Master Kong (known internationally as Tingyi Holding Corporation) is number one in market share in both instant noodles and ready-to-drink teas, with over $10 billion USD in annual revenue. While China has a rich tea culture, most sugar-free bottled tea on store shelves markets itself as “healthy” and “tasty.” Wanting to set itself apart from the competition by uncovering new consumer needs, Master Kong reached out to IDEO. Together, Master Kong and IDEO immersed themselves in modern Chinese tea culture and built a new, premium, sugar-free bottled tea brand that resonates deeply with contemporary tea drinkers. ‍

During research, the combined IDEO/Master Kong team took a two-pronged approach to uncovering new opportunities: industry exploration and consumer research. The team visited various tea-related businesses, from traditional tea houses to modern beverage shops, as well as “third place” tea spaces outside of home or work. They also conducted in-depth, in-home interviews with consumers with various levels of interest in tea, delving deeply into their daily routines to better understand their lifestyles and any emotional or functional needs related to tea.

The team discovered that the essence of Chinese tea culture resonated with contemporary consumers’ longing for authenticity, simplicity, and physical rejuvenation in their fast-paced lives. This insight presented a unique opportunity for Master Kong. Instead of positioning its new sugar-free tea brand as merely a “healthy alternative” to other beverages,  it could spark a meaningful connection to tea culture, seamlessly integrating into various moments of modern life.  

Armed with this insight, IDEO designers and dozens of Master Kong beverage team members participated in a series of immersive, hands-on tea innovation workshops. Teams of experts from R&D, marketing, supply chain, and other company departments temporarily set aside their job titles to explore, iterate, and refine dozens of new tea concepts that were commercially viable, feasible for mass production, and aligned with consumer needs. The cross-departmental collaboration allowed for a broad mix of perspectives, experiences, and expertise, enriching the innovation process.

The co-creation sessions led to a new sugar-free tea product and flagship brand called Cha De Chuan Ren (“Descendants of the Tea”), which celebrates fine, origin-sourced tea and the passion and dedication of tea farmers. The novel concept resonated strongly with consumers and was validated during subsequent rounds of quantitative market testing, ensuring its relevance and market potential.

Cha De Chuan Ren launched with two signature flavors: Tieguanyin (green tea) from Fujian and Pu’er (black tea) from Yunnan. The unique mottled bottle design pays tribute to traditional handcrafted glass containers and the handiwork of tea farmers. The tactile paper label, which features Jia Ma-inspired woodblock illustrations of local tea fields and tea farmers’ hands, nods to the artisanal craft of tea making and the source of the tea inside.

“Descendants of the Tea” debuted on Tmall in April 2024. It claimed the top spot on the commerce site’s Tea Beverage V-List in August and September. Offline, it launched in FamilyMart convenience stores in May and has since expanded nationwide. The new brand received a 2024 Red Dot Award for “Brands & Communication Design.”

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“We are honored to collaborate with IDEO, a global leader in innovation, as our strategic partner. ‘Descendants of the Tea’ is not just an exceptional product but also a tribute to the rich heritage of tea culture. Only by continuously integrating culinary traditions with innovation can we sustainably meet consumers’ true needs.”

Richard Chen
‍CEO, Master Kong (Tingyi Holding Corporation)

“Innovation is incredibly fragile. If even one leader is unsupportive or hesitant, the culture of innovation can collapse. I always encourage my team to take risks, as long as they’re not high stakes. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? At the very least, we’ll have a fair chance at creating something new.”

Wei Hong-Chen
‍Chairman of Master Kong Beverage Holdings Co., Ltd.

Sugary bottled teas were once very popular in China. Today, rising consumer demand for healthier beverage options has expanded the market for sugar-free tea.

#1

on Tmall’s Tea Beverage V-List, August- September 2024

2024 Red Dot Award Winner

‍for Brands & Communication Design

Twenty years ago, carrying a single-use plastic water bottle was a status symbol—no more. Growing awareness of the negative environmental impact of plastic pollution, combined with the adoption of healthier lifestyles and social media influencer trends, has made reusable water bottles “it” accessories for on-the-go consumers. While brands such as Stanley, Yeti, S’well, and Hydro Flask own the under-$100 market, fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, and Prada have etched out a new and growing market for high-end bottles that appeal to discerning, trend-conscious young people looking to perfect their hydration habits.

