More than 7 million people each year came to the Boston.gov site to tap into all sorts of city services: reporting a pothole, learning the assessed value of their property, paying a parking ticket, checking recycling schedules.

Boston wanted to create a beautiful platform that would make the process of finding and navigating information easy and intuitive, one that prioritized the needs of its people.

The Boston.gov site had outgrown its existing structure and needed an overhaul. The user experience was mired by the fact that Boston City Hall has nearly 50 different departments, each with its own microsite, navigation and content standards that feed into a centralized site.

So the City of Boston hired IDEO to design its new digital home, Boston.gov. IDEO designers worked with the major stakeholders—department heads, employees, and Boston residents, with a focus on those in underserved communities and those with varying levels of technical proficiency—to gather insights into what users needed.

The objective was to design something that would simplify how people navigate the site, to make it easier for residents to find answers to common questions, and, in the process, serve as a community facilitator—an up-to-date, reliable resource that makes life in the city more manageable.

Rather than organize the site by the city’s departments, the design solution was rooted in illuminating relevant content by topics—people’s life moments—many of which overlapped through different branches of government. Owning a car in the city, for example, is closely related to preparing for winter, so bridging those common threads allowed for a more intuitive organizing principle.

In the process of the site redesign, IDEO also helped to create a visual identity system that underscores Boston’s strengths: the city’s confidence, humility, personality, and optimism.

In addition to the web architecture and redesign, IDEO also produced a comprehensive style guide to help maintain design consistency, so departments can add content without compromising the overall integrity of the site, as well as a brand look that the city has decided to adopt across nearly all of its consumer-facing media. Now you’ll see the famous underlined B on T-shirts, banners, and even snow shovels.

Holding true to its mission to include Boston residents and all site users in its design process, the new Boston.gov site was piloted for six months, and the process document on the city’s blog (including the IDEO designed brand guide), before a full launch was rolled out in July 2016.

“The website should act like a helpful human. This is one of the big differences between the old site and the new site,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the city’s chief of information technology in a Boston Globe article. “Oftentimes, when you looked at something on the old site, it would feel like you were interacting with some sort of lawyer-robot that was speaking to you in government-speak, using very formal language. We are trying to move away from that so your experience is akin to a person.”

The City of Boston was in need of a new digital home—one that emphasized a shift to a more welcoming tone and commitment to its citizens.

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In the Western Hemisphere, The North Face brand has long represented an active, sporty lifestyle that’s filled with challenges and adventures. But appreciating “the great outdoors” in China is less about extreme sports and more about connecting with nature in a communal, spiritual way. This research-based insight led the team to identify new opportunities for The North Face to better target its messaging.

Designers found a key opportunity: Encourage Chinese consumers to escape the pressures of hectic city life by enjoying the freedom and renewal that comes with spending time outdoors.

Today, as people find less time to enjoy the benefits that lie just beyond China’s large cities, there’s a tangible desire to return to the outdoors to refresh, reassess, and renew oneself. The North Face aims to help consumers do exactly that.

To create a compelling new brand vision for The North Face in China, the team’s design research tapped into Chinese ways of spending time outdoors. IDEO’s insights and creative brief provided the essential brand story for The North Face in China and informed the tagline of the company’s current marketing campaign, “Go Wild” (去野). The North Face brand’s new messaging links “old nature” and “new outdoors” through a combination of digital, retail, and interactive community channels.

IDEO also collaborated with the company on designs and prototypes for a new digital platform and an updated store-within-a-store merchandising display. The digital community aims to attract newcomers and connect them with more experienced outdoors enthusiasts and clubs. As the platform evolves, it will help aspiring adventurers plan trips, learn skills, and share their experiences through photos.

The retail community space aims to integrate this digital community with in-store shoppers and an effort to turn the “buy-a-product moment” into a “join-the-outdoors moment.” Both will be integrated to provide a holistic brand experience in China centered on nature and community.

In the West, The North Face, with its decades-long history, has long symbolized an adventurous, active lifestyle. In China, however, the outdoor market only began accelerating in the early 21st century.

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Success in this growing market depends on building strong and deep connections with Chinese consumers.

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20% sales growth in China

from 2012 to 2013—the year the project was completed—propelling the brand from sixth place to a market-leading position

Over the last 36 years, IDEO and Lilly, along with the pharmaceutical giant’s other design, development, and manufacturing partners, have collaborated on more than 250 projects. During this time, Lilly has not only honed its engineering-focused internal device-development team but also transformed into a human-centered organization with extensive, robust in-house innovation capabilities.

