When it comes to food, we often have to choose between health, convenience, and taste. Parents struggle to get their kids to eat veggies. The same daily salad can become boring or bland over time. Produce often withers in the crisper drawer.

Betterer Foods set out to make one of the world's favorite foods healthier. Rice is a beloved food across many cultures, but many people now avoid simple carbohydrates due to diet restrictions or health concerns. Innovations and alternative options have mostly been limited to products in the freezer section, like riced cauliflower.

Betterer Foods created RightRice: a dry, shelf-stable grain made from rice and vegetables, including lentils, chickpeas, and green peas. RightRice has more than double the protein, five times the fiber, and 40 percent fewer net carbs than traditional rice. But the product still tastes and looks like rice, and is faster and easier to cook.

RightRice founder Keith Belling, the founder and former CEO of popchips, asked IDEO to design a brand that would communicate the product’s benefits. The start-up needed everything from a defined target consumer and brand story to a stand-out package design, website, and go-to-market materials.

The team listened to people's challenges with rice and eating healthfully: home cooks find it difficult to store fresh foods without them going bad, busy professionals are strapped for time when preparing balanced meals, and parents sneak vegetables into dishes like casseroles or mac and cheese. Some consumers say they avoid rice because it’s a carbohydrate, which is forbidden in so many of today’s diets. People describe themselves as “carb phobic” or say they consider rice a “guilty pleasure.” Others don’t eat rice because it makes them feel sluggish or bloated, or is too difficult or time-consuming to prepare. Overall, people wished rice could be healthier, simpler to cook, and still taste delicious.

IDEO translated these insights into a brand foundation that helped RightRice come to life on shelves, online, and in the world. The package messaging emphasizes the vegetable ingredients, and the cut-out window lets consumers see that the product looks like rice. The shape of the window simultaneously forms a bowl of rice and a smile.

Rice is a household staple around the world. The RightRice brand makes it easier for consumers to have health, convenience, and good taste in one accessible product. RightRice launched nationwide in Whole Foods and Amazon in February 2019.

Since this launch, the company has expanded both its reach and product line. RightRice is now available in nearly 5,000 retailers nationwide in addition to Whole Foods and Amazon, including Sprouts, Wegmans, and approximately 1,800 Kroger stores. Over one million bags have been sold.

The company has received numerous awards and acclaim, including being named “Best Plant-Based” by People’s 2019 Food Awards. Building on the success of RightRice, Belling and his team launched RightRice Medley, a blend of RightRice, ancient grains, and vegetables, in 2020. This new product, which features the same branding the company created with IDEO, has doubled the company’s shelf presence at Whole Foods.

After 40 years of rapid development, China's economic growth has reached a critical turning point.

However, looking at the world, today is also the most complex and uncertain era in human history. The traditional engine of economic development is slowing down, while innovation and other emerging ideas are helping the economy burst into dynamism. To ride this trend, China has already put in place comprehensive policies to ensure that the country can achieve this magnificent transformation—not only to maintain economic growth, but also to achieve high-quality development. To this end, what China needs most is a group of new business leaders with a sense of cooperation and innovation to lead and realize this change as a pioneering force.

People of insight can often see the situation clearly with a forward-looking eye. China's society and economy are undergoing transformation and upgrading, and market demands are constantly changing driven by technology. While seeking business development, many mature entrepreneurs with successful experience have realized that they need to explore some of the most essential issues inwardly, including: The original intention and mission of the enterprise and the role that enterprise leaders should play. However, without a systematic approach, transformation and upgrading, strategic decision-making, management mode and cultural construction cannot truly serve the enterprise

As a top institution of higher learning in China, Tsinghua University has always placed an important strategic position on cultivating innovative talents for China. IDEO is the world's leading design and innovation consulting firm. As a pioneer of design thinking, IDEO has always been committed to applying design and innovation capabilities to solve the world's most complex problems. After discovering the need for China's economic and social transformation and the need for innovative leadership by Chinese entrepreneurs, Tsinghua University and IDEO jointly launched the "Leading China" program in 2018. This program is aimed at senior management of Chinese enterprises, and aims to train entrepreneur trainees to use new perspectives and ideas through a one-year innovative leadership course to seek solutions for the systemic changes that need to be achieved in the process of social transformation in China.

