kate spade new york has been an iconic fashion brand since the early 90s, when its handbags first stormed the Manhattan fashion scene. Since then, the company has expanded and evolved into a global lifestyle brand.

With e-commerce reshaping the retail landscape and redefining the role of brick and mortar stores in recent years, kate spade new york leadership asked: How can we make the kate spade new york specialty store experience, well, more special?

kate spade new york already held the key to a new way of thinking about a multichannel customer experience: a brand promise “to inspire her to lead an interesting life.” Hoping to bring that promise to life in store, they engaged IDEO to help make it happen. The solution was for kate spade new york to take the brand message from words to action in the form of a customized guest journey. The team created more than 100 design concepts and strategies for building a retail experience that rewards curiosity and sparks artistic and literary exploration.

“In partnership with IDEO, we spoke extensively with our customers and associates to better understand how we can provide the most engaging and fulfilling in-store experience,” said Mary Beech, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Kate Spade & Company. “The new store elements that we introduced speak to our customer’s personality and appetite for adventure while aiming to enhance engagement with new and existing customers.”

The team knew that striking the right balance of digital tools in in-store interactions was pivotal in allowing two people to have a more rich and collaborative face-to-face connection. The concepts include things like “pack a purse” to test drive how many everyday items can fit in different style handbags, cheeky “dare cards” that challenge customers to go on an exciting adventure with their new purchase, and digital moments like the “shoe selfie” platform that would allow a guest to share “I’m thinking about them” heels or just-purchased flats with her social network. IDEO live-prototyped a selection of concepts in stores around the country and saw a high correlation between customers’ positive reactions and their subsequent purchasing decisions.

“At kate spade new york, our brand promise is to inspire women to live a more interesting life,” said Jenica Myszkowski, Vice President of Stores at Kate Spade & Company. “Our new and improved guest journey experience puts our customers at the center, allowing us to more fully deliver on our brand promise in our retail stores with a stronger vision and purpose for our stores and our store teams.”

To deliver the newly envisioned guest service experience, the role of the sales associates needed to be redesigned, as well. The kate spade new york and IDEO team created a new role: the Muse, whose job is to live the brand promise of an interesting life and to inspire customers to do the same. The reimagined role ultimately shifted the focus in specialty stores from selling to inspiring and building long-lasting relationships with guests.

Athletes’ Performance and its subsidiary, Core Performance, were both founded on a single mission: to enhance human performance through a holistic approach to mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery. Athletes’ Performance focused on elite professional athletes, and Core Performance provided corporate fitness programs and workouts for employees hoping to lead more healthful lives, and both found a footing in the competitive health and fitness market.

Faced with a challenge to redefine the brands, IDEO designers collaborated with the founder and integrated marketing team to unite Athletes’ Performance and Core Performance under one name that would cut across the health, fitness, and wellness markets to reach a full breadth of audiences and partners. Under a new name, EXOS, the teams created a brand identity system unified by its founding mission and focus on human performance.

For the new EXOS brand, IDEO designers created a visual language using “x” and “+” to highlight the progress from goals to achievement, as well as a system of interaction for athletes of all performance levels. The team also created a bespoke digital tool, outfitted with custom software, which gave designers both guidance within the brand guidelines and creativity to explore new products and contexts.

Imagine this: Your company has just gone through a $2 billion merger. You show up at work to find an invitation from the CEO asking you to help shape the bank’s future. This is what happened when Umpqua acquired Sterling Financial Corporation in 2014, doubling its size and resulting in the creation of the West Coast’s largest community bank overnight. With a mission to be “the world’s greatest bank,” CEO Ray Davis seized the moment to reinvest in design across the organization.

Umpqua asked IDEO to help examine the brand they had and take it to a new level. They wanted to find out: how can we leverage our strength and reputation by activating the brand in new ways to deepen employee and customer engagement and foster continued growth?

IDEO identified three core brand opportunities and a newly articulated purpose statement that became a launch pad for more than 15 different concepts to express the brand internally and externally.