Early in the relationship, a team of IDEO designers and Eli Lilly leaders traveled the world to understand how people with diabetes live with the disease. Their findings led to the design of a series of award-winning insulin injection pens like SAVVIO. Portable, aesthetically pleasing, and discreet, the pens are suitable for use in both medical and personal settings. Combined with Lilly’s technical design prowess, this human-centered focus allows the devices to seamlessly integrate into patients’ lives and routines, making a challenging disease like diabetes feel more manageable.

Fast forward to today, Lilly’s innovative, easy-to-use auto-injectors are not only continuing to provide life-saving treatments to people with diabetes but also enabling the adoption of the popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound, which together accounted for the majority of the company’s annual revenue in 2025. Perhaps most importantly, patients consistently rate the experience of using Lilly’s auto-injectors as relatively pain-free, easy to use, and preferable to competitors’ brands, improving adherence, satisfaction, and health outcomes.

This unwavering focus on driving innovation through a patient-first mindset is evident in some of the most impactful projects Lilly and IDEO collaborated on over the years:

GLP Auto-injectors
Convenient and cutting-edge, the first Trulicity injection device was originally designed to deliver the GLP-1 drug to treat type 2 diabetes. Today, it has been adapted for use with other GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, which are increasingly popular weight-loss drugs and are also administered once weekly via fixed-dose injections. A wide base enables the pen to be held securely against the injection site, and the device automatically regulates the dose and needle depth.

Taltz Injectors
For most patients, living with severe plaque psoriasis means being your own medical technician—metering your drug dosage each time, and attaching and removing needles by hand. Taltz provides patients with clear visual and auditory feedback throughout the injection process through simple icons, bright colors, a translucent material, and clicking sounds. The devices are available in both autoinjector and prefilled-syringe formats and are adapted for Emgality, a preventive monthly migraine treatment, and Ebglyss, which helps treat eczema or atopic dermatitis.

HumaPen SAVVIO Injection Pen
Key insights informed the design of SAVVIO, including patients’ preference for insulin pens that look less like medical devices and more like everyday objects you’d find in a backpack or purse. The sleek, colorful device was created to help patients feel comfortable and confident about fitting mealtime injections into their everyday lives.

Refillable Human Growth Hormone (HGH) Injector and Reconstitution Device
Designed to be kid-friendly, the Refillable HGH Injector leverages insights into pediatric treatment adherence to create a more integrated, systematic approach to treatment, while the Reconstitution Device makes mixing Lilly’s powder-and-liquid drug easier and less intimidating for parents and healthcare professionals alike.

KwikPen Insulin Pen
KwikPen is a next-generation, prefilled insulin injection pen that builds on the success of two previous designs, reducing its size to 5.7 inches and enhancing ease of use for patients.

HumaPen(R) Luxura™ Insulin Pen
HumaPen Luxura combines several innovations into a robust yet elegant pen that can be carried and used anywhere—an insulin pen solution that improves dosing accuracy, dose setting, and injection force.

In addition to designing products to meet the needs of people with diabetes, IDEO and Lilly have developed innovations in areas of oncology, autoimmunity, and men’s health. The results of this collaboration and expansion have won numerous design awards and produced one of the longest and most fruitful innovation relationships in IDEO’s history.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Eli Lilly had a number of new, life-changing medications and two big challenges: Most of its drugs were self-injectables, not pills, so patients were hesitant to take them. And its drug-delivery device platform lagged behind its drug pipeline.

99%

of Trulicity users reported the auto-injector was “easy” to “very easy” to use in a JDST study

$36.5B

of Lilly’s $65.2B 2025 revenue came from sales of its auto-injectable GLP-1s, Mounjaro and Zepbound, a 45% increase from 2024

Systemic transformation is not new to Cottage Health. Founded in 1888 by 50 forward-thinking women in Santa Barbara who wanted a proper hospital for their growing community, Cottage Health has since expanded to 4 hospitals and is quickly growing its outpatient services as well.

To understand the current Cottage Health experience, IDEO conducted dozens of in-depth interviews with patients, providers, caregivers, and staff. They also ran multi-week diary studies, engaged in inspirational research activities, and held events to hear from local women.