The students of the first "Leading China" program came from more than 30 entrepreneurs from 20 different industries. The teachers who participated in the lecture included 73 Chinese and foreign experts including Shan Jixiang, the former dean of the Forbidden City, Masahiro Kuroyama, the father of Japanese industrial design, and Jake Knapp, the inventor of "Design Sprint". As China's first innovative leadership course with design thinking as the core, the project is equipped with "design to open enterprise creativity", "reshape enterprise competitive advantage", "forge innovative business system", "innovate with the help of finance", "embracing Industrial Revolution 4.0" and "Win-win China Created 2030" six modules. The trainees traveled to nine cities in one year, and completed the courses in the interactive teaching of inspiration and the exchange and sharing of practical experience. Many students said that the course not only helped them find the direction and path of enterprise reform, but also improved their way of thinking, strategic planning and leadership models.

Liu Feng, the founder of Top Intelligence, gave an example of the inspiration brought by the six pillars of "vision-led" enterprise reform. Through "vision leadership", he not only sorted out the original intention and values ​​of the company, but also launched a series of measures based on this starting point, which improved the company's various aspects from the telephone customer service process to the organization of the annual meeting, and mobilized the enthusiasm of employees. This greatly improves the company's efficiency and flexibility. Ting Zhihong, chairman of Hongtu Logistics Co., for example, said that the biggest change brought by the course is her awareness of the importance of empowering the team. The company has now built many platforms to give employees more room to play, to create markets, to put decision-making on the front line, and to let employees play the role of company operators. Her company doubled its profits in 2018. Hu Chao, founder and CEO of Leyou Pregnancy and Baby, introduced that what most executive courses learn is knowledge, and what this course learns is people-oriented values ​​and ways of thinking.

The students of the first class of "Leading China" graduated in December 2018. Regarding the course of this year, Wang Jingwei, former assistant dean of the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University, commented: "Since the project was launched, we have not only witnessed the true value of design in a business context, but also experienced first-hand the use of people-oriented The difference between the designed executive courses is that the entrepreneurs who participated in the courses quickly entered a state of immersive learning, and many students quickly began to practice the methods they learned in the enterprise.”

On April 8, 2019, the list of winners of the 3rd "Changing the World Innovation Award" was announced, and the "Leading China" project was shortlisted for case nomination, becoming the only Chinese innovation case in the education category. The "Change the World Innovation Award" was announced by Fast Company, one of the world's three major financial and business media organizations.

As one of the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers, the Chinese brand vivo is widely known for its exceptional technological innovation and top-of-the-line photography and gaming hardware. But in an increasingly saturated phone market, vivo understood that it wasn’t enough to lead the pack based solely on technological excellence. To win the hearts of young Chinese consumers, they needed to become a beloved brand.

China consumes roughly 30 percent of the world’s smartphones, presenting a tremendous market opportunity to brands who wish to capture young consumers’ loyalty. In order to achieve that, vivo wanted to design a complete brand experience beyond the devices themselves—one that would express the joyful vivo brand spirit through services and retail experiences. One of their first key initiatives was to build its first concept store in an iconic building in Shenzhen, China.

Before building the concept store, vivo approached IDEO to explore what kind of in-store experience would resonate with young Chinese people. The concept store needed to convey joy in a meaningful, tangible way, while also setting the stage for vivo’s future brand systems. With this in mind, IDEO set out to explore how vivo’s young consumers experience fun.

After conducting research in four different cities, IDEO shared the stories of young Chinese consumers back with the vivo team. Their interviews revealed that young people value experiences that enrich their lives and create a feeling of positive personal transformation. They seek opportunities to expose themselves to new experiences, express themselves in different ways, expand and deepen their social connections, and build knowledge and skills.

Through this understanding of how young Chinese define “enjoyment,” IDEO helped vivo identify the value proposition of the concept store as expressing oneself in new and different ways. The store would allow every visitor to see something unique and find a fresh perspective. The vivo team took that value proposition into a design brief and later built out the space and interactive experiences.

The concept store launched at Shenzhen on March 22, 2019, featuring an upper level dedicated entirely to interactive experiences with photo booths, sound recording, and lighting technology. The engaging, lively and positive atmosphere of the store represents a major milestone in vivo’s transformation from a smartphone maker to a consumer brand.