Inside Umpqua, company evangelists handed out notebooks with tips on “how to be better-makers,” and associates now participate in collaborative design challenges through an internal tool built on IDEO’s OI Engine, software that fosters open innovation. The design challenges are drawing unprecedented participation of 84 percent among employees and are having a real impact on the organization. Of the five they’ve run in two years, the company has implemented three winning ideas including a buddy program for new hires or transferees that upwards of 1,000 associates could experience over the next year.

WATCH: Umpqua Bank on using the OI Engine platform

IDEO also worked with Umpqua’s team to conceive digital products including a new digital app called Raindrop that lets people bank in the way that they think about saving and spending, not the way a bank does. It’s due for release in 2016.

To introduce all of this work, IDEO set up an immersive exhibition at Umpqua’s headquarters in Portland. Teams large and small, including the executive and associates from across the company, walked through the exhibit and witnessed how the brand impacts every aspect of their business, from employee engagement to product development. It was signed on the spot by Davis, who invited employees to sign their names, too.

The sweltering summers in China can be insufferable—especially for people who like to wear jeans.

Lee Jeans, in its quest to boost its brand differentiation among an expanding market of apparel brands that also use fabric performance as their unique selling point, like Uniqlo and Levi’s, developed denim that’s cooler to wear during hot weather. It found a novel solution in an ancient material: jade. When woven into denim, crushed jade particles maintain the coolest temperature and, alongside other technological enhancements made to the fabric, pull sweat away from the body. The fabric dries quickly, creating a refreshing cooling sensation.

The immense popularity of jade in China makes the denim a natural fit for Lee’s Asian market, and although Lee’s jade-infused fabric was entirely unique, the company needed to differentiate its inventive new product from a rapidly expanding market of high-tech fabric alternatives made specifically for hot weather.

Lee and its parent company, VF Corporation, saw an opportunity to create a new product that helps position the company not just as a premium brand, but one that leads with innovation. Lee came to IDEO to help design the go-to-market and launch strategy for the new line of jade-infused fabric. Looking for insight, designers conducted research in multiple cities in China and India, seeking out those who were committed to wearing jeans despite the most extreme circumstances—the denim-clad bicyclists pedaling through sweltry city streets, the basketball players on the court, commuters who stripped to their underwear while driving and wriggled back into their jeans upon arrival. The common thread: They were all steadfast in their preference for thick, heavy denim, no matter how hot it got.

The resulting strategy for product launch: positioning jade—a traditional material that has strong cultural and spiritual meaning—as a high-tech solution for the contemporary lifestyle of young people. IDEO helped Lee name the new line JadeFusion and created a system of messaging to communicate that these aren’t just jeans—they’re jeans with a fascinating narrative woven within; a hierarchy of messaging that blends jade’s exotic premium significance with a very modern technical story. Lee salespeople learned how to share the story with customers, encouraging them to talk about jade-cooling technology at work, on the streets, and even on the basketball court.

The JadeFusion line sold out within seven weeks of its debut. The launch, which was originally limited to mainland China and Hong Kong, was expanded to India, Malaysia, and Thailand, and sales orders doubled for the following year. Along the way, Lee developed a new understanding of how to incorporate customers’ input and be open to discovery and inspiration from the very start of planning a product launch.

Many companies are withdrawing financial guidance, and stock markets are whipsawing against tariff talks and social media speculation. Global uncertainty is now on par with—or even higher than—the peaks of the COVID-19 era, according to indices like the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. Even trade experts can’t confidently answer pretty simple questions like: How many units will we sell? What will it cost to deliver our service in the next three months?

Every leadership team we talk to is operating in a fog. Whether they admit it or not, that fog is affecting their risk appetite: They are delaying projects, sitting on approvals, and slashing budgets. With tariffs swinging wildly, it’s tough to plan ahead. A once-profitable offer can turn into a loss overnight. Even companies with limited exposure to physical goods can feel the ripple effects through disrupted supply chains, spooked investors, or sudden stock price drops.

It’s no wonder leaders feel paralyzed. But resilient organizations don’t wait for certainty. They aren’t afraid to rethink how they lead, focus, and design for the future. In times like these, fear can’t be your compass. It’s time to step out of preservation mode and chart a course toward where your organization needs to go.