The qualitative research surfaced that women often carry the mental burden of repeatedly remembering, explaining, and advocating for themselves. Women’s pain is often minimized, which causes new providers to inherit mistrust from previous experiences, without having the tools to rebuild it. During significant life transitions, such as pregnancy or menopause, women may receive conflicting advice from health providers and seek additional outside support from informal networks. Access to quality care can sometimes depend on insider knowledge, private resources, or providers willing to go far beyond their job descriptions. And while providers make referrals, women must handle the time-consuming coordination required to make everything work, instead of focusing on healing. The bottom line: what women wanted most was to be seen, heard, believed, and supported in knowing what to do next.

In order to address these challenges, IDEO proposed a new vision for women’s health, alongside design principles and concrete service shifts to guide future decision-making. Every interaction with Cottage Health should build on the information patients have already shared, demonstrating the system is listening. They should also guide women through life transitions by anticipating needs in future life phases, not just what’s happening now. Much like a community gathering, the Cottage Health experience should feel like a village, fostering belonging and shared care through warm, connected, human touchpoints.

Building on these design principles, IDEO developed three exploratory service concepts that represented potential pathways for future development, rather than finalized offerings: True North, Wellness Commons, and Care Circle.

True North is a patient-facing tool that helps women see the long view of their health journey by integrating personal data, health goals, and reflections into a dynamic timeline they can share with their healthcare providers.

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Wellness Commons serves as a digital front door, offering curated resources, including community events, discounted wellness programs, fitness classes, and trusted referrals, that help women navigate their well-being with clarity and agency.

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Care Circle connects women to an extended support network inside and outside Cottage’s walls, including a hotline, health coaches, peer group support, and nurse navigators who can help patients manage complex care needs.

IDEO also provided Cottage Health with a multi-year roadmap building out the women’s health experience alongside continued pilot and implementation advisory. The roadmap included a comprehensive series of launch-to-learn pilots designed to test assumptions, reduce risks, and learn quickly, with IDEO stewarding the process. These pilots ranged from digital mockups and a curated community referral directory to a support line, a new nurse navigator role, and peer coaching services, among other experiments.

In July 2026, Cottage Health announced it was expanding its focus on women’s health through a new Center for Women’s Health campus in Santa Barbara. Led by Dr. Jane Varner, the Center is projected to open in early 2028. It will encompass women’s health services across the lifespan, from puberty to menopause and beyond, including OB-GYN, pelvic floor health, women’s heart health, a menopause clinic, and a breast care center of excellence. It will also include supportive services, including trained nurse navigators to coordinate patients’ care journeys, giving women a single, trusted entry point for integrated care at every life stage. Cottage Health is also exploring a new digital support system inspired by IDEO’s Wellness Commons concept.

Cottage Health had ambitious goals to expand its women’s health services and needed a partner to help it understand what women truly wanted from their healthcare and bring it to life.

7 months

from end of project to the announced launch of Cottage Center for Women’s Health

I kept going over books, blogs, and videos, hoping for a moment where it all clicked and suddenly I became a chip whisperer. But it just wasn’t happening.

Then things changed. I bashed my fingers into my keyboard for days, failing over and over again until finally—it worked. I had a project idea that tickled my brain in just the right way. It was weird, and it was mine. I made something work, something I liked and that was just for me. I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

Looking back, I can see now that what really changed my relationship to code was letting my creative process lead. I was trying to make “useful” stuff, and that's not always necessary when you’re learning. Let the weird in! We worry about how the computer thinks when we’re learning to code, assuming that it’s smarter. It’s not. It’s a dumb box with lots of opinions. When I started worrying less about how it thought and more about what I was trying to achieve, I was able to find little toeholds in the translation process. I was able to work backwards from an idea, and break it down into tiny little steps. These steps are what every code project is made of.

I wanted to help my colleagues glimpse this feeling of creativity and control over programming—without having them touch a computer. I’m a lover of generative art and have long been inspired by the work of Sol LeWitt. His works are sets of instructions that can be interpreted and performed by anyone. This is also how a computer works. You give it instructions and it interprets them to perform some kind of function. (Literally, the part of the computer that reads code is called an “interpreter.”)