Spotting an opportunity to disrupt the predominantly utilitarian water bottle market, Steinmann partnered closely with IDEO, tasking the team with developing an industrial design that perfected the tactile and sensory user experience, from drinking and carrying to disassembling and cleaning thoroughly. The collaboration deepened over time, with Steinmann and IDEO working together to develop the high-level engineering concept, the OKAPA logo mark, and packaging ideas.

Key user-centered features of the OKAPA bottle include a medical-grade German borosilicate glass interior for superior taste of hot or cold beverages with no lingering odors; a Swiss-engineered thermoplastic lockable and leak-proof tilt cap that can be easily operated with one hand when driving or doing other activities; and an ergonomically shaped mouthpiece for a pleasurable drinking experience. Precision-engineered for maximum longevity, the inner glass bottle is suspended via a shock-absorbing system inside a bead-blasted, extruded, and anodized aluminum outer shell. Eight modular parts come apart easily for either a quick or thorough cleaning.

At its core, the OKAPA bottle elevates an everyday ritual through meticulous design and uncompromising engineering. Launched in January 2025, the new bottles are available in eight contemporary colorways curated by renowned color and materials specialist Beatrice Santiccioli (BSD), including Misti Pinku, Goldie Samba, and Fetishe Noir, among others.

In the US, the reusable water bottle market is estimated to increase from $10.2B in 2024 to $14.1B by 2031, with 69 percent of Gen Zers owning at least one. Customization trends, such as personalized design and branding, are anticipated to boost the market, ripe territory for disruptive startups such as OKAPA. (Persistence Market Research)

Once a practical accessory for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts, reusable water bottles have gone mainstream. Yet none check all the boxes in terms of purity of taste, hygiene, durability, functionality, and beauty.

8

modular pieces ensure hygienic cleaning is quick and easy

100%

recyclable materials in each bottle

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s mission is to interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science. Over its 110-plus-year history, its offerings grew to include everything from a quarterly magazine, popular websites and apps with millions of users (Merlin, eBird), partnerships with outside organizations, and the world’s largest database of photographs and audio recordings of birds. This abundance is a testament to the passionate enthusiasm of its employees. Still, it confused potential members and led to siloed internal efforts, preventing the Lab from advancing its urgent collective vision. “Birds and biodiversity are in peril,” said Executive Director Dr. Ian Owens. “We must take radical action with a coherent vision, united voice, and purpose.”

IDEO began by helping the Lab better define its audience. While primarily composed of people passionate about birds, IDEO discovered its larger audience was nature lovers interested in biodiversity, bioacoustics, conservation, and science. From there, IDEO created a brand strategy and architecture focused on helping the Lab streamline its efforts under the “One Lab” brand. The brand architecture visually articulated the relationship between Cornell University, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Lab’s many products and offerings. IDEO designed a comprehensive brand identity system to work across mediums, including a simplified logo system, new colors, type, graphic language, voice and tone, and key messaging.

When the Lab’s design team began implementing the new branding elements across its website and many digital products, it became clear that the organization also needed IDEO’s help in creating tools to facilitate cross-department collaboration. To better understand the day-to-day nuances of the organization, IDEO designers worked out of the Lab, co-creating a brand activation playbook. The playbook, launched in 2023, contains recommendations for new cross-functional working groups (partnerships, visual identity, and brand voice), as well as exercises and interactive tools designed to build trusting relationships, gain alignment, foster collaboration, and manage change at scale.

Post-collaboration, the Lab has applied the new brand across its website, apps including Merlin and eBird, Living Bird magazine, email and newsletter templates, and its line of merchandise. A new internal brand guidelines site has become central to employee onboarding, while new working groups are helping to bring down barriers between teams and spur collective action. Like a flock of birds, the Lab now sings one collective song.

The Cornell Lab’s 300+ scientists, professors, staff, and students were passionately dedicated to their individual team’s unique conservation projects, but segmented internal systems could stymie their collective impact.