So, how do you lead through uncertainty and regain momentum? Here are four methods we’ve been using with our clients:

1. Focus beats forecasts

When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done. Leaders must help teams focus their energy on what truly matters—starting with the courage to say no to outdated initiatives, pet projects, or business-as-usual efforts that no longer serve your strategy. Focus isn’t just about doing less, it’s about freeing up capacity and renewing energy to go bolder on the bets that will shape your future. A global retailer navigating supply chain turmoil and changing consumer habits might choose to pause low-impact projects to focus on one priority: last-mile delivery. That kind of clarity can boost fulfillment speed, earn customer trust, and drive revenue. Achieving this kind of focus means aligning across functions, reaching beyond silos, and creating momentum—even without perfect clarity. Because in moments of uncertainty, focus is the fuel that keeps progress alive.

2. Rethink where to play

Whether we’re designing a product, service, strategy, or experience, we also have to design for where, how, and at what cost it gets delivered. It’s no longer just about customer segments; it’s about navigating geopolitical risk, regulatory change, and supply constraints with agility. That requires a new playbook—one that views the landscape like a moving chessboard—where your next move depends on which pieces are in motion and how the board is evolving. Imagine a toy company facing price uncertainty, choosing to prioritize growth in regional markets closer to where they produce, and then amplifying their sustainability efforts and local stories in their marketing. Routing the right products to the right markets still matters. But so does staying light on your feet. Embracing flexibility—and even a playful mindset—can help your teams move forward with confidence, not fear, as the environment continues to shift.

3. Momentum > perfection: redesign for rapid experimentation

When the future feels uncertain, the instinct is often to pause. But pausing comes at a cost. The businesses that thrive now are those that experiment faster, not because they know exactly what will work, but because they’re willing to learn their way forward. You may not have enough certainty to build a multi-year roadmap. But you do have the tools to test, iterate, and adapt in real time. A beauty brand facing increased production costs on all of its packaging might rapidly pilot makeup refillables via mobile pop-ups to prove out a new customer behavior that is both more sustainable and lower cost for the brand to deliver. This also shifts how your teams work: embedding lightweight prototyping, faster feedback loops with customers, and an emphasis on small bets that unlock new opportunities into the day-to-day. These small wins build resilience. And resilience builds momentum. In this climate, progress—even if it’s imperfect—is the boldest move you can make.

4. Digital products can offer a beacon of hope

With physical goods and global delivery models under pressure, we’re seeing renewed interest in digital experiences and revenue streams. For many, digital feels like the one domain where they can move faster and iterate more freely. Consider re-imagining the digital experience not just as a supporting channel or companion app, but as a core engine of new customer acquisition, brand loyalty, and resilience. Let’s say a health-insurance provider is facing rising service costs: launching an AI-assisted care-navigation app where members could check symptoms, book telehealth visits, and file claims all in one place could help the company cut support call volume, improve the customer experience, and help people catch health issues early, avoiding costlier medical interventions later. To unlock the full potential of digital, invest in product-led growth strategies across customer touchpoints—where value is delivered through the experience itself, and innovation is driven by real-time data and user feedback.

Where we’re going, there are no roads.

There’s no map for what comes next—but that doesn’t mean the answer is to stand still. Regaining momentum is less about knowing the final destination and more about having the right compass to guide you through the fog. At IDEO, we’re working with leaders across industries to shift out of survival mode and design for the clarity, confidence, and energy their organizations need right now. If you’re ready to move through the uncertainty, we’re here to help you chart your course.

The business world runs on planning: forecasts, earnings calls, revenue projections. But right now, that’s mostly guesswork.

He had taken a disability leave from work to prepare for the removal of a tumor on his spine. The drives to his appointments had become routine, each trip a reminder of how much his body was changing—and how much he now relied on me. He said, “I’m going back to work after my surgery.” Despite my uncertainty, I didn’t argue. The surgery gave him a 50 percent chance of walking again, and for him, that was enough. But the probability alone was not enough to prepare me for what came next.  

