For the socially-conscious, investing can be a tricky proposition. The same people who wish to vote with their wallets may find that their options for investment funds and 401K plans are rife with companies that violate causes they believe in. So far, there have been few options in the marketplace that give consumers the opportunity to put their money in financial products that not only cut out environmental and social offenders, but actually contribute to the well-being of the environment and society.

Dave Fanger, a financial professional, was determined to design a solution. He approached IDEO to help create a startup venture for socially-conscious investors. Pacific Life, a Fortune 500 financial services company and Fanger’s employer at the time, offered the resources to develop and launch the idea. The online impact investment platform gave consumers the opportunity to invest in high-growth industries that are addressing global, environmental, and social challenges. Swell rigorously screened companies for both impact and performance, so consumers could be confident that their investments were in line with their values.

A holistic approach

Embedded as core team members, IDEO designers worked alongside Swell’s founder to shape the company. In just one year, they went from an initial concept and prototype to an SEC-registered investment adviser with a fully developed business model, a digital platform with initial investors, and well-defined branding that set the look and feel of the values-driven company. The IDEO team helped to hire the initial team of employees, working to ensure that the fintech startup would have the creative talent it needed to operate post-launch, as well as a defined culture that would help it grow.

A new investment platform

From the outset, it was important for the team to build an innovative, digitally-fluent, and customer-centered platform to make it easy for investors to back causes they care about. Working in close collaboration with software development partner Carbon Five, Swell and IDEO committed to act nimbly, take risks, move fast, and ditch decks for prototypes. Understanding the motivations of the investor—their values and what drives their investment decisions—was key, so the team leveraged IDEO’s network to form a consumer council, which helped to quickly iterate and refine prototypes throughout the duration of the product development process. Having that core group involved every step of the way made it easy for the team to keep consumers at the center of the design and validate key decisions quickly.

Swell offered consumers portfolios of companies that work to solve some of today's biggest challenges. The six impact portfolios offered were: green tech, renewable energy, zero waste, clean water, healthy living, and disease eradication.

As of June 2019, Swell had attracted over 15,000 investors⁠—more than half under the age of 34⁠—and $35 million AUM. Nearly 40 percent of investors were making investments on a recurring basis.

Learning to code isn’t just about knowing symbols and syntax—it can help unlock kids’ imagination by inspiring them to build new things and interact with everyday objects through discovery and play.

With that in mind, Google Creative Lab came to IDEO to help with user experience and product design on their new coding tool for children. The result of the collaboration, Project Bloks, is a simple and interactive experience that teaches kids how to code using physical blocks. This establishes a new paradigm for learning computer science: it takes a language typically only understood through screens and keyboards, and makes it tangible.

Project Bloks was also designed as an open hardware platform, enabling developers and educators to build tangible programming applications that are innovative, educational and fun.

Kid-centered design

From the very beginning, how kids physically play and learn were at the center of the project. Designers quickly iterated using sketches, foam core, paper, Play-Doh, and 3D-printed models to see how slight changes informed children’s experiences. Understanding what deepened kids’ engagement, increased their curiosity and changed their behaviors drove the language, taxonomy, architecture, and physical form of Bloks.

Because play and physical building is an important way in which many kids develop skills, designers began with a set of blocks and sought to help them discover coding through tangible objects. Each block was given a specific function and shape, guiding kids to arrange, combine, and rearrange the blocks to create commands and control things like robots or speakers in the real world. Children could also create block patterns together by physically building on each other’s ideas.

An inside look at the design process. Video by Google.

Designing for early learners also forced the team to rethink how a new language could be taught. An early version of the blocks was based on how programmers typically code, from top to bottom. However, the team quickly realized that the orientation had to be driven by the child’s natural instincts. Given young children are just learning to read from left to right, designers observed that the switch in directions was too confusing and changed the arrangement of Bloks commands to go left-right in addition to top-bottom.

The final outcome of Project Bloks was an interactive coding kit comprised of three key parts - pucks, baseboards and a brainboard. The puck is a critical component that controls a command, whether it’s an on/off switch or the ability to move in a particular direction. It’s the piece that enables children to move from words to the world of graphics and play. The puck is easy to produce and can take an unlimited range of forms and functions, enabling the Bloks system to scale.