WATCH: Official launch video provided by vivo.

As China's agriculture moves towards scale and sustainability, helping farmers grow healthier food with resilience is a matter of national economic security and individual livelihoods.

Bayer Crop Science—with its mission to accelerate China's agricultural modernization and benefit Chinese farmers and consumers—has provided high-quality products for millions of growers in China over 18 years. Yet its service relies heavily on multi-layered distributors and retailers across the country. The last mile of Bayer’s product delivery spreads across tens of thousands of highly fragmented retail stores, making the quality of service difficult to monitor and control.

Together with IDEO, Bayer Crop Science aimed to uncover new ways to engage with local farmers and retailers, and develop design concepts for its diverse set of retailers—establishing local relevance as well as the potential to scale nationwide.

With this ambition in mind, a team formed by Bayer Crop Science and IDEO launched into a design sprint in the rice fields of China’s Anhui province. Field research uncovered multiple challenges facing Bayer Crop Science’s retailers. First, each store needed to serve more than one hundred farmers, many of whom rely solely on the store owner to understand how to use the products. Retailers struggled to meet a high daily demand for direct support in a way that provided a positive customer experience.

In turn, farmers felt they had insufficient access to expert advice. While many farmers shared similar needs, there was no system for aggregating requests or arranging group instruction. Given that many rice farmers are illiterate, pre-printed educational pamphlets had limited impact, and retailers lacked tools for providing targeted support. And because the retail stores were also used for storage, little space remained for educational or community programming.

With these constraints in mind, the team needed to come up with ideas and design concepts that could be easily integrated into the daily lives of the retail store owners. The team brainstormed hundreds of concepts and quickly prototyped a select few. One retail store in Dangtu was transformed entirely into a live prototype set. Over three days, more than 50 farmers and retailers came through and provided feedback. From there, the team was able to make daily iterations of the concept, evolving the experience in real-time.

The Bayer team was energized by the potential of these prototypes to enable more customer-centered retail experiences. An exhibition of the concepts was set up during the National Annual Sales Conference of Bayer Crop Science in China, during which a much wider audience from Bayer experienced not only the concepts, but also the immediate feedback from farmers.

One year after the project’s completion, more than half of the design concepts have been included in Bayer's support kit for dealers. In 2019, these concepts will be rolled out in more than 1,000 flagship stores across China.

The work has also accelerated Bayer Crop Science’s efforts to build an ongoing engagement mechanism with its retailers and growers. Its online platform, Bayer Joy Grower, now has more than 10,000 retailers and will be expanded to growers soon.

I didn’t start out working at an enlightened company—I started out working in the art world, in upscale art galleries, private art clubs, and various museums. My surroundings were beautiful, but I was miserable. The politics and sexism were intense. I never felt like I could speak my mind.

Luckily, I eventually landed at IDEO. For the past 10-plus years, I’ve helped create events, experiences, and rituals that keep our studio culture healthy and our designers happy. Now, I’m Co-Director of the experience team in Chicago. Our mission: Design for belonging.

My team and I use tools like our studio space, food, events, experiences, and rituals to help make everyone who comes through our doors feel welcome, supported, and empowered to do the best work of their lives. We do things like throw spur-of-the moment pop-ups that break up the afternoon, and plan group lunches so people will eat together—like a family—instead of having sad lunches alone at their desks. We even plan crafting sessions and inspirational field trips.

Not convinced that thoughtful extras like spa water and storytelling events can actually help fuel the ideas that drive revenue? Consider the case of Uber.

Remember Travis Kalanick, the former CEO?

The deposed chief executive set the tone for the company’s culture. Under him, Uber flouted local laws and criticized competitors in its quest for success. Thanks to the company’s pervasive “bro” culture, sexual harassment and discrimination were rampant. Employees were pitted against one another, and management turned a blind eye to infractions from top performers.

Contrast Kalanick’s approach to leadership and culture to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who took the company’s reins in 2014. He inherited a company lacking innovation—and relevance. Microsoft’s stock performance was flat. His goal was to shift the culture from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all.” “Microsoft’s culture had been rigid,” he wrote in his book, Hit Refresh. “Each employee had to prove that he or she was the smartest person in the room. The culture change I wanted was centered on exercising a growth mindset every day.”

