In 2017, IDEO acquired longtime partner Datascope and integrated the company’s data scientists and engineers. Datascope team members aren’t just passionate data scientists; they’re human-centered designers who happen to work with data, as illustrated by successful collaborations like this one:

If Procter and Gamble (P&G) were a city, it would be the size of Boulder, Colorado. The company employs more than 100,000 people in 70 countries. Its research and development team is made up of more than 20,000 specialists working across locations, languages, and areas of expertise, from cleaning chemicals to paper products to over-the-counter medications.

P&G approached Datascope to help the company connect these researchers to one another and the rest of the organization. In working with P&G leaders, Datascope found that the company needed a better way to access and leverage employee expertise. Managers routinely got requests from researchers looking to work with others in their subject areas, but didn’t know how to identify the right partners or set them up for fruitful collaboration.

Datascope gathered internal data, including unstructured research data on the scientists’ interests and who they partner with most often. The team used that information to develop two new systems that bridge the gap for P&G researchers and managers. The first is an internal search engine that lets managers quickly find and connect the right experts across P&G offices worldwide. The second is a data visualization tool that highlights subject areas ripe for more collaboration among experts and research teams, who may already be asking similar questions. This intelligent tool can surface relevant, timely information managers need to connect their teams.

P&G already had a practice of collecting information for product research, but it wasn’t until Datascope came on the scene that the company took advantage of large, multi-layered data sets and made them more intelligent, so leaders could expand P&G’s expertise through new global partnerships.

In 2017, IDEO acquired longtime partner Datascope and integrated the company’s data scientists and engineers. Datascope team members aren’t just passionate data scientists; they’re human-centered designers who happen to work with data, as illustrated by successful collaborations like this one:

The second a smartphone debuts, buyers, bloggers, and journalists begin writing comments and reviews—and users start troubleshooting. Motorola Mobility wanted to tap into this river of data, but didn’t have the right tools to collect and respond to it.

Motorola’s design, engineering, and service teams hoped to identify product problems early, address them quickly through customer support, and ultimately fix them in future releases.

So Datascope built a custom engine that aggregates and analyzes feedback from hundreds of millions of phrases and internet references, drawn from consumer sites, user forums, news coverage, social media feeds, and product reviews. The tool parses key, product-specific information and routes it to the right Motorola teams: hardware, software, connectivity, and interface design, to name a few.

The analytics and visualization engine not only studies product performance in real time, but it also uses algorithms to gauge customers’ emotional reactions: Do they like the phone or hate it? Do they have complaints? Are they recommending it to friends?

Datascope’s tool translates all this data into simplified to-dos that are sent to the correct service and repair staff before user issues can mar a product launch or even the company’s reputation. And as engineers discover more about how a phone performs in the real world, they learn how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

The tool proved valuable as soon as it launched in 2012: When Motorola released the RAZR M smartphone, customers had a hard time figuring out how to use wifi and voice features at the same time and lodged complaints online. The engine recognized the pattern of complaints and alerted Motorola's customer support team, which was able to post responses with clear instructions in every relevant forum, turning a potential customer satisfaction problem into a positive interaction.

Motorola continued to use the engine to address issues in later releases of the RAZR M. The advance warning made engineers’ lives easier, while better handsets and software made for a more seamless customer experience. Improvements were also evident in the RAZR M’s well-reviewed next generation, the RAZR MAXX.

Based on the tool’s success, Motorola used it to improve the company’s supply chain and product development process. And beginning in 2014, with the Moto 360 smartwatch, Datascope’s analytics engine has been used to gauge performance and public sentiment not just for new smartphones, but for Motorola Mobility’s entire line of products.

For most parents, ensuring their child’s proper nourishment is a top priority. But that’s not always easy, especially for parents on the go. Plum Organics, an organic baby food company, set out to solve that problem by providing families with pureed fruits and veggies in pouches, making it easy for them to feed their babies. Plum approached IDEO for help designing a non-pouch package that could showcase the vibrancy of the ingredients within.