The baseboard reads the puck’s instruction and is activated when a puck is placed on top. The brainboard provides the power and connectivity. When hooked up to a baseboard or a chain of baseboards, the brainboard sends the instructions—turn left, jump, get louder—to a connected object, like a rocket or a speaker.

The boards can be rearranged, sequenced, and packaged however kids like, opening up a vast realm of possibilities. Children can code anything from a toy robot drawing a shape on a piece of paper, to a sensor turning on a fan when the temperature gets too high.

Enabling innovation for education

Beyond a tangible coding kit, what makes Bloks unique is that it’s an open platform. Educators, developers, and designers can build on it to accelerate new ways of teaching and exploring tangible programming. The platform can fit into various curriculums around the world. The pucks can take on different shapes and graphics. The material used can be fabricated by 3D printing.

The Bloks platform is a new vernacular that allows kids to interact with the language of code in a way that’s less prescriptive and more open-form, like a sandbox. And the more kids play with Bloks, the more opportunities they discover for what they can create with a little bit of code.

For students who are the first in their families to pursue higher education, navigating college can often feel like navigating a foreign country. Challenges like not having enough money or poor access to support services can make graduating an insurmountable hurdle. In fact, only 55% of these students in the United States end up completing their degrees.

To help change this statistic, IDEO partnered with Beyond 12, an organization that provides personalized, virtual coaching to first-generation college students to help them learn how to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and much more. The challenge was to scale Beyond 12’s successful coaching model using technology in order to benefit as many students as possible.

In 2014, IDEO designed the MyCoach app, with the goal of helping students take ownership of their education and feel in control of their future. After the early version of the app was named as a finalist in the prestigious Robin Hood Foundation College Success Prize, Beyond 12 piloted the product with 3,500 college students across the US. Following the pilot, Beyond 12 and IDEO went back to work, using the resulting insights and data to design the next evolution of MyCoach.

First and foremost, IDEO sought to develop a more flexible model for Beyond 12 to enable scalability of the offering. As some students need more support than others, a blended business model was envisioned to recognize the spectrum of students’ needs. Engaging in-app content forms a supportive layer that helps students get organized, stay on track, and learn the skills they need to stay in college, while students who need more hands-on assistance can connect directly with coaches. An invisible data layer works behind the scenes to assess student risk and dynamically tailor student support throughout the school year.

Once the app’s model was solidified, creating a user experience that compels students to use it became essential to its efficacy. Growing up with technology has reshaped how many students engage with the world, and tools like Snapchat have set a new dynamic for participation. Youth today are the masters of their own digital worlds, fluidly jumping between conversations, engaging with stimulating content and contributing their own perspectives. As a result, MyCoach needed to speak students’ language and to create content that was authentically youthful and effective in order to be effective. By drawing inspiration from popular social sites, digital experiences and games, the team designed a user experience that keeps pace with a digitally native state of mind.

IDEO Designer, Isabela Sá explains the approach that led to MyCoach’s design and content strategy, “We created an app that makes no distinction between content and utility. We borrowed the content-first approach of social apps like Snapchat and Instagram and used it to teach students the skills and strategies they need to graduate. With that, the digital experience became more human. The intricate system that we had designed to power the whole thing was hidden below the surface. For students, the app was just the means to learn how to help themselves and get in touch with a coach when they needed one.”

Development is underway for the next version of MyCoach, which will allow Beyond 12 to scale its offering to reach exponentially more students in need.

Coca-Cola is one of the world's most iconic brands. More than 5,000 people work at its global headquarters in Atlanta.

Back in 2010, Coca-Cola found itself at a major crossroads. As the company grew, it became clear that in order to stay competitive, any kind of campus renovation would have to take into account a vision of the future of how people work at Coca-Cola. Before the company hired architects, they came to IDEO to help design this important part of their 2020 vision strategy; ultimately the redesign would change the way the company works, plays, and profits.

