Looking to understand the role of instant noodles in middle-class Chinese life, the IDEO team conducted in-home research with consumers across a range of life stages and levels of attachment to noodle culture and convenience foods. The first finding was reassuring: Everyone kept instant noodles at home. The category still had a place in middle-class kitchens. But beneath that was a more complicated, emotional story—and an unmet need for convenience and quality to coexist in a single product.

The team discovered that instant noodles are more than just a quick, on-the-go meal; they are a nostalgic comfort food that evokes fond memories. But since their heyday, their role in daily life has evolved. Once a complete meal in itself, instant noodles now often function as a versatile flavor base or culinary accent in other dishes. Because they don’t align with the healthier, higher-quality, and more novel food choices that middle-class consumers aspire to, noodle shops, delivery noodles, or fresh-cooked instant options often win out. Yet, even these alternatives come with trade-offs. Delivered noodles lose texture during transport. Sit-down noodle shops preserve quality but offer limited flavors.  Cooking from scratch meets the bar for both texture and flavor, but requires a significant time investment. As one young mother said, “If I could get the texture of fresh-cooked noodles without turning on the stove, I’d buy that instant noodle for sure.”

The research inspired the creation of a new category, which the team termed “fresh-brewed noodles.” More than just a noodle or broth upgrade, Master Kong’s fresh-brewed noodles would offer the speed of instant noodles with the quality of freshly cooked options, plus flavors not found in traditional noodle shops. The strategic positioning was clear. Executing it by making fresh-brewed noodles mass-producible, affordable, and eventually profitable presented a category-innovation challenge. To get there, IDEO designed a series of dual-track co-creation workshops with the Master Kong team and consumers.

One track focused on prototyping the core product experience: noodles, broth, and toppings. IDEO and Master Kong’s R&D team began by studying the traditional craft of Chinese noodle-making, starting in Shanxi, a region renowned for its noodles. Through successive rounds of prototyping and consumer tasting, the team identified a critical insight: for “fresh-brewed noodles” to be convincing, the innovation had to be centered on the noodles themselves.

Texture alone was not enough. Consumers needed to see a meaningful difference before they tasted the product. IDEO translated this insight into a distinctive noodle profile: irregular, dimensional shapes designed to remain springy, hold sauce and broth, and mimic the resilience of freshly cooked noodles using only hot water. Because this visible shape represented the product’s core value proposition, it became a hero feature on the packaging. The graphic design made a bold visual statement about the noodle form, turning a technical R&D breakthrough into an immediately legible consumer promise: these are not ordinary instant noodles.

A parallel track explored the broader commercial experience: trend-forward and reimagined classic flavor profiles, light yet deeply satisfying broths, carefully selected toppings, and packaging that signals a new level of quality on store shelves. One key insight was that utensils carry meaning. Conventional instant noodles are often associated with disposable plastic forks, while higher-quality noodles are eaten with chopsticks. IDEO translated this cultural cue into the design of the bowl’s lid.

Instead of treating utensils as an afterthought, the team designed a solid, rounded, heat-retaining lid that embeds a pair of small wooden chopsticks. The gesture creates a small ritual of anticipation and reframes the product—not just a convenient instant meal, but a more considered noodle experience. Once opened, the product fulfills that promise with satisfyingly bouncy noodles, a rich liquid broth pouch that replaces the traditional oil-and-powder packet, and a vegetable packet reformulated with more premium whole ingredients.

The first batch of “Te Bie Te” Fresh-Brewed Noodles—Chinese wordplay that emphasizes “special”—launched in August 2025 with three trendy and tried-and-true flavors. Within just three days, sales exceeded 100,000 bowls. Within a week, “Te Bie Te” topped the instant noodle category sales ranking on Douyin, China’s domestic counterpart to TikTok. The outcome was bigger than a product launch—it served as proof that a mature, declining category could be fundamentally reinvented to meet consumers’ real needs. For Master Kong, the project became a North Star and a model for internal category innovation in beverages, ready-to-eat foods, and beyond.

Once a popular, affordable staple, the instant noodle category in China has been declining rapidly due to shifting demographics, rising food delivery options, and increasing customer demand for healthier, more nutritious meals.

‍

According to the World Instant Noodles Association, between 2020 and 2023, China’s instant noodle consumption fell by 4 billion packs.

100,000+

“Te Bie Te” bowls sold in the first 3 days on the market

#1

on Douyin’s instant noodle category ranking within one week of launch

Taylor’s legacy began in 1969 with the founding of Taylor’s College and soon expanded to include Taylor’s University, one of Southeast Asia’s top private universities, as well as many other institutions that serve 35,000 students per year. The family-owned group also operates Taylor’s International Schools, Garden International School, and Nexus International School for students ages 4 to 18. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital city, annual tuition at premium private schools like these ranges from about $10,000 to $25,000 USD. Taylor’s wanted to do something different: provide the same level of academic rigor and immersive learning experiences at one-third the cost.

IDEO began by speaking with over three dozen students, parents, teachers, and experts across the capital to understand what was working, what wasn’t, and what was missing from such moderately priced international schools.