At 22, I came face-to-face with the hidden costs of healthcare when my father became paraplegic. Since then, I’ve become his sole full-time caregiver. This role has profoundly shaped my perception of the healthcare system—not only exposing the many gaps in healthcare but also the massive opportunities to improve how care is designed and delivered.

Today, alongside my role as a caregiver, I am an interaction design fellow at IDEO, where I spend my days collaborating with other designers to shape and refine human-centered experiences. Part of our job is to listen with empathy to user pain points to craft useful solutions that foster trust and understanding. As both a caregiver and a designer, I deeply understand these pain points and how we can design solutions that ease the burden on the 24 million caregivers in the US alone—whether it’s creating clear, comprehensible medical bills or developing devices that help prevent further health complications. Here are four massive opportunity areas I believe we need to solve for.

Mitigating enormous burnout

The first few years were by far the most difficult. My peers were embracing the newfound freedom of adulthood, while I was responsible for everything from dealing with insurance companies to daily cleaning and bandaging his stage-four wounds. I was in and out of the hospital, drowning in paperwork and trying to make sense of my father’s condition, his medications, new routines, and medical bills. I spent countless hours battling with insurance reps, demanding appeals, chasing down unreliable case managers, and pushing charge nurses to advocate on my father’s behalf. The burnout was debilitating. But there are so many opportunities to lessen that load.

Technological tools that patients and their families can trust can help close the gap in an inequitable healthcare system. Already, AI tools like Hyro AI and SICURA by Nohold are taking on some of these pain points by reducing the complexities of dealing with insurance, treatment options, and medical jargon. Hyro AI is even integrated into many electronic health record systems, allowing patients easy access to their personal health information to understand and manage treatment.

But what if AI patient advocates could take things a step further, flagging biases, challenging questionable denials, and assisting with appeals? As insurance companies increasingly use AI to deny claims, such a tool could help level the playing field, ensuring that vulnerable patients aren’t silenced by the very systems meant to support them.

Navigating the system

My father was hospitalized for over a year following his surgery, moving between the ICU, skilled nursing facilities, and acute rehab centers. Each stay brought hefty bills, frequently arriving months later with little clarity about their origins. They were outrageously expensive, and I struggled to understand what we actually owed—or why we owed it in the first place. Between the maze of Medicare, state programs, and private insurance, determining financial responsibility was completely overwhelming, and cost transparency was non-existent.

What if medical bills were as clear as itemized receipts, with straightforward descriptions alongside hospital codes? Originally designed to prevent fraud, medical billing systems rely on cryptic codes like “ICD-10” and “CPT”—effectively standardizing claims but making them nearly impossible for patients to decipher. While these systems serve the industry, they often do so at the expense of patient transparency and accessibility. An app that translates these complex codes into a simple, easy-to-read breakdown would be invaluable.

Beyond that, there’s an opportunity to design a visual progress tracker or dynamic dashboard, helping caregivers and patients manage payments, track processing status, and reduce the financial guesswork that adds unnecessary stress to an already difficult journey.

As a young adult learning to manage my own financial responsibilities while taking on my father’s, I found myself in need of a financial “buddy”—someone who understood my situation and had the expertise to guide me. While some companies, like the AI app Cedar, are tackling this issue, there’s still significant potential for innovation in this space.

Providing physical care

Whenever my father developed a stage-four bedsore, I had to administer IV antibiotics every six hours for eight to 12 weeks. During these times, I was stuck at home, bound by the six-hour window, having to reposition him every two hours to help the wound heal and prevent new sores from forming.

When you care for someone with limited mobility, bed sores are one of the most challenging issues. In the US alone, nearly 60,000 people die from bed sore complications annually. They emerge shockingly quickly and can go from the size of a nickel to so deep you can see bone. For caregivers, the physical toll of lifting and repositioning their loved ones can be overwhelming; it often left me physically drained and emotionally exhausted.

After dozens of hospital trips and many sleepless nights, I decided to invest in a specialized bed that could handle repositioning. But insurance doesn’t cover them. And they range from $2,000 to $15,000. A pressure-relieving mattress adds another $500 to $3,000, and professional assembly—often required—can cost an additional $200 to $500.

