but would consider all factors that impact a person's health.

Through deep collaboration, Ascensia and IDEO built a powerful app-based service. The project began with a strategic vision for the experience and ended with the delivery of an all-encompassing health offering, including training of providers, packaging, app design, content creation, and visual design.

The patient experience married data and tracking, real-life mentorship, and personalized content. When a patient signed up, they were paired with a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) who created a tailored program based on their needs and linked them to relevant articles on topics like cooking, mental wellbeing, and sexual health. The IDEO team led the charge in hiring and training guides, crafting the educational content, and even designing the content management hub.

The data engine behind the app is another one of the program's stand-out qualities. The app pulled data from multiple data sources—exercise bands and glucose meters—to provide constant feedback, track progress, and continually refine the experience. To generate empathy, as well as build the app's initial data set, IDEO's data scientists tested the product on themselves. One designer wore a wrist full of exercise monitors around the office and tracked her blood sugar after every meal.

The app-based service was tested with 60 people and demonstrated remarkable early results. Only two participants failed to complete the study—a stunning success rate when adherence to therapy for chronic illnesses in developed countries averages around 50%. Additionally, participants reported drastic improvements in both physical and mental health. One recently widowed 70-year-old woman emerged from depression, returned to swimming, and started having regular blood sugar readings.

The project required Ascensia to embrace new ways of working internally, adopt a broader view of their offering, and ultimately expand the way they serve people with diabetes.

When Mr. Gordon told his fifth grade students they were taking a field trip on a bus, many of them envisioned the city bus that they ride each day to school. But when they saw the Verizon Explorer Lab pull into the school parking lot, they realized a unique experience awaited them. Painted in bright colors, this bus promised something very different from their daily commute.

“Climb aboard, explorers!” says the Lead Explorer. The students walk through the bus’ sliding doors and inside, where instead of rows of seats, they find a sleek research lab. Suddenly, the lights dim. The bus makes a rumbling noise as though it’s about to lift off. And on a large screen, a vision of Earth from space appears. The students listen and point as the video narrator briefs them on NASA’s ongoing search for life in space.

Science education isn’t always this fun. Some kids have a chance to learn through interactive games, immersive experiences, or engaging field trips; but many lack access to rich educational experiences in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As a result, they can be less likely to pursue careers in STEM, though many future jobs will demand mastery of these subjects. This not only impacts a student’s potential and future, but reduces the diversity and number of qualified STEM job applicants.

In under-resourced schools, students are often limited to the scarce tools available for STEM learning in their classrooms. Many kids rarely have a chance to leave their neighborhoods. For these kids, mobile learning experiences that come to their school offer unparalleled exposure to cutting-edge, technologically advanced, and—most importantly—inspiring gateways into these critical academic subjects.

As part of its focus on digital inclusion, Verizon partnered with IDEO to share the excitement of STEM learning with middle schoolers. To facilitate access and discovery of STEM, the team designed a learning experience that takes place on a coach bus and can be scaled to reach kids across the nation.

The team set out to transform the bus into the Verizon Explorer Lab: a futuristic research lab that transports kids to new environments, from outer space to under the sea. As part of the larger Verizon Innovative Learning program, the Verizon Explorer Lab offers delightful and rigorous content that meets national science standards.

A multidisciplinary team comprised of designers across interaction, communication, environments, games, and software partnered with Verizon to bring the Verizon Explorer Lab to life.

To keep the student at the center of the experience, the team designed alongside kids. Their gravitation toward play, interaction, and technology inspired the digital game that students play onboard the bus. When developing the game’s narrative, the designers turned to popular kids’ books and movies. What began as a card game prototype eventually became a 360-degree video and virtual reality expedition to Mars—complete with a custom musical score—that introduces middle schoolers to engineering basics.

After stepping through the bus doors and taking a tour of the solar system, Mr. Gordon’s students receive an emergency call from NASA: They must rescue the missing Curiosity rover, which is dedicated to collecting evidence of life on Mars. Eager to save Curiosity, the students become immersed in the adventure at hand. And through the adventure, they become immersed in science.

Students use tablets to design their own Mars rover. Each rover appears on a large screen and traverses the planet’s extreme terrain. The goal is to collect data that suggests life on Mars, including ice deposits, photos, and more. Students iterate on their rover’s design—wheels, power sources, and sensors—to test if it can stand up against dust storms and craters. The team consulted a NASA planetary scientist to ensure accuracy, as well as educators to establish cohesion with classroom curricula.