A few themes quickly emerged. Families, students, and teachers were worried about the stability of these new private schools, which tended to have higher-than-normal teacher turnover rates and were plagued by financial instability, negatively impacting talent attraction and retention, as well as student learning. Parents appreciated that the schools offered holistic learning experiences, such as field trips to rural areas, including jungles, but wished they were more consistently part of the curriculum. And now, the looming challenge of AI—how to use it, how to teach it, and how to teach with it—was in the background, a persistent cause for concern. The big unmet need? Reassurance that Taylor’s was thinking long-term and systematically about developing the skills, knowledge, and mindsets that would prepare students for an ever-changing world. Parents wanted a school that measured growth in academic, social, and character terms over generations, not just school semesters.

With these insights in hand, IDEO began developing a design Playbook for Taylor’s new brand—Lexel International Schools. A combination of “lexicon” and “excellence,” Lexel’s mission is “building what lasts, learning for life.”

The schools are centered around three key differentiators: 

• Always Ahead: Lexel schools commit to staying current with the topics and subject matter they teach, as well as the tools they provide to students, parents, and teachers.s.  
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• Learning That Builds for Life: The schools ensure programmatic, systemic, and consistent learning experiences from Pre-K to Year 11. Interested students can even continue their post-secondary journey in partnership with Taylor’s University and other higher education institutions within the Taylor’s ecosystem.
  
  
• Educators for the Long Run: These schools commit to ongoing investments in professional growth opportunities for teachers and stable learning environments for students.

Four Lexel Literacies—AI, Digital, Financial, and Nutrition—integrated into the Cambridge Curriculum bring the school’s vision and mission to life.

By systematically integrating AI literacy into its spiral education framework, in particular, an approach where major topics are revisited multiple times through a curriculum to build fluency over time, Lexel ensures parents that the school is thinking a decade ahead from Day One, setting the school apart. In addition to enhancing AI fluency, Lexel offers unique end-of-term experiences called Jungles & Junctions.

Combining three important strands of learning—community engagement, nature-based personal and interpersonal development, and career and university exploration—Jungles & Junctions leverages Taylor’s extended educational network and Lexel’s strategic founding campus within the Gamuda Gardens development in Selangor. Surrounded by tropical rainforests, the township’s residential neighborhoods, theme park, and various sports facilities, including an Olympic-length swimming pool, are transformed into an extended Lexel campus, with a GenAI-driven planner to help teachers streamline the organization of class outings. “The Township is Your Campus” became the tagline for this approach.

In September 2025, just months after IDEO’s collaboration ended, Taylor’s began classes at its first Lexel International School. By mid-year, the new school had achieved 115% of its year-one student enrollment target, with significant inbound demand for Year 2 already demonstrating the school’s market resonance.

The modern campus features spacious classrooms, science and technology labs, a library, a multipurpose hall, and a canteen. Annual tuition ranges from about $2,800 USD for pre-K students to about $6,100 USD for secondary students.

Most importantly, by combining Taylor’s deep academic expertise, Gamuda Land’s development prowess, and IDEO’s innovative design Playbook, Lexel brings quality, affordable international education closer to home for Malaysian families. According to one parent, “My daughter looks forward to going to school every day … and has a lot of opportunities to express herself. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give [Lexel] an 11.” Based on the IDEO Playbook, a second flagship campus in the Southern Klang Valley, which is scheduled to open in September 2026, has already exceeded its year-one target enrollment expectations, with plans to continue extending the Lexel network to other parts of Malaysia and the wider Southeast Asian region in the near future.

Malaysia’s private international school sector has grown significantly as parents seek quality English-language education. However, high tuition fees and limited access to reputable schools are continual challenges for those in the emerging middle class.

115%

of Lexel’s student enrollment target reached during the launch year of its first campus
‍

Year 1 enrollment target exceeded

at Lexel's second campus several months ahead of classes commencing

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The American news industry has long been a competitive and saturated market. This has only intensified with the emergence of social media outlets and AI-generated news. Even so, SAN’s rigorously unbiased, fact-based reporting style and rich video storytelling had enabled the ambitious startup to rise above the media fray in just three short years.

With a strong foundation to build on, IDEO sought to further differentiate SAN’s cutting-edge news product and build deeper engagement with a wider audience through a new user experience.

‍Collaborating closely, IDEO and SAN began by delving deeply into media consumption habits. They met with early SAN superfans, news consumers who spent hours a day absorbing content from traditional outlets like Fox and USA Today, and those who looked to their Ring doorbell app or Reddit for news. The takeaways? People were tired of clickbait and clunky interfaces. They sought clear, factual news that was easily accessible, with additional context to help them interpret events and understand their significance. They craved more than one perspective on important topics, so stories felt balanced rather than polarized. They also valued having control over how they consumed news, so making it easy to switch between text, video, and audio formats was crucial.

