Life Technologies, a global biotech company that supplies scientists with products and services, needed to grow big, from a $4 billion to a $10 billion enterprise. So it hired IDEO to help seed innovation across the company.

"When we started out, it was an R&D thing for driving innovation in new products. Now it’s not just R&D; user-centered innovation is a central part of our culture. It’s what we do throughout the organization," said Amy Cuneo, Associate Director, Customer Insights.

Over a three-year engagement, IDEO helped transform Life Technologies’ corporate culture through the introduction of User-Centered Innovation (UCI), an optimistic, experiential approach to problem-solving. Far outperforming its ambitious goal, Life Technologies is now a $13.6 billion company and uses UCI to inspire innovation throughout the 10,000-person organization.

After working with Life Technologies, IDEO designers came up with three products that have gone to market, including, a new bottle that showcases superior handling and storage, easier identification, and additional room for supplements. And Life Technologies has transformed from a company that aspires to focus on customers to one that truly does.

Unplanned pregnancies are a big problem in the US, especially among unmarried 18- to 29-year-olds. Seven in 10 pregnancies in this demographic are unplanned, a statistic that applies to women of all ethnicities and socioeconomic levels. Complicating matters are the social tension between abstinence-only and contraception-inclusive education, and the difficulty and expense associated with obtaining prescription birth control.

Since 2009, IDEO has worked closely with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit NGO, to address this pressing social challenge. One of the first insights on the project was identifying the need for comprehensive birth control support. Designers looked at ways to transform birth control from a prescription (a piece of paper that is handed to you by a doctor) into a subscription (a program that ensures you start using birth control, use it correctly, and migrate to more effective methods).

Given the complex and potentially overwhelming subject matter, the IDEO team interviewed women in the target demographic; talked with doctors, counselors, and other experts with varying opinions about birth control; and hosted roundtable discussions. They developed several concepts and scenarios that allowed members of the National Campaign to see sex and pregnancy through the eyes of the young women they’re working to reach.

Research and prototyping efforts led to the design of Bedsider, a multi-touchpoint birth control support system with a carefully crafted sex-positive brand, which is uncommon for the healthcare industry. Bedsider focuses on five key areas (awareness, motivational drivers, digital offerings, services, and loyalty) and acts as a vehicle for behavioral change that’s flexible, with room to grow into a much larger movement.

The Ad Council and the National Campaign debuted a multiyear, multimedia public service campaign in November 2011. The Bedsider website offers comprehensive education about existing birth control methods. This includes opt-in reminder services, personal stories from women across the country on why they chose a particular method, a phone service that provides information in both English and Spanish, features such as “Fact or Fiction” (hilarious animated clips debunking popular myths), a “Frisky Friday” newsletter, and more.

Bedsider has launched nationally with the help of an Ad Council campaign that drives sexually active women ages 18–24 to Bedsider.org. The multimedia Public Service Announcement effort includes television, radio, print, web, and nontraditional advertising, as well as an integrated social media program.

“We hope that Bedsider will be a useful tool for women to learn about their birth control options, better manage their birth control, and in the process avoid getting pregnant until they’re ready,” said Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast in its monthly newsletter. Planned Parenthood and Philliber Research Associates joined forces with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy to help test and evaluate Bedsider.

Through a social media campaign called #ThxBirthControl, people are voicing their thoughts about what birth control has made possible for women, men, families, and society. It’s all part of Thanks, Birth Control Day, launched in November 2013 as part of a continuing initiative to encourage positive conversations and more consistent use of birth control by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. To celebrate the movement, IDEO wrote, scored, and performed an animated musical featuring condoms and pill packs dancing the cancan.

According to an independent evaluation of the program, Bedsider is the first digital intervention in reproductive health in the U.S.—with adults as an audience—that has shown to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Turns out that when women and men have the ability to plan, prevent, or space pregnancies, they’re more likely to finish school, achieve their goals, and ultimately have healthier families, according to the nonprofit organization.