During the game, students are encouraged to compare designs and learn from each other: One rover may be able to travel long distances and take various photos, while another can carry large quantities of ice and sediment samples but can’t go far because of its size. At the end of the mission, the group finds Curiosity and sends all of the evidence they’ve collectively gathered back to NASA to aid the search for life beyond Earth. Before departing the bus, students watch an animated video that explains various jobs in STEM and encourages kids to pursue one of these careers.

The Verizon Explorer Lab teaches students the engineering design loop, the value of collaboration and teamwork, and what a career in STEM might look like. The mission to Mars game is just one of many potential STEM learning opportunities for students and integrated, customizable learning modules for teachers.

Since launch, the Verizon Explorer Lab has traveled to various parts of the United States and reached thousands of kids. It continues to be managed by Learning Undefeated, Verizon’s nonprofit partner. By designing for and with students, it’s possible to create educational experiences that facilitate meaningful learning and genuine fun. The Verizon Explorer Lab represents progress towards a more inclusive future for employers and the STEM field.

Smartly curated by Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, the show features objects dating back to the late 1950s, from the Eames Office to the first iPod to a home CRISPR kit.

I've now seen the show twice. Here's what’s stuck with me:

So much of what comes out of Silicon Valley today has its roots in the DIY utopianism of the Whole Earth Catalog. Founded in the late 60s by Stewart Brand and a bunch of Stanford longhairs, the Catalog promised “access to tools" that would equip us to break free from our hidebound culture.

The title was inspired by Brand’s 1966 campaign to have NASA release a satellite photo of the Earth as seen from space—the first image we’d see of the "whole Earth." That picture, he believed, would unite humans in our belief in a shared destiny and encourage more peaceful, ecological, and holistic thinking.

When I was in my 20s, the Whole Earth Catalog spurred me to start my own DIY design magazine, ReadyMade, in the back of a used furniture warehouse in Berkeley. Whole Earth made designing a life on one's own terms seem within reach.

That spirit shines through in another standout of the exhibit: the recreated office of Charles and Ray Eames, down to the posters on the wall, the kilim rug, and a looping projection of their film for the World’s Fair (a serenade to industry and systems design). Everything they laid their mid-century paws on exudes a kind of singing-nun joy. Two things I love most about them: their philosophy that “Eventually everything connects—people, ideas, objects,” and that they employed the people they were designing for—Los Angeles locals, war veterans, and housewives.

There’s also the agitprop hijinks of Ant Farm; the stained leather scrappiness and propaganda of Marin’s craft guilds; and Heath Ceramics—the tableware preferred by my avocado toast.

And for us outdoorsy types, the centerpiece of the exhibit is a Bucky Fuller-inspired North Face tent, pitched alongside radically new 1970s climbing equipment made by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia.

I had a feeling the iconic "one laptop per child" by fuseproject would be on hand (check!), and was excited to see my friend Eric's (of Stamen Design) dazzling data visualizations.

Having done a tour of duty at WIRED in its third year of publication (1995), it was great to see their eye-popping cyberpunk spreads on display, and I'm always happy to learn of companies like D-Rev that care enough about social impact to design an $80 high-performance knee (80 percent of the world's amputees have no access to modern prosthetics).

California design got swept up in the digital tsunami that WIRED was chronicling and all those "new tools" for connected living now look quaint. The first Apple desktop computer and Handspring Visor sitting under vitrines look like beige relics from a technocrypt.

IDEO’s Dennis Boyle, who led the Handspring Visor design team, told me that its eye module accessory is credited as being the first digital camera on a handheld electronic PDA. "It’s the precursor to today's cell phone cameras," he said.

I'm drunk on Kool-Aid, no doubt, but I walked away from this show marveling at how IDEO appears to be the aortic valve of California design. There are no less than five examples of our work on display: The prototype for the first Apple mouse, Thoughtless Acts? and Method Cards, the Handspring Visor, and the prototype for the Q Concept workstation, designed by David Kelley and Jim Yurchenco, Jane Fulton Suri, Dennis Boyle, and Martin Bone, respectively.

Yurchenco, who repurposed a butter dish and a roll-on deodorant ball procured at a local Palo Alto drugstore to make the earliest mouse, is struck by the crude tools designers had at their disposal back in the day:

“It was done using old techniques: a pencil and paper on a drawing board instead of 3D solid CAD to design the parts; manually machined injection molding tools and pieced together check models instead of 3D printed models. Of course, everything designed at that time was done the same way.”