Together, IDEO and SAN created features across SAN’s website and app that put facts, trust, and transparency at the core of the product experience. Fact Cards distill key data points into clear, shareable units, while the Sources feature allows readers to trace information directly back to its original source. To make complex stories easier to grasp, Big Picture insights drill down into why events matter, surfacing underlying themes, historical parallels, differences in reporting, and common ground. The Why This Story Matters section provides readers with clear framing and sets the story within a broader context, while the Timeline illustrates how events unfold over days, months, or even years. An antidote to news polarization, See All Sides presents left, right, and center narratives for key topics side-by-side, and Media Landscape visualizations reveal how coverage varies across outlets. Finally, to ensure SAN fits seamlessly into readers’ daily lives, the redesigned Today Page is organized into three highly scannable sections: Latest News, Top Stories, and SAN Originals. The combined features create a balanced, clear, and non-polarizing news experience, making it easy for readers to delve deeper into the sources of their news.

SAN now delivers a news experience as modern, dynamic, and trustworthy as its journalism. A month after its debut, the SAN app’s page views increased 1,170 percent year over year compared to June 2024, while active users rose 700 percent. Readers also give the updated mobile experience a 4.8 rating on the Apple App Store. “Our team is delivering reporting that’s both deeply factual and accessible,” said Derek Mead, SAN’s Chief Content Officer. “This redesign is pivotal to the direction journalism needs to take and the leadership role Straight Arrow News is taking on as we help guide the news industry into a brighter future.”

SAN built a loyal readership and gained recognition for its unbiased reporting. To expand and stand out from legacy media, SAN  wanted a redesigned user experience that reflected its commitment to fact-based journalism.

1,170%

increase in app page views YoY 

700%

increase in active users

4.8 rating

on the Apple App Store

Sanofi was the first company to supply the polio vaccine worldwide. Because of the global fight against the disease, endemic wild poliovirus transmission is now limited to just two countries. However, attitudes toward vaccines and immunizations have shifted significantly. To ensure a smooth launch of Beyfortus in a time of increased vaccine hesitancy, Sanofi asked IDEO to conduct research across four important and very different healthcare markets: Germany, Spain, China, and the US.

IDEO worked with parents, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and healthcare administrators to identify potential barriers to vaccine adoption and understand the emotional needs of all stakeholders involved in the immunization process. Navigating cultural differences and diverse healthcare environments, the team uncovered a set of insights.

For healthcare professionals, the team discovered there was no one-size-fits-all approach to immunization training across Sanofi’s 20-plus global markets. While consistency of key information was important, trainings needed to be flexible and customizable. This way, regardless of whether the vaccine was administered by midwives, OB-GYNs, nurses, or doctors, they could  confidently discuss the pros and cons across cultural contexts and administer the drug correctly.
‍
For new parents, receiving information about a new immunization immediately after giving birth could be too stressful. But simply leaving pamphlets about Beyfortus in waiting rooms didn't address their real concerns, either. Caregivers needed to engage in conversations earlier in their pregnancies and continue them after leaving the hospital, when they might have additional questions.

IDEO translated these research insights into a highly accessible global communication toolkit that uses simple, straightforward language, metaphors, and illustrations to support informed conversations between healthcare providers and parents before, during, and after a child is born. IDEO then conducted a series of market-fit co-design workshops with representatives of Sanofi’s global immunization business to iterate on the print and digital tools, make them more resonant with regional customers, and ensure compliance with local regulations. IDEO handed the toolkits over for development to support the launch of Beyfortus in January 2024, just in time for RSV season.

Beyfortus saw enormous demand in its first year, demonstrating strong efficacy in real-world applications and achieving blockbuster status as a $1.8 billion therapy. Sanofi’s global launch team credits the patient-centric toolkit with increased requests for communication materials from its regional markets as well as from healthcare and government organizations that have typically been hard to reach, key goals of its global-local launch strategy.

Since its development, Beyfortus has received swift regulatory approval from the US, EU, China, and Japan, with patient demand causing Sanofi to triple its worldwide manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of the 2024-25 RSV season. Ahead of the larger global distribution of Beyfortus, IDEO and Sanofi partnered with equity expert consultants, Fearless Futures, to conduct a DEI review and worked with doctors and nurses who participated in the initial drug launch to make the materials even more accessible, relevant, and successful for 2025 and beyond. To date, six million babies—and counting—have been immunized with Beyfortus.

Worldwide, childhood vaccination hesitancy among parents fluctuates between 25-45%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a trend it considers one of the biggest global threats to public health.

85.9%

‍reduction in hospitalizations for infants who received Beyfortus compared to those who did not (2023–24 RSV season)

$1.8B

in first-year sales of Beyfortus

‍

It’s helping us better understand fundamental biological processes like protein folding, and bringing the open source movement to human gene editing. But as designers and technologists, our focus extends beyond the data to consider how AI can impact the human experience. We are committed to harnessing AI’s potential to not only improve processes, but also to enhance lives.

William Gibson once said, "The future is already here–it's just not evenly distributed." This is particularly true in healthcare, where the adoption and impact of AI varies widely. In some health systems, experimentation with AI is already having an effect on patient and provider experiences. In others, it's primarily a tool to cut back office costs. And in far too many, it’s nowhere at all. Our goal is to smooth this distribution a bit, uncovering the benefits of AI that can address the core human need to be seen, understood, and cared for. Here are some key applications that could move that effort forward.