Our studio has a bi-weekly tradition called Make(Believe)Time. At each session, a member of the studio comes up with a creative activity to get us out of our heads and thinking more playfully. It might be to invent a new game, design advertisements for a future Earth invaded by aliens, or exploring our senses through making something strange. Ben Swire runs Make(Believe)Time and helped me craft a session that made this translation of code come to life with needle and thread. Each person received sewing supplies and a blank manila card (made to look like an old Fortran punch card). Everyone was asked to write simple instructions for a stitch on the card. Here are a few:

Ben and I shuffled and distributed the cards into groups. We explained that each card is a statement, a simple bit of instructions to be interpreted by the individual sewer. When each person was done with their statement card, they were to pass it to their neighbor until the group had shuffled through all of the statements. Each group of sewers would be acting like a programming function, performing a collection of simple directives.

When a group was done performing their “function,” their data (aka, the cards) was passed to another group. Much like in a computer, data was passed from one function (output) to another where it was added to (input). We were a human computer!

We were delighted to see the wild differences between each group's interpretation. That balance between constrained instruction and broad interpretation touched an interesting space between active and passive creativity. It was fun and inspiring to see the wide range of outputs that came from such simple instructions.

We’d love to hear how you explain complex processes through tangible experience. Send us your story!

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Despite what I was led to believe, learning to code was excruciating. Throughout the process, I was convinced that I was dumb and should just get really, really good at Excel because that’s as close as I’d ever get to making a computer do anything by typing at it.

In the beginning, we hadn’t been assigned to client projects yet, so we found ourselves on what IDEO designers call “whitespace,” meaning we had some time on our hands while we waited for placements.

With so many newbies wandering the studio, and more joining the ranks every week, it was becoming hard to keep all the new faces straight. Our colleague Annette, one of our co-experience directors, saw an opportunity for us to revive a studio-wide program that set up any two IDEOers to go out to lunch on the studio’s dime once a month. The idea was to help establish new connections, but busy colleagues would often cancel lunch plans and the task of scheduling (and rescheduling) soon fell to one of our beloved leadership coordinators, Biz. As a result, this benefit had become severely underutilized.

Our mission: to use data science to (mostly) automate the scheduling process so that newbies and veterans alike could easily participate in the program. The tool would need to assign “optimal” groups of Chicago IDEOers, search their calendars for a mutually agreeable time, and send them an invitation to go to lunch together. Here’s how we did it:

1. Designing the perfect group

We started by asking a seemingly simple question: What makes a good group? To find out, we practiced our design research skills in some working sessions with Annette and Biz.

Annette suggested that we create groups of three, rather than two, based on social science research that finds triads are more conducive to sparking creative collaborations and community than dyads. That fact inspired us to call the program “Meet ‘n Three,” a play on the traditional Southern combo meal offering of a protein and three sides.

Together, we decided that groups should comprise three people whose paths don’t cross day-to-day, while also striking a balance of design disciplines—not all interaction designers or all data scientists. And an ideal triad would mix people who were new to the studio with those who had been around longer. With these principles ironed out, we got to building the algorithm.

2. Creating custom datasets

To build the groups, we needed some data on our coworkers. We turned to IDEO’s intranet to get a list of everyone who worked at a given IDEO location, their disciplines, and projects they’d worked on. We combined that with manually-created datasets that contained each person’s level of seniority and discipline. Using this data and the earlier criteria, we created an algorithm that randomly samples employees, generating one group at a time. Once a person is in one group, their likelihood of being chosen for another decreases; to spare their calendars, no employee can be in more than two groups.

The group is then assigned a score for its “novelty,” which includes the number of disciplines represented, the variety of seniority, and the number of projects shared between group members. The algorithm optimizes the score for an entire month’s worth of groups using a Monte Carlo approach. (In other words, we create many more groups than we actually need, and throw away all but those with the highest scores.)

3. Addressing the scheduling conflict

Once we have a group, all that’s left is to find a time for them to meet. Through the Google Calendar API, we were able to get a list of available times on people’s calendars. Since these times aren’t uniform, this data structure isn’t easy to work with. After many frustrating attempts to create a functional system, we realized that fellow data scientist (and Datascope co-founder) Mike Stringer had already solved this problem (albeit for a different reason). We used the Python library he created to perform unevenly spaced time series analysis, saved ourselves heaps of wasted time and energy, and learned a lesson: When surrounded by world-class nerds, phone a friend before trying to reinvent the wheel.

