Keeping diabetes in check isn’t easy. Between checking blood sugar multiple times a day, keeping a detailed activity record, and logging food intake, staying healthy can be daunting.

But a recent advance in smart diabetes management—Ascensia’s CONTOUR NEXT ONE blood glucose meter and the CONTOUR DIABETES app—can give patients more clarity and control.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE is the latest product to spring from a multi-year collaboration between IDEO and Ascensia Diabetes Care (formerly Bayer Diabetes Care). In 2009, Ascensia and IDEO developed the award-winning CONTOUR USB blood glucose meter—the first meter to plug directly into a computer, providing patients and their doctors with instant access to blood sugar data and personal trend reports.

Buoyed by the success of the first collaboration, Ascensia asked IDEO to help design a next-generation diabetes management system (and the company’s first internet-connected device).

To help reduce the stigma of checking blood sugar in public, IDEO designed the CONTOUR NEXT ONE to look and behave like today’s modern tech devices. The highly simplified, seamless system allows patients to upload blood glucose readings automatically to the app, which helps guide informed, real-time decisions. The meter’s red, green, or yellow smartLIGHT feature gives instant feedback about whether blood sugar levels are below, within, or above the target range.

Seeing contextual data, which includes physical activity logs and photos of meals, paired with recent and historic blood sugar levels, nudges patients toward healthier lifestyle choices and better control of their condition.

For doctors, the accuracy and quantity of the data combined with the app’s easy-to-read pattern views invites more comprehensive, actionable conversations with patients.

The CONTOUR NEXT ONE hit shelves in Europe in 2016 and is now available in the U.S. Ascensia is poised to develop more products enabled by rich, personalized data to help people with diabetes live longer, healthier lives.

What if we could use the sky to provide alternative solutions to these problems, creating more space for living and transportation? What exciting future awaits us?

At JAXA’s Aeronautical Technology Directorate (ATD), researchers are conducting research and development on aviation science and technology for the future. They are working to affect positive impact through research like noise reduction of airframe and an integrated aircraft operation management system for disaster relief and crisis management.

Normally, JAXA begins their projects by examining the needs of the aircraft industry or comparing themselves against global technology standards. This approach often leads to ideas that are merely an extension of the current technology. JAXA needed a new approach in order to create radical ideas and real change.

The key question was: What solutions would emerge from prioritizing people’s needs over the most advanced technological possibility—taking a human-centered approach to tackling the most pressing societal challenges?

JAXA ATD voluntary partnered with IDEO to attempt to answer this question, identifying new research areas by envisioning people’s needs in the near future. Together, JAXA and IDEO developed four scenarios of future societies.

The scenarios do not necessarily focus on technologies. Rather, the focus is on telling stories that help readers put themselves in the shoes of the four personas. At the same time, the team worked with industrial designers to illustrate convincing demonstrations of the vehicles and machines of the future.

JAXA’s team embraces the belief that “technologies developed at JAXA should incorporate emotional aspects to blend seamlessly into people’s lives.” Driven by this philosophy, the visual design of the four scenarios used a friendly illustration style intended to be approachable and understandable for people of all ages.

In order to develop human-centered concepts from scratch, the IDEO and JAXA team first undertook research and inspiration-gathering. They skydived, observed cities from above, brainstormed with students from the department of architecture at Waseda University. They interviewed airline employees, a former Judo world champion, skyscraper lovers, a business producer who focuses on new working styles. Throughout the research phase, the team explored the possibilities of the sky as a “living space,” not just a place for transportation.

The team was surprised and excited when they learned from a former fighter pilot that old cockpit designs were inspired by the Japanese tea room, highlighting a historic precedent for taking inspiration from real life to inform new technology designs.

The team synthesized their research and developed several concepts, each informed by a different social issue or pressing concern. Each issue was brought to life through a fictional personal narrative.

How might we relieve city congestion and pollution using the sky, while still keeping it clean and blue? Floating public lights, a skyway that regulates air traffic, camouflaged planes that keep the sky blue—concepts introduced in this scenario were the closest to the technologies already being researched at JAXA ATD. They show us how the sky could become an infrastructure that supports our daily lives. Meet Ayame, a girl from Gunma prefecture, ready to begin her college life in Osaka.