Close observation 

AI’s ability to be omnipresent, listening, and interpreting is one of its most promising capabilities. Tools like Abridge Inside are transforming patient interactions by summarizing provider-patient conversations and generating care plans in real-time, directly integrating them into medical records. This kind of ambient documentation is changing how both providers and patients relate to care visits by reducing the administrative burden on providers and improving patient understanding of their care plans with clearer and more tailored visit summaries.

In skilled nursing facilities, where high patient-to-staff ratios are common, Care.ai’s Smart Care Facility Platform uses ambient intelligent sensors to monitor patients closely, reducing the workload on healthcare providers. This technology is a step toward integrating AI into clinical settings, allowing for more efficient and personalized care, and making sure that no patients fall through the cracks.

Early combinations of AI and robotics have pushed the possibilities of who—or what—might be able to deliver care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Boston Dynamics, MIT, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital used a Spot robot equipped with sensors to remotely monitor patient vitals, with the goal of reducing healthcare worker exposure to COVID-19.

We’ve seen similar innovations in more everyday settings, hinting at what might happen when these kinds of ideas scale. At the MIT Media Lab, the Fluid Interfaces group has developed a conversational memory aid designed to assist with daily tasks. This device, which works on commercially-available hardware, offers a glimpse into the future of AI-driven, unobtrusive memory augmentation. It’s a small but powerful example of how AI could be used to support cognitive functions in everyday life, improving everyone’s ability to navigate logistics and to make more meaningful social connections.

At IDEO, we’ve experimented with similar AI in more informal settings. Our colleague Danny DeRuntz developed a Slackbot that helps users catch up on conversations by summarizing messages and even creating whimsical “sauces” that capture the week’s vibe. While this may seem light-hearted, it underscores the potential for AI to bridge gaps in communication and reduce the cognitive load in professional environments.

Hyper dynamic tools

Healthcare has long been plagued by poorly-implemented and difficult-to-use technology, particularly when it comes to electronic health records (EHRs). AI is now driving the development of hyper-dynamic tools that can adapt to the needs of individual patients and providers, from device technicians to specialized neurologists. Epic, the premier EHR provider, is currently trialing more than 60 AI-driven use cases across health systems, with the ambition to significantly improve the user experience by making EHRs more responsive and less cumbersome. Of course, efforts like this to significantly decrease the time burden of using EHRs have been tried before, with very mixed success.

Startups are also using AI to address healthcare’s continued reliance on outdated technology. Tennr, for example, is using AI to interpret and send faxes—which are still used surprisingly often in healthcare—while Hippocratic AI is automating workflow calls like discharging patients, remote monitoring of health conditions, and pre-procedure preparation that would otherwise require human intervention. These innovations suggest that new technology may even be able to solve some of the problems created by older ones.

Beyond healthcare, we’ve seen AI used in similar ways to tackle everyday tasks. Google’s Duplex AI is a prime example, capable of autonomously booking appointments by making phone calls that sound eerily human. This kind of task-specific AI reflects the adaptability we hope to see in healthcare tools, enabling them to meet the unique needs of each user. Importantly, this use case is from 2018, long before our current and much more capable crop of AI tools came to market. Imagine Duplex being applied for appointment scheduling, medical supply chain tracking, and even up-to-date clinical fact-checking. We are likely close to a future of customizable, or potentially even fully-DIY tools that can take on some of our daily health tasks.

Enhancing empathy

One of AI’s most human, and therefore most controversial, potentials lies in enhancing empathy within healthcare. Studies have shown that AI tools, like ChatGPT, can often deliver more compassionate responses than human physicians. This raises important questions about how scalable machine empathy could be and what it means for patient care.

In simulation environments, AI is being used to model entire hospital systems, where each staff member and patient is represented by an AI agent. These simulations can not only improve AI performance, but also reveal the emotional pressures of a workflow and the impact of misaligned incentives, offering new insights into how we design and manage healthcare systems.

Cultural projects have also explored the concept of AI-driven empathy. For example, Laurie Anderson worked with the University of Adelaide’s Australian Institute for Machine Learning to create a Lou Reed AI that replicates her late husband’s voice and style. While acknowledging that this bot is not her husband, she finds value in the creative collaboration she gets from writing with it. Although this might seem like its applications are a long way from healthcare, this project highlights AI’s potential to engage human empathy through emulating personality and style—an area that could have profound implications for patient interactions in the future.

Escalating negotiations

The automation of prior authorization processes is a double-edged sword. AI can streamline the filing process, making it faster and more efficient, but speed can come at a cost. The recent revelations about Cigna's use of AI to deny claims in mere seconds is a concrete example of how AI can be used to prioritize efficiency over compassion, leading to significant concerns about denial of patient care.

Similar dynamics have played out in consumer markets. Amazon’s Hands Off the Wheel program, which automated pricing negotiations between Amazon and third party sellers, led to significant changes within the company, including layoffs and a restructuring of teams. AI-driven automation can fundamentally alter business processes, a trend that could similarly impact healthcare as AI continues to evolve.

AI is even transforming the landscape in businesses like telemarketing. The Jolly Roger Telephone Co. uses AI to keep telemarketers on the line, wasting their time and protecting consumers from unwanted calls. This creative use of AI highlights the ethical considerations that come with automation—questions that are equally relevant in the high-stakes world of healthcare.

