IDEO

Proceed with care. It’s some of the best advice I can give when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion data—how to best measure it and what to do with that data once you have it. As head of IDEO’s global change management team, which focuses on belonging and equity, I’ve seen the importance of being rigorous with and thoughtful about the information we collect and how we share it. Telling someone to handle data with care might suggest that it’s fragile or in danger of breaking. That’s not the way I view it. I see a responsibility to keep...

The clutter is curated but not fixed. I rotate the items, and that process is rejuvenating and refreshing. To keep things from straying toward hoarder territory, I stick to a couple rules: I only hang on to the things that have some kind of value to me, and if I can’t move something without knocking something else over, I need to reassess. I live with my partner, who is adamant that she is not a fan of clutter, but our friends will laugh and say “What are you talking about?” Her approach is an even more curated and...

I’m in a drafty room in Farringdon, London, shaking the hands of a dozen mechanical engineers. A few months before, I was scoring paper at an airy luxury atelier in Paris. On its face, those client experiences might sound worlds apart. And they were, but not for the reason you might expect. I came to IDEO from those luxury ateliers and joined a team that was designing a new brand for Ford Motor Company. I brought with me the best of what I learned in Paris: a vigilance about being a brand-guideline guardian and a proficiency in creating highly aspirational...

I want to take a hack at reimagining the experience of identifying and applying for a job. At scale, it's currently a dry, massive vortex of duplicative job boards, cluttered search engine results, and mounting self-doubt and uncertainty. What if we had a universal tool that could help point a candidate to a strong-fit company, job family, industry, or job title based on a series of filters they could manipulate? Job security can prompt a domino effect with a host of other social issues, so let's put candidates back in the driver's seat and make the process of getting there...

So we decided to train Lotbot, and make it tough. We started with an isolated chatroom, so that we could gradually prepare it for the real world. We copied over all the chatter from our parking channel, and helped it categorize and understand each post. Over time, it made very few mistakes. Eventually it made none. We then tried to anticipate ne’er-do-wells in the channel. We had a list of the usual suspects and guessed at their meddling. We predicted (accurately) that one person I won’t name (Gian) was going to throw fake spot numbers at Lotbot. Another (Lopper) would...

While a color screen might seem like a great new opportunity to present rich information, it was only used for displaying simple data, like meal markers, dates, and times. From a human-centered design perspective, it made more sense to eliminate the color screen and use users’ smartphones or computers instead. The meter’s color screen was adding unnecessary cost without contributing enough benefit in return. By focusing on the outcome rather than the solution, we were able to spot our own blindspot. Just because an intervention can be solved with technology doesn’t mean it always has to be. 5. Inspire the...

Creativity Challenge # 2: Increase your creative output Anyone who studies dreams will tell you that if you want to remember your dreams, you need a dream journal right beside the bed. The moment you wake up—whether it’s the middle of the night or in the morning—you should capture those dreams before they fade away. The same holds true with your waking “dreams,” your partially or fully formed ideas, your glimpses of possible futures. If you want to maximize your creative output, don’t rely on short-term memory. Even if you never get to experience Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame,...

2. Shift from should to could Let’s go back to the feeling in the meeting room when all eyes are on you and you feel like you should know what to do next (but don’t). You’re getting ready to go into panic mode. Oh yes, I know the feeling well. Ever since I was young, I felt the pressure to do things as they should be done. And that pressure has followed me through adulthood. When I first started leading projects at IDEO, I often thought to myself: “If I were smart enough, I should be able to impress the...

2. Kids are buzzword bloodhoundsEinstein long ago reminded us that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it. Tapping a kid is the ultimate way to prove this out: If they’re confused by a concept or question, it usually means we have a lot more work to do.Quinn will call us out on our assumptions—happily and loudly—and she won’t fall for any design jargon or doublespeak. Getting critiqued by a kid keeps you honest.3. Kids are full of surprisesKids see the world from a different perspective and value it with different priorities. Having first-hand access to that unique...