Chicago’s federally funded, citywide bike-sharing service, called Divvy, makes a fleet of bicycles available to commuters and tourists 24 hours a day. Alta Bicycle Share (which runs bike-sharing systems in Boston, the Bay Area, DC, and New York City) collaborated with IDEO to spread Divvy’s message, “Divide and Share!” to the cyclists and would-be cyclists of Chicago through the brand.

The new brand would appear on its bikes, stations, company vans, member fobs, and website—and it needed to be ready to hit the streets in just six months. IDEO partnered with local brand strategy studio Firebelly Design to collaborate on a solution. IDEO led the early research, conceptual brand development, and naming phase of the project; the Firebelly team led the visual design and developed the brand guidelines.

The brand has become a functional and fun part of Chicago’s transportation landscape and has been embraced by Chicago commuters. Just three weeks after it launched, the City of Chicago called the Divvy Bikes program the busiest bike-sharing system in the world. Six months into the service, enthusiastic cyclists have racked up over 780,000 trips and 1.7 million-plus miles, and over 12,000 Chicagoans have become members.

‍

After watching her husband suffer from cancer, Tomoko Namba, founder of Japan’s leading mobile internet company, DeNA, wanted to empower people with better health information to aid them in making medical decisions. DeNA partnered with IDEO to help with the design of a genetic test that had mass-market appeal.

Together, IDEO and DeNA designed all the consumer touchpoints from the ground up for the expanding new business, called MYCODE. The aim was not only to create a functioning, usable product, but also to introduce the notion of genetic testing in a privacy-sensitive country that for the most part, hadn’t yet considered it an option. What would make MYCODE resonate with mass-market Japan? How could genetic testing results be shared in a way that was accurate but also actionable and motivating?

The team worked with doctors, nutritionists, medical governing bodies, and more, setting up fast, iterative cycles, and conceptualizing and prototyping almost every aspect of MYCODE in just 16 weeks. Data design, home testing experience, purchase flow, and how the service would be used over the long-term were all considered, along with traditional branding elements, like name, logo, and visual identity.

The result is a product that puts reliable genetic information into the hands of Japanese consumers, helping them to make more informed healthcare decisions. MYCODE went to market in August 2014, just nine months after the engagement with IDEO began. Not only did MYCODE fulfill Namba’s mission, it helped the company find new ways to grow: Upon announcement of the new service, DeNA’s share price jumped 6.7 percent.

In a studio like ours, with a very distinctive creative culture, where people feel like they have ownership over their workspace, a massive, group art project would help us say goodbye together. Not only would it be one last hurrah for this studio, but it would also help reinforce the idea that our culture would be moving with us to the next space.

For years, our tradition at the Cambridge studio has been to reinvent our kitchen wall every six months or so. We’ve created everything from a hand-cut monster wall to a science fiction fine art series (think Yoda portraits in renaissance style). Knowing this mural would be the studio’s last, we wanted to create something that made people think and talk about design—reinforcing our values—and, of course, something big enough for everyone to be involved.

We also wanted to leverage our skillsets—Grace’s in drawing and painting, Greg’s in industrial design and fabrication—to pull together the project. At the time, Grace had been working on a series of dot drawings that caught Greg’s eye. They mimicked that phenomenon in nature when many tiny things form a greater whole. That seemed like a great metaphor for celebrating the multidisciplinary magic of the studio. So we decided to create a drawing as a base, and then scale it up into a wooden dowel installation.

To get started, Grace created the dot drawing (below on the left) that served as a guide for the dowels. She makes these dot drawings (one of which the mural is based on) over several hours of repetitive stippling. First, she measures the margins of the paper using a ruler as a guide, then forms all of the dots by keeping her hand as straight as possible.

We then scanned the drawing and used a Processing script that located the coordinates of each dot. Next, we used a custom Grasshopper script to place a circle at each centroid and extrude it up to the 3d surface that we created in Rhino. From there, we just exported the lengths of the dowels in order of installation to a CSV file for Chop-Chop, our cutting machine.