Custom weirdness

Personalized medicine has long been a buzzword, but AI is pushing the boundaries of what personalization can truly mean. Gene therapies, for example, have seen breakthroughs with 36 FDA-approved treatments and hundreds more in the pipeline. AI’s ability to better map our bodies and molecules promises even more tailored treatments, but it also raises important questions about safety, responsibility, and the ethics of such deeply-personalized interventions.

In mental health, companies like Tripp VR are using AI to create hyper-personalized, generative meditation experiences. While this might not appeal to everyone, it demonstrates the breadth of care opportunities that AI is opening up, particularly in areas like anxiety and chronic pain management.

Beyond the clinic, platforms like Character.ai, where users create and interact with custom AI personalities, highlight how quickly consumers are adopting AI-driven personalization. This trend could spill over into healthcare, where patients might soon expect—and demand—highly-personalized AI presenting care solutions.

At the fringes of this trend are biohacking enthusiasts who are pushing the limits of personalized health. Some are experimenting with gene-edited bacteria that produce alcohol instead of lactic acid (preventing cavities), or antibiotics that kill competing oral bacteria. While these innovations are not yet FDA-approved, they signal a potential Cambrian explosion of personalized health interventions driven by consumer demand.

The road ahead

AI has the potential to be a true collaborator in healthcare, helping practitioners see patterns across modalities that are not visible to individual people. It is our responsibility as designers, technologists, and healthcare professionals to ensure that AI tools are developed with the needs and perspectives of all stakeholders in mind.

As we move forward, we must embrace experimentation and collaboration, ensuring that AI not only enhances healthcare efficiency but also contributes to a more humane and empathetic system. The future of AI in healthcare is promising, but it requires us to actively engage with these tools and guide their development to serve the greater good.

For us, that means leaning into human-centered design, and putting people and their needs at the center of the process. That’s how we work with our clients to build desirable and responsible futures, and to understand how our technology choices will impact participants in the health system. It’s also why we believe so strongly in co-design, working alongside the folks we’re building new health tools for, as we did with teenagers in California to build Soluna, a mental wellbeing app for the state’s young people, which we made in partnership with Kooth. Because when we’re building health tools with emerging technologies like AI, it’s critical that we go beyond doing no harm, and build the right solutions for patients and providers. 

(This piece was adapted from a talk delivered at the American Medical Informatics Association®  Clinical Informatics conference.)

AI is broadening how we derive meaning from data, offering new perspectives that were previously inaccessible to most.

As designers who love toys and games, we set out to explore how we might reduce the environmental impact across the whole industry.

The toy industry’s environmental impact is the flip side of the joy of play. The $90 billion toy industry is a highly plastic-intensive sector, using 40 tons of plastic for every $1 million in revenue. It contributes significantly to the 11 million tons of plastic dumped into the world’s oceans each year, causing widespread damage to marine life and ecosystems.

If the toy industry can reduce its plastic usage by half, it would mean millions of tons less plastic entering the oceans, mitigating the harmful effects on marine life and helping to preserve ocean health. It would also be an opportunity for the industry to serve as a beacon, setting a new standard and demonstrating that significant reductions in plastic usage are achievable and impactful. 

We’re looking to help create a transformative leap that propels our industry forward. That means we need to design better play experiences that are inherently more sustainable, joyful, and viable for kids, families, and the companies that manufacture them. “Consumers are asking for it, and toy companies are starting to feel the need to do something about it,” says Lynn Rosenblum, Professor of Toy Design at Otis College of Art & Design. “They are finally understanding that they must take urgent action.”

To take action of our own, we conducted an internal design project to understand how kids and parents feel about their toys, what would make more sustainable toys a viable option, and how we could not just make a non-plastic alternative, but something even better. We spent four weeks with parents and their kids, as well as industry experts who are working to address this design challenge. We also rapidly prototyped our ideas both digitally and physically, turning concepts into testable experiences the kids could play with. With their help, we surfaced insights that point the way to a better future for the toy industry—and the planet. 

‍Sustainability alone won’t sell toys.

Most families do not view green toys with the same pride as they do STEM toys. (Not yet, at least.) To make sustainable toys more appealing, they will need to provide additional value, like affordability, enhanced educational benefits, or support for children's development. Jessica, a mother of a 5 year-old, told us that to her, the ideal definition of sustainability would be toys that last long enough for all of her kids to play with them, and when they’ve outgrown them, the chance to pass them on to another family. “When I think of sustainability I think of getting a lot of use more than the sustainability of the environment,” she says. 

‍Plastic lasts longer than kids’ attention spans

Families often prioritize durability when they’re buying toys. But according to a study with  2,000 UK families, parents estimated that 15 percent of toys their kids receive for Christmas are neglected within days, 23 percent within a month, and 50 percent within six months. Children often tire of specific toys long before they wear out. So unless we can increase the amount of playtime with toys from the outset, they’re destined for a quick trip to the landfill.