By conducting research and in-person interviews with families, Plum set out to ensure that the new product was both desirable and functional for parents and their babies. By joining families in their homes, IDEO was able to gather essential insights that helped inform prototypes and the final design, like the fact that nothing can replace the feeling of making an intimate connection with a child through spoon feeding; that baby food is often wasted if a parent can’t remember how long a product has been in the fridge; that families struggle with how to spoon-feed their children on the go without making a mess, and that both parents and retailers were concerned that baby food jars don’t stack securely on shelves.

With those insights in mind, the team designed a transparent bowl that allows consumers to see the natural color of Plum’s vibrant, organic food. A resealable lid makes it easy for parents to store food between feedings, and the container includes a feature that allows them to track the day that they opened the pack to ensure that they don’t end up throwing away perfectly good food. Lastly, the new package is easily and safely stackable and includes a divot in the lid for parents to rest a spoon on, making for a much cleaner and more sanitary feeding experience.

Baby Bowls for Plum are now available at retailers nationwide and are a natural evolution for the brand, helping Plum continue to provide high-quality, organic baby food for consumers and their children, even if they’re eating on the go.

Accessing our genetic code is as easy as spitting in a tube, but how can we benefit from all that DNA data? IDEO surveyed more than 1,000 Americans about the gene sequencing services they want. "Give me things I can act on,” one respondent said. “Give me advice, action plans, apps, and tools. Information is just air until I can put it to use." As it turns out, tools that can translate our genetic information into better life choices—to improve our health, chart our family history, or even find an effective exercise routine—are hard to come by.

Inspired to organize and apply the wealth of genetic data in all of us, Helix envisioned the first online platform for products that offer insights based on a person’s unique DNA sequence. The startup’s founders approached IDEO to help them get to launch by identifying their future market segments and designing their brand and product offering.

Helix sequences all 22,000 of your genes from one saliva sample—sent in a mail-in kit—and hosts a marketplace of products developed by trusted brands and innovative developers that explore your health, ancestry, entertainment, family, fitness, and nutrition. Similar to the Apple app store, Helix lets you pay individually for the products you want and is a platform for developers to launch new offerings over time. After you've provided a DNA sample once, every product in the Helix store is made available to you on-demand. So, as new products are launched and new discoveries are made in the field of genomics, the data from your original sample is all you’ll need to keep exploring your personal genetic insights.

IDEO engaged a range of users, including early adopters of at-home genetic tests and “quantified self” enthusiasts, and surveyed potential Helix customers across the country. That qualitative and quantitative research validated Helix’s “app store” business model and provided key insights into the products people were most interested in.

Through the partnership, Helix uncovered what users need most from a genomics company:

• to prioritize the accuracy and privacy of DNA test results
• to encourage a sense of discovery and exploration of our genes
• to celebrate each individual’s unique qualities

A team of ethnographers, data scientists, and designers at IDEO helped direct the startup’s brand approach (including its name, Helix) and crafted a blueprint for how the company connects with customers and presents its product. The Helix store launched in July 2017.

Our DNA used to be a mystery—something we guessed at by observing our parents. Now, easy access to our genetic code—and the tools to truly understand it—arrives on our doorstep.

It’s time to challenge that notion. The ability to navigate ambiguity—and to guide people and organizations without knowing what’s ahead—will be one of the key leadership qualities of our time. Because, in today’s world, almost nothing is certain. Technological change is drastic and rapid; volatility grips politics, the economy, and the climate; the future of healthcare and education are in question. And much as it would be a relief to land on a quick fix for any number of these challenges, the reality is that solutions are a moving target, and no one leader possesses a silver bullet.

But creativity can help. According to the World Economic Forum, creativity is among the top three skills needed to thrive in 2020, along with other capabilities infused with the human touch: complex problem solving and critical thinking. In a world where thorny challenges have no magic solution, leaders must get comfortable with not having an answer—leaning into the unknown and establishing a leadership style that incorporates many perspectives, sustains optimism, and perseveres through ambiguity.