Three years later, not only are employees happier, more innovative, and empathic, but the company has generated more than $250 billion in market value—more than Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify, Snapchat, and WeWork—combined.

As an experience director, I’m laser-focused on making sure employees feel safe to fail and explore, that they feel connected to others, and that they have what they need to solve problems and come up with innovative solutions. My job is to set the conditions for great work.

So how do you actually do that? Here are five ways to jump-start your company culture.

1. Define and build on your company’s cultural values

Values are the compass that an organization uses to select staff members, reward current employees, and make business decisions. If you’re just starting a company and need to define your values from scratch, Greenhouse, the company that designed the recruiting software IDEO uses, has a helpful culture mapping exercise to help get you started. Need further inspiration? Check out Google’s values: “Focus on the user and all else will follow.” “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” “Fast is better than slow.” “Great just isn’t good enough.”

2. Leverage naturally-occurring behaviors

Put on your anthropologist hat. What interesting or unusual things are people already doing around the office that you could build on? (It’s faster and easier to build on existing behaviors than to encourage new ones.) At one company, I noticed people were wary of talking to strangers. Unfortunately, since it was a co-working space, almost everyone was a stranger. I also observed that people would use the kitchen as a shortcut to the bathroom, and that it was a neutral zone—no one group owned it. High foot traffic + no ownership = opportunity to spark casual conversation and community! You can do what I did—look for unused spaces in your own workplace and use questions on Post-it Notes to spur random conversations—or move shared resources like printers or snacks to the middle of the space instead of tucking them away in a corner.

3. Identify and empower cultural mavens

As an experience director, I’m always look for new collaborators. Though some cultural experiences can come from the top down, others work better when they come from the bottom up. They feel more authentic. I’m always trying to identify new cultural mavens within our organization, and I empower them by giving them some time, money, or resources to bring their ideas to life. For example, at IDEO, we noticed a few of our designers were natural teachers and always went out of their way to show others how to learn a new skill. This aligned perfectly with two of our company values—“Learn from Failure” and “Make Others Successful”—so we gave those designers a budget and set them free to build on their ideas. Now we regularly have Nerd Nights where people learn to code, and Shop Class where we make things like concrete planters and leather wallets.

4. Prioritize face-to-face interactions

Digital tools are efficient, sure, but the only way to build authentic, human relationships is face-to-face. Period. When you find yourself using a digital tool to communicate with an individual or a group, think: Could this be done in person instead? Am I hiding behind this tool, this emoji? Encourage others to get out from behind their screens, too. One easy way? Get people to eat their meals together.

5. Design meaningful rituals

We participate in rituals in institutions, politics, and religion all the time. But they’re not commonly talked about in the world of business, even though they’re a simple way to make cultural values tangible. At IDEO, I was part of a team that started IDEO Stories, a Moth-like live storytelling event designed to help teach our designers how to tell better project stories. After the first event, it became clear it wasn’t just a good way to learn a new skill—it was a way to celebrate an individual’s unique backstory and unite the community.

For the last seven years in Chicago, we’ve also held an Annual Studio Awards party, an Oscars-inspired evening where the community votes on award-worthy project work from the past year. Categories are tweaked each year to incentivize emerging behaviors that are beneficial to our business.

Have ideas for rituals of your own? Share them with us on Twitter, so we can inspire each other.

Often, people want to write culture off as a slew of perks you might find at tech companies. But really, culture is about creating an environment that makes it possible for people to work together to come up with innovative products and ideas—the same products and ideas that drive revenue.

We met a beer and sausage vendor in Germany who keeps an array of hats stored on his gearshift, a humorous-looking makeshift hat hook. When we asked him more about it he explained that he often sells his wares at football games, so it’s important that he wear the right football club’s hat. “One time, when I wore the wrong one by accident, they called me an ass and tipped the van over,” he said. “You always have to howl with the wolves.”

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

You can’t beat the smell of fresh ink, the texture and weight of high-quality paper, and the sound as you flip through the pages. When holding a magazine, I’m not simply reading it—I’m immersed in it.

