Glide, a video communication software startup, came to IDEO to collaborate on the design of its first hardware product. With current Apple Watch models not including cameras, Glide sought to design a compatible band that would empower users to capture and share photos and videos directly from their wrist.

Faced with this challenge, IDEO designers embarked on a six week-long design sprint, involving users in the research to understand how they might use the band for interactions such as taking reminder snapshots and intuitively sharing photo and video messages with friends. The team then brought these ideas to life through a comprehensive industrial design and engineering process, working to meet a range of technical and performance requirements along the way.

IDEO’s final band design elegantly integrates two cameras—one nestled in a wave-shaped notch above the watch face, and the other on the band’s outward-facing surface. Together, the cameras ensure that, between recording themselves and the vibrant world around them, users never miss capturing a moment worth sharing.

IDEO also designed a compatible, on-the-go charging dock that conveniently refuels both the watch and band with a single plug-in, completing an effortless user experience.

Today’s younger workers are more comfortable dressed casually. They prefer an impromptu meeting over coffee, than at the conference table. They’re used to working flexibly, collaboratively and creatively. And, via smartphones, tablets and laptops, they’re accustomed to having everything from hailing a cab, to doing work, to getting groceries, at their fingertips.

Tech-savvy, independent, entrepreneurial, demanding: this new generation of business people and the lingering impact of the financial crisis, are reshaping hospitality.

To that end, Crowne Plaza approached IDEO to understand the needs of this audience, the macro trends impacting them, and to develop a new meeting and work offer that expressed the brand’s values.

Research, sensor data, surveys, interviews with potential customers revealed what modern travelers wanted, but lacked: informal, flexible experiences; energizing and uplifting spaces; peer-style service; curated choices; and integrated technology to control it all.

IDEO translated those customer insights, and Crowne Plaza’s promise—Making Business Travel Work—into an integrated, designed and built-out branded offer. Launched with two pilot schemes in Atlanta, Ignition is a free-to-use, innovative new meeting and working experience, housed in the lobby of Crowne Plaza hotels.

Spanning space, food and beverage, service, and digital, every touchpoint is designed to keep travelers in a state of flow, and heightened productivity. From single-person Pods, to the Nooks and Huddles for four-person impromptu meetings, to the 10-person Apartment (bookable by the hour), Ignition’s spaces cater to every professional’s needs, whether they’re on the road or in their home city.

Food and beverage offerings have been redesigned specifically for work meetings. Delivered to where you’re working, it’s non-drippy, made to be eaten one-handed, and served on square plates to sit neatly alongside laptops. Out of hours, a new self-service marketplace offers 24-hour premium sustenance.

A new role, the Host, provides peer-style support, whether greeting guests’ guests, helping with meetings, or sourcing local restaurants for a client dinner.

Underpinning Ignition is a new tablet-based ordering system (Food To You), and Host chat platform, to easily get everything from photocopies to coffees.

But ultimately, IHG’s ambition for Ignition goes beyond its existing guests. It’s designed to become a local business fixture in its own right, attracting people to meet, and work, irrespective of whether they’re staying. As one guest summed it up: “There is nothing any hotel brand in this range is doing to stand out. This concept, however, could completely change that. It could even live on its own. It’s what you would seek out.”

Fender, a brand that’s been synonymous with rock ’n’ roll since 1946, is best known for its iconic electric guitars—think Stratocaster—played by everyone from Eric Clapton to The Edge, the lead guitarist of U2. Less well known is the imprint Fender has made on the acoustic space. IDEO worked with the company to design a new family of acoustic amplifiers: one professional and one with stereo effects.

After gathering insights from amateurs, professionals, music magazine editors, and producers, the team explored portability, storage, materiality, and form through a series of early prototypes that they tested with users.

While most acoustic amps in the market don’t look all that different from their electric cousins, the new Fender product line reflects the pure, natural sound at the core of acoustic. This new line of amps uses a unique manufacturing technique with bent plywood that’s new to acoustic amp design. Not just a design statement, the innovation also improves sound quality.

The acoustic amps were also designed with simple, intuitive controls, and with illuminated features that balance high-tech performance with a satisfyingly analog experience. The design emphasizes portability and maneuverability, targeting the acoustic artist who often may have to make a tough choice between traveling light and using the often unreliable house PA.

Pi Jacobs, a singer-songwriter who participated in the design research process, said acoustic sound requires its own unique medium. "Acoustic is raw, pure, no bells and whistles. You see someone playing and singing, it’s like looking through a window into someone’s soul," he said.