1 brand

unifying 300+ employees and 8 departments

Founded in 2008, Ascend Public Charter Network prides itself on providing “rich, joyful learning experiences that unlock lives of boundless choice” for its students, 93 percent of whom identify as Black or Latinx. The organization is also proud of being Black-led: 78 percent of staff and 80 percent of the executive team are people of color. Using co-design and joy, IDEO held a mirror up to Ascend’s core optimistic spirit during a moment of anxiety and change, helping its new CEO, staff, students, and parents reflect a dynamic, collectively imagined vision.

While the project’s goal was serious, the combined team centered the collaboration on bringing back fun, beauty, and imagination to those who could use it most: educators. Through engaging interactive activities, the IDEO team invited principals, PTA members, student council representatives, and board members to join “organizationally sanctioned play” moments like creating collaged vision boards and writing poems about Ascend’s impact. These interventions helped burned-out educators escape the day-to-day tasks of running schools and dream expansively about Ascend’s future. The team also solicited written, visual, and audio stories, asking community members to describe Ascend at its very best.

Stitching together submissions from 551 students, 75 parents, and 16 staff members, the co-design sessions resulted in a powerful new purpose, mission, and values, as well as a vibrant visual language and activation tools to bring Ascend’s vision of a “dope,” “unapologetically Brooklyn” charter network to life. The joyful, eye-catching visuals are embedded throughout its 17 Brooklyn schools, staff recruiting and training materials, and digital presence.

Shortly after the collaboration with IDEO, Ascend received an unsolicited  $11 million donation from MacKenzie Scott's foundation, Yield Giving, the most significant gift the then-14-year-old institution had ever received. The pivotal funding will allow the organization, with its bold new “grown-up” vision, to focus on becoming the school of choice in Brooklyn by 2027.

In the summer of 2021, one in four K-12 teachers was ready to quit. Pandemic stressors and increased curriculum scrutiny were to blame, according to a 2021 Rand Survey.

In 2022, 44% of K-12 workers reported burnout, the most of any US professions the time, according to a Gallup Poll.

Pandemic exhaustion and leadership turnover left Ascend’s new CEO eager to align staff around an exciting new vision.

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$11M grant

Ascend received an $11M grant from the MacKenzie Scott Foundation a few months after the collaboration

1 collective vision

to guide a network of 17 schools

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Regardless of how much potential it holds, an idea in its early stages is like a flickering flame, easily extinguished by hesitation or misalignment.

Early-stage innovation is inherently fragile. It requires decision-makers to recognize this fragility and remain vigilant to potential oversights stemming from past success. Only then can organizations create the conditions of openness, encouragement, and support that nascent ideas need to take root and grow.

This is the story of how we helped a group of senior leaders move beyond the comfort of familiar formulas to create space for innovation.

Internal misalignment meets external pressure

In recent years, our client—a leading consumer goods company in China—had seen growth in its most successful product category begin to stall after decades of strong performance. In response, the company wanted to develop a new strategic offering in the same category to reignite sales. That’s where our collaboration began.

But from the outset, the project faced internal friction. The core challenge was aligning leadership levels on how to pursue future growth.

Senior executives prioritized scale: “Is the market big enough?” Earlier wins, where hero products had ridden the wave of urbanization to dominate their category, had shaped their expectations.

Business unit leaders, however, believed revitalizing the category required more than incremental change. They pushed to move beyond familiar playbooks and explore bolder directions, such as targeting higher-value customer groups. These approaches might not deliver immediate volume, but they offered long-term potential and a path to renewed relevance in a shifting market.

Yet, whenever these proposals reached the executive table, the conversation often came down to a single question: “How much volume can it deliver?” They dismissed ideas that didn’t meet past benchmarks before they had a chance to evolve.

Meanwhile, the market had already moved on. Competitors had introduced new offerings targeting younger middle-class consumers, with growing success—and our field research confirmed it. Across a wide range of households, we found consumers actively purchasing competitor products in the same category.

By the end of the research, the message was clear: the younger middle class represented a valuable growth opportunity. Whether the executive team could step beyond legacy benchmarks and make room for new thinking would shape not only this initiative but the future of the category and the company’s broader capacity to innovate.