Imagery courtesy of Coca-Cola, Gensler, and IDEO

One of the ways they deliver this value is by being more approachable and responsive to a wide range of user behaviors. Or, seen another way, by being social and emotional by default. Designers of these tools can lean into the power of emotional engagement, or pretend it isn’t actually there at all. Count us on the side of emotional engagement: We believe that designers should understand and intentionally integrate emotion into data analysis tools.

Why does emotional engagement with data matter?

Data is at the heart of decision-making, driving everything from product development to customer service. Every presentation of data is ultimately telling a story, from a dry spreadsheet to Florence Nightingale’s famous casualty diagram. But how effective, impactful and, perhaps most importantly, intentional is that story? Emotional engagement is vital because it not only makes data more relatable, but also invites curiosity and deeper reflection. By intentionally crafting the personality of conversational AI systems, we can create experiences that enhance functionality through emotional connection.

Personality-driven AI interfaces help transform the process of making sense of data into an experience that can spark empathy, understanding, and even enjoyment. This approach offers a way to help AI systems humanize data, making the interaction with that data feel less transactional and more like a conversation.

The role of personality in AI systems

Integrating personality into data presentation systems is more than a party trick to add life to your pie charts. It’s about designing tools that can communicate with users in ways that reflect their mood, tone, and even sense of humor. Large Language Models (LLMs) make this not just possible, but accessible to everyone who needs to present data. By generating natural-sounding dialogue and infusing it with personality, LLMs allow for conversations that resonate emotionally—and at times playfully—rather than just delivering dry data. We believe all data tells a story, and LLMs can help you tell a better one.

What can that look like in practice?

During a recent workshop we hosted at HCI International 2024, we asked participants to design AI-enabled systems using an evolved version of the "Talking to Docs" framework. Our goal was to strip back the LLM interface as much as possible, until it contained just the elements we wanted to explore: a base prompt and a searchable vectorized document set. This simplification let our participants experience how setting intentions around personality and emotional framing through prompt engineering can recontextualize their unstructured data (held in the vectorized document set). Each participant took a unique approach to how their unstructured data could be presented in a more intentionally humanized way, blending functionality with personality. Here are some of our favorites.

1. Exploring Newton’s Principia Mathematica with an enthusiastic fitness coach

One participant created a conversational system to explain Newton’s Principia Mathematica in the style of an overly-enthusiastic fitness instructor. This personality is rooted in humor and contrast. Principia contains some of the most revolutionary ideas in physics, not to mention that it’s written in Latin–not an inviting combination. By choosing the framing of a fitness coach, the system immediately added a whole different set of cultural signifiers. But, the benefits went beyond style. The system actually framed its explanations of the ideas in the text as fitness metaphors, making them more relatable to a common human experience—like when it explained the concept of gravity.
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"Just like your muscles build momentum during a run, gravity pulls that ball down the hill! Keep up the energy,—you’ve got this!"‍

This example shows how AI can make even the most challenging material feel dynamic and engaging and, perhaps most importantly, welcoming to audiences who might not be seen as the core one for a particular subject​.

What could this mean in real-world applications? Imagine large multinational corporations creating engaging experiences for AI adoption and upskilling their workers; hospitals could explain complex medical treatments to patients in digestible ways, and schools and education companies could make tough subjects more fun and accessible to learners.

2. Demystifying Picasso’s Guernica for the curious

Another participant used a friendly, approachable art teacher personality to explain Picasso’s Guernica to younger audiences. By using relatable language and a conversational tone, the system helped break down the complex themes and techniques of the painting, making art more accessible as a patient teacher might:
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"Picasso broke things apart and put them back together in strange ways to show the confusion and chaos of war. It’s like a giant puzzle, and you’re the detective figuring it out!"‍

LLMs can be prompted to use existing pedagogy techniques (for example, Socratic dialogue or reciprocal teaching) to deepen understanding of topics a user might normally just skim over. This approach could be used by art and fashion players like museums and brands to explain the backstories of their artifacts, or by travel companies to add greater context to a visitor’s experience of a new place. Or, even more provocatively, this technique could be used to create understanding, consent and trust when agreeing to data usage, especially in highly-sensitive but complex areas like genetic data and other personal information.