How might we make travel feel easy for people of all ages, no matter how far they need to go? While the researchers at JAXA ATD are working to improve the mobility of aircraft, like reducing air friction or increasing the engine efficiency of aircraft, this scenario explored how people could travel door-to-door through the sky with or without aircraft. A day-in-the-life of Naoto, a 72-year-old man who commutes twice a month from Tottori to Tokyo for medical checkups.

How might we leverage the sky as a resource for reusable energy and economic growth? One of the criteria of JAXA’s R&D activities is to improve the environment. While JAXA has been focusing on “protecting” the environment, this scenario focused on “creating” new environments. A day-in-the-life of Toshi, who runs a “sky-to-table” farming business.

How might we help people live with peace of mind, even during a disaster? JAXA’s disaster relief technologies have been extremely valuable in countries like Japan, which frequently suffers from natural disasters. In this scenario, we approached the problem from victims’ point of view while exploiting the potential of a network of aircrafts and other flying objects. Here's the story of Yuri, a victim of an earthquake in Tokyo who reunites with her family after evacuating to the sky.

The purpose of the project website is not to present answers, but to introduce new directions towards an exciting future. By presenting JAXA ATD’s vision through these four scenarios, the team invited people from all industries and of all ages to participate in co-creating the future.

Just like movies, cartoons, and novels from childhood stimulate the imagination, this project aims to spark new conversation and vision for a radically different, positive future.

By illustrating and communicating a more human-centered future to a wider audience, Japan’s top aeronautical technology development agency may already be changing the future of the sky for the better.

The speed and scale of change in our world are unprecedented. As more people relocate to cities, our lives are impacted by urbanization problems such as pollution, congestion, depopulation of rural areas, resource, and energy deficiencies.

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For factory operators, a smart valve is a game-changer. It gathers data on how smoothly the system is running and feeds it to an app, making it easier to troubleshoot from anywhere. And when things get overheated, it can automatically shut down the machinery, avoiding a meltdown.

Georg Fischer (GF), the Swiss-based, B2B industrial manufacturer collaborated with IDEO to design that valve, along with a system that adds value for generations of engineers to come.

And there were some surprises along the way. When the team set out to interview customers, they learned a lot about their real needs. “We showed a customer a sacrificial concept of a smart valve and asked, what do you think about this?” says Laura Barrabia, GF’s Head of Corporate Design Thinking. “The customer answered, we don’t want your valve to be smart, we want to be smart. If GF is providing a smart valve, where is my value?”

For GF Piping Systems, these insights helped shape initial prototypes and guided the direction of the design to something that would tie parts together into smart systems and more efficient industrial facilities—a competitive advantage.

Yves Serra, GF’s CEO, recognized early on that his company needed to strengthen its customer-centricity and digital capacity, so he approached IDEO to begin shifting GF’s culture from engineering-led and procedural to customer-focused, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and flexible. That kicked off a decade-long relationship that would help GF take a design-based approach.

Learn what it means to move from being technology-driven to being truly customer-centric.

To help GF identify clients’ pain points and address them with new digital offers, IDEO proposed three “lighthouse” projects, one for each of GF’s divisions: Piping Systems, Casting Solutions, and Machining Solutions. Lighthouse projects (also called “Beacons”) are proofs of concept that light the way for an organization and help it shift its way of working.

For example, GF Machining Solutions built a prototype for an application that uses real-time data to help customers identify and fix problems in the machines, laying the foundation for truly predictive maintenance. Making data streams more transparent for customers also simplified life for the GF service engineers, who keep the machines running.

Learn how Georg Fischer is moving from hardware offerings to digital solutions.

For GF Piping Systems, the design team developed the GF Digital Line, a set of products, apps, dashboards, and other services that help customers plan, install, and maintain water and chemical piping systems. GF teams went back to customers to test several prototypes and gather feedback on the Digital Line and make sure it addressed current and future needs. They also built internal capabilities to support product development, laying the groundwork for future innovation.