Though it seemed impossible to design a mouse for less than $10 when Steve Jobs first proposed it, IDEO founder David Kelley and Yurchenco alighted upon a crucial insight:

“The most surprising thing that happened during the process was we were able to make [the mouse] low-cost by realizing it didn't have to be as precise as we first thought," Kelley says. "Because the user's human brain would intuitively move the mouse to exactly the right spot."

Jane Fulton Suri still expresses surprise that a simple deck of cards (Method Cards), which were published in 2003, became the foundation for IDEO's design approach:

“At the time it wasn’t obvious that sharing information about our approach and sensibilities would be a powerful way for IDEO to lead the way. It's now core to IDEO's strategy to create design tools and empower others in the world at large.”

Three of the four designers quoted above still work at IDEO. And that reminds me of another thing I love about California designers:

They never stop trying to make things better by making better things.

Next up: Nick Pajerski interviews "Designed in California" curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher.

If my heart were a painting, it would be on permanent loan to California. I love its shaggy optimists who turn drained swimming pools into skate parks. Its fog and fearless politics. Its pioneers and garage inventors and beat poets who came in search of a Golden State. I'm a big believer in the design that was born here, too, which is on display at the SFMOMA’s "Designed in California" exhibit through May 27, 2018.

My friend Stefan suggested I try a different mindset. Instead of trying to get things right, I should put myself in “play mode.” From his email:

Right then, I was working on an illustration for part of my book where some early readers got confused. But I wanted to get it right, so I’d been putting it off. "Okay," I thought. "I can afford to waste an hour on this."

I tried play mode. I told myself the next hour didn’t matter—I was just goofing around and having fun. I set a timer. I made about 15 rough sketches. Then the hour was up. And I hadn’t gotten it right. But I’d broken the ice, and I was in the zone, so I kept working. Thirty minutes later, I had an illustration I was happy with. And the whole thing was fun rather than stressful. Play mode worked!

I’m writing this post to remind myself of the value of play mode. Next time you talk to me and I say, "I’m stuck," tell me to flip the switch.

This post was originally published on Jake Knapp's blog.

I get stuck a lot. I get stuck writing, editing, making slides, designing, replying to email. I get stuck anytime I want to get something right.

But there are limitations to voice-enabled interactions. They’re slow, embarrassing when other humans are around, and require awkward trigger phrases like “Okay, Google” or “Hey, Siri.”

Thankfully, though, talking into midair is no longer our only—or best—option.

The new iPhone introduced a camera that can perceive three dimensions and record a depth for every pixel, and home devices like the Nest IQ and Amazon's Echo Look now have cameras of their own. Combined with neural nets that learn and improve with more training data, these new cameras create a point cloud or depth map of the people in a scene, how they are posing, and how they are moving. The nets can be trained to recognize specific people, classify their activities, and respond to gestures from afar. Together, neural nets and better cameras open up an entirely new space for gestural design and gesture-based interaction models.

These new options beg the question: Of the existing interaction modalities—haptics (touch), sound (voice), and vision (gesture)—which is better to use when, and why?

The use case points toward an answer. When you’re SCUBA diving, or water skiing, or directing traffic on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the auditory channel isn’t available, so gesture or touch become essential.

In an operating room, a surgeon’s hands are sterile; she can’t flip through radiology scans—only speech and gesture are available. If you’re conducting an orchestra or on a military raid you can’t call out commands, so we’re back with gesture.

WATCH: From Charlie Chaplin to Cricket, there are a wide range of sources to inspire us as we design for gestural communication.

To dig into it further, our team at the Cambridge studio snagged a camera like the one in the new iPhone and performed a series of experiments to figure out when gesture might be the best choice.

First, we gave pairs of people an idea, then we asked them to make a four-handed pose to express that idea.

Then we recorded stories and tracked people’s hands using computer vision to study when we naturally deploy gestures to amplify emotion or explain a concept.

WATCH: Tracking how we gesticulate to bring stories to life.

WATCH: Ask a group of people to perform an action or request and you get some variation. The trick is finding gestures that are as universal as possible.

Lastly, we trained a neural network to recognize a small set of gestures, and used these to control a Philips HUE light set and a Spotify station to create an installation for the office.