We call this approach creative leadership. The term has made the rounds in academic circles for decades, but in practice, it’s only now gaining recognition as an effective approach in today’s turbulent times. Creative leadership takes conditions that are anxiety-provoking for many, and turns them into opportunities. In certain industries, where frequent change is inherent, it’s not unusual to find leaders who fit the bill. But now we are seeing that creative leaders can spark change in any industry or on any team, from manufacturing to marketing to finance to food.

So what are those qualities that equip leaders to leverage ambiguity and drive progress? How do they show up in their day-to-day role and move their companies forward? There are three key tactics that creative leaders employ: building diverse, multidisciplinary teams to maximize perspectives; navigating ambiguity with bold ideas; and maintaining forward momentum by sharing optimism, empathy and inspiration.

1. Creative leaders convene diverse groups and rally them around tangible goals.

Among many industries facing uncertainty and change today, healthcare stands near the top. In 2015, Northern California-based Sutter Health hired its first Chief Innovation Officer to help guide its enterprise innovation strategy across their integrated healthcare system, which serves three million people in one of the most diverse regions in the country. Sutter tapped Chris Waugh, then the vice president of design at a young, innovative primary care provider called One Medical Group, to partner with them in transforming the healthcare experience to make it more simple, engaging and human.

As Sutter’s first chief innovation officer, Waugh admits he battled impostor syndrome. He’d worked in the health space for much of his career, but often on the design side (including a decade at IDEO), rather than embedded within a large healthcare organization. “Who was I to tell a surgeon what to do? These people do transplants and save lives. Why would they listen to me?”

His first step was to build a diverse, cross-functional team to pool knowledge and ideas. Every executive—from legal to human resources to operations to medicine—appointed an open-minded, collaborative senior staff member. Next, Waugh and his design and innovation team articulated an optimistic purpose: They would “touch one million lives by 2022,” providing better healthcare and services to patients and their families. Then with this lofty goal top of mind, Waugh identified the right places to start small and set constructive conditions under which they could start making a difference.

They began innovating in non-clinical areas, such as using car sharing services to help transport patients to appointments. The pilots aimed for achievable targets, impacting a small number of people in the first few months, setting the right conditions, then progressing to larger scale. “Starting small with constraints keeps you from thinking you have all of the answers at the beginning. You can be more experimental, test for consequences, increase creative confidence, and discover over time when you’re ready to go full scale.”

2. Creative leaders navigate ambiguity by leading with curiosity.

Through it all, Waugh navigated his way toward solutions even though he couldn’t know the answers at the outset. He assembled the right people to converge on decisions at critical moments. And he shared lessons and stories of progress as a way to continually motivate people across the system.

Waugh asked bold questions, such as how might we reimagine the end of life experience for ourselves and our loved ones? His teams created a simple toolkit for talking about death with loved ones, which led to dozens of events around the globe where people turned an often taboo subject into open conversations called #LetsTalkAboutDeath. They also devised a platform that connects people with physical limitations to people who can vicariously fulfill their wishes, then share those experiences with them virtually. Wins like these kept Waugh’s team inspired, increasing their creativity and confidence as they positively impacted people’s lives.

Over the years, Waugh and his design and innovation team have continued their work and expanded the range of challenges they’ve tackled, as well as the number of lives they’ve touched. Now they are moving toward more clinical experiences, such as leveraging telemedicine to support patients in rural areas. “From the beginning, we knew that medical experts needed more creative problem-solving to better serve patients and their families. Across Sutter Health, we have a culture of innovation and we try new ways of working and thinking. With each success, my confidence and the confidence of teams across Sutter grows.”

3. Creative leaders stay fiercely optimistic to maintain momentum.

In 2015, Valentina Freile, an experienced industrial designer, was hired to join an elite team of technical experts at an Ecuadorian software development company called Bayteq. Her first project focused on advancing mobile services for a large local bank. She was excited to develop digital tools to help Ecuador keep pace with global change.