Lastly, IDEO helped GF Casting Solutions escape the “commodity trap” of competing with foreign automotive suppliers. To better understand the pressures car manufacturers face, the design team explored the development cycles of two car manufacturers. They learned how challenging it is to implement solutions to reduce vehicle weight—essential for cutting fuel consumption. As an expert in aluminum die casting, GF was well positioned to help manufacturers meet that challenge, not just with quality parts, but also with digital engineering to deliver cutting-edge lightweight casting solutions, which are harder to replicate.

By the end of these lighthouse projects, GF had rolled out a global design thinking training program that had touched more than 1000 employees. After the training, employees throughout the organization adopted a new way of working and became passionate ambassadors. The enthusiasm spread from the R&D department to HR to finance and many other departments.

Today, GF has permanent design thinking and digital teams to continue this work. All three divisions aim to launch the first releases of their lighthouse projects by early 2019. And with every project, GF’s business—and solutions—get smarter about how to meet the needs of a fast changing world.

IHG’s ambition is to grow in service of its guests around the world. IHG’s Atlanta-based team had identified a major opportunity for hotels in the midscale space—a market segment known for its inconsistency.

Alongside colleagues at London-based forpeople, IDEO was invited to help IHG shepherd that business opportunity into a human one, by asking how IHG might reimagine the everyday travel experience for people relying on this category of hotel. What kind of offer might resonate equally with guests and with the owner/operators who’d need to buy into a new brand and bring it to life?

IDEO began by talking to travelers to better understand their lives, values, and needs—travelers who spend one or two nights on the road a few times every year; travelers who regularly take short trips to small cities or away from city centers; and travelers who live on the road, moving from hotel to hotel. These included court stenographers, medical technicians, consultants, conference-goers, and more.

Early research insights evolved into two distinct concepts for a new hotel brand, which were built out into two full-scale physical prototypes at IHG’s design center in Atlanta. Over three weeks, IDEO and its IHG partners led potential guests and hotel owners through each model, gathering their feedback on new formats for breakfast offerings, service details, booking experiences, and overall tone.

The investment in prototyping paid off with surprising and actionable insights. Despite wide variation in occupation and income, these guests are sophisticated and self-reliant; they know what’s out there, and they know what’s reasonable to expect. In fact, many describe a syndrome IDEO dubbed “anticipation anxiety:” the sense of dread that comes from not knowing whether a lower-priced hotel is going to be clean or safe, or provide a bed that enables restful sleep. Many have so little confidence in the cleanliness of hotels in this price range that they travel with their own packs of wet wipes.

IDEO, along with the IHG team, recognized these behaviors as an unanswered cry in the market. The purpose of the new brand crystallized around extinguishing that anxiety and rewarding guests with something much better. avid hotels exceeds its competition by doubling down on quality in just a few select areas: an extraordinary mattress; rigorously high standards of cleanliness; a focused, high-quality, grab-and-go breakfast and coffee experience; and an overall tone of warmth and straightforwardness.

These guests made clear that for trips like this, they aren’t interested in bells and whistles, or communication that isn’t frank or to the point. That led to an insight that upends an industry truism: for these guests—and there are many of them—choosing a hotel is rarely only about the price of the room. avid guests can often afford to stay in a more expensive place for a honeymoon or a vacation or a trip with friends; they’ll spend more when they need more. But for functional stays of one or two nights, it just feels wasteful. It goes against their values and their principles.

IHG and IDEO heard a clear call for a sense of focus and affordability—but never at the expense of quality. Guests should be able to access a simple booking process, rooms designed for sound sleep, and a quality breakfast, all at a fair price. And hotel owners ought to be able to deliver that experience with confidence and consistency, at costs that build a compelling case for their own business.

That’s what avid hotels is designed to deliver, every single time. Early traveler reviews have been exceedingly positive and have noted specifically the unique differentiating offers avid brings to the market.

Within a year of partnering with IDEO, IHG had issued 150 avid hotels licenses to franchisees in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and announced a development deal for 15 avid hotel locations in Germany over the next five years—a scale of success that came at unprecedented speed for the industry. The collaborative, inclusive design process is now serving as a model for how to develop robust, guest-centered hospitality brands that deliver where it matters for people.

But in organizations wired for efficiency, it can be difficult to quickly adapt—a potentially fatal shortcoming in a world where disruption and technological change are constant. We often see these organizations unravel and reassemble abruptly, resulting in jarring employee experiences and decreased productivity; or change course entirely, building something new that causes more damage than value. As a result, companies are dying more quickly than ever: Today, the average age of an S&P 500 company is less than 20 years old; in the 1950s, it was nearly 60.

