EDGE(s) of IDEO

Modalities of Search

The different typologies of finding things

min read

Everything

8.17.24

What are we really looking for?

Past, Present, and Future of Search: Part 1

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Emerging Technology

7.30.24

An LLM Mediated Manifesto

How we got an LLM to facilitate group authorship of a manifesto about AI tools.

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Everything

7.18.24

AI is getting emotional. Is this supposed to save the digital economy?

On retention and intimacy in a non-boring sense

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Everything

6.6.24

In Search of Novelty

Unlearning Through Constraints

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Everything

5.6.24

Figproxy: A Free and Open Tool to Connect Figma and Arduino

Figproxy enables rapid prototyping of tangible user experiences by allowing Figma prototypes to talk to the external world. This article dives into what it is and why I made it.

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Play

2.13.24

Kezie Todd

Lauren Lin

Game Design Principles to Improve AI-Enabled Experiences

IDEO Play Lab's Kezie, Lauren and Keren share insights on how to prototype, position and world build with AI-enabled experiences

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Play

2.6.24

Takashi Wickes

Elise Granata

Behind the Scenes: Making an AI-Infused Holiday Wishing Well

Three Principles We Applied When Designing a Holiday Card With Gen AI

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Play

1.25.24

Elise Granata

Matt Hovde

Playful Rituals, Stronger Teams: Lessons from IDEO Play Lab

Part 2 from our series on Play x Work: Setting teams up to feel seen

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Emerging Technology

1.22.24

Ceci Gomez

Olfactory Odyssey

Decoding the Essence of Memory with AI in Scent Replication

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Emerging Technology

12.21.23

Fashion is a ruthless business

Squeezing creativity from an LLM

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Play

12.15.23

Tomoya Mori

4 Tools to Playfully Bring Strategy and Rigor to Your Design

Strategy can be playful too y'all

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Everything

12.12.23

Michal Janicki

Poetic Algorithms

Emotional Resonance in AI-Generated Film and Sound

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Emerging Technology

12.7.23

Michal Janicki

Do Pigeons Dream of Electric Budget Blogs?

Rapidly prototyping a budget horoscope with AI

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Play

11.29.23

Kezie Todd

Matt Hovde

What game design can teach us about leading teams at work

Part 1: Setting teams up for Success

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Everything

11.28.23

Grishma Rao

Thomas Overthun

Thomas Overthun Looks Back at 30 Years at IDEO

Grishma Rao talks with Thomas Overthun about his design legacy

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Climate

11.28.23

Words by Dave Vondle, industry advice by Kipp Bradford, concept design by Dave Vondle and Daniel Huang

Daniel Huang

Design for a Cooler Tomorrow: Part 3 of 3 - Why Haven't Refrigerators Changed?

If you compare a refrigerator from 100 years ago to today, things don’t look that different. In part 3 we address the barriers to novel refrigerator design and share our process.

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Climate

11.20.23

Words by Dave Vondle, industry advice by Kipp Bradford, concept design by Dave Vondle and Daniel Huang

Daniel Huang

Design for a Cooler Tomorrow: Combatting Climate Change with a Next-Gen Refrigerator - Part 2 of 3

In the future our appliances will be able to work together and work differently, supplying us with greater functionality with a much smaller impact on the environment. This installment is about one way this might play out.

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Climate

11.8.23

Words by Dave Vondle, industry advice by Kipp Bradford, concept design by Dave Vondle, Hal Monson, Nat Steinsultz, Vlad Seghete, Chris Gold, John Grimley, Jamie McCoy, Rob Rehrig

Design for a Cooler Tomorrow: Combatting Climate Change with a Next-Gen Refrigerator - Part 1 of 3

This series starts with the challenge: How might we help balance the load on the electrical grid to reduce carbon emissions?

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Everything

11.7.23

How do we discover new things?

Letting in the angels, spirits, subconscious, muses and dreams

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Everything

10.30.23

Can You Create A Renaissance?

Thinking about the conditions for creativity to thrive

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Emerging Technology

10.14.23

pr;dr™️

The idea of “Folk AI” has been around for awhile. What happens when anyone can create their own personal AI applications? So, here's an AI Chrome plugin that reveals the subtext of websites

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Emerging Technology

9.25.23

By Alireza Karduni, Tais Mauk, Angela Kochoska, Brian Lange and Peter Winter

ALIREZA KARDUNI

Tais Mauk

peter winter

Warming up to AI

Everyone on the call was holding up drawings of their dream treehouse. At IDEO, this type of thing isn’t totally unexpected; this is an example of a creative warmup, a short activity that gets everyone making and sharing in order to build creative energy and psychological safety amongst team members at the beginning of a meeting or working session. What was unusual this time was that an AI-powered parrot named Doodling Dave suggested we start our meeting this way.

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Climate

9.22.23

Words by Savannah Kunovsky, Alex Gallafent, and Bryan Walker & Visuals by Stephanie Sizemore

Savannah Kunovsky

How AI can help us solve the climate crisis

The problems we’re being asked to solve are changing. It’s less about helping partners innovate in incremental ways, and more about big transformational shifts in how we live and work. Two of those shifts: generative AI, and our rapidly changing climate.