But Freile’s enthusiasm quickly turned to concern when she saw the initial product concepts. The team was proud to have incorporated cutting-edge technology on par with other international banks, but they’d overlooked a major consideration: how that new tech would add value to real people—the bank’s customers. Freile felt like an outsider on the team. She was the only one ready to admit they didn’t know how to move forward. But she knew she had to intervene before they wasted precious resources.

Freile brought the team together, and didn’t shy away from asking tough questions about how the technology would support customer needs. “After many uncomfortable conversations, the team realized we had not considered our users and had overestimated the need for new technologies.” The features did not support the Ecuadorian customers’ unique needs and behaviors, and it became clear that cutting-edge technology wouldn’t bring value if it was not suited to the people it was meant to serve.

While the developers on Freile’s team realized they would have to rethink their usual approach, they were unsure how to proceed. Meanwhile, the pressure was on—senior stakeholders were asking for updates and sweating the competition.

Amidst this pressure, Freile optimistically motivated the team. She suggested they try a different route to understand local Ecuadorian banking customers. They observed customers—in bank branches, banking from home, and on the go. The team learned quickly about specific local behaviors. “Ecuadorian people move small amounts of money daily between accounts and need to make payments as easily as possible. The population prefers asking relatives for loans rather than resorting to the bank. In our Latin culture, family plays a huge role in how we handle money.” Banks were last resorts.

The team took these insights and hosted collaborative work sessions with all of the stakeholders. In the end, they did not include any technically advanced features—rather, they focused innovations on designing banking processes and behaviors that suited the people they’d serve. “We created an entirely new mobile experience, adjusted to Ecuadorian people’s needs and behaviors. We added the ability to save money among numerous family members and easier ways to transfer money to relatives.”

The results exceeded all expectations. This was a clear instance of creativity elevating the output of the company. On a team of technical experts, it was Freile whose creativity unlocked a new way forward.

A future-fit leader is a creative leader.

Creative leadership is not about avoiding change. It’s about turning vulnerability and complexity into assets, and even leveraging them as tools for speed. While it can be unsettling to dive headfirst into the unknown, modern leaders must build the creative confidence needed to navigate uncertainty with and for their teams. Their agility and positive outlook generates a feedback loop that keeps everyone moving forward with a sense of possibility about what’s to come and how they can shape it. With creative leaders, an ambiguous juncture becomes navigable, and what awaits on the other side could change the game, helping the organization take the lead.

Illustrations by Raymond Biesinger

If you ask executives today whether it’s their job to have the right answer, most would say yes. In fact, most would say that producing answers to critical challenges facing their organization is how they reached their high-level position. Who gets ahead by not knowing?

When doubt creeps in, it's easy to continue with the process or the tool that we know best. But as designers, we have an opportunity to be a part of the conversation around how these new technologies will shape the world around us—and in order to do that, we have to know how they work.

IDEO designers often learn best by getting our hands dirty and making things, so we decided to invite the IDEO interaction design community to a two-day machine learning workshop to get our bearings. Our key question in building out the workshop was simple: How might we create a safe space to prototype, play with, and test new machine learning technologies?

The first day focused on inspiration, explanation, and experimentation. On the second day, we divided everyone up into teams and took a crack at using our new tools to get building. We discovered the value of bringing designers together to learn something new (and a little scary), but we also learned a lot about planning a workshop. Here are some principles that could help you next time you want to bring people together to dive into the unknown.

Have experts in the room

We invited Andreas Refsgaard and Gene Kogan, two artists and creative coders, who work specifically with machine learning. Gene even wrote a book that helps artists and designers start playing with the tools of the trade.

Andreas and Gene have been leading machine learning workshops for the past four years. They're experts at explaining complex tools to people of all technical backgrounds, and they were there to answer any questions that came up along the way.

Including experts makes people feel that the workshop is legit and ensures everyone gets the support they need to learn and build. If you're trying something brand new (like we were), reach out to an expert to get some tips and tricks to ensure your learning experience is successful. Without Andreas and Gene, our workshop couldn't have happened.