Given all the factors threatening the vitality of companies, what factors can instead contribute to their longevity? One source of inspiration comes from cities—and the planning and development that underpin their resilience. While the best cities do seem to function like fine-tuned machines, their systems are in fact much more adaptable, flexible, and resilient—more like a living organism than a machine. In his book Scale, theoretical physicist Geoffrey West asks, “if cities are indeed some sort of superorganism, then why do almost none of them ever die?“

The reason is that they learn to evolve in response to changing conditions—a quality that is equally critical to companies. Every business leader stands to glean some adaptive tools by taking a page from urban leaders who’ve deployed adaptive responses to their local challenges.

The “just enough” strategy

After the massive 2010 earthquake destroyed 80 percent of buildings in Iquique, Chile, architect Alejandro Aravena was tasked with developing a new city plan for Iquique. His solution was unexpected: he designed a replicable house that would be half-complete when handed over to the inhabitants. On one side, the home would be move-in ready, sufficient to meet the legal requirements for low-income housing; on the other side, a vacant frame would give residents agency in determining how their own home would ultimately be. Concrete foundations, plumbing, insulation, and electricity were all provided for inhabitants, who could expand on the basic design by taking workshops and buying building materials through the city. This design gave residents a starting point to design their future, rather than a mandate. In the end, they each owned their homes.

This kind of “just enough” strategy could help businesses adapt, too. In times of change, organizations tend to set new visions in multi-year timeframes — forecasting three, five, or even 10 years ahead. Leaders develop detailed road maps explaining how every part of the organization must change in order to reach these goals. But these macro-level and long-term mandates often don’t feel tangible or attainable to employees, especially when they’re asked to report on progress every three months. This results in a lack of momentum, support, and internal innovation.

Instead, organizations can think about creating a “minimum viable organization” (MVO)—the basic foundation and tools needed in order for talent to step in to help create and shape the company’s future innovation and growth.

Zalando, Europe’s largest fashion retailer, is one of the companies that has successfully employed this approach. To more quickly adapt to industry changes, and carry out their new vision to reimagine fashion for the good of all, IDEO designers and Zalando employees established a dedicated product innovation team and lab. Rather than devoting months to strategizing or establishing an entirely new innovation department, the lab offered the MVO conditions to yield faster, more tangible progress on a long-term vision that the company could internally rally around and take to the market. In the three years since its launch, the lab has built and sent to market multiple new products like Seen At, a mobile app that allows members to upload street-style photos; and Collabary, a digital tool that connects online fashion influencers with brands.

A nimble plan for scaling

Curitiba, Brazil, is considered one of the best examples of urban planning in the world. When the city’s population exploded in the 1960s, residents worried that overcrowding and traffic congestion would threaten the city’s history and character. To address the issue, architect Jaime Lerner rolled out the Curitiba Master Plan. The plan introduced a public bus system, and required all new development to be concentrated along the bus routes to maximize use. He also introduced the Trinary Road System, which features dedicated bus lanes at the center of the thoroughfare, with parallel streets on either side for private vehicle traffic.

Rather than primarily investing in new infrastructures, Lerner focused on innovating within existing conditions, focusing on roads, public spaces, and downtown areas. As a result, he designed a system that facilitated the city’s scale while still preserving its culture.

What can businesses learn from Lerner’s approach? When organizations scale, many companies rely on structural reorganization to address challenges with stakeholders, process, and other complexities. But while that approach adjusts the high-level org chart and shifts reporting lines, it does not change informal human dynamics, relationships, and emotions, which largely influence workplace culture, engagement, and productivity.

In his TED talk, designer Alastair Parvin tells the story of an architecture firm that was working with a school to help address narrow hallways in light of a growing student population. In between classes, the corridors became congested, resulting in difficulty monitoring student behavior and bullying. But rather than expanding the hallways or building a new space for the school, the firm redesigned the school bell system. “Instead of having one school bell that goes off once, have several smaller school bells that go off in different places at different times, and distribute the traffic through the corridors,” says Parvin. “It solves the same problem.”

