Sealy and IDEO first collaborated in 2008, to rethink the design of its Stearns & Foster line. For years, Sealy, the largest mattress manufacturer in the world, had taken the standard industry approach to selling mattresses and watched market share and sales flatten; it knew something had to change. Stearns & Foster evolved from a single product design into a keystone for transforming the organization.

IDEO helped Sealy use actionable consumer insights to develop a scalable design methodology and new brand principles, which it applied to product design, operational and manufacturing decision-making processes, and sales and marketing strategy. This “brand-to-product” framework was subsequently used for three separate and consecutive product launches—Stearns & Foster, Embody, and Posturepedic—resulting in an overhaul of 85 percent of Sealy’s mattress portfolio.

Tempur-Pedic was already working with IDEO on a new mattress design when it acquired Sealy in 2013. It was also interested in how design thinking and human-centered design could improve its business. Once solely focused on the technological elements of designing a mattress, together with IDEO, Tempur-Pedic redesigned the outer shells of its mattresses to reflect the quality on the inside. This design change led to the company to look at new ways to infuse design into their products.

“The initial project was to design the mattress,” said Thomas Overthun, associate partner and design director at IDEO. “But the second project was to create a whole design language from the mattress out to what it meant for any other product, from pillows to blankets and other accessories. It eventually became bigger than just the mattress.”

Working on the Tempur-Pedic/Sealy relationship has been gratifying, said IDEO partner and design director Michael Hendrix, because although home goods can be thought of as simply products, nothing could be further from the truth. IDEO and Tempur-Pedic/Sealy changed the course of the mattress company's business through the transformative power of designing where, and ultimately how, people sleep. And in the process, the organization itself changed as well, moving siloed departments to cross-functional teams, with the brand division central to their cooperation, which led to consistent and aligned decisions across the board.

Some of the projects include:

Stearns & Foster Luxury Mattress
Sealy teamed up with IDEO to develop a design language for Stearns & Foster mattresses that would reestablish what the brand stood for. Through redefining brand principles and rounds of prototypes that focused on evocative details, the new Stearns and Foster mattress was the highest rated in Sealy’s portfolio since it started keeping records, and initial retailer orders were three times what management projected.

Next-Generation Posturepedic
An icon in the mattress industry was brought into the 21st century by developing a new product that delivered on the long-running promise of the brand. Together, IDEO and Sealy designed a product that focused on holistic back health. In its earnings report, the company said US bedding sales for the quarter were up 10.6 percent, to $253.4 million, a figure driven by the new product line’s introduction. According to Sealy’s Q3 earnings report, the Posturepedic launch represented the largest and fastest rollout in the company’s history.

Embody by Sealy
The project began by defining the market opportunities for all-foam beds, and ended with the modern, streamlined Embody mattress as well as a simplified design language, free of industry jargon, to help retailers talk about the mattress to customers. “Sealy collaborated with IDEO to create an approachable and attractive mattress that delivers the simple, healthy rest consumers want with a selling story they can easily understand,” said Jodi Allen, Sealy’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Tempur-Pedic Sleep System
Best known for the revolutionary, NASA-proven Tempur material inside its mattresses, Tempur wanted to transform the exterior of its mattresses to match the caliber of innovation inside. Together with IDEO, Tempur created a new sleep system, including an easily removable and washable fabric mattress cover. “Tempur-Pedic was born of innovation, but we were never a design-driven company until we worked with IDEO,” said Patrice Varni, senior vice president of brand marketing, Tempur Sealy North America, LLC. “Seeing consumer need in a new way through IDEO’s eyes has transformed us. Our product design, our creative psyche, our brand are all fundamentally changed by this sharper focus. This collaboration has given us all a renewed sense of pride.”

The challenge of how we’ll feed the exploding world population in the future—in a sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way—is seeding an agricultural revolution in Europe.

In 2012, INFARM founders Erez, Guy Galonska, and Osnat Michaeli found that vertical farms could be a solution to urban self-sufficiency. These farms could allow people to grow vegetables and herbs in small spaces, with no soil and far less water.

An approach that’s captured the imagination of futurists for decades, vertical farming involves growing vegetables and herbs in stacked units or inclined surfaces, within which moisture, light, temperature, and nutrients are monitored, and controlled.

After creating their first vertical farming experiment in their apartment in Berlin, the founders brought together plant scientists and industrial designers to explore and develop vertical farming’s potential.