Imagine if there was a smart, modular bed for paraplegics that automatically adjusted using an AI-powered scanning app to track movement and prevent pressure sores. It could offer personalized configuration by allowing users to add or remove features as needed, enabling customization at home. Additionally, an affordable smart mattress that monitors sores and relieves pressure could greatly benefit both the caregiver and the patient. Accompanied by an AI-powered scanning app, the bed could track movement and prompt timely repositioning. Companies like Tidewave and Arjo already use technology to help mitigate bedsores, and the ForeSite Intelligent Surface (IS) by XSENSOR uses AI to monitor the real-time emergence of sores. However, these solutions are largely limited to hospital settings. If a company could create an affordable version for home use, it could significantly improve the lives of millions of patients and their caregivers.

Accessing home modifications

When my father was discharged from the hospital, it was up to me to find a wheelchair-accessible home in the Bay Area. Whether it was too-narrow doorways, steps, or tight corners, none of the homes I toured had the necessary modifications for him to navigate in his power wheelchair. The home we finally found had enough space to meet his mobility needs, but we still had to pay out of pocket for ramps, touchless light switches, and other accessible features. Even now, he can’t leave the house on his own. He can’t reach the door handle from his wheelchair, and the ramps are too narrow for him to safely navigate alone, leaving him at risk of getting stuck—something that has happened more times than I’d like to count.

Instead of having to tour each house with a tape measure in hand and the wheelchair measurements stored in my phone, it would have been incredibly helpful to have an app that could instantly tell me if a wheelchair would fit through the doorframe or if adding a ramp was feasible.

Imagine if that app connected to stores like Home Depot or Amazon, curating a list of items I could purchase directly, without the hassle of checking measurements myself. Or, what if real estate or rental apps had a special section for homes that had already been modified or were built with accessibility in mind? With the right tools in place, I could have avoided much of the uncertainty and frustration, making the journey to find an accessible home much smoother for both my father and me.

What began with inexperience and uncertainty has evolved into a journey of growth and adaptation, both as a caregiver and a designer. Together, my father and I have learned a lot about how to live our new life—and each other. It has not been easy. And there is so much opportunity for insurance companies, healthcare providers, and startups to alleviate the unnecessary stress for caregivers and their loved ones. As the caregiver population continues to rise, the need for innovation is clear—without it, millions will continue navigating these challenges alone. As designers, we’ve only scratched the surface—there is so much more that we can do.

As my father and I prepared to head to Stanford for yet another doctor’s appointment, I remember asking him, “Are you prepared to never walk again?”

As you play, your job is to move a circle from one side of a line to the other. At each level, you have to wait one more second before you can cross the line. It’s both easy and increasingly boring—until you up the level of friction. The harder you make it, the more obstacles fill your path, and the more points you score. The higher the friction, the greater the fun, sense of accomplishment, and meaning.

This is a principle that’s true across play. Think about it: You could walk to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, or you could pretend your kitchen floor has turned to gooey molten lava, and hop  from chairs to rugs to the sink to get what you need. You could sit around at home mindlessly watching TV on a Friday night, or you could pay money to be locked in a room with your friends, forced to solve puzzles to earn your collective freedom.

As the Executive Managing Director of IDEO’s Play Lab, I lead a team of toy inventors and designers who use play to create effective and joyful products and experiences. Rarely does our work involve making things seamless. It’s usually about inserting obstacles, adding layers, and crafting challenges to help motivate and delight players, employees, and customers alike. 

And yet, as technology accelerates at an unprecedented pace and becomes intertwined in all aspects of our lives, from dating to healthcare to managing our time, we’re constantly trying to remove as much friction as possible. Digital tools promise to streamline our calendars, show us the shortest routes to destinations, enable us to make purchases with a single click, and even facilitate our relationships with each other.

But at a moment when technology promises frictionless living, we have to ask: What are we losing when everything becomes too easy?

Lessons from Gen Z

Gen Z is our first generation of digital natives, people roughly between the ages of 14–28, who have known digital technology and the internet for their entire lives. They have also seen the downsides: cyberbullying, superficial relationships, and broken attention spans. In many ways, they understand the costs of tech better than the rest of us. 