For Fender, the work proved to be transformative. "Working with IDEO was an eye-opening and refreshing experience," said James Gifford, vice president of design for Fender. "The result of the work that was done with IDEO on the acoustic amp project was a game-changer that challenged the traditional definition of the design and experience received from using acoustic guitar amplifiers."

To better articulate the Bigelow family values—obsessive about ingredients, environmentally conscious, community-oriented—the company asked IDEO to help convey its story to a younger demographic, for whom tea was popular but the Bigelow brand was not. Any changes to the product or its packaging would have to improve the offering without alienating Bigelow Tea’s loyal customers.

IDEO worked with the company to update its positioning statement, brand identity, and packaging. After many interviews with tea drinkers, IDEO and Bigelow executives learned that the brand could differentiate itself by crafting a strong point of view—one that cultivates and celebrates tea enthusiasts with a superior yet accessible product. With a refined positioning statement in hand, a refreshed identity system followed.

The new packaging ties together all of Bigelow’s lines of tea. Each box features bold graphic elements like a larger, easier-to-read logo, instructions for brewing a perfect cup of tea, a caffeine “caff-o-meter,” and the name of the team member who packed the box. Bigelow boxes now stand out when stacked on store shelves, winning over tea drinkers and retailers alike.

There was a lot to celebrate. We’d launched an innovation lab and piloted new products as part of a larger, multi-year collaboration to expand the organization’s human-centered design capabilities and enable culture change.

And our collaboration had revealed something crucial: In order for the product to be successful we also needed to support the underlying organization, which meant looking more holistically at strategy, process, tools, and incentives.

That became an opportunity for me, an interaction and product designer by training, to apply my trade through an organizational lens. It turned out that the prototyping methods that I had learned could also be applied to people and processes. By experimenting, responding to feedback, and iterating, we could help nudge behavior change within the organization.

Here are the five big lessons I took away:

1. Speak their language

We were working with product managers, engineers, and designers, so instead of explaining what we planned to change with academic research and abstract frameworks, we used language they already understood. We were going to run scrappy experiments, learn quickly, and iterate. If the ideas didn’t work, we’d pivot and try something new. But instead of prototyping products, we were experimenting with people and processes.

Big insight: Meet people where they are. Ground organizational design in a familiar context, and make it tangible in order to build trust.

2. When facing big change, start small

Behavior change is hard. So, we started with small experiments. What was the least that we needed to design in order to learn—the minimum viable product (or MVP)—and to help nudge new behaviors? In one instance, to test our hypothesis on the need for a company-wide training program, we started by creating a workshop for one multi-disciplinary team of 10. Its success soon paved the way for a broader rollout.

Big insight: Organizational change doesn’t have to begin with big initiatives. Starting small with prototypes can lead to big learnings and start to shift behavior.

3. Measure impact in creative ways

Email surveys are an obvious way to take the pulse and determine whether experiments are resonating with individuals, but they can easily fall to the bottom of a priority list. We tested more lightweight, in-the-moment feedback methods. After prototyping a beer and knowledge-sharing gathering, we asked attendees to place a magnet on a board to indicate their responses to a few questions, like: “Would you come again?” and “Did you learn something?” It was an easy and immediate way to figure out if the idea was worth evolving.

Big insight: Simple and in-the-moment measurement tools can be enough proof of concept to move forward quickly.

4. Find the right ambassadors

Early on, I was determined to get all of the senior executives involved in our prototypes. What was I thinking? Their understandably divided attention and packed calendars made that next to impossible. In the end, some young, energetic community managers were the ones who embraced our ideas and helped push them forward. Not only did they have the time and passion for the projects, but they were also trusted leaders within the company. Community managers helped us organize an informal gathering of product people to share methods over beers. (Yes, beer again. When in Germany!) We asked a VP to simply show up. When he saw the overwhelming attendance and impact on the community, he became one of our biggest advocates. Teams that had been working in silos started to meet regularly. The more we demonstrated quick wins, the more senior leaders got on board to encourage new behaviors throughout the organization.

Big insight: The best agents of change may not be the most senior folks. Look for individuals with passion and social capital.

5. Make it stick

There are two things that we did that helped ensure that our ideas lived on after we were gone. First, we found owners within the organization who would commit to moving our ideas forward. Second, we helped create an internal group dedicated to maintaining momentum. This group provides leadership training and coaches teams to ensure both a top-down and bottom-up approach to behavior change.

Big insight: Prototypes are just the beginning. Organizational transformation requires dedicated owners and a multi-layered strategy.

It all adds up to a set of behaviors: Get scrappy, get tangible, find your people, and learn by doing. It never hurts to do some reflection from a rooftop, too.

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Not long ago, a coworker and I found ourselves contemplating the eclectic Berlin skyline. We were on the rooftop of our client’s office—a leading European brand in online retail—and thinking back on what we’d learned from embedding with them for a year.