3. Adapting the approach to user behavior

A third participant introduced a humorous twist to the bureaucratic process of filling out tax forms by creating an interface that changes its entire persona based on the attitude of its user. If the system detects the user’s tone as positive  and polite, it responds with the personality of a bubbly, cheerful government worker right at the start of their career. But if the system sees that the user is grumpy or rude, it replies with a sarcastic and grudging attitude, and adopts the persona of a government worker on their very last day on the job.
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"Ugh, all right. You do not put your ITIN here. Grab a coffee and take a deep dive into section 4 of Pub. 15 if you really want to know more."‍

What happens when you no longer have to design your interface with an assumed user intent, but instead can dynamically adjust it based not just on explicitly gathered user preferences, but on their tone and attitude?

There are many applications where creating some intentional friction when users don’t behave as intended is desirable, from financial planning to medical treatment plan adherence. Instead of building these frictions on a one-size-fits all design, we can use LLMs to estimate user attitudes and create the right behavioral nudges at the right time. And maybe they can even manage to be funny while doing it.

The future of emotionally-engaged AI design

Designing AI-enabled systems isn’t just about efficiency and ease. It’s about creating meaningful interactions that leverage how humans think and feel to make data more accessible, relatable, and even enjoyable. With their ability to understand and transform human language, AI systems naturally evoke emotional responses that differ from those triggered by traditional software or hardware. Even the absence of a defined personality becomes a personality in itself. As designers of these systems, it’s our responsibility to think deeply about how they’ll relate to users, not just how technically accurate their responses will be. The applications of personality-driven, emotionally-infused AI interfaces can span sectors from technology to healthcare, culture, media, education, government, consumer products, and beyond, potentially making data more vital, relatable, and actionable in all of our everyday lives. It all depends on design.

As AI technology advances, so does the potential to reimagine how we experience data—where even the most abstract information can evoke curiosity, empathy, and engagement.

Try it for yourself

We created this process to make engaging with the fundamentals of AI tools more accessible to designers–and that means you too! If you’d like to try your hand at our personality crafting exercise you can find instructions here. We’d love to hear about what you make! And if you’d like to partner with us to help solve an AI problem of your own, get in touch.

AI data analysis tools are promising a lot: efficiency, adaptability—even enhanced comprehension.

That was a key message we took from our time at the second annual TED AI conference, hosted in our own backyard of San Francisco. Two days full of panel sessions, robot demos, and classic TED Talks had us considering the nature of time, the power of language, and transcending human cognitive limitations. The biggest theme: The urgency for bringing human centered-design to AI is only getting stronger.

Here are five key takeaways from our time on the ground.

1. Beware the black box

The black box approach to AI’s foundational models are the root cause of issues around ownership, copyright, credit—and in the case of certain industries like healthcare—exclusion of entire userbases.

Not knowing what the training data was, where it came from, or who it originally belonged to, means that:

1. We’re not able to give credit or reimbursement to the original creators of that data.
2. There are unknowable but impending legal ramifications from a copyright perspective.
3. Healthcare professionals are unable to use models such as ChatGPT, because without being able to verify or validate the training data, they’re unable to confidently (or even legally) use the answers the models provide.

Already, though, some companies are pioneering more transparent and more widely-usable data sets and model developers. HOPPR, for example, is building the first multimodal AI foundation model for medical imaging and radiology, while the non-profit Fairly Trained is based on the belief that that many consumers and companies “would prefer to work with generative AI companies who train on data provided with the consent of its creators.”

The concept of designing for transparency is reflective of a lot of research we have done in the past with users and data. Our 2019 work with Mozilla exploring more ethical and user-centered solutions to the Surveillance Economy highlighted the pitfalls of data collection, and the opportunities for tech companies to build value by handling user data in more human-centered ways. Combine that with our blockchain work at IDEO CoLab, and there are lots of interesting spaces to explore and draw inspiration from—including individual and collective control, consent, and value generation.