Designing experiences that expand perspectives

Data and arguments weren’t enough to shift mindsets. So we turned to something more visceral: designing experiences to help leaders gently challenge their assumptions and expand their perspectives.

We kicked off a strategic workshop with an immersive exhibition in our IDEO Shanghai studio. The team turned key insights from internal research, market trends, and consumer home visits into tangible exhibits—concrete facts that couldn’t be ignored.

Some of the insights were blunt:

“Our so-called ‘new’ products are mostly cosmetic upgrades—not true innovations.”

Others hit harder:

“The biggest takeaway from this research? Young middle-class consumers are already buying products in this category—but not from us.”

Seeing these insights laid out physically prompted unfiltered reflection. The room fell quiet. One sticky note on a panel read: “Ouch.”

We followed with another activity—this time off-site. We took our clients to visit one of Shanghai’s most popular lifestyle destinations, known for its cutting-edge retail stores. Their task? Choose a gift they believed would resonate with a young middle-class consumer.

Many selections were easy to challenge: “Would this actually appeal to a young person?” Lively debates followed as our clients reflected on what younger consumers truly value.

One executive reflected aloud, “I’ve been in this industry for decades. But the pace of change is way beyond my experience... What should I do next? I really need to spend more time understanding this generation.”

A mindset shift was underway.

Building alignment through shared practice

As perspectives began to shift, we took the next step: building alignment through shared practices.

We designed a series of product innovation workshops. Participating client teams were intentionally diverse—spanning age groups, functions, and seniority levels—to simulate the kind of cross-functional collaboration innovation demands.

Each team was tasked with defining a product concept rooted in real consumer insight, building a quick prototype, and pitching their idea in a simulated live-streaming sales session to test resonance with the target audience.

The goal wasn’t to finalize a product. It was to rehearse the full cycle of consumer-centered innovation—from insight to positioning to storytelling.

To ground this work in real-life contexts, we recreated a series of “consumer life corners” in the space. Each corner depicted a typical lifestyle scenario based on our research, featuring everyday objects that illustrated the consumer’s routines and values.

For example, the “relaxed mom” corner included an air fryer, symbolizing this persona’s preference for convenience without compromising on quality.

Each scenario also included a puzzle. Certain key consumption choices—like what a young professional might eat for lunch during the workweek—were hidden behind covers. Teams need to decode them based on their understanding of consumers' true needs.

The exercise sparked rich dialogue. When a younger business unit leader suggested that busy professionals might opt for frozen konjac dumplings, a senior executive countered, waving a sandwich: “No way. There’s no time to cook those at noon!”

In those moments, hierarchy dissolved. Everyone was focused on a shared goal: What does the consumer actually need?

By the time teams took the stage for their live-stream-style pitches, the change was visible. The same executives who had once asked, “Is the market size big enough?” were now using phrases like “dopamine colors,” “punk wellness,” and “a feast for the eyes.”

The room buzzed with insight and energy.

Through this immersive journey, the executive team not only built a sharper understanding of the younger middle class, but also came to a deeper realization: bringing an innovation to life is far more difficult than it seems. 

As one senior marketing executive said, “I thought I understood young consumers and trends. But actually designing for them? That’s a whole different challenge.”

This shared understanding created space for innovation to flourish. Leadership greenlit and fully resourced the initiative to develop a strategic new product line targeting younger middle-class consumers. The client is also investing in broader product innovations across the company.

The larger win, however, was cultural. As a team, they learned how to protect—and nurture—the fragile spark of what’s next.
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‍“The Making of...” is a series of behind-the-scenes articles written by IDEO Shanghai designers about our innovation methods and work with major clients across industries in China. Read the original Chinese version here.

People often marvel at the impact of innovation once it lands, but reflect less on where it begins: with an idea.

Growing up with a Jetsonian vision of push-button dinners and automated cleaning, I imagined coming home to a house managed by a trusty humanoid helper. In hindsight, that glimpse of the future wasn’t a bold vision of what could be in 2040; it was a 1960s dream.

