Named after Ernest O. Lawrence, UC Berkeley’s first Nobel Laureate, The Lawrence Hall of Science’s wide-ranging products, services, and tools developed organically over half a century. To begin to make sense of the breadth and depth of its offerings, IDEO asked leadership and staff to surface the myriad activities, audiences, and relationships with external partners, enabling the group to visualize—and make sense of—the totality of The Lawrence brand.

During in-depth research with parents and kids, educators, and experts, IDEO discovered that each of these audiences had distinct mindsets. Parents and kids engaged with The Lawrence to explore, have fun, and dive deeper into a specific topic. Educators utilized it for professional learning opportunities and to discover new, exciting classroom tools. While experts, including UC Berkeley faculty, STEM educators across the US, and funders, viewed the center as a resource for best-in-class STEM education research. The mindsets highlighted The Lawrence’s unique capabilities, but the complexity also created some opportunity areas, including ways to use storytelling to create emotional resonance around The Lawrence’s core values and how to design a unified narrative to connect the dots across audiences and offers.

Building on its strengths as an institution and the identified opportunity areas, IDEO created a modern, vibrant, and flexible brand that strategically and visually unites all of The Lawrence’s offerings, working across digital and physical media. Grounded by a grid system, the updated brand identity is simultaneously rigorous and fun, featuring a bright color palette and signature retro-cool super-nova mark. Different offerings are bundled together based on different audience needs, preventing confusion and easing navigation. Even the name of the science museum, The Lawrence Hall of Science, was updated to a more contemporary and approachable, The Lawrence, inspired by The Met.

The Lawrence unveiled its new brand with much fanfare in late 2018 as part of its year-long 50th anniversary celebrations. Visitors can see the updated identity across all public-facing elements, including The Lawrence’s website, curriculum and educator materials, letterhead, collateral, and exhibition and wayfinding signage. The redesigned brand has been credited with bolstering the popularity of the science center among families and schools and causing ticket sales to return to—and exceed—pre-pandemic levels. Internally, the rebranding effort has helped generate excitement and energy across departments, helping solidify a collective future strategy and vision for its next 50 years.

The Lawrence Hall of Science’s diverse offerings had grown extensively over the decades, creating a confusing and disjointed experience for its various audiences. On the eve of its 50th anniversary, Lawrence leadership sought a brand refresh to better connect with its target audiences and differentiate itself in the STEM education ecosystem.

Over $6M in new funding

raised to transform and modernize The Lawrence, thanks to IDEO's rebranding effort

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When Greene King approached IDEO in early 2022, it was (and still is) one of the UK’s leading hospitality brands, with over 2,600 pubs, restaurants, and hotels. At that time, consumers in the UK and other parts of the world were beginning to rediscover the joys of travel after years of pandemic lockdowns. Greene King’s newly formed Venture Hotels Team wanted to understand how guest expectations had shifted during Covid-19 and how a new customer-centric hotel brand and signature service experience might meet—or exceed—their expectations.

To get inspired, the IDEO team interviewed a range of travelers of different ages and backgrounds, met with hospitality and luxury experts, and conducted immersion visits, including visiting high-end hotels. The research revealed modern travelers want unique hotel experiences that cater to their curiosity, support local communities, and are environmentally sustainable. Luxury, which once meant “exclusive,” was now about enabling one-of-a-kind cultural experiences. Today’s travelers value inclusivity, accessibility, and well-being; they want to feel welcome, do things at their own pace and have thoughtfully curated options to choose from. They also expect hospitality practices to be ethical and sustainable, contributing to the welfare of local communities and the planet.  

Building off this research, IDEO crafted a new entry proposition for Greene King’s new Everly Hotels Collection called “The Discover Collection,” which leverages the best parts of a classic British pub and inn—bespoke historic locations full of character, culture, and stories—while offering guests a modern experience from pre-arrival to departure, all grounded in supporting the communities they are in.

Signature moments include a warm welcome during check-in, as well as staff recommendations and local maps highlighting neighborhood gems. During their stay, guests enjoy expansive seasonal food menus, as well as a beverage menu that includes a wide variety of locally brewed, distilled, and crafted drinks by local suppliers. Rooms feature a smuggler's treasure chest with a surprise treat. Art and books from local talent are on display throughout the hotel, and local experts lead activities and events. Guests tangibly experience Greene King’s commitment to sustainability through its use of local materials, produce, talent, and partnerships, all designed to support the surrounding community. Upon departure, guests receive a personalized postcard.