Last year, we tested early prototypes of creative and relationship AI tools with a group of young people to gain a deeper understanding of what they truly want from technology. They were universally clear: They’re happy to use AI tools that can make them more efficient, but they don’t want to get rid of the messy parts of life. As one of them told us, “I want to go on a date for myself. I want to go on a bad vacation. You know what I mean? I want to experience things and be like, ‘Oh, I hated that.’”

There are numerous videos on YouTube featuring young people questioning the value of tech making their lives more convenient. Some are going so far as to turn back the clock, embracing flip phones, embarking on digital detox journeys, and becoming digital minimalists. On YouTube, Jess Farnham shares how intentional tech breaks help her feel more grounded. Sakura Opal explains her switch to a flip phone as a return to intentional living. JV Scholz paints a picture of the creative rebirth that comes with limiting your screen time.

The comments on their videos reveal a growing groundswell: Consuming mountains of content is becoming overwhelming. These young people want to return to creating content through activities they loved as children, like writing stories and drawing. They’re also recognizing that our brains have lost the ability to sit with our thoughts or commit our full attention, factors that can be contributing to our growing loneliness epidemic, because intimacy requires time, focus, and effort.

Young people aren’t the only ones—brands are responding, too. Bottega Veneta shut down its social media channels to focus on in-depth, slow storytelling. Heineken and Bodega created the “Boring Phone,” a tongue-in-cheek device that encourages users to step away from digital distraction. Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year? “Authentic.”

Designing for meaningful friction

Instead of assuming that we should always design for efficiency, we should look for opportunities to design for deliberate friction, perhaps making our lives a little bit slower and maybe even more challenging.

As human-centered designers, friction has long been a part of our toolkit. And not just recently with the proliferation of AI. In 2011, we partnered with the beloved nonprofit Sesame Workshop to develop Elmo Calls, an app that allows preschool-age children to call Elmo to hear advice, educational stories, songs, and jokes. Going to the doctor for a shot? Need help going potty? Call Elmo for support and a positive message about the challenge ahead! The app’s purpose was never to have kids glued to a screen, though.  Together with Sesame Workshop, we made a decision: Elmo will show up for a few minutes when kids need him most, and when the call is over, he will hang up. 

We did something similar when we designed a VR version of the classic ViewMaster with Mattel. The toymaker asked that we purposely design it without a headstrap, so that kids could interact with incredible scenes enabled by the new technology for a reasonable amount of time, but would put the device down when their arms grew tired. This purposeful friction moderates usage and ensures that kids can experience the fun while encouraging most of their playtime to be in the real world, with real people.

Can you imagine if our phones weighed as much as bricks? Our lives would be very different.

Maintaining the rewarding parts of work

Recently, we’ve been involved in several AI projects where the initial impulse is to outsource work to tools that can automate tasks, generate content, or make decisions on behalf of users. But, there is a danger in outsourcing all our work to AI, because not all work is created equal. True, there’s burdensome work that you don’t want to do, but there’s also rewarding work that you wouldn’t want AI to take away from you.

When an early-stage startup approached us for help designing an AI-powered writing hub for high school students and their teachers, our research quickly made it clear that both students and teachers value the process as much as the result. As one student said, “I feel like writing kind of helps you learn more about yourself, and I feel like just having a computer do that for you...you don’t really get to tell your own story.” Their teacher told us, “It isn't just about the strict grade that I’m giving them, but also making sure that their writing connects to them as a human being. It gives me a peek into who they are as a person.”

Writing isn’t just about writing. It’s testing ideas and practicing critical thinking. The effort that goes into it is well worth it if it lets us share our thoughts with others, gives us a sense of accomplishment, and enables us to learn more about ourselves and each other.

So, rather than create a tool that makes writing easier, Ethiqly was born out of the question: What if teachers could give individualized writing instruction to every student? The product we designed with our clients guides students through the steps of developing their own creative thoughts—surfacing topics they are excited about, providing the right prompts to draw out ideas, and helping them craft a story that feels authentic to who they are. It also helps teachers provide individualized feedback at scale. It’s not about having AI replicate our work; what we want is for technology to help us do our work better so that we can continue to learn and feel the exhilaration that comes with that accomplishment.