In our pursuit of future-forward thinking, we often find ourselves recycling outdated paradigms. This phenomenon, known as the “used future,” refers to the adoption of established ideas and models without critical examination of their current relevance or efficacy. First introduced by Sohail Inayatullah, a pioneer and leading voice in the field of futures studies, “used futures” are ideas about the future that we inherit without criticism, ideas that resonated in the past but are no longer fit for our emerging realities. The image of a humanoid robot tidying the home is just that—a nostalgic picture of tomorrow that distracts us from the more systemic innovations we need today. Which, given our current context, should look more like redesigning entire systems for living, rather than just one gadget for individual efficiency.

As a futurist, I am fascinated with the concept of the used future. Many leaders and organizations I work with unintentionally operate on autopilot, constantly recycling old beliefs and assumptions about what people want, what good or better looks like, or what technology should enable. Even futurists unthinkingly adopt concepts developed in different contexts and timelines, leading to solutions that are inappropriate or even detrimental to current needs. ​Designers who go after used futures are at risk of building yesterday’s dreams without realizing they're already stale. This is evident in many of the “redesigned” systems we see in today’s world:

• Urban planning that continues to favor car-centric infrastructure despite growing awareness of the benefits of pedestrian-friendly and sustainable transportation.
  
  
• Educational systems that still mirror the industrial revolution's factory model, emphasizing standardization and conformity over creativity and critical thinking.
  
  
• Healthcare that focuses on acute, episodic care, neglecting holistic, preventative, and community-based wellness and public health approaches.
  
  
• Office designs that prioritize “modernized” cubicles and centralized workplaces, overlooking the potential of hybrid models and third spaces, and ignoring costly commutes and work-life balance issues.

Each of these systems carries the DNA of an older future that doesn’t fit the reality we’re living in or the expectations we have for the future. Most attempts to redesign or evolve these systems and so many others are myopic and incremental at best—more akin to remixing previous fixes than driving paradigmatic change.

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It’s an easy mindset to slip into. Over many years of doing futuring work with clients and graduate students, I’ve returned to the same exercise. I ask them to close their eyes and  “imagine the year 2040.” Almost invariably, their minds leap to the familiar—flying cars, corporate dystopias, and neon-lit cityscapes of sometimes decades-old popular culture. The futures they could imagine are limited by inherited visions of what could be.

To break that loop, I’ve started changing the prompt. Instead of “What does 2040 look like?” I ask, “What does your birthday in 2040 feel like?” Suddenly, the answers are different. They talk about who they hope would be there, where they would be, and what they would be doing. The future becomes grounded in something personal, emotional, and ultimately, human.

And that’s where real futures thinking begins. The key is to notice when you are repeating someone else’s vision of tomorrow and get curious enough to imagine your own. But how, exactly, can you sidestep the used future?

Here are five techniques I use regularly that can help transcend the limitations of the used future:

1. Identify emerging signals

‍Looking past today’s dominant narratives means tuning into faint signals of the future, early indicators of change that hint at what might be plausible tomorrow. These signals are not trends yet; they’re provocations, cultural artifacts, early-stage experiments, or subcultures operating at the edge.

Consider IDEO’s Future of Automobility project from 2015. Introduced long before autonomous vehicles hit city streets, this work mapped a world where vehicles were shared, adaptive, and integrated into a broader urban ecosystem. It didn’t ask, “How do we make cars better?” It asked, “What happens when we stop designing around car ownership?” By interpreting early shifts in technology, social behavior, and city planning, the team envisioned new mobility platforms that anticipated today’s transformations in transportation infrastructure. Witnessing the most recent “carriage-style” entries into the autonomous market in the Bay Area, it’s impossible to miss the similarities between what IDEO imagined mobility could be and where it is today.

To avoid the trap of the used future, we need to be less obsessed with forecasting with certainty of what will happen and far more courageous in noticing signals for what is possible, no matter how speculative it feels.

2. Question the framing

Used futures often sneak in through the front door, via projects that frame the problem to be solved using assumptions, categories, or language that come from the past. That’s why it’s critical to ask: Is this work going after incremental improvement or transformational reimagining? “Better-than-today” efforts may optimize the status quo, but “future of” briefs open the door to strategic reinvention.