In addition to the hotel experience moments, IDEO delivered branding recommendations for The Everly Hotels Collection, including visual identity and tone of voice that provide a cohesive look and feel for the collection of hotels while simultaneously showcasing each property's unique character. This was all packaged as an experience playbook, with design principles and briefs to help guide implementation decision-making across Greene King’s marketing, digital, interior design, and food and beverage teams.

A few months after the project ended, Greene King launched The Everly Hotels Collection. Its pilot hotel, The White Horses in Rottingdean, East Sussex, opened within the year. The new brand and guest experience strengthened bonds with Greene King’s loyal customers and first-time guests, ensuring the brand's relevance and appeal in a competitive market. More hotels are planned in the future in other scenic UK locations.  

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Greene King wanted guests to have a consistent brand experience while maintaining the storied charm that makes each property unique.

2 years

from concept to the launch of Greene King’s boutique Everly Hotels Collection

1 pilot hotel

The White Horses opened in Rottingdean in 2024

The hard drive space is full of companies competing over technology and performance. But iodyne wanted to add another layer, focusing on user needs and product aesthetics to better position the company to meet the values of a broader audience and create compelling new entrants into this crowded market.

Together, IDEO and iodyne jumped into in-depth discovery research to learn more about the needs of their end users. The team sat down with photographers, videographers, and digital imaging technicians, asking questions about their file management systems, how they used hard drives in the field, and how they stored them for transport and at home. They also headed to the source, visiting studios and home office set-ups to understand the full range of potential use cases.

A few big discoveries leaped out. No one had a single storage solution to rely on. Users constantly transferred data from different hard drives designed for different purposes (in the field versus at home), accumulating hundreds of old hard drives over time. Traditional hard drives also don’t allow multiple users to work off them simultaneously or come with software systems that help keep projects and tasks organized, protected, and sharable. Meanwhile, the ever-shrinking size and weight of laptops—and people’s willingness to take them everywhere—set a new benchmark for portability, one that iodyne could lean into.

With these and other insights in hand, the team brought unrivaled performance and aesthetics together to create a far superior user experience. IDEO and iodyne developed Pro Data’s engineering architecture, collaborating on thermal performance analysis, material choice, inspection of sample parts, and even packaging design. By combining integrated venting, multiple laptop-quality fans, smart power management, and 20 thermal sensors, the team was able to minimize cooling fan loads and reduce noise and power consumption. A single, centralized, and consolidated storage space makes sharing data among teammates easy, too—up to four computers can connect to the Pro Data at the same time and access the same files. The redesigned Pro Data creates new value for consumers in a highly mobile, secure package that can go from desktop to backpack and back again.

The iodyne Pro Data hard drive launched in 2021 to overwhelmingly positive reviews. Storage Review wrote “Nothing else comes close to this level of performance in a package this size,” while Jemery Boros of StarGate Studios said “I don’t think I could have done the shoot without Pro Data. It was easy to use, fast, and kept all of our data safe on the other side of the world.” The drives have since been used in the making of major motion pictures from F1 to A Complete Unknown.

Spurred by Pro Data’s success, iodyne decided to create a second product with IDEO, a Pro Mini that could provide the same cutting-edge performance and sleek design but scaled down to fit the needs of customers who required less storage capacity in an even more portable package. Pairing Pro phone-quality industrial design with a unique internal solid-state cooling architecture that imposed key constraints on airflow was critical.

IDEO worked with iodyne to create the Pro Mini’s internal layout and collaborated with an emerging engineering company to incorporate novel solid-state cooling technology, positioning the vents to maximize airflow and optimizing how users physically interact with the device. The team also addressed users’ durability concerns, advising iodyne on part selection as samples came in from vendors. The new Pro Mini is set to ship in the second half of 2025.

Hard drives are essential tools of the trade for people with large troves of media to store and transfer, like photographers and videographers. But beyond rolls of masking tape and label makers, there isn’t an easy way to see what’s on each drive without literally going through them one by one.  

Traditional hard drives generate a lot of heat and need fans to cool them, making them bulky, loud, and slowing transfer speeds.  

Many external hard drives are treated like commodities. They’re designed for mass production rather than for durability and aesthetics.

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2 cutting-edge hard drives

to market in 3 years

LACDMH is the nation’s largest public mental health department, serving over 10 million people. The agency provides critical support for the most vulnerable, including staffing a toll-free, 24/7 Help Line. Since late 2024, more than 70 Field Intervention Teams—comprised of mental health clinicians (social workers, psychologists, licensed psychiatric technicians, and registered nurses) and community health workers (trained peers or community members with lived experience)—have been dispatched around the county to help de-escalate mental health crises quickly, compassionately, and without force.