2. Consider the human consequences

A lot of industry specialists are focused on the near-future of the technology, as opposed to the mid-term opportunities and AI’s long-term effects on humanity. Some speakers were concerned that we're spending too much time worrying about what the technology will do for us, while others think we're too concerned about what it will do to us. There was a lot of focus (for better or worse) on the productivity benefits, but relatively few people were thinking about the consequences for humans.

Eugenia Kuyda, founder and CEO of Replika, noted that we should “stop designing for productivity, and start designing for joy,” which is a lovely provocation. We don’t need to forsake one for the other, but designing for joyous experiences can make productivity far more desirable. Our work with Ethiqly around integrating AI and writing exercises in schools focused not on the power of the technology or how many more essays kids could write, but on making the process of getting your creativity on to paper more joyful and rewarding, and focusing on the relationship between teacher and student.

There were also several conversations around the idea that technology will free up time for us to spend with our families instead of working. As romantic as this sounds, it’s not realistic. Organizations will simply reduce headcount, and then increase the other workloads for employees. Articles like this one from the BBC hint at a workforce feeling more burnt out due to AI implementation, showing a glimpse of the human consequences we should be designing for at the application layer.

3. Embrace quality over quantity

Several people spoke about the exponential growth of investment in computing power for large language models (LLMs). Currently, 70 cents of every dollar invested in AI models goes into crunching the data.

As an alternative to this massive use of resources, several speakers brought up the concept of small language models. SLMs are literally smaller models, trained on just 1 billion tokens. (LLMs can require upwards of 1 trillion tokens.) These SLMs can be created with a fraction of the time and energy, and offer great specific utility. Consider the example of the telecom call center. Its model doesn’t need to be exposed to the nuances of Shakespearean sonnets; it just needs to know the words and phrases needed to operate a call center, so you can spend less time, money, and energy on creating your model.

With the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars we’re spending to train LLMs, how much are we willing—or is financially feasible—to spend on models? If we continue down this path, the financial / physical / electrical requirements are going to become unsustainable. One panelist mentioned that “we should be feeding the machine the right information vs. all the information.”

The potential futures for more intentional and nimble SLMs seems much more approachable and both financially and ethically feasible.

4. Spoken language is irreplaceable

One of our favorite speakers was Jessica Coon, the linguist who consulted on the movie Arrival. She argued that human language is rich, nuanced, and endowed with the histories of our cultures. An input text box attached to a keyboard populated with Roman characters is never going to be able to express a fraction of it.

Rikin Gandhi, the co-founder of Digital Green, a company using AI to provide agricultural information and guidance, spoke about the company’s work with farmers in rural India, where illiteracy and nuanced local dialects and translations make-text based offers unviable. But AI models’ abilities to understand spoken language, locational context, and nuances of a given agroecology and a given time of the year means those farmers can interact through images, video, and spoken word.

This perspective shines a spotlight on the potential for more diverse and inclusive design principles, and our spoken language is a key part of that future.

5. Discover a new impetus for responsible design

We also heard from Pratyusha Sharma, a leading researcher and member of Project Ceti, who shed light on how we might be able to leverage generative AI to understand the unsolved mysteries of the ecological world.
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Sperm whales communicate through clicks, or codas. While researchers for decades have understood that this is the primary communication pattern by which this social species coordinated, it had been impossible to untangle the spoken language and what it meant. Sharma spoke about a novel use of generative AI—using a generative adversarial network, or GAN, to surface both the alphabetic principle and deeper understanding of coda meanings. With this technology, not only could we hear the sperm whales’ communication—we can understand what it means and predict from their communications what they might do next, whether that’s diving for food or coordinating childcare.

As AI tools become more and more powerful in helping us understand the language of the world around us, the impetus for responsible design will become clearer and clearer. If we can start to interpret the language plants, animals and earth use to communicate, how can they not be a stakeholder in everything we design?

Curious how human-centered design could help you make more desirable AI products? We’d love to chat.

We need to start pulling the human signals from the technological noise, and weaving them together.

A good purpose statement articulates a passion to boldly make an impact. It can differentiate you from competitors, grounding your work in deeper meaning. It can serve as a beacon to draw like-minded individuals to your company—as consumers or employees. And it can align and motivate leaders, guiding strategic choices.