Since then, the startup has created custom growing systems for clients including Airbnb, Mercedes-Benz, and Weber. Most recently, INFARM installed a vertical farm growing herbs and vegetables at the Berlin branch of German supermarket chain Metro, the fourth-largest retail chain in the world, to sell to the public. It’s been profiled in Wired Germany, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian, and Zeit.

INFARM collaborated with IDEO to further explore their B2B offer, including concepts for the industrial design of the stackable, modular, climate-controlled units; the interaction design of an accompanying app to monitor and control the units, and its business model.

Urban farmers will sign up for “farming as a service,” comprising the units themselves, as well as a monthly subscription for seeds, cartridges filled with nutrients, and a pH regulator. Because they’re stackable, the modules can be scaled to suit anyone from a home grower to a restaurant chef or supermarket owner. And Erez claims a 1 square meter growing tray can yield four to six mature plants every day, 365 days a year, doubling that of state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouses.

As well as remotely regulating each unit’s climate, the app will educate growers about new vegetables and herbs, selling packs of complementary seeds, with suggested recipes for them, and cooking instructions. Aiming to promote biodiversity, the firm will sell rare-breed and heirloom seeds too.

The startup has funding from the EU’s European Pioneers fund, and is now looking to secure investment to accelerate software development and ramp up their hardware production capabilities. Quite literally, it's growing its business.

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational group that revolutionized children’s television with the launch of the landmark Sesame Street program in 1969. The show, which has since become a household name, is now watched in more than 150 countries worldwide. The Workshop also creates educational content for new media platforms, and partnered with IDEO to design a line of Sesame Street–themed apps for Apple’s iPhone. The Elmo Calls app, which functions as a utility app for parents and as an entertaining behavioral-development app for kids, is now one of the Top 100 paid iPhone apps in the iTunes store.

The collaboration began with a mutual desire to bring the show’s beloved characters to the iPhone platform—and to do so using a human-centered design approach. Child-development experts, educators, toy and interaction designers, and even the Sesame Street puppeteers weighed in on the design decisions. The team also worked closely with families throughout the project—from initial concepts to early prototyping to the final development—in order to stay focused on how children actually use the iPhone for play. The games were designed accordingly. For example, the team omitted menus from the Sesame Street apps to keep the experiences simple, playful, and fun for a young child. And each game features exclusive new Sesame Street videos, allowing players to enjoy “lean back” moments along with interactive ones.

The resulting iPhone applications let children engage with the favorite Sesame Street characters in a whole new way. Kids touch, shake, swipe, and tilt their way through original games featuring Elmo, Grover, Bert, Rosita, and the Count.

The titles, all of which are available from iTunes, include:

• Elmo Calls: Engages 2- to 5-year-olds in listening-skills practice and active participation during everyday situations.
• Elmo’s Monster Maker: Allows kids to create unique monster friends that dance and play with Elmo.
• Sesame Street Video Maker: Lets kids star in their own music videos, mashing recordings of themselves with popular Sesame music videos and adding their own stamps and special effects.
• Sesame Street Makes Music: Helps kids explore an array of instruments as they contribute to new renditions of classic preschool tunes with their Sesame friends.

How do you know when you’re successful in your work? You can check off a list of technical skills and expertise you bring to the table. You can use a career development rubric to make sure you’re hitting the right goals. But often, it’s your behaviors—the intangibles that are the most difficult to articulate—that make the most impact. Things like your ability to stay optimistic or your willingness to adapt when there’s no roadmap.

Because of the nature of our work at IDEO, these intangibles are a big part of what defines the experience of working at the company. So in 2012, a global team of designers from our U.S., Europe, and Asia offices came together to codify these values and behaviors as part of a larger effort to evolve IDEO’s career development platform. More often than not, when IDEOers hit road bumps in their career, it was not about what they were doing, but how they were doing it.

The team agreed that, in addition to identifying the technical requirements needed to progress through one’s career, it was just as crucial to give IDEOers the tools they need to navigate the complex culture. So they captured the values they believed were foundational to the culture and most strongly shared across the IDEO community, and put them to paper in The Little Book of IDEO. The title is meant to reflect its purpose for readers—a handbook that’s compact, useful, and free of any corporate jargon.

For IDEO-ers, this red cloth-bound guide provides a shared lexicon around both the hard and soft skills we need to succeed. It describes things like why IDEO is so loosely structured, where it comes from, and where it’s headed.