If we could design a method to cut the dowels in order, and then get the installers to place them in that same order, we’d be in business. To do it, we needed some way of organizing the dots into rows for the installers to follow—even though they’re not a perfect grid, since they were drawn by hand. By using Grasshopper script, we were able to find logical rows within the hand-drawn pattern.

Since the rows’ zig-zag route only appears in the software, we needed some type of marker for our installers to follow. By using a dot, double-dot, or no-dot marking scheme, we made it easy for our teammates to to identify and stay in their row, even if it zig-zagged.

The panel production took us seven days. We used a ShopBot Alpha to mill each hole, then made a second pass to mark the hole with the appropriate dot pattern.

Each of the 20,000 dowels is a different length, so we built a CNC bandsaw to help us cut them all. After sketching a few concepts, we settled on a JET bandsaw augmented with a custom digital stop.

We created the digital stop using parts we designed and 3D printed, as well as stock parts from Adafruit, Misumi, McMaster-Carr, SparkFun, and Arduino. Arduino reads the length of each dowel from the SD card, then turns a stepper motor and timing belt, moving the stop to the correct length. Once the dowel is cut, the miter sled hits a switch and tells the stop to move to the next position. Once we were in a rhythm, the process was pretty smooth.

One of the goals of this mural was to maintain the feeling of human touch that’s so obvious in the original drawing once we scaled it up to the mural. So we decided to design a straightforward process for our installers, and then chalk up any misplacements to the artistry of human error. As we chopped the dowels, we slotted them into trays marked with row number, tray number (some rows had up to 6 trays), and the dot scheme, so the installer knew where to start.

Four months later, we were ready for the big install. We invited the entire studio to come in on a Saturday morning, and we were blown away by the number of people who trickled in. Before we knew it, close to 40 people were helping out. Some heroes even stayed until 2 a.m. There were people hammering in dowels, cutting on Chop-Chop, filling trays, documenting with photo and video, and making beer runs. The assembly lines were staggeringly efficient and fun. It was a robot love fest.

We had hoped that there may be some errors in the process and we were happy to see them. You can find these beauty marks where the surface of the dowels gets uneven—that kind of inconsistency is impossible to predict or design, and it completely enhanced the beauty of the piece. Working together with the studio on a piece defined by the installers was a true bonding experience. It was an inspiring weekend for all of us, and we know that we’ll carry that with us in our move around the corner.

Music by Dan Deruntz. Footage by Chris Wright, Tom Kershaw, Dirk Ahlgrim, and Greg Wolos.

Materials: 20,928 birch dowels, 5/16” diameter; 7 MDF Panels, painted white; jet bandsaw; custom linear slide; Arduino MEGA; Big Easy Stepper Driver; Adafruit LED display; stepper motor; timing belt and pulleys; limit switches; custom 3D printed parts

Software: Rhino, Grasshopper, Processing, Arduino

Suppliers: Adafruit, Misumi, McMaster-Carr, SparkFun, Jet Tools

‍

As we prepare to move from our current Cambridge studio into a new space around the corner, we can’t help but think of it as a place where many of us began our IDEO journey—sneaking up to the roof for sunset cocktails and riding in the freight elevator to the pop-up gallery in the basement. We knew giving it a proper goodbye should mean involving everyone.

Here's an example: When I was working as a chef in fine dining, I set out to reinvent a classic—my all-time fave—the bagel, lox, and cream cheese sandwich.

My former boss, Chef Joan Roca, once told me that his most prized dining experience was when he ate the best version of a beloved dish:

"For me, there is nothing like eating the best bowl of spaghetti Bolognese I've ever tried—I don't care if you've come up with the most revolutionary dish made from watermelon and chicken feet, it just doesn't resonate in my memory banks like the familiar flavors of Bolognese do."

The process of reinvention or "deconstruction" is fairly common practice in the modern kitchen. Once you've deconstructed something, it unlocks myriad ideas. Here's what design thinking looks like in the kitchen, as expressed through a new version of the classic breakfast sandwich.

1. DEFINE THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: REINVENTING THE BAGEL SANDWICH

Bagel, lox, and cream cheese immediately transports me to the kitchen table at my Nana's house on a Saturday morning. The flavors are classic, yet sophisticated; a perfect dish to deconstruct for a modern appetizer.