IDEO’s collaboration with Conservation International initially focused on protecting biodiversity hotspots. Through reframing, the team moved from traditional conservation messaging toward building a new cultural paradigm: helping people recognize nature as a source of emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. This new context led them to think of nature as their client, shifting the way conservation is valued and communicated in human-centered terms. It was a significant reorientation of purpose rather than just a new message.

3. Prototype tangible futures

It’s hard to unlearn the futures we’ve inherited unless we see, touch, or experience alternatives. Prototyping tangible futures helps us push beyond habitual thinking and brings speculative ideas into experiential form. This might mean creating speculative artifacts like newspapers from the future, designing future rituals like a daily huddle with your AI agent, or simulating entirely new systems.

At IDEO, teams often use tangible futures techniques to prototype new products, new services, and new ways of behaving. When teams work on “future of health” projects, prototypes might include a mock clinic that embodies an alternative care model, a future policy pamphlet, or the interior of an autonomous ambulance. These prototypes for interactions are tools for stress-testing assumptions and unlocking insights  creating momentum that stakeholders can react, iterate, and imagine together. You don’t need a time machine to imagine what could be; you simply need a prototype.

4. Create human narratives

Too many future visions center on technology, markets, or efficiency and miss the beating heart of change: human lives. Human-centered narratives illuminate the values, desires, tensions, and trade-offs that define meaningful futures. They help us imagine what the future brings as well as what it will feel like to live in it.

In several IDEO projects that reimagined the future of aging, teams resisted the common narrative of decline and dependency. Instead, they co-created stories with older adults that ranged from reimagining retirement as an opportunity to engage in lifelong purpose to redesigning death to helping the elderly live with intention, right up to the end. These future narratives inspired new product and service ideas and reshaped social attitudes and policy conversations.

Narrative is a strategic tool. By telling stories of a preferred future where people thrive in just, inclusive, and life-affirming ways, we can build the collective resolve to make them real.

5. Design nascent paradigms

Sometimes it’s not enough to design for a new future; we also have to design the conditions and new thinking that make shaping nascent paradigms possible, reorienting how we define progress, value, and success

In the Beyond the Bag Challenge, IDEO worked with startups and major retailers to help define what it means to design solutions that restore and renew natural systems rather than deplete them. The collaboration led to a range of alternatives to single-use plastic bags, including biodegradable options and systems for recirculating bags. Within months, several prototypes were launched in major retailers and key markets.

Avoiding the used future in design means embracing techniques that encourage not just imagining transformative futures, but also those that help us surface and question possible outdated visions as well. If we don't notice the used future, we risk creating innovation theater, polishing legacy ideas instead of surfacing the truly new needs, emotions, and possibilities. By consciously moving beyond these old visions of what’s possible, we open ourselves to a broader spectrum of possibilities, enabling designs that are not only innovative but also deeply attuned to the evolving context of our world.

‍Looking to bring futuring into your own work? Get in touch.

I’ve been waiting for a housekeeper robot since I was a kid.

The question tossed out at checkout has become such a common refrain that it can feel like background noise. Perhaps you say no—worn down by membership fatigue, especially for stores you rarely visit. Or perhaps you say yes, lured by a one-time signup perk, only to join the 35 percent of shoppers who say they belong to a loyalty program they’ve never used.

Nearly 80 percent of Gen Z and millennial consumers believe a high-quality digital experience is essential for loyalty programs. But these reward systems, typically built around points, discounts, or tiers, rarely reflect what the brand actually stands for. And when the behavior being rewarded feels disconnected from the brand’s promise, it creates a subtle but powerful disconnect. We think of this as brand dissonance: a type of cognitive friction between what a company claims it values and how it invites people to engage.

When we design loyalty programs at IDEO’s Play Lab, we begin by recognizing that a brand exists at the intersection of what it says about itself and how people experience it, across hundreds of small, accumulated interactions. Done well, loyalty programs don’t just reflect a brand’s values—they embody them, shaping how people experience the brand in the countless moments that add up to brand loyalty.