Because those experiencing a crisis are often too disoriented, confused, or otherwise unable to seek help for themselves, IDEO’s communication strategy targeted reaching “trusted messengers”—parents, spouses, siblings, and friends of people who have a mood or personality disorder like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The campaign aimed to define mental health crises, help people understand what to expect when they call, build trust in FITs, and divert mental health crisis calls away from 911.

To understand what drives these specially trained mental health professionals to do this type of work—and what sparks trusted messengers to call for help—IDEO met and interviewed former clients and loved ones who had reached out to the county for support during a mental health crisis. The team also interviewed multiple FIT staff to learn more about how they approach clients and families.

The research inspired the communication strategy’s central idea: position FIT members as real-life superheroes and first responders. By associating FITs with that term, the campaign changes the narrative and communicates their compassion and expertise to those in crisis. Custom illustrated portraits feature actual FIT staff in strong, action-figure-style poses, while a bright, eye-catching color palette and clear, direct language convey confidence and inspire trust.

The team explored their initial design directions in a series of focus groups with LA residents, trusted messengers, and county and mental health workers to better understand the impact of the potential messaging and visuals. The research uncovered the importance of clarity, even in an inherently emotional situation. The  IDEO team discovered that transparency—and real personal stories—would be the key to building public trust in ACR.

Between March and June of 2025, the robust awareness campaign will run across LA County in a number of languages on city buses, in Metro stations, on social media, streaming TV,  radio, and more. An updated landing page on LACDMH’s website includes in-depth information and educational videos about mental health crises, as well as heartfelt testimonials from staff and former clients who have been helped by the service.

LA County Department of Mental Health created an innovative new program to provide urgent, compassionate care to Angelenos experiencing a mental health crisis but needed help driving awareness of its service across the region.

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Calling 911 is an entrenched behavior in an emergency. However, dispatching police officers who are not trained in mental health can make a bad situation worse. In 2022, 39 percent of people shot by LA police officers were in the midst of a mental health crisis.

172 million impressions

delivered via digital and physical ads across LA

50% increase

in calls to the ACR helpline, year-over-year, attributed to IDEO’s awareness messaging

24%

of Angelenos now name LACDMH as the first to call in a mental health crisis, leapfrogging 911 or the police, which slipped 14.3 points

IDEO organizational designer Mollie West Duffy doesn’t buy it. “By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk preventable mistakes,” she says. “We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to make work meaningful, and we are more likely to burn out.”

Last month, West and her coauthor Liz Fosslien released No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed, which argues for harnessing emotions to push your career forward. “Most of us have never learned how to do this in our professional lives, let alone been allowed to admit how much feelings at work matter,” she says. IDEO’s Anna Moore Silverstein sat down with Mollie to learn more.

What inspired you to write this book?

The inspiration for this book came from the fact that when Liz and I started our first jobs, we thought professionals did not fail, did not fuss, and certainly did not feel. But we soon realized this view was not only unrealistic, it stood in the way of our sense of fulfillment—and of our success. Our goal as we began researching No Hard Feelings was to better understand our emotions—when are they useful and when are they just noise? Can we mold them to change how we experience work?

Can you explain the concept of an emotional work culture?

Emotional culture is how and to what extent employees of a company express feelings at work. Every office has one, though few companies talk about emotional norms. Emotional culture affects how much we enjoy our jobs, how stressed we might feel, and our ability to do work well and on time.

To instantly get a sense for a particular office’s emotional culture, Wharton professor Adam Grant suggests you say to an employee,“Tell me a story about something that would only happen here.” For example, at IDEO’s New York studio, Thursday lunches are dedicated to Make(believe) time. Creative activities like aromatic fingerpainting, writing group haiku poems, and blind contour drawing help employees get goofy. You can also look for more subtle cues that indicate what kind of emotions are acceptable in a work space. Do your coworkers seem more comfortable expressing frustration or joy? Are there tissues in meeting rooms (which might indicate it’s okay to cry)? Is it cool to respond to emails with a funny cat GIF?

Why does emotional culture matter so much?

When we feel supported and motivated by our colleagues, we are happier, more productive, and stick around longer. We’re also healthier and better able to cope with job stress. And when our bosses respond to our mistakes with patience instead of fury, we trust them more.