Designing a more rewarding future

If, at this point, you're rolling your eyes at my proposal to purposely add friction, don't worry. I’m not suggesting we slow everything down. AI is poised to bring incredible enhancements to our lives. There are many things we want to do as quickly as possible, from curing diseases to predicting natural disasters. Even mundane everyday moments, like finding directions quickly when we’re running late, benefit from AI’s frictionless speed. There’s plenty of drudgery we can get rid of, too. But we need to be thoughtful about where we apply efficiency versus just creating efficiency wherever we can. 

Imagine if instead of watching videos at 2x speed, they automatically paused and invited us to explore the content in more depth, allowing us to click on elements that catch our eye so that we can learn more about an object, person, location, or event. It could even compel us to reflect and comment on what we're seeing. What if our map apps didn’t automatically take us on the shortest route between points A and B, but instead offered a discovery mode option when he have the time for a more inspirational route? What if we abandoned endless scroll for a feed interrupted by challenges that prompt us to put our phones down and go interact with nature? What if it offered us rewards for time away from our screens, like a coupon for a cup of coffee at the cafe down the street?

Technology will keep evolving. AI will keep getting smarter. And there will always be new temptations to make life easier. But human-centered design has never been about making everything effortless. It’s about knowing when to embrace the effort—to design for friction, for complexity, for depth. Because it’s in those deliberate moments of challenge that life becomes more meaningful, more social, more joyful. Imagine what the world could look like if we design for meaning, not just for speed.

Looking to design for friction in your own products and services? Get in touch. We're here to help.

(This article was adapted from Michelle Lee's main stage talk at Config '25. You can watch the full talk here.)

Recently, my colleague Takashi Wickes designed a deceptively simple game called wait. wait.. wait…

“What might be” was suddenly overshadowed by “what must happen now.” The pandemic disrupted every aspect of our healthcare ecosystem and forced us to adopt an entirely virtual primary medicine model, something most health systems had previously only experimented with. It felt like everything was urgent, and getting anyone to focus on the future seemed impossible. Surrounded by all that chaos, I decided to look back to see what history could tell me about major shifts in this industry during other periods of great uncertainty.

The past is filled with patterns of human triumphs, mistakes, and missed opportunities. These moments can give us a strong sense of how humans, governments, markets, and organizations might react to profound change. A century before COVID-19, the 1918 influenza pandemic similarly upended global healthcare, exposing the limitations of existing care delivery systems. Looking back at this period offered significant insights into how a crisis catalyzes transformation. In that era, patients received healthcare in their homes, by general practice doctors who were also members of their community. Just as COVID-19 forced a rapid transition to virtual care, the devastation of the 1918 pandemic led to the expansion of healthcare systems, the professionalization of medicine, and public health reforms. Despite the realities of the moment, the feelings of fear and uncertainty people felt in public settings in 2020 were eerily reminiscent of the fears that marked the 1918 influenza crisis.

Each decade of our past tells stories about how change develops. The Industrial Revolution demonstrated how rapid technological advancements could reshape economies; the Space Race of the 1960s highlighted how global competition could fuel scientific breakthroughs; and September 11 proved how tragedy could bring a country’s diverse communities together in a shared purpose. Adding the context of examples from human history brings rigor and believability to the futuring process, upping the likelihood that people can understand potential opportunities and consequences in tangible ways.

But how do futurists do this? How do we pick which pieces of the past apply to what we’re trying to solve for, and how do we arrive at tangible takeaways? Here are three ways history can help you understand what could be.

1. A frame for ideation

History doesn’t always offer clear predictions for how change might unfold, but it can provide a scaffolding or starting point for the imagination. A historical lens anchors storytelling, making speculative futures more relatable and actionable by drawing on connections to known human experiences.