On a project with JetBlue, for instance, we were tasked with introducing a new premium service that could compete with first-class perks—but without undermining their mission to “bring humanity back to air travel.” Rather than replicate a tiered status model, we grounded the work in a different philosophy: speak to modes of travel, not travel classes.

We designed for different player types—offering “power-up” benefits like faster security, better access to overhead bins, and higher quality food and beverage options. These upgrades honored JetBlue’s inclusive ethos and resonated more with the airline’s loyal passengers.

The result? The new offerings, introduced in 2011, drove its EvenMore line of perks, generating $230 million per year, with a 30 percent annual growth rate, and increasing revenue per customer by 20 percent. That success didn’t come from gamification for its own sake—it came from building a loyalty experience that reflected JetBlue’s values and aligned with travelers’ intrinsic motivations.

Designing for the next generation of consumers brings added complexity, as brands must account for shifting behaviors, rising expectations, and evolving definitions of loyalty. Programs that feel overly transactional or inaccessible often fall flat. Younger, digitally native audiences are highly discerning and research nearly every product online before buying—not just to find the best deal, but also to assess whether a brand aligns with their values and feels worth supporting. They gravitate toward brands that feel authentic, expressive, and purpose-driven. Think REI Co-op or Trader Joe’s. Earning their loyalty means creating experiences that reflect who they are and who they aspire to be—rather than how much they spend.

That’s where game design offers a powerful blueprint. The best programs go beyond transactions, building ecosystems of engagement that give people agency, align with their intrinsic motivations, and evolve over time. Not to be confused with basic gamification, which adds a superficial layer of points, badges, and leaderboards as a way to incentivize customers, game-inspired programs can go deeper and reward engagement in ways that are rooted in brand values and reflective of real-life consumer behavior and identity. Here are three ways we could design a more sophisticated game approach to loyalty programs across three industries: retail, restaurants, and hospitality.

Pokémon Go for retail

Imagine the goal for your brand is to tap into self-expression, identity, culture, and community through your loyalty program. Your app could include an AR feature that lets users scan physical environments—like storefronts, catalogs, or product tags—to reveal hidden offers, collect digital rewards, or unlock exclusive quests. Shoppers could level up based on their interests or shopping style (e.g., “Sustainable Shopper" or "Sneakerhead"), earning rewards that reflect their values and deepen their connection to the brand. Think Pokémon Go meets personalized product discovery.

Gamify the wait at restaurants

Every parent dreads the restless stretch between sitting down at a restaurant and the food arriving. It’s often when screen time rules go out the window—and then backfire when the meal arrives and a tantrum ensues as you try to pry the screens away. Now imagine you operate a chain of family-friendly restaurants. When families are seated, they can scan the table to unlock secret menu items or interactive mini-games that reward adventurous eaters (“no repeat dishes for two weeks”). Better yet, what if your kids could feel like they’re helping prepare the meal through a restaurant simulator game, synced to the real-time cooking process—turning wait time into a playful, immersive experience that reinforces family connection and the fun of dining out together?

Turn hotel stays into an open-ended travel adventure

Let’s say you run a hospitality brand that caters to travelers who care about connection, creativity, and belonging—not only price or convenience. Imagine if guests could earn recognition beyond the number of nights they stay, reflecting how they make travel a part of their lives. Like the cozy game of Animal Crossing, rewards are given to players for consistently returning and doing small, meaningful things over time—earning recognition for sending postcards, documenting hidden gems to help fellow travelers, or simply enjoying breakfast in bed. Each stay becomes a chapter in their story, where they can log snippets of music, photos, journal entries, and even scents as mementos to savor and relive later. Over time, their loyalty profile becomes a rich, emotional artifact of their journey and identity as a traveler—not just a status tier.

Gaming culture has reshaped how people shop, connect, and stay loyal to brands. The most effective loyalty programs operate like games: they offer agency, build a sense of progression, and create emotional resonance. Grounded in a brand’s core promise, they reward behaviors that reflect what the brand truly stands for and show up in the everyday moments that matter. And while they’re inspired by game design, they don’t need to look like games to make people want to keep playing.