I had been asked to create a newspaper for kyu, the design collective of which IDEO is a member, and I was ready to perform.

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My desire to explore the world using rhythm and sound on one hand and ink and paper on the other started when I was young. I was very quiet as a child. Instead of playing with friends, I created my own playground in a sketchbook. I listened to stories on a cassette player as I drew.

My mom, a violinist who played in an orchestra, taught me how each sound communicates a different feeling. Together, the instruments create a pleasing harmony.

I chose to play the cello, as its sounds comforted me. When I felt sad, I could play and the sadness was transformed into something beautiful. When I felt alone, the cello's mid-tones communicating with and supporting the other instruments made me feel less isolated.

I went to high school in New Zealand and focused on photography, art, and music. Playing in orchestra, string quartet, chamber orchestra, and musical show orchestra required rigorous practice, and I discovered that it was only with disciplined repetition that the ear could learn to hear the subtle distinctions between an almost perfect note and an imperfect one, between good enough harmonizing and exquisite music. Constant practice not only created perfect harmony, it also trained the soul.

Like music, calligraphy embodies many feelings. That was my father’s gift to me. He guided my hand, drawing with me. At first, I stood in his shadow, but I gained confidence over time. The calligraphic technique I now use involves moving very fast, every stroke following right after the one before, never taking time to look back.

The companies that make up kyu share a belief that creative collaboration will yield new solutions. To visualize the collective, I drew the first dot directly with the brush and then started to draw circles. Dots and lines, the basis of musical notation, helped me orchestrate the story visually. Rough strokes conveyed complexity and sometimes chaos, while the diffusion of ink into paper illustrated the calm conclusion of a journey. When the magazine reached a crescendo, the dots began to jump around wildly. The combination of ink and water unified sense and sense, and the story of the newspaper came to its happy end.

Just as each calligraphic mark and each musical instrument is unique, so too is each company in the kyu collective. Independent, but also located within the same “circle.” Sometimes the music of a page is the message.

“Music is the ultimate teacher.” ― Wassily Kandinsky

The day I got the assignment, I ran to the art store and bought brushes, ink, and a grindstone. I set the tools on my desk, which became the stage. I was the conductor, interpreting the text like a musical score.

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The secret is in iOS 11 Live Photo Effects. To make your own, access this feature, take a live photo, then, in the photos app, swipe up to reveal the Live Photo Effects.

Easy, right? Yes and no.

Creating a live loop is easy, but creating a cinemagraph requires a bit more planning. The difference is in the framing—too much movement, and you’ll just get a live loop. Here are a few tips to ensure you nail the combination of still photo and limited motion:

1. Find the shot: To create a beautiful cinemagraph, find a shot where most of the image will be still, and only a piece is in motion—perhaps a tree blowing in the wind, or raindrops on a puddle. If there’s too much movement in the frame, the shot will feel chaotic.
2. Plan it out: While it’s possible to pull off a clean loop without a tripod, don’t just point and shoot. I like to turn on the grid in my photo settings—these lines help me see if I’m holding still or wobbling slightly (I always use the grid to help create a level horizon or position subjects, anyway). Try to lock your body by leaning on something, or even by putting the camera on a table to keep it as still as possible.
3. Stage it: Don’t leave it to chance! When you can, control the shot. The pool shot below took a few tries, and it really helps that there were no other people wandering through.

Sharing the live loop

So you’ve perfected your technique and have a gorgeous loop to share! The problem is, iOS doesn’t exactly make it easy.

If you try to share natively to Instagram, it’ll tell you the loop needs to be three seconds or longer. And iOS doesn’t offer a lot of options to help—there’s no easy way to export your Live Loop into a format that’s shareable for Instagram. I found this out the hard way while I was traveling in the Philippines, and since I didn’t have my computer with me, I had to figure out a way to solve for this using only my phone.

One of my goals was to use only free apps—buying a bunch of apps I wasn’t sure were going to work didn’t sound very fun. After much Googling, trial, and error I created the workflow below. The first time through might take you a few minutes, but now that I’ve done it a few times, I can go from live loop to Instagram in less than two minutes.

Get the apps

First, download these three free apps:

1. Lively: Exports your Live Loop as a video
2. Splice: A free video editor that lets you extend the length of the loop to meet Instagram’s minimum requirements
3. Video Crop: Removes any letterboxing (black bars) in the video export

1. Lively

Start by using Lively to open the loop you want to export. In the top of the export panel select “Movie” and then tap “Export”, then save the movie.

