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.

In business, new models and offers are further constrained by the need to satisfy current stakeholders and follow market trends. So how can you break free of present-day realities to envision a genuinely novel future?

In other words: Design can move us beyond the imagination-traps of our own experience to uncover truly new possibilities.

When I founded IDEO’s CoLab four years ago, one of our goals was to find new ways to catalyze visionary business leaders and to activate new models by assembling diverse perspectives from across industries. We frequently employ design fiction exercises with our partners to open up more exploratory approaches to tough problems—particularly the ever-changing nature and role of technology. The process helps connect the dots between an aspirational vision of the future and a business approach that can make that vision a reality.

How to apply design fiction to your business

The futures that we imagine are based on a few catalytic data or trends—“inevitables”—that serve as foundational elements of a future vision. By anchoring on these inevitable factors, we can then imagine the implications that ripple across a business, industry, or society. For example, five or 10 years ago, one might have assumed that smartphone ubiquity was inevitable and started to imagine the implications (good and bad) of everyone in the world having access to a super computer, the internet, a camera, and more. By extending from what’s already true to what might soon be true, it becomes possible to exert some agency in the way you move forward, even when you can’t know exactly what’s ahead.

The late Bill Moggridge (an IDEO founder who came up with the concept of a folding laptop) referred to this as “preferred futures.” In this view, rather than viewing the future as something that happens to you and can’t be controlled, you adopt the mindset that you can influence what happens, asking, “What future do we want to create? And how do we reverse engineer the pathway to get there?”

It sounds pretty heady—perhaps something to be left to experts—but the process of creating design fiction is actually accessible to most people by following a four-step process. This exercise is inspired by an activity from a class at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business called “Designing the Future” that I taught alongside two IDEO business designers, Becca Carroll and Sandeep Pahuja.

1. Pick an industry and describe its role in the consumer’s life

Let’s take insurance as an example. Insurance is a safety net for when something bad happens. But insurance customers don’t simply want protection—they also want to understand and manage risk, find the most agreeable policy to ensure support when they need it, and trust that their claims will be processed and paid. These criteria are often referred to as the “jobs to be done”—in short, they are the things the consumer has “hired” the product to do.

2. Write a story about the future, free from today’s constraints

If you focus on the “jobs to be done” (and don't get caught thinking about existing insurance companies and how they operate), you can begin to imagine new ways to do those jobs for customers with the help of new technologies and other shifts (behavioral, regulatory, etc.) we believe will be relevant in the future.

For example, if we take the job of understanding risk, there’s a story to be told about machine learning and the explosion of sensor data, which will allow us to create more sophisticated risk models. More sophisticated risk models could lead to a more personalized approach to assessing risk and ultimately the ability to provide more relevant products to customers. In this future, perhaps insurance companies shift from being the safety net after something happens to proactive behavior change coaches who help protect you before something happens.

When writing a story about the future, we continually ask, “What future do we want to create?” This helps us focus on the ultimate goal of creating value for people and preventing harmful consequences, not just creating new technical capabilities and hoping for the best. In this case, we answer it by imagining how the experience of insurance might take on an entirely new form and function when enabled by the tools of the near future.

3. Back out to the assumptions that would make this future real

Taking this vision of the future as possible, we can work backwards to uncover the assumptions need to be in place to support it coming to be. Our go-to provocation is inspired by Roger Martin and Jennifer Riel: What would have to be true to make this future a reality?

Asking what has to be true is a powerful tool to help you optimistically articulate the key assumptions implied by your story and connect them to your current offers and potential path forward. It’s easy to come up with a long list of reasons why something won’t work, and this often leads to risk aversion and incremental thinking. By surfacing the criteria for success you can pragmatically assess how realistic these assumptions are and design experiments or milestones to demonstrate if you’re on track. Invite your colleagues to get imaginative alongside you and uncover even more ideas.

Elon Musk famously published his master plan (and then a second) for Tesla that stepped through five key assumptions that would allow Tesla to move the automotive industry towards an electric future. These included making electric vehicles high performance and cool—a shift from the pervasive negative view of EVs’ aesthetics and functionality; and changing the notion that these cars are too expensive for average consumers, riding the scale/cost curve to reduce the price and range of vehicles, and making them more accessible to the mass market.