Like Curitiba, organizations can shift the way they operate while maintaining existing structures, rather than creating entirely new ones, which often disrupt workplace culture.

Taking a “regional” approach

Cities also offer guidance for how to work with partners—and even competitors—to achieve a big, important goal. As a part of the Helsinki City Planning Department’s 2009 Strategic Spatial Plan, the city decided to think about serving the needs of the whole region, rather than those only within the city’s boundaries. This meant that Helsinki had to redefine its existing economic, social, and environmental relationships, changing who it served. The city also formed new principles and policies for key issues like business activities, housing, and the city landscape, enabling development beyond Helsinki’s boundaries.

Most companies intentionally define clear boundaries and relationships between themselves and the outside world. To a certain extent, this is expected: Nearly every business school student is introduced to Porter’s Five Forces, a popular model used to inform corporate strategy. As part of the framework, future managers learn that by reducing the number of competitors in the market, a business can ensure long-term dominance. But as a result of adopting traditional business frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces, organizations naturally view their relationship to other industry players as competitive or transactional. This creates boundaries between a company and those outside its walls.

Like Helsinki, organizations are rethinking the boundaries of their responsibility by working to address big issues like climate change. Despite being considered industry competitors, leaders from Danone, Rabobank, Nature’s Path, McDonald’s, and Starbucks recently joined forces through CoLab, IDEO’s platform for collaborative impact. During a week-long design sprint, they worked side-by-side to develop solutions, emerging with one concept that helped food companies access better ingredients; and another that used a circular model to offer food delivery to apartment dwellers.

These companies recognize that there’s an opportunity to both stay ahead of the market and generate broader impact by looking beyond their organization’s own walls and intellectual property. This requires companies to form new collaborative relationships to push industries forward together.

While companies can still benefit from using Porter’s Five Forces—and even sometimes from structural reorgs—fresh, innovative thinking is required to address the complex challenges businesses face today. To that end, cities can serve as inspiration for organizations navigating change, helping them to rethink the efficiency-driven approaches that once enabled success, and orient instead toward nimble, flexible, human solutions.

Illustrations by Ryan Johnson

Organizations have long been engineered like fine-tuned machines: They allocate processes and resources (sometimes human) into specializations, each churning and passing their output to the next group. This efficiency has allowed companies to scale, prevent competitors from entering the market, and dominate their industries.

In the hacking world, capture the flag (CTF) describes a competition that requires participants to complete challenges that vary in topic (hardware, software, social engineering, cryptography, etc.) and complexity to—you guessed it—capture digital flags. Not only does winning these competitions mean bragging rights and great prizes, it’s also a great way to learn and teach new skills while working with others in the community.

To prepare for the competition, we doubled down on the design thinking process we rely on in our work: We built a multidisciplinary team so we had a wealth of resources on our side, and we relied on rapid prototyping to create tools that helped us solve puzzles. Here are our best tips for getting through a challenge like this one, borrowed and modified from the best practices and processes of design thinking.

Assemble a dream team

CTF challenges are usually designed to push the bounds of competitors’ knowledge and abilities, and this one was no different. When we were preparing, we knew we’d need a team that could handle embedded systems and hardware as well as web and networking. Luckily, between the two of us, we have those covered, but we also teamed up with friends at the conference with specialties in cryptography, wireless hacking, and other skills to round out our abilities.

As we thought about the types of challenges we might face, we broke down the kinds of skills we'd need and assigned them among the team. Once the challenge kicked off, we huddled to share ideas and make sure that none of the teammates got stumped on their pieces of the challenge. Even though assigning roles to work efficiently is really important, you can’t get through a challenge without leaning on one another.

Adopt a beginner’s mindset

When you go into a challenge like this, you often face things you’ve never seen before, like long strings of garbled text that make absolutely no sense at first glance; hardware that is completely new to you; antiquated and obscure software that you need to exploit somehow.

It’s daunting, but it’s not so different from taking on a design challenge. When you rely on the methods and processes of design thinking to find an unknown solution to a complex problem, you don’t know what you’re trying to build until you figure it out. CTFs work much the same way. And to succeed at them, we rely on the same methods we use to create a new product or service, or solve an engineering problem: we adopt a beginner’s mindset. When we start a project, we take significant time researching the client, the industry, and of course, the users. When we sign up for a challenge, we start working to learn as much as we can in advance, thinking about the creators and what kind of challenge they might be looking to hand us. Having little to no idea about what we’ll encounter once the challenge starts, we do our best to prepare.