2. Splice

In Splice, tap the + icon on the top right to create a new project and select the video you exported from Lively. Click “Add (1)” on the top right to add it to your project.

On the Add Audio screen, tap “Skip” on the top right.

Name it however you like, and use these settings:

• Format: Select Landscape for wide photos or Portrait for tall ones
• Default transition: set to “None”
• Outro: set to “Off”

Now you should be in the editing screen; all you have to do is tap your video and select “Duplicate.” Do this three or four times until your video duration is at least 0:05 or longer.

Lastly, tap the “Export” button on the top right and select “Save.” I always pick 1080p HD for the best quality.

3. Video Crop

One last step: Remove the letterbox (those pesky black bars) on the side of the exported video. Open “Video Crop,” tap the big red button, select your video, and tap the check mark on the top right.

Now use the crop tool to trim off the black bars, then tap the export button on the top right. When it’s done processing, tap “Save.”

Very Instagrammable

Cinemagraph loops look amazing on Instagram or Facebook, and they give you a unique way to share your experiences (Let’s be real—we’ve all seen enough Boomerangs.)

It takes a few steps, but once you get the hang of it, the process is quick and easy. And when your friends ask how you did it, you can point them this way.

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I’ve always loved cinemagraphs—those endless, hypnotizing loops where part of the frame is still while some areas are gently in motion. When I discovered that I could create these loops natively with iOS 11 (iPhone 6S or newer), I couldn’t wait to try it out.

Through the Swedish Energy Agency and its partners, the nation is focusing on reducing pollution from the transportation sector. It plans to reduce (but not entirely eliminate) the need for private car ownership by improving alternative travel options for people in everyday life.

In more wonky language, the focus is on sustainable mobility as a service, an approach that brings all means of travel together. It combines options from different transport providers into a single mobile service, removing the hassle of planning and one-off payments. It’s an environmentally sound alternative to owning a car, and an approach to mobility now being propelled by urbanization, economic shifts, artificial intelligence—and the social and economic impacts of climate change.

Through its initiative, A Challenge from Sweden, the Swedish Energy Agency invited IDEO to join the effort. Here are three lessons we learned along the way through working alongside our Swedish counterparts.

1. Get outside

Swedes live for fresh air and natural landscapes. Even the most committed Swedish city slickers retreat to a cabin at the weekend, or dream of an escape to the countryside. The natural world is imagined and felt as replenishment—as a valuable resource to be respected and enjoyed.

For our design team, it was a reminder to take our research far beyond Stockholm or Gothenburg, especially as we considered designing for a nation of travelers. We took long train rides to meet people in smaller towns, and walked as much as we could. It felt good, and it was necessary.

Going outside also means seeking out inspiration from beyond your own context. We were inspired by examples of civic and societal change from around the world, and brought them into the project, almost as if we’d discovered precious acorns on the forest floor.

2. Engage tradition

Cultural traditions and norms might seem strange or twee to outside eyes. But they almost always hint at a deep societal agreement. We discovered that in Sweden, for sure. Fika is not merely a coffee break during the day: it’s an invitation to pause, to reflect, to reconnect with one’s thoughts or emotions, and to restart.

We introduced fika in our project space, and observed it when we were with the team from Sweden. It added a note of calm and confidence to our work and to our individual energies, even as the work accelerated in intensity towards the end.

Similarly, we drew on Nordic storytelling tradition to share the story of our research in Sweden. Instead of using dry descriptions to describe the different ways Swedes might be triggered to make new transportation choices, we told a three-dimensional fable that told the story of a mythic waterfall, and the different paths that four people took to find it and use it.

The fable allowed us to invite our collaborators into a instinctive understanding of what we’d all learned together, as well as a logical one. The story resonated, it brought joy into an otherwise serious, complex topic, and it was easy to repeat.

3. Be brave

The scale of Sweden’s ambition is remarkable, but—in Sweden itself—commonplace.

Swedes recognize that their country is small, their population tiny, and their contributions to global climate change negligible. But they also understand that, by leading with bravery, they have earned outsized influence in the world. Other countries look to them as an example of how to set goals and make change in service of healthy, sustainable growth.

Sweden has set a goal of achieving a fossil neutral transportation sector before 2030. That’s a big ambition, and an exciting one.

Through a global innovation challenge, Sweden is now inviting engaged political leaders and some of the world’s most capable companies to help make sustainable mobility as a service a reality.

In other words, Sweden is going places fast.

Find out more about Mission Innovation 3 and A Challenge from Sweden.

Through IKEA, Sweden has already transformed the world of contemporary furniture and home furnishing. Now Sweden is taking on an arguably even more ambitious goal: leading the world in tackling some of the thorniest causes of global climate change.

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.