We start with humans.
The best designs answer a felt need. We spend time with the people who'll live with the outcome before we design anything for them — keeping desirability, viability, feasibility, and responsibility in view from day one.
We love a good framework. Human-centered design is the one we're best known for — but it's just one of six commitments that shape how we approach every project.
The best designs answer a felt need. We spend time with the people who'll live with the outcome before we design anything for them — keeping desirability, viability, feasibility, and responsibility in view from day one.
We use making as a strategic tool from day one. By turning ideas into tangible prototypes early and testing them with customers and stakeholders, we de-risk ideas, iterate quickly, and build confidence in a direction forward.
We complement your deep domain expertise with fresh vantage points. By looking beyond category norms — B2B to B2C, public to private, into adjacent and analogous industries — we spot standout experiences that sharpen our thinking and energize design.
We're comfortable operating at multiple speeds at once, navigating ambiguity while designing toward real-world constraints. That means pairing strategic exploration with execution-ready concepts, especially where product, content, and technology intersect.
IDEO has collaborated with many executive teams as they lead their organizations toward new futures and new ways of being. We work shoulder-to-shoulder with our client stakeholders to create shared ownership and actionable conviction.
As AI expands what's possible, we keep human judgment in control. We design experiences that extend creativity, surface meaningful choice, and turn machine capability into real-world impact.
David Kelley Design, ID Two, and Matrix merge to form IDEO, uniting engineering, industrial design, and human factors.
ABC's Nightline features IDEO redesigning the shopping cart, bringing design thinking into public view.
IDEO's approach becomes widely adopted across business and design, embedding "human-centered design" into common industry language. Learn more →
David Kelley helps found the d.school, institutionalizing design thinking in education.
Tim Brown publishes Change by Design, codifying IDEO's philosophy for a global business audience. Watch Tim's TED talk →
Nonprofit arm launches to apply human-centered design to global social challenges.
David and Tom Kelley publish a manifesto for the everyday designer — that creativity isn't a gift, but a muscle anyone can build.
IDEO launches IDEO U and expands from project-based work to longer-term transformation programs.
PillPack, one of IDEO's early startup-in-residence ventures, is acquired by Amazon for ~$1B, demonstrating the commercial impact of design-led venture building.
IDEO evolves its practice to integrate AI, exploring how design can guide human–AI collaboration and responsible innovation.
A benchmark of 100 large companies, scoring the cultural behaviors most correlated with growth — and the four archetypes that emerge from them. Download the 2026 IQ report →
An IDEO leader is, "All-of-the-above": a maker, a writer, a sensemaker, and a host. We strive to be a force-multiplier for our team, encouraging the team to do the best work of their careers and have a positive impact on the world.
Zoey is a software designer at IDEO San Francisco. Her approaches to design include storytelling, data visualization, XR, space design, software platform, installation, and creative prototyping.
Prior to IDEO, she worked with companies and academic institutions to explore the potential of leveraging technology to boost social engagement via technology and design tools. Beyond her digital realm, Zoey is a multimedia and textile artist, translating data and digital graphics into weaving patterns to create new forms of storytelling.
Zach is a communication design director at IDEO Cambridge. He's inspired by the challenge of using creativity to foster belonging and connection, bringing a maker's ethos and hands-on experimentation to his work. Zach's first foray into design was when he started creating xeroxed fliers for his college punk band, which would mark the beginning of more than two decades of designing posters, album covers and merchandise for both major label releases and independent bands at the vanguard of the DIY underground.
Zach has since participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions around the United States and Europe.
Prior to IDEO, Wai spent over seven years in primary and secondary market investment and commercial data analysis for large multinational corporations. In his previous roles, he led investment and M&A strategies in the global tobacco and adjacent markets.
When he's not focused on charting business strategy, Wai is an avid hardcore gamer, enjoying the challenges of complex strategy and competitive systems.
Esha is a design researcher and experience designer at IDEO's Play Lab. With a background in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and an early career in Talent, her work has always centered people.
Esha's perspective is shaped by nearly a decade living in intentional communities with 150+ housemates across the San Francisco Bay Area, exploring alternative housing, shared food systems, and do-ocracy. Outside of IDEO, you may find Esha doing immersive art, DJing for hours, or daydreaming about their next pop-up experience dubbed “Get On My Lawn”.
Jess develops and runs IDEO's global marketing functions, strategies, and teams. She has experience in brand and agency side in VR, art tech, SaaS, events, consumer goods, fintech, entertainment, recruitment and luxury.
Prior to moving into marketing Jess was an artist (shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize), a graphic designer, a media buyer, a professional face painter, an arts workshop leader, and to date she's run more than 45 marathons and ultramarathons, plus three Ironman triathlons.
Peter has cultivated key relationships and business partnerships with C-suite partners to grow a multi-million dollar, industry-facing consulting portfolio in media and technology.
Peter's also known for the kaleidoscope of perspectives he brings to IDEO; he's been an ice-cream store manager, a trained Apple technician, he's worked on a chicken farm, he competed in swimming at a national level, and is a qualified architect.
He's now been at IDEO for over 15 years.
Matt loves exploring challenges through the lenses of game design and storytelling. He believes that play is built into our DNA, guiding us toward social and creative well being. He's a facilitator, an experience designer, a dungeon master. He reads board game instructions for fun, so you don't have to.
Before joining IDEO, Matt was the Artistic Director for The Second City theater in Chicago, where he harnessed improvisation as a dynamic process for deep collaboration, ideation, and learning. He runs workshops for clients and teams on creativity, teaches comedy at DePaul University, and never turns down a chance to host a game show.
Chuli helps organizations turn human and cultural complexity into opportunities where business realities meet emerging technologies. She's known for helping teams see the invisible forces—norms, power, status, and identity—that shape decisions and behavior, and turning those insights into clear direction.
Before IDEO, Chuli worked across the U.S. and China with international nonprofits and global development organizations. With a background in International Relations, she brings a grounded, systems perspective to every project.
Outside of work, she surfs for balance—body and mind.
Sarica Robyn is an anthropologist of crisis and change, and a documentary filmmaker. She combines strategy, ethnography, behavioural science and human-centred design to help organisations understand complexity, navigate disruption and ground innovation in people's lived realities. Her work focuses on using methods from academia to surface human needs and translate them into stories, services and products that drive real behaviour change.
Prior to IDEO, she completed her PhD in Visual Anthropology. In her free time, she curates photography exhibitions, plays jazz piano and is a trained sommelier.
Sergio leads IDEO's AI work in Europe, helping organizations turn big ambitions, often around the climate transition, into real product, service, and venture portfolios that scale. Trained as a software engineer, he's spent over a decade translating complex systems into human-centered solutions across industries, from luxury retail and AI at YOOX Net-a-Porter to media, construction, and grocery startups.
Outside of IDEO he speaks regularly on the future of AI and sustainability, and can usually be found exploring contemporary art spaces and plant-based bakeries in whatever city he lands in.