As an org designer, you help people design and scale change in their organizations, and change can be challenging. How do you account for emotions in client work?

Something we say a lot at IDEO is “Change is beautiful.” But change is also uncomfortable, and can be an emotional roller coaster

To help with this emotional journey, we try to set time for weekly check-ins. On my last project, we had a retrospective every Friday that included the client team. We asked everyone to go around and share one thing that went well, one thing they’d like to change, and their overall feelings about the week. This helped us all share our feelings in a dedicated time, so it felt less awkward.

I also have had to work on my own emotions with clients. I tend to be an under-emoter, which means I process my feelings inside. (You can take our emotional expression tendency assessment to see if you are an over-emoter or an under-emoter). So I’m working on trying to warm more quickly. I try to verbalize how excited I’m feeling about a project and a team, to help get our energy up. I also try to verbalize when I’m feeling overwhelmed and I need more help. It’s an ongoing process!

Are there other exercises you would recommend to help a company build a better emotional culture?

Awareness is a really powerful communication tool. Many of the CEOs interviewed by New York Times columnist Adam Bryant create “user manuals” or “how to work with me” guides to make collaboration easier. It’s one of the best ways to pre-empt potential misunderstandings—or hurt feelings. To achieve the same with your team, Adam recommends blocking off an hour to answer the questions below.

What everyone should know about you:

1. What are some honest, unfiltered things about you?
2. What drives you nuts?
3. What are your quirks?
4. What qualities do you particularly value in people who work with you?
5. What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?

How to work with you:

1. What’s the best way to communicate with you?
2. What hours do we want to work together? Where and how do we want to work (same room, what kinds of meetings, what kinds of file sharing, etc)?
3. What are our goals for this team? What are our concerns about this team?
4. How will we make decisions? What types of decisions need consensus? How will we deal with conflict?
5. How do we want to give and receive feedback (one-on-one, in a group, informally, or during a specified time each week)?

For me, answering these questions was about revealing that I warm up to people slowly. Once people get to know me, I think they find that I’m warm, generous, and even silly. But I can come across as more reserved and serious at first. For Liz, it was about showing people that she loves to be left alone when she works. For people who enjoy frequently emailing or messaging one another, her behavior could come across as antisocial, but she’s a person who needs to put her head down to work—cognitive switching is a productivity sinkhole.

Exercises like these make it easy for people to be honest up front, and set an emotional tone for your team or office. By sharing early, you can make it easier to meet people where they are, and set the stage for sharing of feelings and preferences throughout the process.

Emotions affect so many parts of work, from collaboration to decision-making, motivation, and communication between employees and managers. But in American work culture, “emotional” can be a dirty word. There’s a misconception that expressing feelings is unprofessional or out of place in the office.

At IDEO, we’re often asked to share what we know about design thinking. We’ve developed designthinking.ideo.com in response to that request. On the site we introduce design thinking, how it came to be, how it is being used, and steps and tools for mastering it. You’ll find our particular take on design thinking, as well as the perspectives of others.

Creativity Challenge # 7: Eliminate hierarchy to improve idea flow.

While Speed Dating is useful in situations where people don’t know each other well, sometimes in group meetings you will encounter the opposite problem: a group where people know each other too well. Or, more specifically, a group in which hierarchy is so well established that the more junior members in the room self-edit and defer to the executives rather than putting their best ideas on the table.

To reduce hierarchy (which inhibits conversation) and self-censoring (which is equally limiting), the d.school has recently been experimenting with a “nickname warm-up.” Using a stack of colorful names the instructors have prepared in advance, the activity is a way to temporarily level out the organization during a creative working session. Each participant is given a persona to allow them to “try on” new behaviors.

Tool: Nickname Warm-up
Participants: Groups of 6-12 people per facilitator
Time: A few minutes per person
Supplies: Nametags for each person with the fake names written out. A hat and a ball for each facilitator.

Instructions

Step 1: Each participant reaches into the hat, draws out a name tag, and puts it on. Use names that lend themselves to humor and emotion. Teams tend to produce their best work when the group is having fun. Some of the monikers can imply a big dose of street credibility, while others suggest quirky personalities. For example: Dr. Fabulous, Squirt, Mr. Big Heart, The Clumsy Entertainer, or The Rooster.

Step 2: The facilitator gathers the group in a circle and tosses the ball. Whoever catches it introduces themselves using their new nickname and then tells a short story (created on the spot) about how they acquired this nickname as a child.