To help you play along, here's a brief definition of deconstruction in the chef's world. The concept, which was made famous by catalan chef Ferran Adria, is to reimagine the elements of an established dish in order to create something new. I love deconstruction because it allows me play with one of my favorite elements of cooking and eating—memory.

2. DESIGN RESEARCH

The next step in recreating the bagel, lox, and cream cheese sandwich was to look into the origins and variations of the dish. I wasn't surprised to learn that the word "Lox" stems from the Yiddish word for salmon, “laks”. (There are Scandinavian roots, too, where fishermen preserved salmon in saltwater brine).

What I didn't know was that in 1869, the transcontinental railroad began transporting barrels of salted salmon—giving rise to its popularity in New York City, especially among the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came over to the U.S. with a taste for cured and smoked fish.

As for the remaining ingredients: Bagels were first seen on the silk route in China, and then refined in Italy in the 14th century. My polish grandfather told me he used to buy "hard bagels with a huge hole" as a child in Radom, Poland. Capers came from Italy, cream cheese has roots in Britain, and tomatoes came from the new world.

So, none of the key ingredients to the sandwich come from New York City, but it was New Yorkers who put them together. The fact that the combo wasn't "old country" made me more relaxed about reinventing it—at least I knew that my version wasn't bastardizing some 1000-year-old dish, the dish itself had always been a food bastard.

I realized that in order to successfully transport myself back to my grandmother's kitchen table, I had to leave the core elements in their original, unadulterated form somewhere in the dish.

I looked at more than 50 restaurant versions and cookbook recipes for bagels, lox, and cream cheese. Then, I extracted all of the possible elements and techniques that went into the sandwich.

The ingredients included: lemon, lime, chili pepper, black ground pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper, red onions, white onions, radish, avocado, cucumber, butter, cream cheese, capers, caperberries, olives, pickled scallions, hard boiled egg, chives, dill, tomato. I looked at the whole spectrum of preparations that were applied to each ingredient on my list: fried, scrambled, or hard-boiled eggs; raw, baked, or smoked salmon; pickled or marinated vegetables. There was an almost endless variety of combinations!

3. SYNTHESIS

I created a spreadsheet with the list of ingredients and techniques I'd compiled in my research. The lefthand column listed each possible ingredient; the middle column listed the traditional preparations for each ingredient; and the righthand column listed the options for modern techniques that could be applied in place of the traditional ones.

4. ITERATION (AND FAILURE)

I began to deconstruct the dish ingredient by ingredient, deciding if and how I was going to affect each preparation and presentation. Sometimes I chose dramatic changes like converting drops of lemon juice into an icy lemon granita or transforming smoked salmon into an aerated mousse shot from and ISI foamer. But I also used more common techniques: an alternative cut on a cucumber, dehydration of fresh onions to make chips and powder; crumbled and sautéed bagel in olive oil. Some ingredients were left untouched like the black pepper or some were simply substituted like using marinated cherry tomatoes instead of sliced tomatoes.

I prototyped 10 to 12 iterations of each ingredient before settling on a final version. Conceiving a modern version of the dish that triggered my childhood memory was a bigger challenge than I had imagined. The first 4 to 5 prototypes sacrificed flavor for fancy techniques. One of the versions I came up with was just a bunch of powders—terrible!

Finally, I realized that in order to successfully transport myself back to my grandmother's formica kitchen table, I had to leave the core elements—bagel, lox, and cream cheese—in their original, unadulterated form somewhere in the dish.

5. IMPLEMENTATION

My final version of the dish was a fluid mix of old and new: the presentation and techniques of the dish placed it strongly in the modern kitchen while the flavors remained old-world.

The final version included smoked salmon, toasted bagel, cherry tomato, fresh dill and Philadelphia cream cheese. It also featured smoked salmon rillettes; sieved egg whites and yolks; a Meyer lemon granita; dehydrated purple onions; powdered chives, powdered tomato, and powdered lemon zest (some of the powders made the final cut!); sweet, fried capers; cucumber ribbons, pickled shallots and nitro-dill cream cheese (cream cheese of the future).