Most importantly, the book identifies the organization’s seven core values. These are by design specific, actionable, and integral to the kind of work we do and the environment in which we do it, going beyond common sense and general ethical practice. The intention: to foster meaningful conversations within the community about life at IDEO, and how to achieve success along the way. With each succinct expression comes a deeper explanation of why it matters, and how it shapes our experience at IDEO.

Over the years, the book has been roundly embraced by the IDEO community as an honest articulation of who we are, as opposed to what we aspire to be, and what we appreciate most about working together. When IDEOers first got their hands on it, a movement took shape to create videos that bring each of the core values to life. To depict the value of "Embracing Ambiguity," for example, New York-based designers built a makeshift cardboard rowboat, and while simulating a storm, navigated their way through uncharted territory with teamwork and optimism. San Francisco produced a Jacques Cousteau inspired look at the lifestyle and behaviors of designers in their natural collaborative habitat.

Through the process of making the videos, IDEOers came together to reflect on each of the values, talking through what resonated and what didn’t. It gave them a sense of ownership, and a platform through which to share their interpretations.

A Global Conversation

IDEO has a global presence—offices in two countries in Europe, two countries in Asia, and multiple locations across the U.S. As an organization that embraces a human-centered culture, it felt important to learn if the values resonated with the IDEO community in all of these locations, especially in a country like China, whose working culture is so different from the west. We saw the authenticity and resonance of the values as essential for attracting, motivating, and retaining local talent.

So how did The Little Book of IDEO land in Shanghai? Exploring this question would illuminate insights into how our own clients are often challenged to keep their company culture resonant within the global landscape.

A team of IDEOers in our Shanghai office took on the challenge of exploring the meaning behind each of the values. They were surprised with what they discovered—that despite the firm’s Western origins, locals felt largely connected to the values. It even helped to further solidify their identity as a community, even if it may have been in tension with local working culture, because it was rooted in a set of shared beliefs.

In some instances, the Shanghai team built on the existing values in order to refine the meaning for the local context. For example, the core value "Be Optimistic" rings true, but could sound naive when translated directly to Chinese, implying "rose-tinted glasses.” So in the Mandarin edition, an extra phrase was added to convey the measuredness we mean when we talk about optimism at IDEO. The lesson here: The treatment of something as fundamental and nuanced as our values requires authenticity and emotional connection, and therefore more of a transcreation process than straight translation.

Lasting Power

As an organization, we are designed to be flexible. This means we’re always changing—even when it comes to how we are structured—so that we can respond to the kinds of challenges that clients come to us for. In the midst of our constant evolution, The Little Book of IDEO is as resonant today as it was when it was published.

But this afternoon, we're not here to talk about all things Frenchie, we’re here to talk about the “c-word”—cancer—but, also, comics and catharsis. See, in a few weeks, Laura is having surgery to repair her tear ducts, collateral damage from aggressive thyroid cancer treatment four years ago, when she was in her early 30s. The cartoons she drew during that nerve-wracking time are just like her: quirky, brave, weirdly hilarious, and unapologetically honest. They’re the equivalent of indie-rock visual therapy.

Wearing her trademark black-and-white French sailor shirt and vintage cat-eye glasses, Laura takes a few quick, surreptitious puffs off her e-cigarette and we start chatting.

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IDEO: What were you like as a child? Did you always make art?

Laura Park: My family moved around a lot as a child. My mom immigrated from Korea to Southern California and raised my brother and me by herself. I always drew as a kid. As the perpetual new kid, I wasn’t very popular, but the fact that I could draw meant I had some value. I’d sell kids greeting cards or drawings of their moms for Mother’s Day. I hung out at the food court at the mall where my mom worked and drew portraits of strangers. I’d go up to them, show them my drawing, and try to sell them to them. It was my side hustle. I was a very under-supervised, under-parented child. I had a lot of freedom. I eventually got a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago and fell into the illustration/comic book community here.

What was your first big break?

I was working as an illustrator for educational software company when I started doing drawings for indie record label Asthmatic Kitty Records on the side.

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I also drew magazine ads for Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 Illinois record, plus did some t-shirts and posters for his record label and illustrated an issue of Vice magazine. My other big break was illustrating two big book series for author James Patterson—Middle School and I Funny. They were #1 New York Times Bestsellers. I illustrated two a year until last year. They gave me enough money to do other projects and gave my mom something to brag about.

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You mainly do autobiographical comics, why is that?