Be persistent

Once Andreas and Gene helped us put together our workshop content, we faced our biggest challenge: How do we convince a bunch of people to drop everything they're doing and attend a two-day workshop? 50+ emails and many rounds of confirmations later, we finally had more than 20 of our colleagues agree to make time for our session.

By the end of the day, the benefits of gathering in this way were clear: people had created full-on prototypes that could recognize disco moves or the difference between two friends. Setting aside the time to actually build, fail, and repeat was invaluable. We all have busy workdays, but making room for this kind of experimentation gave everyone a zing of new energy.

Turns out, if you bug people, they'll actually set aside the time and come to your workshop—and they'll probably have a good time, too. Use whatever communication channels you have to remind people: Slack, email, carrier pigeon, skywriting. When possible, share the agenda ahead of time. If folks know what they're going to get out of their time, they're more likely to RSVP yes.

Harness the power of collaborating within your community

The second day, we dove right back into building and quickly broke into our teams. As interaction designers, we’re often siloed—we’re usually the one interaction designer on a multidisciplinary team. But working on a team of other interaction designers has great benefits: You have a similar way of thinking and can bounce ideas off each other in unique ways.

There’s also something powerful about working on a creative project just for the sake of creating and learning. At IDEO, we often work on projects that have the potential to really impact people’s lives—in the worlds of healthcare, mobility, financial services. On the flipside, this workshop gave us the chance to make something truly weird and to not be afraid to fail in doing so.

Almost every project was full of funny glitches and nearly all of them were ridiculous—like a tug-of-war game where people had to meow and bark, and a game of ping pong controlled with your nose. Revolutionary stuff. This workshop gave us a break from our day jobs to work together and flex our craft-muscles in a way we don’t always get to.

The workshop structure sets the conditions for learning

By the end of the day, the eight teams created machine learning prototypes—but just a few days prior, many thought machine learning was totally out of their league. Without a thorough introduction to the topic and built-in time to get prototyping, it would have been hard to see these new skills come to fruition.

One participant said, “I had to step out of my current mind-box to realize that there are new possibilities I previously was not brainstorming.” Another said, “There were some really funny concepts that showed the power of simple programming combined with great ideas.”

There’s no way of sugarcoating it: Setting up a workshop is actually really hard, and a lot harder than we first thought. But once we got over our initial trepidation, we were able to give ourselves and our peers a unique chance to understand and play with a seemingly intimidating tool. Workshops are a framework that let us all show up as beginners. There’s comfort and power in this: We can ask questions, learn, and become stronger designers together.

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In our day-to-day work as designers, we stumble upon a lot of buzzwords: deep learning. Convolutional neural networks. Artificial intelligence. Staying up to date with new technologies is one thing, but understanding how to apply them is another. And personally, it's something the two of us are a little intimidated to tackle on our own.

When our team set out to build the first version of the social impact investment product Swell Investing, we decided to hack the Sprint process, IDEO style.

The Sprint method allowed the team to start prototyping quickly, collect immediate user feedback, and make small mistakes early. We conducted multiple design sprints in quick loops—folding the learning from week one into the structure of week two, and so on. We learned a lot in the process. Here are a few quick tips we picked up for running successful and energizing design sprints.

1. Anchor your sprint in a big question

Identify critical hypotheses to test. First, decide on the big question you want to answer. (Hint: This is the one that, when answered, will allow you to make the most progress.) For instance, during the Swell project, we asked: When it comes to social impact investing, are users more interested in returns or social impact?

Once you’ve got your big question, brainstorm and sketch different solutions, and then select two or three good ideas to prototype. Prototypes are something people can touch, test, or play around with. Putting different approaches in front of users in a single sitting is a great way to gauge interest in different product directions.

Tip: Limit the number of variables in your prototype, so you receive specific feedback on your big question. Designing a digital product? Start by designing landing pages that express each product offering, rather than the entire user flow. Testing two feature sets? Keep the branding the same and test different product features against one another.