‍Children love natural materials

As 10-year-old Jude was playing with some of our prototypes, he told us, “Plastic toys are a scam.”  He preferred his wooden toy train tracks because “They won’t break.” Jude and many of the other kids we talked with were clear that they preferred the tactile and sensory experiences of natural materials, even if they aren’t consciously aware of their material preferences when they select toys. Often, the dominance of plastic in the marketplaces is less about kids' preferences—it's about the convenience and affordability that plastic provides.

Being resourceful is fun and sustainable—but you can’t unwrap it

Children love to make their own toys, repurposing Amazon boxes as backdrops or using face masks as doll dresses. They’re often happy just coming up with their own ways to play. But, as Jessica said to us, “The grandparents just want to see them open a present.” Extended families tend to prefer buying a new physical toy that can be wrapped and unboxed. The surprise and reveal are part of the appeal. At the same time, it's worth noting that there is a thriving, if informal, secondhand market in places like Facebook or Buy Nothing where parents and children are perfectly happy with pre-loved toys.

Nixing is easier than fixing

Most toys are designed to be disposable, fostering a culture where repair is uncommon. As Jessica told us, “In today’s culture, everything is just thrown away because it’s so cheaply made. It’s cheaper to buy a new one. If you are buying quality toys then it makes sense to invest to maintain, to take care of it, to repair it rather than throwing it away.” Unlike high-quality sustainable toys, many plastic toys lack durability and repairability, making them more likely to be discarded.

From insights to action

How, though, do these insights translate to opportunity areas for toy companies, and joyful and more sustainable toys for families? We created a set of quick  concepts to help us learn quickly about how we can have an impact on the future of sustainable toy design. Here’s what some of of our prototypes look like, and the opportunities they helped us uncover.

Create non-plastic toys with superior functionality

There’s a big opportunity in designing  trendy yet sustainable toys using alternative materials, and enhancing their appeal by incorporating vibrant colors, exciting designs, and interactive features. By emphasizing durability and engaging play experiences, we can make non-plastic toys the preferred choice for both children and families. Picture a unique collection of toys crafted from natural materials sourced from the very environments where kids love to play, like seaweed beach toys, or bamboo car tracks.

Design toys for circular play models

Another option? Creating systems to make existing toys function within a circular economy to minimize their footprint. Introduce easy-to-use, repairable, re-sellable, and shareable toys designed for longevity and multiple users, built on children's natural play behaviors like constructive and collaborative play. These systems should seamlessly integrate with parents' existing rituals and day-to-day activities, making sustainable play convenient and practical for families. Think new platforms that transform toy repair into a fun and educational experience, or a second-hand toy purchasing experience where kids and parents can discover gently used toys ready for new adventures.

Offer play as a service

Revolutionize play with toys designed for maximum imaginative impact and minimal environmental footprint. By embracing alternative business models beyond the traditional pay-for-product approach, we can unlock new ways for kids to engage in meaningful and sustainable play. Focusing on access rather than ownership to reduce new toy production, minimize waste, and extend play time or use technology to breathe new life into existing toys through AI-enabled or VR experiences. 

Already, we’re building concepts and new toys based on these opportunities, and we’re excited to make them real. If you want to work together to build a more sustainable future for toys, get in touch. 

‍

This project was informed through conversations with numerous experts, and families all around the US. We're grateful to them for their contributions.

‍

‍

While the toy industry has thrived by delivering joy and play to kids worldwide, the scale of plastic production has led to real environmental challenges.

Designing emerging tech is different from traditional product design. Much of the time when we do user research, our participants are already kind of familiar with the interaction models we’re presenting. They know that a fob unlocks a car, or how to type queries into a search engine, or how a toaster usually works. But when you’re working with a new technology, potential users have no known reference points, which makes it much harder for them to know how to use it in a way that provides real value. Think about early drivers trying to figure out how to crank-start a model T, when their previous transportation was a horse. 

With emerging technology, wild rumors about the technology precede widespread adoption, and the gap in understanding how to use it can feel enormous. That makes providing a user experience people love, the most important piece of the product’s design.

It can also be the trickiest part. After all, you’re designing something nobody has ever used before—not even you. At IDEO, we’re really familiar with this ambiguous place—the space between a new technology everyone is excited about, and real products that provide real value for their users. We’ve spent a lot of our history there, creating everything from early computer mice to IKEA’s kitchen of the future to dancing robots.  Here are some simple rules we follow when we’re trying to get from unknown technology to products people love.

Lean into co-design

Designing with potential users helps us understand how people will respond to a new technology.

In the last year or so, IDEO’s Play Lab dug deep with Gen Z users to test out what they actually want from AI-enabled products. Often, companies assume that if it’s new and it’s possible, young people will be into it. We wanted to test those assumptions, creating concepts like an AI concierge that could plan your trip, or a creative problem-solver that could hand you the solution when you get stuck. 

Instead of fully building them out, we made really early prototypes that let them test the idea of the product, rather than a fully-built product itself. That was enough for them to understand the experience, and their feedback was clear: They want useful tools that take care of hassles, but they still want life’s messy moments. Tech is not a solution to their relationship issues, and they don’t want it to be creative for them. They want tools that help them maintain their humanity, not supplant it. The Gen Zs we worked with then helped us rethink the ideas to fit their needs. Our final designs and insights were much stronger because of it.