They’re how I process information. They’re my second stomach, how I “Rumpelstiltskin” my depression and sickness. I draw about things that cause me both extreme stress and extreme joy because both are distortions of time. I’m either locked in an anxiety-ridden hellscape or I’m celebrating the awesomeness of my dog.

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In high school, I loved the Riot Grrrl movement and made my own zines because I didn’t see myself reflected in other comics. It’s a very powerful thing to make your own media and not wait for others to validate your experience.

I love it when other weirdos say to me, “I recognize myself in your comics!” Everyone thinks they’re singular and alone. It’s comforting to know that’s not true.

Can you tell me what happened when you were diagnosed with cancer?

It was 2012 and I was 32 and uninsured at the time. I lived for six months with a big lump on my neck. I avoided it. I knew it was bad when my doctor didn’t make me wait after getting the results back. It was thyroid cancer and it had spread to lymph nodes in my neck. I had a nine-hour surgery to take everything out, but the tumor had grown around my vocal nerve. The next day in hospital room, I woke up with a paralyzed vocal nerve. I went from someone who was always very loud, to someone who didn’t have a voice. It was very weird. I had to drink radioactive iodine as part of my therapy, which is nasty and why I’m having surgery to repair my tear ducts.

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Comics are how I process information. They’re my second stomach, how I 'Rumpelstiltskin' my depression and sickness.

I processed my cancer in terms of narrative. I asked, Who is my character? What is her arc? I did a better job of telling the story of my cancer in my comics than I did telling people in person. What really resonated with my fans was how expensive my medical bills are. They were hundreds of thousands of dollars and destroyed my savings.

Enough of this depressing cancer stuff! What are some things you’re excited about?

I just won an Emmy for some storyboarding work on the Cartoon Network miniseries Over the Garden Wall! I have the certificate on my fridge. I also just signed a contract to do a graphic novel adaptation of immigrant stories for StoryCorps and have a collection of early work and new stories for Drawn & Quarterly that's forthcoming. My biggest accomplishment, though, was figuring out a way to have Walt appear in as a cameo character in Over the Garden Wall. I’m pretty proud of that.

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*Post script: A few weeks after our interview, Laura did, indeed, have surgery to repair her tear ducts. She’s recovering well and, of course, fearlessly documenting the entire process along the way.

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A ridiculously photogenic French bulldog is why I'm sitting across from Laura Park, a humbly prolific Chicago cartoonist, in a trendy Wicker Park cafe one grey November Sunday. I started stalking Walter Wallet on social media a couple years ago. Turns out, his owner was pretty cool, too. Laura's the author and main character of the darkly funny comic series, Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream, among many, many, many other noteworthy, cool things that she hates to talk about. Lucky for me, soon we—and our dogs—were friends in real life.

For the better part of my career, I had been conditioned to believe that employees are either adding value to an organization by working in immediate service of its bottom line, or they are not, and should subsequently be disciplined. I was terrified I was in the latter camp. Over time, though, I began to take more deliberate notice of how my IDEO colleagues spent their “white space” time between projects.

My friend, Dave hacked an Android tablet into the housing of a 1980s GRiD laptop to celebrate the life of IDEO cofounder Bill Moggridge. Three IDEO Chicago colleagues made an LED-powered, floating cloud installation that communicates current weather conditions by changing color. And a pair of engineers created an automated, Arduino-powered, steampunk-themed shandy machine to keep colleagues hydrated during summer parties on the Chicago studio's roof deck.

With my Pavlovian conditioning coming undone, I dove head first into the fray. During a few hours of project downtime, a teammate and I outfitted an old Mac Classic with an iPad for its screen. Was I reprimanded for using company equipment for a side project during work hours? Quite the opposite. I was told to post an image of our creation to the IDEO Instagram account.

Since then, I have experimented with pumpkin carving via laser cutter; flown toy cars from rooftop ramps into frothy mugs of beer; teamed up with a friend to explore and film fluid dynamics studies using a syringe and typewriter ink; 'printed' Nyan Cat out of yarn via a hacked, decades-old electronic knitting machine; and twice stencil-graffitied IDEO’s San Francisco headquarters—once with moss and once with superhydrophobic solution.

So, why do we create these things? Because even before we’re designers, we’re makers. And taking a few moments away from our day-to-day work for unorthodox and inspiring creations often fulfills our need to make. When we bring this energy back to our teammates, we work better together, and we do better work.

Creating stuff makes us happy. And doing it together makes us better designers. This is why we make.