I asked my fellow designers which publications they find the most exciting, and I’ve included a few of my favorites, too:

1. Apartamento

Yes, I suppose it’s an interior design magazine, but instead of focusing on beautiful, minimalist, multi-million-dollar houses (not that there's anything wrong with that), Apartamento covers real, lived-in homes and the creative people who occupy them. Raw portrait photography, cluttered spaces, and intimate interviews show how people really choose to live. Based in Barcelona, Spain, it’s survived through subscription revenue and a higher newsstand price, and has bucked the trend of featuring numerous ads or sponsored content. Plus, its perfect novel size, centered layout, patterned spine, and chunky typography are delightfully raw and unfussy. —Lindsey Turner, IDEO Cambridge

2. B

B magazine is published in South Korea. Every issue, it takes an advertisement-free, documentary approach to a single iconic brand. It’s covered many amazing brands, from the luxury to the mundane, including LEGO, Ray-Ban, and Bic. Each issue goes deep into the people, history, evolution, products, experiences, and philosophies of the brand it covers. Fans and collectors are also often included. I recommend it to anyone who likes branding and brand strategy, or just loves products and design. The many ways it looks at a brand and all its expressions goes far beyond simple identity and logo. —Clark Scheffy, IDEO San Francisco

3. Banana

In 2014, first generation Asian-Americans Vicky Ho and Kathleen Tso launched Banana magazine, a lifestyle magazine dedicated to exploring the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures. Ho and Tso are not claiming to be experts in Asian culture, but rather are discovering it right alongside their readers. Their goal is to understand what this third identity—neither Asian nor American, but Asian-American—means. As a designer, I think it’s fascinating to understand how cultures can blend together. With the growing influence of Asian countries on design trends, this magazine is relevant, vibrant, and bold, and offers great graphic design inspiration. —Coline Prevost, IDEO Palo Alto

4. [BranD]

[BranD] is a Hong Kong-based magazine that explores communication design in visual art, advertising, products, graphic design, and architecture. It brings together designers, artists, art directors, marketing specialists, and business-minded people of all stripes to share new ways to express ideas and brands visually. I'm an avid reader of [BranD] for inspiration in my craft; it's a great vehicle to stay connected to the ways other designers are stretching their own skills and building their crafts in a discipline—comms design—that is always evolving. —Joshua Lavra, IDEO San Francisco

5. Cat People

Cat People is an English-Japanese bilingual magazine featuring interviews and works by cat-obsessed artists, designers, photographers, and writers. It’s only in its first issue, but it’s already sold out. I’m very excited for future editions because this magazine promises magnificent inspiration for design and feline die-hards (like me). —Camden Foley, IDEO Palo Alto

6. Cereal

Cereal is a biannual travel and style magazine based in the United Kingdom. Each issue highlights engaging interviews and stories about unique design, art, and fashion on a specific theme, such as sustainability or desire. I’ve followed this magazine since its inception in 2016 and have every issue to date. Cereal’s publisher offers beautiful magazines, city guides, art prints, and even a children’s book—all with some of the best photography and design I’ve ever seen. —Camden Foley, IDEO Palo Alto

7. The Collective Quarterly

The Collective Quarterly is a magazine about travel and creativity across the U.S. The magazine staff—a rotating team of writers, photographers, illustrators, and other creatives—visits small towns or regions around the country to interview artists, creators, and other cornerstones of local life. As a photographer, the exceptional photography caught my eye, particularly that of one of the co-founders, who still shoots film photos like I do. It’s inspired me to get out with my camera more often. I recommend the magazine to anyone who seeks a deeper appreciation of creativity in intimate communities, hopes to explore non-urban corners of the country, or wants to bask in the magic of film photos. —Tara Safaie, IDEO San Francisco

8. Drift

Back when I was a barista, my mornings were spent adjusting the espresso machine's grind and my tamp to each bean's age and provenance. I learned that coffee is ubiquitous, yet highly circumstantial; you can find it in virtually any city, and yet each urban environment and its inhabitants have radically different rituals, cultures, and methods of consumption for this most essential drink. Drift transports its readers to different cities and their respective coffee cultures, allowing readers to intimately engage with new adventures in new places through a common cup of joe. —Adam Cristobal, IDEO Palo Alto