To do all that, a good purpose has to make you FEEL something.

But too often in crafting a purpose statement, marketing and business jargon sneaks in, adding extra bloat. Or conversely, the language gets watered down to the point where it doesn’t mean anything anymore. The emotional gets sacrificed for the intellectual.

If you feel yourself or your team starting to slip into the weeds—or floating too high above the clouds—here are three ways to re-inspire and re-calibrate your thinking around purpose.

1. Get out of your own head: Collect love letters.

‍If you’re feeling lost at where to even begin, start with some on-the-ground research. Approach employees, end users, stakeholders—whoever interacts with your brand or company—and ask them to write a love letter to your organization, talking about what they’re most proud of, or what they appreciate most.

How we’ve used it: Last year, we were working with the team at Dartmouth Library to develop its strategy, starting with a clear articulation of its purpose. As part of a series of co-design workshops with faculty, staff, and students, we asked participants to write a letter to their library: What did they treasure most? How did it make them feel? While the stories we gathered covered a broad range—encompassing everything from intellectual exploration to belonging—they revealed the deep connections people had with their library, an attachment that was central to both its purpose and strategy.

2. Push past “what” and “how” to uncover your “why.”

‍If you’re feeling like your purpose is stuck in details and logistics, try the classic Golden Circle from Simon Sinek. Draw three concentric circles: the biggest should be WHAT you do; the next, HOW you do it; and the center WHY you do it. Brainstorm your answers to each and put them in the appropriate sphere. Focus on what landed in your center circle—your whys start to articulate your purpose.

How we’ve used it: The Boston Society for Architecture reached out to us to help the organization shift from being program-driven to being impact-driven. In a series of collaborative workshops, we had stakeholders list all the practical and emotional benefits for member architects, partners, community leaders, and students. Together, the team mapped these examples on the Golden Circle, setting aside functional positioning statements to focus on elevating the why—the emotional purpose that the organization could rally around.

3. Fast forward to the future to ground purpose in greater context.

‍If you’re struggling to make your purpose feel more aspirational and evergreen, consider taking an imaginative journey five, 10, or 15 years into the future. Spend a few minutes generating as many future signals as possible: What are things you observe in your industry, your customers, or your organization today that might indicate bigger trends over time? How might you evolve your purpose to stay relevant amid these changes?

How we’ve used it: In the earliest days of the pandemic, we were working with a large consumer electronics company to design a bold new strategy for the organization. To kick off the work, we spent a couple of hours with the core team generating signals. Even though we had no idea what the impacts of the pandemic would ultimately be, we were looking to uncover and better understand trends that were already starting to emerge in the world around us. These explorations into themes like hybrid work, climate resilience, equity (and more!) helped us paint a picture of the future that gave us a context for defining a purpose that could fit the company for years to come.

Articulating a bold and inspirational purpose is hard. It requires creativity, empathy, and constant iteration. And in the swirl of “are we there yet?” it can be easy to sacrifice the emotion, chopping the “feeling” in favor of generic language that—if said with enough oomph—sounds smart enough. But it’s not worth it.

Finding the right “why” can help give your purpose the power it needs to inspire leaders and employees to work in service of something greater. And when you bring it to life, a great purpose can signal your company’s core ethos to consumers, acting like a beacon to those who seek what you have to offer.

For organizations and brands, discovering purpose always starts with a question: “Why do you exist, beyond profit?”

But where is “here” exactly? Here is a tense political environment amidst a divisive battle over “woke” values. It’s a challenging business climate with companies deprioritizing DEIB budgets and sometimes removing entire teams. It’s a design community questioning when and where to push on inclusive practices, in service of moving all of us forward.

Even amidst these hurdles, many of us are still seeking a world where our commercial systems reinforce the world we want to live in. That’s our “there.” To those who believe, the path to more inclusive design practices is not some cherry-on-top afterthought; it’s an imperative facet of our evolving global culture. And for some designers, it’s why we wake up and go to work every day.