In 2023, IDEO partnered with LeadingAge California to explore a fundamental question: What does it mean to age well in a world of rapid change? Through a series of workshops, we examined how traditional older adult care, long centered on institutionalized models, could be reshaped by shifting demographics, emerging technologies, and evolving cultural expectations. We started by grounding our work in historical precedent to add credibility. Then, we crafted six bold, forward-looking narratives that reimagined aging as a deeply human-centered experience, one defined by purpose, autonomy, and connection rather than decline. These stories introduced new possibilities for older adulthood, where updated mindsets on aging, advances in AI, regenerative medicine, and assistive technology redefine what it means to grow old, allowing people to maintain their physical and cognitive health in previously unimaginable ways. Using the past as a framework clarified how services for this population could be reimagined to evolve in response to social and technological change. Within these constraints, we designed futures that felt not just visionary but entirely within reach, creating a roadmap that could help bring these ideas to life.

2. A way to stress-test plausibility

History helps make future scenarios more credible by grounding them in familiar patterns and contexts. This thought experiment requires thinking critically about the past. What factors spurred a particular phenomenon? What kinds of decisions shaped action, and by whom? What decisions did people decide not to make? By examining these dynamics, we gain insights into how similar forces might unfold under new conditions and use them to inform our stories. A backward glance at the mental health impact of isolation during 2020 could provide insights into the potential effects of remote work and virtual schooling on future communities. When we think this way, the past becomes a launchpad rather than a limitation.

These methods were extremely useful in 2023, when we partnered with the DC Federal City Council to reimagine the future of downtown Washington, DC, a city with both a storied past and a future that can change radically every election cycle. To generate bold, forward-thinking ideas for revitalizing downtown neighborhoods, we convened over 100 stakeholders. We asked them to identify the past and present to surface patterns of transformation and areas of opportunity in the city. With that foundation in place, the teams developed plausible future narratives, layering ideas such as new pedestrian zones, green spaces, and artist live/work zones onto physical maps of each neighborhood. These activities helped them create stories of the future that didn’t just feel aspirational but were deeply rooted in the city’s identity, its people, and the existing infrastructure. By looking to history, the workshop unlocked new pathways for action, moving closer to the goal of a thriving, community-driven urban future.

‍3. A method for predicting outcomes

The future is about identifying strategic choices that will shape the future we want to build. History reveals how communities, industries, and organizations responded to change, offering a glimpse into potential outcomes that could have a significant impact.

IDEO’s 2024 collaboration with San Francisco public television and radio station KQED explored how public media will have to evolve to remain relevant and essential in a rapidly shifting landscape. In a day-long workshop, the IDEO team guided the KQED board through a method developed by futurist Sohail Inayatullah called “The Futures Triangle,” which examines the weight of the past, the push of the present, and the pull of the future. By discussing these different forces, we surfaced a key tension: In an era of hyper-personalized content and decentralized media consumption, KQED’s legacy of trusted journalism and civic storytelling can be both a powerful foundation and a potential constraint. So, how will these existing forces shape the future? With this insight in mind, participants crafted stories and created artifacts from the future that drew a picture of a public media ecosystem more deeply embedded in community life, one that reaches audiences through interactive, on-demand, and participatory experiences. They explored how KQED could expand even further as a multimedia organization and community convener to become an agile, responsive, and dynamic force for engagement across generations and platforms. By analyzing the historical forces pushing and pulling the public news source, the group identified key strategic choices KQED could make today to shape the desired outcome of a more inclusive, innovative, and community-driven future for public media.

To build bold, forward-looking futures, we must look backward—not to recreate the past, but to navigate the future with intention. History provides more than context; it offers structure for creativity, a stress test for credibility, and a mirror through which we anticipate consequences. When we weave these insights into our foresight practice and design efforts, we can imagine futures that are rigorous, plausible, and transformational, drawing on the past to shape scenarios that inspire action and meaningful change. Years from now, when futurists look back on today, they will be reading the signals we left behind.

At the end of 2019, I embarked on a project exploring the future of primary care medicine, looking ahead a decade to imagine stories about innovative home diagnostics, expanded virtual care, and transformative shifts in delivery models. Then came COVID-19.

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.

‍

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.