Step 3: After their self-introduction, they toss the ball to a new person, until everyone has had a chance to share their new name and story.

Step 4: The rule for the rest of the workshop—strictly enforced—is that everyone must use only these nicknames when referring to themselves or others.

Tips from the Field

Do the nametags work? Although this is a relatively new exercise, experience so far suggests that the answer is yes. At a recent management event, the CEO of a global hospitality company drew the “Squirt” nickname. There was a pregnant pause in the room as everyone waited to see how he would react. But he gamely played along through the rest of the workshop, and the organizers felt it contributed to an open environment in which people could speak freely.

The goal is to flatten out the hierarchy, so it’s important to get the senior people in the room to participate. Leading by example will naturally break some of the barriers to free-flowing collaboration.

This post was taken from Chapter 7 of Creative Confidence. Purchase the book for more on how to use creativity to solve problems, or read more from this series of creative exercises on the IDEO blog.

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Everyone is creative. This belief runs through everything we do at IDEO, and in 2013, it led my brother David and me to write a book that would help others—even those who don’t think of themselves as “creative types”—to unleash their creative potential. Creative Confidence has inspired thousands of people to adopt a creative mindset and apply it to the diverse real-world challenges they face. In this series, we’ll share some exercises from the book that can help you approach your challenges from a new perspective.

As leaders at the CoLab, IDEO’s platform for collaborative impact, we’re familiar with tension in all its forms. CoLab brings together organizations from across industries to focus on tough challenges, from designing for the circular economy to opening our financial systems. During design sprints, small teams build prototypes to explore new opportunities. Given that team members are often industry competitors with divergent approaches and ideas, tension tends to arise. We notice participants are often used to acting with the interests of their business first, rather than seeing the collaborative potential.

In order to create the impact we’re striving for at CoLab, we need to meet this tension head-on and create ways of moving forward. No matter what you’re designing or who you’re designing alongside—be it a colleague or another organization—here are four quick tips for adopting this mindset and productively addressing tension.

Observe the dynamic

Though tension can sometimes make us want to jump into action to resolve it, there’s value in sitting back, too. Try answering the following questions for yourself: What opinion is each team member pushing forward? Why might they have this view?

Paying attention helps you establish empathy. As designers, we use empathy not only to deeply understand the realities of the people we’re designing for, but also the realities of those we’re designing with. Even if you disagree, understanding why a teammate might have a certain opinion can help you create solutions that ultimately meet a need that you might not have noticed alone.

Give it a name

Once you’ve spent time observing, try naming the tension out loud or writing it down on a piece of paper. Saying or jotting down, “There’s tension around X right now,” or simply, “I’m feeling tension,” externalizes the tension. It’s is no longer this abstract, all-encompassing feeling. The tension is a named, tangible thing that the team can hear and see — not just feel — and therefore more objectively address through listening, dialogue, or compromise. In fact, mapping out seemingly conflicting interests or goals is a great tool for synthesis and identifying opportunities for design.

Just start making

Tension frequently arises when teams are trying to align on a shared vision or strategy. After all, when there are various stakeholders involved, they’ll likely have a variety of approaches. But it’s draining to debate things like your purpose or mission statement all day long. Reaching consensus can take hours, and may not even be useful at such an early stage before teams have had a chance to validate concepts through building.

It may seem counterintuitive, but to move teams through this tension, we recommend to just start doing. Whether it’s a whiteboard sketch or a model made of construction paper and glue, acts of making can offer clarity to subjective, “big picture” items. Shifting your mental focus from defining to doing has the power to shift a team’s dynamic.

Assume good intent

Though tension can sometimes feel like opposition, it often happens because teammates are passionate about the same thing. They may just want to apply or direct this shared passion in different ways. When things get tense, remember that you’re all working towards the same goal, and that the tension is likely not about you. Don’t take it personally.

Reinforce this “oneness” and good intent through language or actions. Try this: “I’m glad we’re in the same room solving this problem together.”

The next time things get tense, try not to jump into defense mode or sink down in your chair. Tension in team environments is inevitable because each of us bring a different set of experiences and perspectives to the table (so don’t crawl under it). As a team committed to collaboration across organizations that wouldn’t otherwise work together, we’ll keep embracing tension to get to the impact we all want to see in the world.

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Tension in a team environment can make us nervously glance at the clock, play mediator, get defensive, or cling to the tried-and-true. But tension isn't always so bad (you can unclench your jaw now). In fact, we’ve found that some of our greatest work has come from embracing—even seeking out—these difficult moments.

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.