Build, test, fail… repeat!

Seldom do we participate in a CTF without having to develop custom tools on the fly, like software scripts for cracking cryptography or custom hardware for probing and manipulating physical challenges. Given our time constraints, we have to slap these tools together, focusing on scrappy versions that will last just long enough to help us solve the challenge and find the flag. CTFs tend to last only a couple of days, so time is a valuable resource. It usually doesn’t matter how well a tool is designed, as long as it can be made quickly and help get us closer to the flag.

It’s a strategy straight out of the design thinking playbook. When designers are coming up with a new solution to a problem, we don’t always have time to take one idea from concept to completion. We work on many solutions in tandem, figure out which ideas are going to fail fast, then advance the others forward (or come up with totally new concepts). The tools we develop during hacking CTFs are no different. It’s a cycle of quick development, testing, and processing the feedback in order to inch closer to a solution.

Get out of your head

These challenges are called challenges for a reason. At this point, the two of us have been around the CTF block before—and yet we still get stuck and fail spectacularly.

This time, for example, we ran into an issue with listening to an audio clip that played from our ID badges. We couldn’t make out what was coming out of the tiny speaker, so we started thinking about ways to rip the firmware off the badge and download the file it was playing. That was going to take hours (if not longer), but Rob suggested we just needed a better speaker. We were thinking way too technically—we didn’t need to rip the file, we just needed to hear it better.

By articulating the simplest problem and searching for the simplest solution, we were able to move forward much faster than if we had tried to solve the problem in a much more “correct” way. It’s about knowing when to take a step back and allowing yourself to be curious about other possibilities.

Just like with our other work, failure is part of the process. Sometimes your seemingly perfect solution fails in testing, or your prototype isn’t what a client wanted. You get sent back to sketch out new ideas and start again. After our momentary fiasco with the ID badge speaker, we got the message from the audio file, moved forward to the next challenge, on and on, until we won!

Enjoy sweet, sweet victory

By pulling from our IDEO skills, and with support from some new friends, we ended up winning our first hacking CTF at this competition. We’ve since gone on to compete in other hacking competitions around the country, including winning DarkNet at the notorious DEFCON, thanks to our experience in things like breaking out of handcuffs and having a basic proficiency in Vulcan. (Yes, knowing the fictional language from Stark Trek was an actual part of the competition). Part of the challenge even involved cracking codes to gain access to a secret party—super cool.

If you can’t tell, we’re huge fans of the way CTFs push us to think quickly, pivot fast, and challenge our expectations. And Rob is such a fan that he’ll be heading back to Thotcon this year as an organizer. That's handy for the rest of us, because even though he won’t be sharing any hints as to what’s coming, we already know the way he thinks. We're ready to hit step number two, thinking about the kinds of challenges he might be all too excited to throw at us.

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You’ve infiltrated the other team’s base, found the hidden flag, and are anxiously navigating back to safety in order to score. For many people, this might bring back adolescent memories of playing capture the flag with their neighbors; for the two of us, this was what it felt like to compete in Thotcon, a two-day hacking conference. Instead of running around in someone's backyard, we were gunning for flags over wireless connections, hacking into devices, and deciphering puzzles.

His winding path evolved from leading teams at Facebook, Pinterest, and serving on the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA)'s board to interrogating the systems that shape our reality through fine art and design. I first connected with Brian while creating a public art installation inspired by his work. Sitting down for a chat with him reminded me why art at the edges is key to activating social change and reimagining our future.

In one sentence, who are you?

I’m the guy you root for in the movie who doesn’t actually win in the end, but also doesn’t get eaten by zombies. I’m also an artist and designer who gravitates towards thought-provoking work.

What do you do? How did you learn it?

At the core of my work is deconstructing and reconstructing words, symbols, and objects in order to shift their meaning. I wish I could say how I learned it. I can trace some of it to my roots in the design and communications profession. And by being curious. Well, that and just trying and failing and trying again.