Insights like these, which are hard to come by without co-design, can uncover what users really want, long before a product hits the market, helping you make better investments with your development dollars. 

Break norms

A major purpose of emerging technology? Providing new value to people through new user experiences. If we stick with existing interaction paradigms, we’re missing the point.

The purpose of XR is to overlay reality on our reality, or to take us into new realities. If we’re designing a website inside of VR goggles, that seems like an underwhelming use of the technology. We should take advantage of its capabilities—the fact that it’s a big open space where we can have interactive experiences, and that the audio can come from all around us, and that it's social and connective with people all around the world. If we’re just designing a flat website, we’re making a black and white tv in a color tv world. 

Similarly, in the generative AI space, everything is a chatbot. That’s because we’re used to interacting with intelligent things by talking to them. 

But look around, and you might discover a whole category of people trying to rethink how we can interact with intelligent machines. AI hardware companies are showing us how there are so many new possibilities of how to use technology in our daily lives (some more successfully than others). Brilliant Labs’s glasses that can translate what you hear; Limitless’s wearable pendant, which remembers the details of your workday; Meta’s AI glasses that allow you to ask questions about what you see. All of them create new user experiences—and the best ones are very different from what our existing gadgets are designed to do.

Embrace unexpected collaborators

Here’s an idea for you: Bring a group of creatives—musicians, electrical engineers, designers—into your emerging technology lab. Ask them to experiment with the technology you’re developing.

There is a long history of creatives helping technologists unlock new ideas and possibilities for what the technology might do.

Take John Cage, the avant-garde composer who collaborated with engineers and technologists, particularly at Bell Labs in the 1960s. Cage wasn’t an engineer, but he was a visionary artist who explored the boundaries of music and sound. His approach to music was deeply experimental, and he often used technology as a tool to create new forms of expression. His creative explorations led to tangible developments in electronic music, influencing the design of synthesizers, advancements in sound manipulation, and the foundation of interactive and generative music. Cage’s work encouraged technologists to think outside their usual constraints and explore new creative potentials within their inventions.

IKEA did something similar, when it decided to make the kitchen of the future. Years ago, they asked us and a group of students to explore the social, technological, and demographic forces that would impact our relationship with food in 2025. IDEO took their research and designs and built out a full concept kitchen that could help guide product development into the future.

Focus on design from the outset

Too often, companies focus on what they can build, rather than what they should. You can make the most cutting-edge technology in the world, but if your customers don’t like it, you don’t have a product. Bring them into early stages of the development—rather than as a panicked afterthought when you might discover that customers aren’t adopting what you made.

That doesn’t mean you have to invest your entire budget into speculative design work that might not pay off; after all, you may not even be sure the technology itself is feasible. But at a minimum, design can help you understand where technology might go so you can ask the right questions, consider what comes next at each development milestone, and make a plan for when and how designers, design researchers, and product people can help you think about which areas of the technology will be most valuable to users and should be developed.

When Willow set out to redesign the breast pump experience, the startup tapped IDEO and Function Engineering as partners, creating a cross-functional team of researchers, industrial designers, and mechanical engineers. Together, they uncovered mothers’ unment needs, and designed and engineered a more human-centered version of a device that hadn’t changed much in 25 years. Now, instead of being stuck shirtless, tethered to a wall, mothers have the option of a cordless breast pump that fits under their clothes.

Prototype to widen your aperture

When the founders behind education startup Ethiqly came to us to create new tools for students and teachers, they didn’t ask, “How can we use AI in the classroom?” They looked at the bigger picture: “How does gen AI change what it means to be a student?”

Then, we jumped into prototyping to test the capabilities of the technology. We created interactive prototypes, building generative AI mini apps that let us test key research questions. Could gen AI help teachers give students feedback more effectively at scale? Could providing students with prompts help them get past the hurdle of a blank page? The prototypes we made suggested feedback that teachers could choose to share, and encouraged students to interrogate their own ideas. That’s what learning how to be a good writer is all about; it’s not just generating an essay, it’s digging into and uncovering your own perspective and what you want to say. So that’s what the final product we designed helps you do—uncover your voice. Prototyping allows us to see the possibilities outside the constraints of what we’ve imagined. It lets the technology tell us what it can do, which uncovers new possibilities for how we might use it.

‍Make a vision, but don’t get too attached

Visions keep us from wandering aimlessly, which is a good thing. But when you’re working in the completely new and speculative environment of emerging technology, getting too attached to an early vision can limit your progress. 

Think about Large Language Models. Entrepreneurs in the space have been really serious about building chatbots, like some version of the AI love interest in the movie “Her.” And sure, there seems to be a market for romantic partner AIs—but if those companies had stuck with just that, they would have missed out on ground-breaking enterprise products, educational products, and more. From the outside looking on the journeys of LLM startups, it seems that they realized they needed to prioritize what their customers want—which is a little different from the Hollywood vision.

The possibilities for what we can create with emerging technologies are endless (that’s what makes this the most fun job ever), but it’s also what makes it hard. It’s part speculative, it’s technical, and it’s creative. It comes with ambiguity, and long timelines. Even those of us making it don’t always know exactly what it might become. But by leaning into the design process, and following guidelines like these, we can make it a lot easier to iterate our way to undiscovered gold mines of innovative ideas and new possibilities. 