2. Bridge the say-do gap

Use tricks that force users to make real—not hypothetical—decisions. The goal of any new product is to create something that people find valuable and are willing to pay for over other options in the market. But as designers, we know that often what consumers say they like is different from what they actually buy in the wild. One way we bridged this gap was by testing demand with potential Swell consumers: We gave them fake cash they could “invest” in one product or another. It was a great way to gauge whether the service had real value in the market.

Tip: Use the same currency exercise for all of your sprint prototypes, so that you can see how attitudes evolve with your design tweaks. For example, give each user $500 Monopoly dollars and see where they would invest their money. Designing a new shoe brand? Ask them which ones they’d buy, or if they’d prefer to spend the money on their tried-and-true Nikes. This exercise is about the conversation it provokes more than the payments themselves, so get curious!

3. Focus your features

Design for a light-touch, full-product experience. Ask yourself: What’s the smallest set of features you can design that will still solve users’ problems? Start with the simplest version of your product, get user feedback, and then add features. As your sprint loops continue, you can move from simple prototypes to robust product directions. With Swell, we focused on creating a hero page for each key interaction (landing page, sign up, and invest). This meant we were testing the functionality of the full product experience, just in a light-touch way.

Tip: Prioritize high-impact pages that people visit a lot, like the home page or sign-up flow. This way you’re getting the most detailed feedback on sticking points, without spending a ton of money building them.

4. Be scrappy: Build just enough to learn

Choose the format that best expresses the idea. It’s impressive to build a digital prototype in a week, but remember: You can learn a lot from paper prototypes! Make a conscious decision about the areas that you design in high fidelity (like screens) and places where a paper prototype will do the trick. Being scrappy will pay off in the end. We created a combination of digital and paper prototypes for Swell. Digital prototypes were reserved for value proposition and user flow testing, whereas paper prototypes were a great way to test new and emergent thinking.

Tip: Imagine that you’re designing a mobile-first experience. Designing for a phone instead of a computer will force the team to simplify messaging and features to their most minimal expression. This is something you can develop by putting a post-it sketch on top of your smartphone.

5. Keep the team energized

Use the Tabata training method of product design. Tabata training is a workout method that focuses on 20 seconds of intense work followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is a great metaphor for sprint prototyping: It’s intense, and that means that rest is just as important as the creative bursts. Make a point of managing team energy by having intentional down days. With Swell, we made sure to keep our energy up by working in cafes, getting breather spaces when we needed to focus, and even hitting up museums or exercise classes to stay healthy and inspired.

Tip: When you need a boost, take the project on the road. Try a day of cafe hopping where the team commits to sketching one feature at each stop. Sketching in new contexts and in focused bursts means you’ll have fun and be productive.

Special thanks to Kim Cullen for her contribution to the sprint prototyping process, and to the team at Swell Investing for going on this journey with us.

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Here at IDEO, it’s not uncommon to see dog-eared copies of Jake Knapp’s Sprint, a book that outlines the five-day process that Google Ventures uses to solve tough design problems. The books are stacked on desks, passed from designer to designer, and referenced in research planning discussions. Why? Because the Sprint process pushes you to think outside of the box, even at a creative place like IDEO. It helps you shift away from following your gut instinct and opinions; instead, it encourages you to let users guide your decision making. And it pushes you to move fast.

IDEO’s AI Ethics Cards are a tool to help guide an ethically responsible, culturally considerate, and humanistic approach to designing with data. The deck is made up of four core design principles and ten activities, all meant for use by teams working on the development of new, data-driven, smart products and services.

Today, data systems and algorithms can be deployed at unprecedented scale and speed—and unintended consequences will affect people with that same scale and speed. How can we always make sure we’re putting people first when designing large scale systems? Especially when those systems will change over time, even evolving without direct human supervision?

As you explore these questions and more, we hope these cards serve as a tool to help designers consider these challenges with a human-centered lens.

Download the AI Ethics Cards here, and read more about them here.

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.