4. Prototype

So now you know what would have to be true. Are those things possible? Rather than speculate and debate, prototyping is your way to find out. Begin with scrappy, low-fidelity prototypes to test your assumptions and continually iterate forward, incorporating your learnings into higher-fidelity prototypes. Getting really clear on these key assumptions enables you to take an evidence-based approach to making investment decisions in risky innovation projects.

As quickly as possible, you’ll want to test your assumptions in the market. This is another sticky point where risk aversion and desire to jump to scale can grind progress to a halt. Designing in-market experiments that are right-sized and laser focused on testing key assumptions is an organizational skill that is difficult to cultivate. Successful startups often are forced to be quite scrappy in the market and increasingly, larger companies are building these capabilities. The founders of Airbnb famously tested their idea out by renting out air mattresses in their apartment during a conference. Established companies are getting into the act too, LEGO, Coca-Cola and General Electric have all market tested new products on crowdfunding site Indiegogo.

It’s unlikely that there’s only one viable solution to get to any preferred future—there are many avenues that may get you there and thus it’s important to diversify and have a number of bets. Many entrepreneurs will tell you that their current business is not exactly like their original business idea. Often, it’s pretty far from it. That’s because the steps required to go from idea to reality involve a lot of prototyping, experimentation, and openness to change along the way. Whether you work in the field of innovation, you’re an entrepreneur with a startup, or you have an idea for a business that you’re ready to explore, using the principles of design fiction and cross-organizational collaboration can help.

Hear more on design fiction and cross-organizational collaboration in this episode of IDEO U's Creative Confidence podcast.

Illustration by Mark Conlan.

There’s no such thing as a truly original idea, or so the saying goes. Even the most imaginative inventors and artists are limited by the boundaries of their own experience, and every fresh idea is derivative of something that came before.

In the 70s and 80s, Cey’s earliest work was exhibited next to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring; later, as the founding creative director of Def Jam Recordings, he developed the visual identities for the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, and more. Recently, you may have also seen his collaboration with Pabst Blue Ribbon and Levi’s. He may not admit it—he's too humble—but Cey has definitively shaped hip-hop culture, design, and beyond.

When I met Cey through a mutual friend, I was immediately taken by his uniquely bold style and refreshingly humble spirit. I asked him if he’d work on a creative project at the IDEO New York office. After the completion of Revolution Solution, we sat down to talk about his creative journey, why he left and then returned to New York, and what it means to be, as he says, “an artist without a blueprint.”

Diana: Let’s start with how you got into hip-hop, working with Russell Simmons and Def Jam.

Cey: When I met Russell in the early 80s, the term hip-hop wasn’t even coined yet—it was just rap music. A photographer had given me Russell’s business card, and I went down to his office to show him my portfolio. All I had were photos of car washes and commercial walls I had painted. But he said, “Okay, we can find something for you to do.” There wasn’t a long-term contract, but to me it might as well have been one. I’m laughing now, but the best thing about being young is that you don’t know enough to feel empowered. You just know they’re not saying “no.”

Did your graffiti art influence your hip-hop design?

To me the responsibility was always how to transform a language everyone was familiar with into something else. You see graffiti on the subway, scrawled on the walls, but I knew it was bigger than that. My question was how to elevate graffiti and keep its integrity.

Was there a breakthrough moment when someone said, “Now I see the power of what you’re creating”?

You know what? I never really heard that. At the time, nobody had formal training so it wasn’t like they understood the power of graphic design. It wasn’t until LL Cool J’s record Mama Said Knock You Out hit number one that I felt that recognition. The album cover was a beautiful black and white photograph of LL shot by famed photographer Michel Comte, and that was when everyone finally saw it as art.

What are you most proud of from that chapter in your creative life?

I think about the artists more than the creative pieces. It’s a little embarrassing to say, but sometimes I’ll dream that it’s 1987 again and we’re on the Together Forever Tour with Run-D.M.C and the Beastie Boys. We’re reliving everything as adults, and we’re all so much more appreciative. Then I wake up and realize it’s just a dream, and Adam Yauch is gone and Jam Master Jay is gone, but I realize I was actually there. During that time I learned about the power I had that I didn’t even know I had.

You went on to art direct the book Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey, which captures the essence of the hip-hop era. What came next?

That book is synonymous with hip-hop itself. The fact that the publishers were convinced to make a book so huge is wonderful! The design of that book was completely my vision, I got to experience every creative idea I’ve ever wanted in that book.