There is little more terrifying than having non-billable time at work. The first few weeks of my employment at IDEO were a nervous time for me. I was intermittently assisting a few project teams, but it would be an excruciating few weeks before I was staffed full time to a client project.

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1. Closca Fuga Foldable Helmet, 2. Alphabet Compendium, 3. Crosley Messenger Turntable, 4. Uuni 2s Portable Pizza Oven, 5. Universe2go, 6. Roting 600 Drafting Pencil, 7. Olloclip 4-IN-1 Lens, 8. HAY Tower Block Notepad, 9. Night Notebook, 10. Keep Cup, 11. Appointed Workbook, 12. Alite West Bluff Pack, 13. Sharpie Stainless Steel Permanent Marker

Closca Fuga Foldable Helmet

Helmets are a total necessity, but carrying them around is a pain. The Closca foldable bike helmet solves that problem, collapsing down to half of its size (about 2.4 inches tall), making it possible to hide away in a backpack or purse. The 2015 Red Dot award winner is also certified to global safety standards, so all you have to worry about is picking the right color.

$140

closca.co

Alphabet Compendium: An Illustrated A-Z of Things

Isometric mural illustrator Nigel Sussman has poured the same style he's used to decorate the walls of tech companies like Google and eBay into his first book, Alphabet Compendium. His hyper-detailed drawings cover everything from the aardvarks to the zucchinis.

$29.95

http://alphabetcompendium.com/

Crosley Messenger Turntable

The Crosley Messenger Turntable lets you spin records anytime, anywhere, thanks to its messenger-bag style design. With built-in speakers and a headphone jack, you can share the music, or go it solo.

$90

crosleyradio.com/

Uuni 2s Portable Pizza Oven

Have a pizza lover in your life? This wood-burning oven goes from ambient temp to 932˚F in just ten minutes. Stainless steel construction means it can handle life in the great outdoors, and Uuni's wood pellets are sustainably sourced, so you don't have to feel guilty. They'll even plant a tree for every bag of pellets sold.

$299

uuni.net/

Universe2go: My Personal Planetarium

This star viewer and app combo give you a closer look at the real night sky, not the dome of a planetarium. Take a guided tour of the stars above you—it will illustrate constellations, help you discover planets, and even point out moving objects like comets and satellites.

$99

universe2go.com

Roting 600 Drafting Pencil

This is one serious pencil. The iconic, metal design has a comforting heft to it, and its hexagonal base makes it easier to hold in your hand. Better yet, it won't roll off your table. Choose between .5 or .7 lead.

$37

rotring.com/us

4-IN-1 Lens

Help your loved ones kick up their iPhone photography game with four quick-change lenses (fisheye, wide-angle, macro 10x and 15x) that fit right on top of the iPhone. Panoramas and extreme close ups are made easy with the 4-IN-1 Lens, which is small enough to fit in a pocket. It's a selfie-lovers' dream.

$80

olloclip.com

With the Macro 15x lens on the right. Without on the left.

HAY Tower Block Notepad

A beautiful, ombré tower of notes just waiting to be sketched on. Available in fade coral and fade orange. Drool.

$25.00

store.moma.org/

Night Notebook

Spare, beautiful, and conveniently on sale, this blank Poketo notebook is perfect for capturing your thoughts. And thanks to Smyth Sewn binding, it lies totally flat, making doodling in your notebook easier than ever.

$6

poketo.com

Morning, Day, Evening, and Night Notebooks

Keep Cup

These eco-friendly cups out of Australia are made using waste product from the manufacture of wine corks. Their designs include everything from basic colors to characters from the Star Wars universe. Now you just have to decide between the resistance and the evil empire.

$24

us.keepcup.com

Appointed Workbook

A spare, utilitarian design with a durable cover, this notebook can handle the abuse of every day. Choose between classic navy or white.

$24

appntd.com/

Alite West Bluff Pack

A backpack rugged enough for the outdoors, but designed with commuters in mind, the West Bluff pack has an interior laptop sleeve and a padded back built for comfort. It's perfect for the urban explorer in your life.

$48.99

alitedesigns.com

Stainless Steel Permanent Marker

Add some cred to your brainstorms with this stainless steel Sharpie.

$9.50

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Struggling to find ideas for the designers on your list? Browse our most coveted tools and trinkets, from notebooks to fine nibs to the perfect traveler's mug for your fixie pannier sidebag. Just beware: it's pretty tempting to pick up something for yourself.