When I sat down to enjoy the dish, I could almost hear my Polish Nana telling me, "Ess, mein shayna yingele, ess." (Eat, my beautiful child, eat.) And so I did.

Hi, I'm Danny, the culinary resident in IDEO San Francisco's Food Studio. I've been cooking professionally for many years, and now that I'm here, I've discovered that designers and chefs have a lot in common. We both sketch out initial ideas and then iterate quickly until the product is tasty and ready to consume.

What does the Imagination Institute do?

We are looking at how we measure imagination, so we can explore ways to increase it. The other part of our activity is studying how imagination plays a role in different fields. For this, we’ve been running events (like the one you attended) in which we gather leaders in domains such as education, futurology, psychology, physics, even comedy.

Why pull from different disciplines?

We want to understand what kind of mind is best suited for creating progress within these specific fields. The hope is that we could get some idea of how to develop that kind of imagination in schools. In the school system at the moment, it’s one-size-fits-all. But individual differences matter!

What would you teach, if you were trying to get more creativity into schools?

The value of personal expression. There are so many forces in our lives that put other people’s words in our head. But creativity research findings show how important it is to be able to insulate yourself, and not be contaminated by other selves. Often the best way we can help others is by developing our highest potentialities to their fullest, and schools are doing a pretty crummy job of that at the moment.

Business leaders want the outputs of creativity, but they often have an unconscious bias against creative behaviors and personalities

How do you continue to be inspired by others without losing yourself?

If you are secure in your sense of self, you can be open to new experiences. It’s the people who have the most fragile egos who are insecure and not creative because they are so scared that they could be wrong.

Tell me more about openness to experience. You mention that a lot.

Openness to experience is a personality trait that can be measured. It has been shown to be the number one predictor of creativity. To be creative, you need to constantly be growing. Openness allows that.

Who’s your psychology hero?

I am hugely interested in Maslow and the humanistic psychologists of the 50s and 60s. When they talked about creativity, they viewed it as the height of being. All these ideas are so relevant today, in our age of constant anxiety, with all the pressure to pay attention to other people’s goals.

What’s your take on creativity?

It’s a very vulnerable way to be—to be curious, and a little crazy.

Embracing the messiness of your mind.

Business leaders ask for creativity, but I think people are actually conflicted about what they really want. They want the outputs of creativity but they often have an unconscious bias against creative behaviors and personalities.

Want to know more about how to flex your creative muscle? Go buy Scott’s book, Wired To Create.

I came across psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman at an event hosted by the Imagination Institute, where Kaufman is scientific director. Before being locked in a room for two days to discuss the philosophy and psychology of education, all participants had their brains scanned in an MRI machine. Only later did I realize this was typical Kaufman: He’s made a career of fearlessly mixing hard science with culture to create fresh angles on a question IDEO asks on a regular basis: How can we all be more creative?

Two weeks ago, I was witness to such a moment myself. A colleague and friend, the imaginative Mr. Brown, was doodling a mob of amiable monsters and charming creatures with ink, a brush, and some paper.

Pretty, yes. Cute, maybe. But it was when he was cleaning up that he came across a real gem: With ink-stained hands, he scrunched some paper towel to mop up the inky mess. He dabbed the offensive blob, gave a little twist and twirl with the paper towel, and lifted his hand away.

Underneath shone a ravishing vortex which drew one’s imagination into its depths. Not one to shy away from allowing his imagination to wander, he kept twirling, twisting, and whirling.

Being the cheap bugger that I am, and living in a home filled with empty walls, when I spied these beauties I immediately requested if I could have one once he was done.

His inky booboos are now hanging at home—a prized possession.

It goes without saying that some of the best ideas were borne from a fortuitous mistake: Alexander Fleming had his mold, Archimedes submerged himself in a bath, and Spencer Silver accidently created the perfect adhesive for Post-it notes (IDEO thanks you, Mr Silver).

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.