Around 9/11, I realized none of this stuff mattered in the same way anymore. I got disillusioned with the business and the misogyny. I knew I couldn’t change how everyone thought, but I could take myself out of the equation. By that time, I’d designed as many albums as I needed to and wanted to try something else.

After spending a few years in Hollywood doing film titles, I moved back to New York to get my hands dirty. I missed making things so I began painting again and learned silk screening. After I made a few pieces, Adidas commissioned me, Shepard Fairey, and a handful of others to make original works for a clothing collection celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali. Working with Adidas was my first major corporate partnership. That got me thinking, maybe partnering with major brands isn’t the worst thing in the world.

At the time, I was also teaching art to high school students at Brooklyn Academy of Music. Over a ten-week course, I had to create dozens of lesson plans. I came up with every possible creative scenario to challenge their notion of what art could and should be. I stumbled into working with collage then.

That was a small start of something big. Tell us more about your work with collage.

For one of my lessons, I cut out a giant letter and had each student pick a color and fill in a small area of collage. The letter was broken up so nobody knew what it spelled. At the end of the project, we’d have a family sharing moment and present the final piece. The students would line up holding letters that spelled “FREEDOM” or “JUSTICE.” It was such a powerful way to communicate. I realized that collage combined what I learned as a graffiti artist with my love for letterforms.

This makes me reflect on a conversation we had at the beginning of our collaboration when you decided to create the number “25” for the IDEO NY mural. We had lots of discussions around bravery and creativity. At one point, you quietly offered that “maybe it’s not about a word.” Tell us why letters and numbers are so important to you.

There’s a simplicity working with letters and numbers. They break down barriers. The process of making collage is so involved that I don’t want the design to get too busy. Letters and numbers let the design be bold and simple, but the execution is always complex.

Speaking of murals, can you tell us about the One Nation mural you created for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture?

When I was invited to make a piece for the ribbon-cutting ceremony with President Obama, I said yes immediately. The whole thing was surreal. Just the existence of the museum was something I’d been waiting a lifetime for. The only guidance they gave me was to make a piece of art that the community could contribute to. A collage was the perfect vehicle to do that. People could contribute to creating a piece that was bigger than themselves. That’s the beauty of collage.

Trusted Brands came next, which brought together your graffiti work and your graphic design work. What inspired the series?

As a kid in the 60s and 70s, I loved seeing huge graphics like the 76 logo whizzing by on the highway—Trusted Brands was an homage to the symbols of that period in my life. As I was working with collage, I started wondering what the next thing was going to be. After doing letters and numbers, I wanted to do a project that nodded to my favorite brands.

Just recently, I partnered with Pabst Blue Ribbon to reimagine their signature 12oz can and launch National Mural Day. Like Trusted Brands, I wanted to pay tribute to the brand’s history and iconography.

Looking back on all of these chapters, is there a specific approach or ritual in your creative process that is the “Cey Adams secret”?

I always try to make work that is positive and uplifting. Even if it’s all black, I’m thinking about how to make something that will make someone feel good.

While you were creating the IDEO NY mural, we had three and a half months of your lovely presence in our studio. What was it like to be with us at IDEO?

One of the coolest things was creating in the lobby. I thought I’d be in a project space, but being in a community space that you can’t control was the best thing I could've done. Had I done it another way, I might've reached the same results visually, but I wouldn’t have had the same experience interacting with people in the moment.

I have such an appreciation that an organization like IDEO exists because it’s so nurturing to creative talent. Even at the age that I am now, I crave it so much! Not that I need to be patted on the back everyday, but it’s refreshing, that feeling of love and support is foreign to me.

A peek into Cey Adams' creative process. Video produced by Ian Gittler.

You might not have realized it in the moment, but you’ve seen Cey Adams’s art—on album covers, gallery walls, and the streets of New York City.

In the ensuing years, I heard countless personal stories about the damage that bullies and backstabbers inflict, and how to deal with them. I’ve also been tracking the growing pile of academic research on all things asshole.

Until now, I resisted the polite but persistent pressure from readers, friends, and publishers to do another book on what I'd learned as “the asshole guy.” But it’s clear that now, more than ever, there is a need for just such a book.