The meditation techniques below are designed to help you harness creativity by encouraging you to take time to pause and bring a more intentional approach to your work. They’ll help you cultivate a designer’s mind, characterized by:

• An open and curious mindset that can look at challenges from many angles.
• A rigorous and organized methodology for thinking holistically about a problem.
• Clear visual and verbal communication skills to work through and articulate potential solutions.
• A positive and optimistic outlook that can transform problems into solutions.

Here are 3 exercises to try out that should kick start your creativity:

1: Flowing River

If you’re feeling stuck with a problem you’ve been working on, taking a walk around the block or grabbing a breath of fresh air are both useful exercises, because they allow you to leave a problem behind and come back to it with fresh eyes. In that same vein, this first exercise is a highly visual and engaging way to clear some of the noise in your head.

Close your eyes and picture yourself sitting on a large, smooth rock in the middle of a river. It's up to you how big or powerful the river is, just make sure you feel comfortable on the rock you're on, and turn to face directly upstream. Sit there for a moment and start to breathe steadily, adjusting yourself to make sure you’re comfortable. Now look up the river, and whenever a thought enters your head allow it to float down towards you. Recognize what it is, give it a nod if you need to, and let it continue to float past you down the river. As other thoughts, worries, or memories come up, continue to picture them floating by until all you see is a clear-flowing river ahead. Take a deep breath and open your eyes.

2: Cloud of Gold

Sometimes when you feel overwhelmed by your to-do list, the natural tendency is to work harder and longer, and sacrifice things like taking walks, having an enjoyable lunch with a friend, or taking the time to let your mind wander. This exercise is designed to instill a feeling of optimism and positivity throughout your mind and body.

Close your eyes and imagine that a soft, delicate, golden mist is surrounding your head and shoulders. It might be swirling very slowly or just hanging there in space. It’s the most beautiful thing you can think of, and when you take a breath it fills your lungs with a wonderful sensation. Now start to focus on your breathing, taking steady and slow deep breaths. Start by focusing at the very top of your head, and as you inhale, visualize the mist filling that region. When you exhale, picture anything negative or unhealthy leaving that part of your body and being replaced by the gold mist. This might look like some kind of pollution leaving your system, maybe a dark mist that you want to expel and forget about. Once you’re comfortable breathing in the good and breathing out the bad, slowly start to move down from the top of your head, taking a breath or two for each area you recognize. You might want to spend more time on certain areas, like your eyes if they’re tired, your neck if you’re feeling sore, maybe somewhere inside your head if something’s been troubling you. Continue towards your toes until you’ve filled your entire body with the gold mist and can feel it moving through all your veins. Open your eyes and stand up.

3: Clay Mind

Find a ball of clay, or something else you can sculpt with your hands. You want it to be about two inches in diameter.

Think about one thing you are working on at this moment. Now that your mind is clear and healthy, this is a chance to practice deep focus and put some love towards something you might be struggling with. Our brains are intimately connected with our hands, and this exercise takes advantage of the fact that we aren’t often reinforcing that connection.

With your eyes closed, hold the clay in your lap with both hands in front of you. Imagine that the ball of clay represents that challenge or problem you want to focus on. Take a minute to warm up the clay with your hands, not thinking too hard, just move the clay around and allow it to grow into different forms. What are different shapes it can take? Once it has turned into a smooth rounded shape, imagine that it represents everything connected with your chosen challenge, a tiny universe you can mold and explore freely. Continue to roll the shape around in your hands. Now stick your fingers into the center of that world and slowly turn it inside out. What do you see? Allow the inverse world to be worked back into a round shape once again. Next roll it between your palms into a long worm and think about what that represents. Could it be a timeline? An alternate reality? A way of looking at different elements of that world in a more linear way? Now divide your clay in two parts, assigning meaning to each part. Continue to subdivide into small pieces until you’ve exhausted the amount of elements you can assign a meaning or role to. What do you see? Is there anything you haven’t recognized before? Lastly, gather the pieces together and form them into a smooth shape again, and begin to slowly increase the pressure on it until your hands are holding it so tight they can’t move any more. Take a deep breath to allow that world inside you, and as you exhale let it go.

Illustrations by Adam Hilborn.

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We live in a world that values extroversion, production, and a lean approach to business and product development. Companies that embrace those ideals may be effective at pushing an idea out into the world, but might they lose something valuable to the creative process along the way? Like reflection, mindfulness, and a clear head?

Short answer: Yes.

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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.