WATCH: Using a set of gestures, we trained a few devices in our office to respond to our cues and adjust the lights and music.

In messing around with these exercises, we discovered that gestures need to be either sequential, like a sentence—noun then verb, object plus operation. For example, for “speaker, on,” one hand designates the noun, and the other the verb: You point to speaker with left hand and turn the volume up by raising right hand.

Another surprising insight: Gestures are generation-specific.

When asked to signal turning up the volume, a few people twisted an invisible knob, but most of the under 30s lifted a palm or made a pinching gesture with their fingers.

After analyzing our results, we boiled our thoughts down to four reasons to opt for gesture over voice or touch:

1. Speed: If it needs to be fast, gestures are much quicker than speaking sentences.
2. Distance: If you need to communicate from across the room, gesture is easier than dealing with volume.
3. Limited lexicon: If you don't have a thousand things to say, gestures work well. The smaller the gesture set for a given context, the easier it is to remember. (Thumbs-up/thumbs-down, for example.)
4. Expressiveness over precision: Gestures are well-suited to expressing emotional salience. A musical conductor communicates a downbeat and tempo, but also so much more: dolco, marcato, confidence, sadness, longing, and more.

It's exciting to imagine a whole new category of products that will take advantage of gesture’s subtlety, expressiveness, and speed.

How might we use gesture in unexpected ways? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Many thanks to the rest of the team: Lisa Tacoronte, Todd Vanderlin, Jason Robinson, Danny DeRuntz, Brian Standeford, Eric Chan, and Ari Adler.

Since Siri was introduced in 2010, the world has been increasingly enamored with voice interfaces. When we need to adjust the thermostat, we ask Alexa. If we want to put on a movie, we ask the remote to search for it. According to some estimates, some 33 million voice-enabled devices reported for duty in American homes by the end of 2017.

“I don’t think of myself as a collector, I just keep the stuff that happens in my life," Kelley says. And what happens over the course of a life in design adds up.

Kelley, who founded IDEO 40 years ago and went on to launch Stanford's d.school, has a lot of stories to tell, and most of them are connected to stuff—stuff IDEO made, stuff given to him by other designers and architects like Ettore Sottsass (who also designed Kelley's house), stuff that unlocks memories and, not infrequently, gets him choked up. (SPOILER ALERT: skip to 1:54 where he points out a picture from his wedding. One of the guests is IDEO cofounder Bill Moggridge, the father of interaction design, who died in 2012.)

Take a tour of David Kelley's office shelves

The wall of wooden cubbies in Kelley's small Palo Alto office is crowded with prototypes, model automobiles (Kelley is also a car buff who owns about 20 vehicles, including a 1954 Chevy pickup), and other curios like a giant "I" that lights up and is inscribed with his life's story. His coworkers fabricated it for him in the company shop for his 50th birthday.

In fact, Kelley has a small museum of birthday keepsakes that IDEO designers have given him over the years: a giant spotlight, an old motorcycle, and one of those mechanical horses that costs a dime to ride, purchased from a grocery store.

Inspiration and materials for those gifts often came from University Art, the Palo Alto supply store down the street from the studio. "There was a guy named Jim, lovely white haired guy," Kelley says. Jim was the store manager, and when Kelley told him he was starting a new company down the street and would like to open an account, Jim replied that they'd have to charge $50 a month to qualify. Kelley admitted he didn't know if they'd be able to do that. "Fast forward a few years, Jim was still there and we had about 350 employees and we were charging $50 a minute. Jim would always remind me of that story..."

Kelley's collecting gene runs in his family. His mother used to call it "shopping in the basement." She'd go down to the first floor of the house and dig up something from Kelley's past and send it to him for his birthday.

"Things would show up in the mail: My leather pouch that I would keep my marbles in when I was a little boy; my boy scout uniform. I'm kind of in that same vein as my mother. I'm keeping things that are meaningful. When I am sitting around, I can look at the model we made of the first mouse or the Christmas card we made in 1993 and I just think, it's pleasurable now; it's going to be even more pleasurable as I get older."

Though IDEO still makes stuff, much of what we design, along with what we consume, has become less tangible. And it's a good thing—there's not much more room on Kelley's shelves.

It's not everyday that you see the first ever example of something you love. So, when David Kelley invited us into his office and pulled an early prototype of the Apple Mouse off his shelf, I let out an audible gasp.

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.