Want to explore these ideas further? Reach out to emergent@ideo.com.

Many of the companies I talk to ask me some version of the same question: There’s this amazing new technology. We’re excited to adopt it to create a really great product. But how do we make it stick?

He outlined his thesis, built over many years of creative problem solving: Almost any creative endeavor can produce an output–a digital experience, a new brand, a physical product, a reimagined service–but the quality of that output is wholly dependent on how we frame and examine the problem it’s meant to solve. For years, his thinking has stuck with me: Obsess over the question. Questions are a tool to guide our thinking, and, to address the biggest, gnarliest challenges facing society today, we need to think in radically new ways.

Questions can serve two purposes: They can open our apertures, allowing us to uncover new approaches to familiar problems, or they can focus our efforts by providing clarifying constraints on formidable challenges. In both cases, a well-crafted question allows you to examine a problem in new ways, stress-testing potential solutions to ensure innovation is successful and doesn’t fall into a trap.

Across our interactions at IDEO–in our health portfolio and beyond–we encounter organizations looking for answers to the most critical challenges that they are facing, and, in response, many groups purporting to have the answers. AI products that will “unleash the power of your workforce,” digital solutions that will “fix your patient experience,” or elixirs that will magically cure every conceivable ailment hindering your organization today. But, when you are holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when organizations start with solutions, the impact of their innovation efforts will be at best limited, and at worst, will completely miss the mark, squandering opportunities and investments.

So, when faced with a daunting challenge, jumping to solutions with “guaranteed” results can look attractive, but doing so may very well limit you to what is possible right now. The questions we ask are a starting point to allow us to envision beyond today, unlocking new solutions to the toughest problems.

Recent history in digital health serves as an excellent example of solutions looking for problems. While “digital health” is now an established term, we are yet to realize the value of a decade’s worth of the progress it promised. To date, even the most future-facing digital health initiatives have been focused on gathering data to drive efficiency or improving costs by outsourcing to digitized solutions. But the true value of digitized health will come when we find the meaning in the data that we gather. It will fuel more integrated health services that fit it into the ways we experience our own health and improve both quality of life and outcomes. Technology for technology's sake will not advance this cause, but digging into genuine problems and asking how our emerging technologies can enable us to innovate in genuine, human-centric ways will. 

By reframing the problem in the first place, we may land on better solutions. How might we enable people to live healthier lives before they find themselves requiring clinical care? How might we enable better collaboration across sectors to transform into the health systems we need for the next generation? How do we leverage human expertise alongside AI? Individual technologies will not be the answer; they will be enablers within a system redesigned with these considerations in mind. 

The opportunity in healthcare is keenly illustrated by developments in the financial sector. Startups and challenger brands have used human-centered innovation to disrupt incumbents in a highly-regulated space by transforming the customer experience. The resulting reset of market share has forced the established financial institutions to elevate their own customer experience to keep pace with these new entrants, accelerating innovation and investment. With the global healthcare industry attracting spending comparable to the annual GDP of a small country, it is only a matter of time before disruptors come along and rip up the existing healthcare rule book. Because if large incumbent brands don’t innovate, someone else will. 

In healthcare and beyond, many organizations acknowledge that AI will be a significant part of their future success, but—to change the question again: What do humans in the experience deem desirable? How should the experience be elevated? What value might new, emerging technologies unlock? 

The answers may lie outside of traditional healthcare itself. The industry doesn't exist in isolation. It’s heavily influenced by politics, policy, geography, and climate, and it is deeply integrated with other parts of our daily lives.  Today, the health of people, communities, and our planet are inextricably linked. To understand just how interconnected they are, consider the following facts: 80 percent of health outcomes globally are driven by non-clinical factors–the environmental conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age. And at the same time, healthcare is responsible for 10 percent of global material extractions and 4.4 percent of emissions, contributing significantly to the very environmental issues that are increasingly impacting human health.

With both the healthcare system and the planet under such extreme pressure, small changes are not the basis of a winning strategy. If we are able to frame the right questions, we might be able to shift the preconceived constraints that exist today and create better systems, experiences, and solutions that address real human needs for the future. 

If you take a hard look around healthcare, you’ll see many solutions, but few that address those big, gnarly challenges. And yet, the need has never been greater. Organizations of every size should carefully examine the questions guiding their efforts: Is this solution solving a genuine problem? Are we placing people at the heart of our solutions? Is the innovation effort set up for success? 

If the answer is no, then the first step is to go back to the problem and ask: Do you have a great question that your innovation efforts are trying to answer? Does it represent the humans in the experience? Is it oriented around an outcome? Does it acknowledge the wider context? And is it broad enough to represent a number of possible futures, while being constrained enough to make meaningful progress?

With ever-increasing societal and commercial pressures, now is the moment to radically rethink our broken health systems. It’s a huge job, but there’s an easy place to start: Ask the right questions. 

Exploring how to innovate in new ways? We would love to chat.

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One of the most impactful lectures I had in my early years of design training was from a professor who sought to reframe the purpose of design.

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.