Here are 3 surprising lessons for how to escape, endure, outwit, and ultimately understand assholes:

1. Own it. When somebody feels as if others are treating them with disdain and disrespect, human biases are such that they are often unlikely to see and accept their role in provoking their tormentor—or are so thin-skinned that they don’t really have a tormentor. If you are in a situation where you believe that someone is treating you like dirt, because of these biases, you should be slow to label others as assholes—and quick to label yourself as one.
2. Be realistic. If you are in a situation where the alleged asshole treats everyone like dirt, well, then, it probably isn’t your fault. But if they are nasty to just you, the chances you are doing something to piss them off are high.
3. Be empathetic. Finally, the more empathy you can develop for the person who is leaving you feeling demeaned and disrespected, the better you will understand your role in provoking the bad behavior (and what to do about it).

This brings me to a lovely and instructive story by Barry Katz, the first IDEO Fellow appointed back in the 1990s. (I was the second.) Barry is a marvelous writer, with a deep understanding of the history of technology and design. As part of the launch for The Asshole Survival Guide, Barry told me one of the most compelling stories I’ve heard about how to engage in asshole survival when you just might be part of the problem. The story, along with Barry’s commentary, illustrates the lessons above perfectly, and more. It's beautifully told, so I've reproduced it as he wrote it to me:

“Many years ago, I connived to spend several months in Paris. Every morning, I walked down the three flights of stairs from my apartment, crossed the street to the neighborhood boulangerie, and waited patiently in line to buy a croissant for breakfast. The lady behind the counter chirped and gossiped and flirted with all the locals in the queue, but when I got to the counter her face transmogrified into a scowl. I didn’t like it, but I wrote it off as proof of the fabled Parisian disdain for tourists.

“Until one day, in a fit of ethnographic curiosity, I decided to conduct an experiment. Inspired by my reading of Clifford Geertz, I registered a thick description of every detail of the behaviors of the French people in line and resolved to mimic them perfectly. The guy in front of me picked his nose, so I picked my nose. The lady in front of him absently folded and unfolded her newspaper, so I dutifully folded and unfolded mine. As I neared the counter, I noticed that when it came time to pay, each of the citoyens placed a banknote in a little plastic tray and pushed it forward; then the baker placed the change in the tray and pushed it back to the customer. By contrast, day after day, week after week, I had innocently thrust a dirty ten-franc note into her face.

“On D-Day, I approached the counter and her face tightened into its usual scowl. She braced herself as I took out my money, but instead of handing it to her, I placed it delicately in the plastic tray and pushed it forward. She burst out laughing and we lived happily ever after.”

Isn’t that a beautiful thing? Barry nailed the upshot in the postscript he wrote me:

“Moral of the story: Unfairly, perhaps, Madame took my failure to observe local protocol as a sign not of ignorance, but of deliberate defiance. I insulted her, and dammit if she wasn’t going to insult me right back. Who is the asshole here?”

My answer is that both Barry and Madame were locked in a vicious circle of asshole poisoning, because each lacked the other’s perspective. But Barry, being the wise person he is, tackled the problem by thinking and acting like an anthropologist. In doing so, he demonstrated the three lessons offered above.

1. He realized that his biases might blind him to his contribution to the “asshole problem.” Then he reflected that he could be part of the problem—that he could unwittingly be provoking the lady behind the counter.

2. Madame was nasty to only Barry, which strengthened his suspicion that he was doing something to upset her, and it wasn’t just because he was an ugly American.

3. Once Barry developed empathy for Madame's perspective, he discovered what he was doing to upset her, changed his behavior, and their relationship was repaired.

It’s lovely example of human-centered design. And it’s a great reminder that sometimes, we are the assholes.

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I’ve spent the past few years working on The Asshole Survival Guide, a sequel to another book about assholes I wrote a decade ago, which focused on how to build a civilized workplace.

What I can do, however, is teach you how to design your own way to greatness—greatness that, at the end of the night, will have grown adults licking the bowl clean.

I spend my days at IDEO U immersing myself in design thinking. I also spend them eating, cooking, and thinking about good food. What I’ve learned is that design thinking is not something you keep in a tidy, 60-minute-meeting-shaped box. Design thinking is actually a set of tools you can use constantly, and the more you practice it in the unique moments of your life—like whipping something up in the kitchen—the easier it will become to apply it to the hairiest problems at work.

So let’s get cracking. Here are six ways to hone your design thinking skills in service of a mind-blowing dinner.

1. Celebrate constraints

Constraints are a designer’s best friend. They keep you on track and help you make decisions. Without them, everything is a possibility, and you may find yourself paralyzed by how to proceed. Constraints also have the ability to engender brilliant solutions, because they force you to think outside the box. In brainstorms, we purposefully provoke creative thinking by asking questions like, What if we had zero dollars to pull this off? Or what if the laws of physics didn’t apply?