Responsible design (or inclusive design, ethical design, or even respectful design, as design leader Dr. Dori Tunstall has dubbed it) has been an emerging focus of design for decades, most often helmed by BIPOC and marginalized folks at design-led organizations. At IDEO, it’s been a movement most recently organized by the Inclusive Design Collective (IDC), a fast-growing crew that meets regularly to discuss design, interrogate our processes, and consider the potential consequences of our work, socially and environmentally.

The IDC has been experimenting with design tools and resources to use throughout the design thinking process (many of these interventions build on tools and best practices from across the worlds of design, engineering, and business). Most of the tools we’ve developed and adopted make space in the project journey to question privilege, power dynamics, biases, and access—all to unlock better outcomes for people and the planet.

Meanwhile, we can feel business shifting. Not all decisions are being driven by profit and shareholder value anymore. We see in our research and in our client work that commerce is becoming more values- and responsibility-driven choice-making. (And in many cases, it’s already there.) Here are five reasons we believe centering inclusive practices in design is the way things are going:

1. Inclusive design is at the heart of global scaling

Capitalism is built on a premise of continual growth. Increasingly, businesses are looking globally to find that growth—but doing so requires that we design thoughtfully and inclusively for consumers and producers in those new markets. For decades now, emerging markets have produced goods for the world, leading to a wave of consumerism. The internet accelerated this change in consumption and exacerbated a trade imbalance that does not serve the needs of people in emerging markets.

But now, we're seeing a shift, especially as historically marginalized countries are experiencing population and economic gains that far outpace the rate of change in other markets. Companies have begun trying to sell products and services to people in emerging markets, delivering to an entirely new set of customers with different values, systems, cultures, needs, and motivations. The businesses that will win—as always—are the ones that deeply understand their customers and how the products they deliver meet those customers’ needs. That means the businesses that will win will be the ones who design alongside them.

We’ve seen this firsthand. Our Last Mile Money program, funded by the Gates Foundation, was a great use case for responsible design. Our work focused on helping companies launch more inclusive products and greater financial access in emerging markets at what is called “the last mile”—underserved women, people in rural areas, and others facing barriers like literacy and internet access. Even companies that were committed to designing for underrepresented users were facing a challenge: Products were often designed with urban, tech-savvy, mostly-male users in mind. Despite pouring money into marketing, promotions, and rebrands, new users weren't adopting their wares. To unlock real growth, these companies needed to expand far beyond their existing users.

In response to these challenges, IDEO developed tools like Designing for Digital Confidence, the Gender Evaluation Framework, and the Financial Confidence Playbook. We centered underserved users throughout the design process, constantly going back to them for feedback to help product teams understand a range of barriers that have kept many people from using and benefiting from digital products. We listened and then took action, redesigning and improving products for needs that have often been ignored.

In India, major e-commerce platform FlipKart (owned by Walmart) redesigned its app to be more intuitive for first-time internet users, helping them serve hundreds of millions of customers. In Kenya, a startup called Leja streamlined its product’s onboarding experience for female small-business owners, leading to 30 percent more sign-ups, and more than quintupling transaction growth. We're seeing many more companies integrate responsible design into how they operate, not just because it’s the right thing to do—but because their own future growth depends on it.

2.  Gen Z won’t mess with anything that’s not inclusive—no cap

‍The number of Gen Z workers—those born between 1997 and 2012—is projected to grow to 51 million by 2030 (overtaking Boomers, who had long reigned as the largest generation of full-time workers, from the late 1970s-2011). Gen Zers are digital natives who grew up in the era of rapid technology development, possess a unique set of skills and perspectives, and are the most diverse generation of our time. Gen Z's strong sense of social awareness and values-driven choice-making guides everything they do. It now has begun to guide business. Companies are shifting their calculus—lack of inclusivity means fewer customers. And businesses who don’t heed this may go the way of Crystal Pepsi.

Meanwhile, external signals reflect a similar sentiment, like the rise in demand for environmental, social, and corporate governance-related investment (82 percent of Gen Z have exposure to ESG investments, and 40 percent say their investment decisions are driven by companies with purpose), or the way Gen Z has redefined consumption from ownership to access, show that they're demanding more from the companies, products, and technologies they adopt. Gen Zers hate labels, love “slow fashion,” and more than half of them identify as “not straight.” For them, DEIB needs to be built in, and authentic, and their loyalty will follow.

