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.

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

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

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

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

Remember Travis Kalanick, the former CEO?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Leverage naturally-occurring behaviors

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

3. Identify and empower cultural mavens

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

4. Prioritize face-to-face interactions

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

5. Design meaningful rituals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Apartamento

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

2. B

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

3. Banana

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

4. [BranD]

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

5. Cat People

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

6. Cereal

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

7. The Collective Quarterly

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

8. Drift

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

9. The Gourmand

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

10. Offscreen

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

11. Surface

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Building the algorithm

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

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

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

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

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

2. Designing the experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Hatching prototypes

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

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

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

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

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

4. User testing

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

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

WATCH: Testing the laugh-bulb prototype.

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

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

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

I help organizations cut through complexity by shaping how they show up, through brand strategy, identity, and storytelling.

Working at the intersection of brand and business, I bring an editorial eye and a bias toward making—turning ideas into tangible experiences that people can understand, trust, and believe in.

My work spans government, healthcare, financial services, media, and consumer goods, from launching Gen Z-focused ventures to building innovation labs and reimagining legacy brands. I relish moments of ambiguity and enjoy translating across teams, perspectives, and priorities to move ideas forward.

I started my career in editorial and digital design, shaping cross-platform experiences and identity systems in publishing and agency environments. That foundation still shapes how I work today: I’m detail-oriented, collaborative, and overreliant on the Oxford comma. I hold a BFA in Visual Communication from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For 25 years, I've asked the same question: Who does this design exclude—and what are we going to do about it?

My work spans human-centered strategy, inclusive design, and qualitative research, with clients ranging from Microsoft, Google, and Verizon to the National Science Foundation, and San Francisco Unified School District.

Before IDEO, I taught elementary school in East Palo Alto and spent a decade doing design work with social service organizations—where I learned firsthand what it costs people when systems are built without them in mind.

I am currently writing User Error, a nonfiction book about digital access and the design decisions behind it. I live in Oakland, California.

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My expertise spans brand, communication, and product design across tech, education, the arts, and social impact.

I believe great work demands both high-level vision and obsessive attention to detail, and only happens through collaboration.

I bring an inclusive, hands-on approach and a deep understanding of business, which enables me to consistently deliver excellence while always asking why.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at the brand firms Pentagram and VSA Partners. I began my career as a designer, leading teams at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum. I hold an MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in communication design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, and have taught at some of the best design schools in the US.

I am responsible for IDEO’s long-term success in China and working with clients to use design as a tool to enable growth. Specifically, I have helped Chinese companies design holistic brand solutions through the development of their products, communication, services, and innovation teams, and I have helped multinationals expand their presence and influence in China.

I advise global leaders on developing China-led innovation and capabilities.

In over 15 years in IDEO Shanghai, I have worked on projects that use design to elevate the quality of the experience of healthcare products and services, streamline processes that increase productivity, create spaces and programs that promote and enable inclusive communities, and build next generation mobility solutions that are planet-positive.

Before joining IDEO, I worked at Philips Electronics and the Electrolux Group in Italy, the Netherlands, and Singapore on a number of breakthrough commercial products. I am a member of the Young President Organization in Shanghai.