Step one in planning your menu: Figure out your constraints. What’s in your fridge? What cuisine or region are you cooking from? What’s in season? How much time do you have?

2. Keep your audience front and center

Who are we designing for? This is the question we, as designers, must ground ourselves in always. What do they need, what do they love, and what brings out the best in them?

On dinner party duty, I consider my audience to be both the eaters and the ingredients. Is your hot date going to be attending? Ditch the garlic for sauteed shallots so you don’t scare them away. Is it the middle of a beautiful tomato season? Let your fruit shine with a smidge of good olive oil and flaky salt. Are you looking to transform that boring chicken breast you just found in the freezer? You’re going to need something punchy, vibrant, and bold to jazz that puppy up.

When in doubt, bring it back to your audience. What will best serve those that you’re designing for? That’s your north star. Come back to it often.

3. Design for delight

Consider the last product, service, experience, restaurant, or healthcare appointment you couldn’t stop raving about—the one you likely described in too much detail to your best friend, your boss, and your bodega guy. What is the feeling you have when you think about it?

Most likely, it’s delight. Delight is that particular combination of feeling cared for and feeling surprised. Like someone knew you so well that they were able to create something you didn’t even know you needed. We design for delight because it helps us build more meaningful, more emotional relationships with our users, all based on joy. It’s not just, "What are the needs of your user?" It's, "How might you fulfill those needs in a way that truly delights them?"

Sauce is delightful. It feels fancy. It feels extra. It makes your people feel like you went above and beyond for them, because you care. In terms of investing your time, energy, and dirty dish count, sauce delivers exponentially.

4. Test, test, test—and by that, I mean taste, taste, taste

Recipes exist for a reason—they’re great tools for learning. But you can’t follow a recipe blindly, praying for a miracle. After all, who developed that recipe anyway? You don’t know their lives. Maybe they’re one of those people who hates cilantro.

When you’re cooking, put what you’re tasting before what the recipe calls for. Taste your way toward what you like, continuously asking, "What’s missing? What does this need? What’s working here?"

In the design world, one common pitfall of trying to bring new ideas into the world is an over-reliance on recipes. People analyze every detail and possible consequence first, to mitigate risk.

From there, I’ve seen one of two things happen: Either you never get started because you get mired in the complexity of the plan, or you create a rigorous and unyielding plan that is based on a core set of assumptions about the future that hasn’t actually been tested yet. That's when the plan fails spectacularly.

At IDEO U, we’ve learned to de-risk the future not by planning meticulously, but by testing as early as we can, then continuing to prototype throughout the process.

5. Know your levers

Samin Nosrat of Netflix series and cookbook fame taught me the power of the four key levers of cooking: salt, fat, acid, and heat. Playing with these not only helps me course-correct when things go south, but also elevates a dish to master level.

When we design, we can’t just look myopically at the product, service, or experience we are creating. In order to make it sustainable, we have to zoom out and understand the system that it sits in, then pinpoint the levers we can use to create change. What are the critical variables we do (or do not) have control over? Price? Timeframe? Quantity? And how might we ask different, creative questions to uncover other levers?

6. Be okay with failure

It can be easy to get stuck iterating on something that’s not working. Maybe it just needs a bit more salt—or more sweetness? Or more crunch? It’s hard to admit, but at some point, you have to stop tweaking. Sometimes the best thing is to start over. And that’s okay. Throw it out and move on with your life.

If we learn to accept failure, we can take a big step back, get some perspective, and tackle the problem from a new angle. Maybe our grounding assumption—about the user needs, the context, the delivery mechanism—was totally wrong. If we can accept and even rejoice in that knowledge, our next prototypes are going to be miles better.

As an instructional designer, I love building tools. A good tool is based on the belief that you, the person wielding the tool, not I, the creator of the tool, have the magic.

It’s also the reason I don’t give people recipes. I want to help them have the confidence to improvise, to take risks, and to delight in both the successes and failures along the way.

So I built a tool for making sauce—a map to help you navigate those critical decision points along the way to your dream dining extravaganza. No stove, fancy utensils, or measuring cups necessary. Just some design thinking and your very own taste buds.

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At least once a week I get a text, email, or phone call asking, “Do you remember that sauce you made? Can you send me the recipe?” My answer, to the person's initial despair, is always no.

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.