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Play

9.12.23

By Keren Ruth Wong, Takashi Wickes, Lauren Lin & Matt Callahan

Takashi Wickes

The power of roleplay: designing Gen AI products that pass the Gen Z vibe check

From safety and privacy concerns around Snapchat AI to hallucinating chatbots, these “creepy” occurrences highlight the increasing sense of worry and backlash many of us feel around the rapid pace of AI development.

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Emerging Technology

8.18.23

Zoey Zhu

peter winter

If these pants could talk

what if you could learn everything you wanted to know about a product just by asking it directly? What would you ask for a pair of jeans, if these pants could talk?

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Play

8.8.23

Words by Diana Tobey, Keren Wong, and Tomoya Mori

Diana Tobey

The Insight That Could Change How Schools Think About AI

Apprehension about AI is everywhere, but few industries are passing judgment and regulation as quickly and decisively as education.

min read

Emerging Technology

7.28.23

Words by Savannah Kunovsky, Evan Burton, and Esha Reddy

Savannah Kunovsky

A Legal and Ethical Framework For Gen AI

In June, the National Eating Disorders Association decided to shut down an AI-powered chatbot called Tessa. “She” was supposed to serve as a 24-hour counselor for people dealing with eating disorders. Instead, psychologists and activists found Tessa was offering dieting tips.

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Emerging Technology

7.20.23

How AI and View-Masters are Helping Us Reimagine the Future

The Federal City Council approached IDEO to lead a futuring workshop on reimagining Washington D.C.’s downtown in the post-COVID era. With many government employees now working remotely, the central business district’s identity needed to change. The goal of this workshop was to generate innovative ideas to sustainably bring people back and establish D.C. as a model post-COVID global city.

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Emerging Technology

6.11.23

What’s in a /ˈneɪm/?

Getting AI to pronounce names correctly.

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Play

5.31.23

Words By Wendy Wang, Angel Napit Annunciacao, Matt Callahan and Lauren Lin, Visuals By Jeremy Chen

Jeremy Chen

WENDY WANG

Will AI interfere with relationships? Gen Z thinks so.

Earlier this year, Snapchat introduced My AI, a relentlessly cheerful chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT technology. The avatar, pinned to the top of your chat feed, was ready to respond to every passing thought, be your 24/7 rant buddy, or even…your new best friend.

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Emerging Technology

5.30.23

Words by Dave Vondle

Integrating AI into Immersive Interactive Fiction

How I made a payphone that talks to the future.

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Play

5.25.23

Words by Wendy Wang & Matt Callahan & Lauren Lin, Visuals by Jeremy Chen

Jeremy Chen

WENDY WANG

Gen Z to AI: Don't kill my creative vibe

AI helped you with your final paper and made your workout plan—why not have it help resolve a conflict between you and your friends, or help you pick your career?

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Emerging Technology

5.22.23

Juliette Laroche

Designing Materials for Better Storytelling with Generative AI

Everything that surrounds us tells a story, from architecture to the furniture we use to the utensils we eat with and the fashion we wear. Materials help shape those stories, communicating how it’s meant to be used and how it needs to be cared for. Industrial Designers must consider material properties, colors, function, lifespan, and cost-effectiveness when bringing a physical design to market. And digital creators must think about the physical properties as if they were in the real world. At the moment, the only creative constraint is we’re limited to using the materials we know exist. But what if we could wave a creative “I-wish-wand” and design a material first?

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Play

5.17.23

Words by Wendy Wang & Michelle Lee & Lauren Lin, Visuals by Jeremy Chen

Jeremy Chen

WENDY WANG

Is Gen Z ready to embrace AI? It's complicated.

Screenagers. Digital natives. The TikTok generation. It's hard to find an epithet for those born between the mid 1990s and early 2010s—aka Gen Z—that doesn’t call out a dependency on technology. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume, then, that those between the ages of 12 and 25 would glom onto everything generative AI.

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Emerging Technology

5.17.23

Daniel Huang

Jason Robinson

AI camera designs itself, (kinda).

Two Industrial Designers pick up the challenge to imagine a physical version of a Generative AI-enabled imaging device. What if I type more here?

min read

Emerging Technology

5.12.23

What’s Up Doc?

Accessing Knowledge Beyond the LLM (aka Grounding an LLM)

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Emerging Technology

5.8.23

What do you want, [AI]?

Answer: To Be My Sycophant and Publish a Book

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Emerging Technology

4.28.23

Vibe Camera: AI creates an impression

Capturing vibes, not photons

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Emerging Technology

4.7.23

Smile

How To Use GPT-4 To Improve Your Personality

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Emerging Technology

3.24.23

Parking Lotbot 2.0, pt 1

The Importance Of Explicit Prompts And Generative AI

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Emerging Technology

3.21.23

Crit-Bot Hotline

Call today and get an AI safeguard for free

min read

Emerging Technology

3.17.23