9. The Gourmand

As we reach the peak of our food media zeitgeist, The Gourmand has emerged as one of the leading alternative voices in the space, covering everything from new ways of visualizing food emoji to Georgia O'Keeffe's strict diet. Boasting both witty writing and distinct art direction, the magazine offers a unique perspective and inspirational fodder to foodies, designers, and creatives of all stripes as we look for more visually appetizing ways to engage with the world. —Adam Cristobal, IDEO Palo Alto

10. Offscreen

Offscreen is a print magazine published three times a year, as well as a weekly newsletter, that takes a thoughtful, human-centred approach to technology. It’s is a slow counterbalance to the fast pace of popular media, exploring creativity and design through introspective writing and thoughtful human stories. Offscreen is a proponent of the “slow web,” celebrating the idea that not all that is instant and convenient is necessarily good for us. —Nathan Paterson, IDEO Tokyo

11. Surface

Surface is a New York magazine that covers a little of everything—design, architecture, fashion, culture, and travel. I picked it up because I judge magazines by their covers. Each cover features a great close-up portrait of a creative person—an architect, musician, industrial designer, etc. The portrait is paired with restrained, Swiss-style black typography and a grid well versed in white space. The magazine examines culture through the lens of design and has a whiff of one of my favorite blogs, Sight Unseen. It's conspicuous consumption for sure, but sometimes that's what magazines are for. —Lindsey Turner, IDEO Cambridge

Next time you want to explore cutting-edge design—or just enjoy a little eye candy—crack the cover of one of these magazines for an inspiring read.

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Thanks to the digital revolution, fewer and fewer of us are getting our hands on paper copies of books, magazines, or newspapers these days. Online subscriptions and digital versions can fill the void, but sometimes, picking up a glossy magazine is simply the best way to absorb inspiration.

As a data scientist, this idea got my gears turning: What if I could use machine learning to build a laugh-detecting algorithm?

Prototyping is a great way to explore how emerging technologies will play a role in our connected future. But instead of focusing on how we will teach our machines to sense human behavior, I’m interested in designing what we will do with the information our devices are learning. In a world filled with machines that learn and interact with us, it’s important that they are able to respond to all parts of our humanity—including the things that make us laugh.

I wanted to see what kind of laugh detection prototype I could build in a few weeks. Here’s how I did it:

1. Building the algorithm

To build the laugh-detecting algorithm, I knew that I wanted to use deep learning, so I turned to Keras, a programming library which makes creating neural networks fast and simple. To train the laugh detector, I needed to use sequences of audio as the input and predict whether or not laughter would result as the output. Fortunately, I found Audioset, a collection of over two million 10-second audio clips with labels from over 6,000 categories. Using a subset of the Audioset collection that is half laughter and half speech, I was able to get a laughter detection model running with 87 percent accuracy within a few days.

After creating a training dataset, I got started on the machine learning challenge. The Audioset data does not contain the extracted raw audio, only a 128-length feature vector for each second of input, which is created using a convolutional network operating on the raw audio spectrogram. These feature vectors will be the input for the machine learning algorithm, and the output will be a binary label of whether the input contained laughter. Since I am working with a relatively large dataset, I wanted to use some deep learning methods, so I turned to keras, an API that makes creating and training neural networks extremely simple, while still leveraging the computational efficiency of optimized tensor computation libraries like TensorFlow and Theano.

Since the model input is sequential, I wanted to try a recurrent neural network first. I started with a single layer LSTM model that quickly converged to 87% accuracy. Learning from the code in a very similar project, I found that applying batch normalization to the LSTM input was very important for getting the model to converge. One of the headaches of deep learning is that seemingly trivial details like this can have a large impact on convergence. I was happy with the performance of my first LSTM model, but I decided to try out a couple more options before moving on. I tried a 3-layer LSTM (because if one layer is good, three must be better), then I tried a simple logistic regression model to see if the fancy RNN architecture made a difference. The models performed with 88% and 86% accuracy, respectively, which showed me that, in this case, more layers did not equate to more power.

Ultimately, I ended up choosing the single layer LSTM, even though it was larger than the logistic regression model, because it was able to handle variable length input. The training data was all sequences that were 10 seconds long, but I wanted the laughter detector to be able to respond quicker than that. While the logistic regression could only operate on input that was the same length as the training data, the LSTM model can still operate on any input length, as long as it is split into one-second chunks.