What are your three favorite possessions?

My guillotine cutter, not just because of how useful it is, but also because I got it off Craigslist for a great deal. My studio (technically not a possession because I rent it), but it allows me not just the physical space, but also the mental space to create. And a giant crocheted crab pillow that my mom made when I was a kid, because it’s a crab pillow.

What does a typical work session look like?

It truly depends on what I’m making (or if I’m still in ideation phase). For many of my projects, there’s a significant planning phase where I’m just figuring out what approach to take. Once that’s ready, I start production which can consist of tying thousands of knots, or counting and sorting paper. Sometimes I wish I just did one thing, so my routines were more regular, but the truth is each session is entirely dependent on the project (and lately, the projects have been pretty diverse).

How do you get over creative block?

I shift gears. If I’m struggling with a concept, it doesn’t help to keep focusing on it. Instead, I dig into a different project, take a walk, read a book, get high, anything to get my mind off of the initial project. Once that’s done, the ideas seem to come more easily (though sometimes they come at 4am).

What was the last item on your to do list?

This? My to-do list is never ending in that there’s always too many things to do and never enough time, so items get moved to the next day, and the next. Today, I’ve prepped for and conducted a recording session for one of my projects and followed up on a proposal. After this, I’m sending a list of available pieces to a gallery, setting up tax payments, planning my week, getting groceries, and going to my nephew’s birthday dinner. My life is pretty exciting.

How do you see the world in 2078?

I’m not very optimistic about the future of humanity. Not because I don’t think we’ll survive, we probably will. Us, and cockroaches. I just think that humans have a tendency towards power and wealth at the expense of other humans and the planet. Maybe we’ll have flying cars and nanobots and we’ll live to be 200 years old, but society will still be a pyramid, with the masses supporting the very rich at the top. Sorry, that’s so dismal.

What’s your number one bucket list item?

Right now, number one is to leverage the very tactics that the advertising industry uses, but to help parents raise their children. This isn’t packaging carrots like junk food, but more like Brave New World for good. Yeah, wrap your mind around that.

Who are you creative crushin’ on lately?

So many crushes. Miranda July? Rigo 23? Matt Bonner (creator of the baby Trump balloon)? There are so many, but one who continually inspires me is Ivan Cash. He’s a brilliant creative with the right twist to his ideas around the effects of technology on society. One of his recent projects was to create sunglasses that block out digital displays.

From putting photos of texting drivers on billboards to calling out mass surveillance with tech company t-shirts to sending 1000 journals around the world to connect strangers, Brian Singer (also known as Someguy) lives and breathes provocation.

As a designer at IDEO’s CoLab, I’m always working on the kinds of systemic challenges that no single company—or even industry—can solve alone. And every time we start exploring a new problem, I get really excited. So excited that I’ve challenged myself to do things like go 100 days without sugar, 100 days without meat, and 100 days in heels (to varying degrees of success). So when we decided to explore and prototype goods for the circular economy—which focuses on manufacturing goods with a use beyond their lifecycle—I decided to dive straight in, and cut plastic out of my life for 100 days.

I kicked off my new journey with a shopping spree at T.J. Maxx, picking up all of the cute little glass jars that I could find to replace Tupperware, drug store cosmetic packaging, and other hygiene-related items. But when I hit the checkout counter, I realized that I was snaring myself in an expensive catch-22. The second all of my existing plastics hit the trash, I would be creating more waste. Instead, I enacted a grandfather clause: I used everything in my life that I already had—plastic or not—and barred myself from consuming or buying anything that brought additional plastic into my life.

The first of January 2019 was day one. Everyone was super accommodating about New Year’s resolutions. But the rest of the 99 days put me in some situations that were downright weird. Around March, I started to run out of toiletries and hit a low point where I used a Sharpie as eyeliner for a good week (do NOT recommend). I once had to drink bubble tea out of a bowl, and ransacked my bag until I found a random piece of pipe to use as a straw. It wasn’t all bad, though. Here are six surprising advantages to going without plastic.

1. I went on an accidental diet

Cutting out plastic meant no more junk food, snacks, sugar, to-go drinks, or sodas. I ended up eating more things that come in their own packaging, like avocados, yams, and eggs, and buying whole fish instead of pre-prepped fillets that came in shrink-wrapped plastic.