As many companies are scrambling to build AI products as quickly as possible, we took a different approach: working directly with Gen Zers to learn more about what they really want from AI. As we tested and prototyped product concepts, they sent us a clear message: They only want products that align with their values. Too many of us assumed that as digital natives, they would take to all-new tech like ducks to water; instead their preferences have many folks really considering the ethical and climate consequences of emerging technology.

3. In many sectors, responsible design won’t be a choice—it will be an obligation

‍‍We all know that businesses today are not nearly as motivated as they need to be to make the changes our planet will need. When we worked with H&M’s CEO at the time, the company had made aggressive sustainability goals, driven by their own aspirations for the business. However, they were also aligned with global regulations, calling for less plastic and less waste in manufacturing processes, and placed them ahead of the market in this transition by streamlining their supply chain, and cutting excess inventory, and producing less waste.

It’s too early for this latest AI growth spurt to have spurred much regulation—but it is coming. IDEO’s Emerging Tech Lab is putting ethics first and sees AI and climate at an intersection, ripe with opportunity for designing more responsibly—for the good of the world, but also because one day, companies simply won’t have a choice.

4. Consumer preferences are changing, and businesses that only care about shareholder growth may be penalized

‍Values-based consumption is not just having a moment—it has redefined consumption. More people are choosing to support companies that align with their values. In fact, in a McKinsey survey, 70 percent of Gen Z respondents said they try to purchase products from companies they consider ethical. Nielsen tells us that 75 percent of Millennials are so eco-conscious, they’ll change their buying habits to favor environmentally-friendly products.

Consider Patagonia. With an estimated value of about $3 billion dollars, and $1 billion in annual revenue, the outdoor company announced in 2022 that Mother Earth would be its only shareholder, and “every dollar that is not reinvested … will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet.” Patagonia has made a name for itself with aggressive environmental goals, like completely eliminating virgin petroleum material in its products by 2025, and becoming net zero by 2040. Patagonia products aren’t cheap, yet sales have quadrupled over the past decade, and it has also expanded offerings into food. The company is a great example of how a brand can be very clear about what it stands for, and still find that people will pay for quality—even at a time when consumers are feeling the pain of inflation. Meanwhile, fast fashion, which offers customers lower quality goods at a much cheaper price point, has seen a steady decline in sales. If businesses continue to only value cost savings, they may learn: Cheap isn’t cheap when it loses you a customer.

‍5. Responsible design creates better products

‍We're big admirers of the healthtech startup Kasha, which has leaned into responsible design to unlock pent-up demand with healthtech. Founder Joanna Bichsel saw that millions of women lacked access to health products in Rwanda. So, Kasha listened to customers’ needs and pain points, and it designed a service that delivered tampons, contraceptives, and other women’s products in accessible and responsible ways. Kasha tapped into massive demand by offering unprecedented product choice, high quality, and perhaps most importantly, confidentiality to its customers, who are 65 percent low-income women. Kasha has seen 10 times revenue growth, and has now expanded to multiple markets across Africa. The woman-led startup isn’t stopping there: It’s adding pharmaceuticals, telehealth, and credit services—all to help women better access quality health care. Kasha learned that centering the unmet needs of the voices that are so often unheard was not just the path to more inclusivity, but also to create products specifically tailored for their customers, and succeed as a company.

The opportunities ahead

Whether it’s the values-based consumption habits of the next generation, new opportunities in growth markets, a coming wave of regulations in climate and Gen AI—Bob Dylan said it best—“the times, they are a-changin.”

Companies that plan for this future, this “there,” with value-loving consumers, more diverse needs, more access, more expansive geographies—will not only get “there,” they will reap the benefits, too. If you’re trying to make it through this tough, ever-changing market—inclusive design might be the best way to survive, and we’d love to help.

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(The figure for Patagonia's annual revenue has been updated for accuracy.)

We won’t get “there” by doing what got us “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.