To take the trained model and run it as a live laugh detector, I put together a python script that pulled together a few different steps. First, the audio is captured from the microphone using pyaudio and chunked into three-second clips. (The length of these clips is an adjustable parameter.) The raw audio is then fed into the pre-trained vggish network and converted to a sequence of feature vectors with the same parameters I used for creating the Audioset training data. The sequence is then fed into the trained LSTM model, and the laughter prediction score is returned and written to a timestamped .csv file. By default, the raw audio is then discarded, and only the score is saved. That way, there are no concerns about storing or transmitting anyone’s private conversations. By running the audio capture and processing in separate threads, I was able to run this continuously without any lag on my laptop.

2. Designing the experience

Once I had the ability to measure laughter, I had to tackle the real design challenge: How do we implement the laugh detector in project spaces without making it seem obnoxious or creepy?

I enlisted the help of a few smart colleagues to approach the challenge from multiple angles: a software designer experienced in designing for play, an environments designer to explore how the detector would show up in a project space, and a communication designer who’s written on the science of laughter.

We had a brainstorm around what we might be able to do with a laughter detector, and the ideas poured in. Perhaps we could use laughter as a weekly indicator of morale (similar to Bhutan’s gross national happiness), or host a competition between project teams for who laughed the most? If we could determine when people are laughing, maybe we could figure out why they are laughing, too. We could determine when laughter is genuine or just polite, which jokes are the funniest, or even measure who is laughed at the most.

Some of the more wild ideas included a gif of an IDEO Chicago director Jon Wettersten (below) who laughs along with us, or an alert that would play videos of clowns if we went too long without laughing.

Ultimately, we wanted to select ideas that would give teams insight into their laughter, but not be too intrusive or prescriptive.

Information systems shouldn’t overwhelm users—particularly when that information concerns people’s moods. There are times when it’s appropriate to not be laughing; you don’t want your smartwatch telling you to laugh more during your grandma’s funeral. And if we were to build a device that listens for laughter, we'd need to make sure that we communicate and maintain people’s expectations of privacy.

With all this in mind, we narrowed it down to two concepts that we would take forward into the prototyping phase.

3. Hatching prototypes

The first thing we made was a simple information dashboard built in Dash. We referred to this design as a “FitBit for laughter,” as it was meant to help teams set goals and measure their progress towards those goals.

This raised the the question, what if you could track your emotional health in the same way that you tracked your physical health? What kind of goals would you set? What would your “laughter workout” look like?

To start, we measured laughs by time of day over a period of 24 hours, laughs per day over the past week, and how close teams are to achieving a daily “laugh quota.”

The second prototype used the output of the laugh detector to control the color and intensity of a Hue lightbulb. When there is a lot of laughter in a room, the light glows a bright yellow to mirror the warmth that laughter brings to a space. When there is less laughter, it transitions to a dim blue to help teams stay calm and focused. In this way, the environment responds to the activities and emotion of its inhabitants.

What if the smart systems we create could react not only to a user’s presence or interaction, but adapt to the user’s mood? How might we design smart systems or spaces that are emotionally responsive?

4. User testing

We wanted to see how people would react to the laugh-bulb, so we got a few colleagues to sit down and test it out. The original plan was to play funny videos to stimulate laughter, but as soon as people sat down, they started joking so much, the videos were unnecessary.

Laughter is a reinforcing behavior; when you laugh, the people around you laugh too, creating a virtuous cycle that can leave you laughing until you’re sore. Seeing the light grow brighter as the room fills with laughter adds energy to that cycle. The group that came in to test the laugh-bulb ended up laughing so much that you could hear them throughout the studio.

WATCH: Testing the laugh-bulb prototype.

Next up, I’d love to put these prototypes in front of more people to see whether quantifying laughter can affect their mood. And I'm left wondering, which emotional or mental health signals could be measured and recorded next?

As more aspects of our lives are recorded, we are going to be able to quantify and improve our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine. Let’s design these systems not just to make us smarter, but to make us more joyful, too.

Play goes hand in hand with innovation. I learned this from Brendan Boyle, director of IDEO's Play Lab, who says that if you measure the amount of laughter in a project space, the teams who chuckle most are also the most successful.

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.