So let’s build something better. Let’s co-create the future of loyalty—one that feels like a game your customers actually want to keep playing.

“Are you a member of our rewards program?”

On the one hand, product development processes are built for good reason: They bring structure, reduce risk, and ensure that what goes to market is feasible and viable. I’ve seen this firsthand across various industries, including mobility, real estate, home goods, and consumer products. Rigor is essential when you’re investing in a launch.

But here’s the rub: Those same processes that build confidence often constrain the ambiguity and risk that innovation demands. Design thinking is often touted as the solution, a concise methodology to inject creativity. But how does that square with a stage-gate model built to de-risk and control?

Is it a matter of choosing one or the other? Or is there a way to bridge the gap?

Here’s how one team figured it out.

The familiar question

“How can we integrate design thinking into our product development process?”

It’s a question I’ve heard many times in my career, and this time, it came from an engineer I was coaching on the R&D team at the headquarters of a globally renowned retailer in China.

The team leader had an ambitious vision: leverage their proximity to China’s robust supply chain and dynamic consumer market to build the world’s leading retail R&D center. A critical step was enhancing the engineers’ creativity and critical thinking skills, moving them beyond task execution toward collaborating more closely with their cross-functional partners to design solutions that meet real consumer needs.

That’s where IDEO came in. Building on an earlier innovation project, we embedded designers as advisors and coaches directly into their product development process.

In one of our sessions, the engineers had mapped out their four key development stages on a whiteboard:

• concept discovery
  
  
• product development
  
  
• product qualification
  
  
• launch
  
  

They had also been taught that design thinking contains four key steps.

“Maybe there’s a one-to-one match?” one engineer asked, hoping I could align each development stage with a corresponding design thinking step.

It was a reasonable guess, but not quite how design thinking works.

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Getting past process

That day’s focus was prototyping and testing. At first glance, it seemed to align with the third stage of their product development process: product qualification.

“How does IDEO do prototyping and testing?” they asked. “At what stage should we use it? What role does it play?”

Instead of jumping into an explanation, I suggested an experiment.

“Let’s forget about process labels for a moment,” I said. “Write down all the questions you want to explore through prototyping, regardless of which stage or methodology they supposedly belong to.”

Before long, each engineer had a handful of sticky notes with their questions written on them.

“Now map these to your actual development stages based on when you’d naturally ask them.”

When they placed their questions across all four stages of their product development process, something clicked. They could suddenly see that design thinking wasn’t competing with their process.

“Can this product store spices?” belonged in the early concept discovery phase, where prototyping could help define the product.

“Does the product stay stable during movement?” fit into the product qualification phase, where prototyping could test structural performance.

Prototyping was clearly valuable across all stages. 

The same is true for all the other so-called steps of design thinking: finding inspiration in consumer needs, translating needs into design opportunities, and generating concepts. They’re not fixed stages to complete in order; they’re ways of thinking and working that help teams ask better questions, explore possibilities, and make informed decisions, regardless of where they are within their own internal processes.

A mindset shift, not a process replacement

Back to the original question: “How can we integrate design thinking into our product development process?”

The answer, it turns out, isn’t about fitting one process into another.

Through the sticky note exercise, the engineers understood that design thinking and product development aren’t competing methodologies. Design thinking could add value by bringing curiosity, questioning, testing, and making ideas tangible throughout their existing process.

This insight shaped our collaboration model: embedding consultation sessions into real projects rather than trying to overhaul their established ways of working. We weren’t disrupting cross-department collaboration or the high-stakes requirements of mass production. We were expanding the potential for innovation and experimentation within their existing framework.

The results are still unfolding, but the engineers are already applying design thinking mindsets to ask meaningful questions, explore solutions, and test ideas, helping them think more expansively, make thoughtful trade-offs, and push concepts further.

That’s the bridge between structure and creativity: not new processes, but new ways of thinking within the ones you already have. Practiced over time, those habits make innovation both sustainable and rigorous.

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“The Making of...” is a series of behind-the-scenes articles written by IDEO Shanghai designers about our innovation methods and work with major clients across industries in China.

As companies grow and their internal processes mature, the concept of innovation can start to feel like a contradiction.

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.