About five weeks after I started this challenge, I noticed that my skin was clearer, my joints were less inflamed, and the number on the scale had dropped—I felt great. But more importantly, it made me realize how much of the real estate in the modern American supermarket is dedicated to things packaged in plastic, from bagged snacks to most of the cold refrigeration aisles.

2. I needed way fewer products than I thought

After rinsing out my shampoo and soap bottles for their final suds, I turned to the beauty gurus and slapped some coconut oil and baking soda together and called it shampoo. It was totally... just okay. But after a rough couple of weeks, my body adapted and my hair and skin were doing great because all the chemicals had worked their way out of my system. It was surprisingly effective.

3. I saved money

My life was a lot more inconvenient, but also much improved. You know when you justify retail therapy as self care, and you go into Target just to grab some toilet paper only to come out with everything you need to redecorate your living room? Most retail was off limits for me, either because of packaging or material choice. Instead, that money and time went toward things I could experience. Shopping used to be entertainment; buying brought the rush of reward. Even now, post-challenge, it feels strange walking into stores.

4. My trash was compostable

With my new rules, I didn’t make that much garbage—mostly just compost that I stored in the freezer, and my experiment brought me closer to the way that I lived when I was at home. My parents grew up in rural China, growing all their own vegetables, so when Mama and Papa Gong bought a house in the middle of urban Chicago, they put a farm in the backyard. When I go home, I’m reminded just how differently they think about waste. Any organic trash goes right back to the chickens and the soil, and they don’t have any food- or shipping-related packaging to deal with. After a season, all their waste has decayed back into the soil, while plastic in our landfills will sit around for 1,000 years.

5. My social life improved

Small talk makes me uncomfortable, but I had to start talking to strangers to ask them to, say, leave the straw out of my drink (flashback to day two of this challenge when I asked for no straw, and somehow ended up with two). These small interactions always turned into real conversations about plastic and climate change. As a bonus, people also started giving me free stuff, like the brewer who was handing out samples of Bohemian Raspberry in plastic cups, but gave me a half-pint of beer in a commemorative pint glass instead. Conversations get a lot more interesting when your opener is, “Have you considered that you consume a credit card’s worth of microplastics a week?”

6. Every day was a challenge

This experiment threw constant small design challenges my way. Getting groceries and forgetting a tote bag meant cradling too many vegetables while chasing a bell pepper that rolled away in the parking lot, until I stopped and made a quick a sack out of a hoodie. It was a fun daily design exercise, finding little hacks to my plastic puzzle.

Though there were a lot of upsides to this challenge, over the course of the 100 days one thing began to frustrate me. A lot of sustainability design aims to shift consumer behavior. But cutting down on plastic isn’t just an individual responsibility. We may have the choice to buy a glass bottle over a plastic one, but by the time we exercise our buying power, it’s too late. We need smart options for what to do with the products we buy after we’re done with them. That starts with design. And until the corporations that provide us with our purchasing choices and set the tone for how we live our lives get onboard with the circular economy, it’s tough to take it on ourselves. Still, I recommend you try. Unsubscribing from plastic is a pretty big wake up call, and it’s changed the way I live.

If you've already blown your original 2020 New Year's resolution, maybe give this challenge a shot? At the very least it might help you lose weight, clear up your skin, and strengthen your social relationships. Let me know what adventures it takes you on and where creativity strikes because of it. Let your favorite brands know, too, so at the very best, they’re motivated to start making changes upstream and join the circular economy. We’ve definitely left our mark with this material—it’s time to figure out what to do about it.

Illustrations by Jenice Kim

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When you go plastic-free for 100 days, you can expect small life improvements, like more aesthetically-pleasing toiletries, and minor inconveniences, like remembering to carry reusable water bottles everywhere. But there were other things that went way beyond my expectations. For example, an incident in Panama in February where I almost landed in “mall jail” after I tried to refuse a plastic bag with my purchase. (The store used bags to determine who had paid for their goods, and they thought I was trying to steal a pair of shoes.) The challenge took me on weird and wonderful tangents like this one, and really made me consider how ingrained plastic is in our purchasing decisions and daily systems.

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.