4. Putting the Meetbot to work

As designers, we knew that creating the algorithm was only half the battle—we also had to share our work to make it successful. To give the bot some personality, we created a mascot we dubbed Meaty the Meetbot, a friendly humanoid meatball on a mission to bring people together. We introduced Meaty (and his functionality) during an office-wide lunch meeting. The newly-minted Meetbot was better suited to the IDEO Chicago of 2018 than the old program: it scaled to accommodate the 45% increase in employees, and infused a little data science flavor. For the big finale, we sent out the first batch of invites all at once, so everyone received them at the same time.

Since Meaty’s initial rollout in late March, there have been 112 group lunches in Chicago (according to Google calendar), bringing together everyone from support staff to directors to designers. Word spread to other studios, and the Palo Alto and San Francisco offices are on deck to start their own group lunches. Meaty has also virtually connected IDEOers around the world, scheduling calls between design researchers in Cambridge and New York, and handling the time-zone-juggling challenge of scheduling global calls between Munich, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

Although Meaty the Meetbot was born as a silly thing to tinker with until we had “real work” to do, it’s had real impact. For us, it’s been a reminder that even in seemingly inane projects, data and algorithms can be used in service of human interactions. By letting a computer take over the grunt work, we freed up some (way more valuable) human time, making room for people to connect and create. Maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Late last year, IDEO acquired data science firm Datascope, adding 18 data scientists to the Chicago studio’s roster overnight. We’re two of those data scientists.

On a recent trip to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, I spotted a baby kangaroo (or wallaby; it was tough to tell) fast asleep in a unique pouch.

Young marsupials, including kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas, spend the first part of their lives inside their mother’s pouches, but baby joeys raised away from their mothers—babies that are orphaned, for example—need substitutes.

When three wallaby joeys arrived at the Safari Park in April, keepers put them into little cloth sacks. But this joey was lounging inside a woman’s fleece sweater, with the bottom sewn up and the arms tucked in to prevent a sideways escape. Keepers had cut a hole in the front and hung the sweater at just the right height for the joey to hop in and out.

Sweet dreams, little one!

Human-centered design requires us to observe human behavior with beginner's eyes, so that we can spot the innate ways people interact with the world around them. We call these intuitive and unconscious reactions Thoughtless Acts, and IDEO designers collect photos of them to inspire their work.

IDEO designers surround themselves with creative people for exactly this reason—when you’re stuck in a rut, sometimes the best way to dig yourself out is to steep in other people’s genius for a while. Here are 6 people whose work inspires our own.

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1. If your podcast library is overflowing…

Graphic designer, musician, podcaster: Hrishikesh Hirway is a creative jack of all trades. In this interview, Hrishikesh goes deep on how this versatility helps and hinders his creative process.

READ: Get to Know the Creator of Song Exploder

2. If coding is your form of art…

Matt Fargo is on a quest to make Japanese culture more fun for everyone. Learn how he draws from the coder’s toolkit to build unexpected weirdness into his digital projects.

READ: Code-Based Eye Candy from a Tokyo Renaissance Man

3. If Mother Nature is your muse…

When New Yorker art director Rina Kushnir's not designing layouts, she can be found painting leaves she collects in her Brooklyn neighborhood. Find out how this meticulous project helps her meditate and stay creative.

READ: How an Art Director at the New Yorker Unwinds

4. If you’re an art enthusiast…

Illustrator Cindy Derby creates imaginary worlds for children’s books, but her unique characters and experimental style capture the imagination of adults just as easily. Get to know Cindy and her made-up worlds in this interview with the artist.

READ: Why This Illustrator Makes Her Own Tools

5. If you’d rather be at a museum right now…

As curator of Architecture + Design for SFMOMA, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher puts the world of design on display. Find out how she stays inspired by constantly considering the now, questioning the promise of future technology, and looking back on the designs that made history.

READ: Meet the Woman Who Spots Great Design for a Living

6. If you’re a film buff…

Nomadic filmmaker Brandon Li uses film to express the beautiful madness of urban life. See how his creative process adapts to whichever city he’s in.

READ: These Eye-Popping Videos Capture the Madness of Cities

Let’s keep the inspiration flowing! Tell us who’s inspiring you right now using the hashtag #CreativeCrushes on Twitter.

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Creativity begets creativity. When you witness or consume brilliant work by someone you admire, it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to dive head-first into your own creative pursuits.

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.