— Creating the First Usable Mouse — Europe China Japan USA Work Blog Tools About Contact Jobs News Big Questions Work IDEO designs the original mouse for Apple Apple The Challenge Create a new kind of computer navigation device that is less expensive and more reliable than any other on the market.…

Illustrations by Alicia Pompei, Communications Designer @IDEO You may know IDEO’s role in shaping the process known as design thinking and how that informed the first Apple mouse , the shopping cart , and the insulin pen for Type-1 diabetes . But fewer know about business design , a discipline at…

These erasable tiles enable teams to visualize the flow of goods and services in a business What “Good” Looks Like Illustrated by Ina Xi When I first joined IDEO as a business designer, I had no idea what the role would look like day-to-day. To start figuring it out, I turned to some of our veteran…

The Oregon Trail is, by most measures, the most successful education computer game of all time. Many versions of the game were created over the years, dating all the way back to 1971. However, the version that many people assume is the “original” — the version that constantly appears in memes and…

I f Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s readout of Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin is a preview of the Trump administration’s approach to Russia, it’s going to be a rough three and a half years. In a diplomatic depantsing that will have repercussions far beyond Russia, Tillerson’s comments…

An airplane is the perfect, and perhaps the only, place to actually read the globe-trotting lifestyle magazine founded in 2007 by Tyler Brûlé, a Canadian editor and erstwhile war correspondent. Its logo, an “M” with a twisted loop inscribed in a circle, lurks at airport terminal bookstores all over…

Eternify As this week's back-and-forth between Taylor Swift and Apple has shown, the debate over whether or not artists can get a fair deal from music streaming is far from over . However, if your favorite band doesn't have the cultural clout of Miss Bad Blood herself, then you might want to…

Getting people to have sex with you is like exercise: when you're doing it all the time it feels super easy and fills you with endorphins, but if you stop for a couple of months it's basically impossible to start again. We've all had dry spells, but what does it feel like when you find yourself in a…

This article originally appeared on VICE Spain Whether you're longing for a threesome with your neighbours or want to fuck a stranger while riding a horse in the surf, most of us have at least one sexual fantasy. And while it's important to follow your dreams, I like to think that it's better for…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was Carrie Underwood’s time . It was the age of wisdom, but also of low-rise jeans. It was only just over a decade ago, but oh, how things have changed since 2005. The dating site OkCupid had launched the previous year, and it’s been asking its…

Emma Stone at the Academy Awards in February. She told Billie Jean King that male co-stars have taken pay cuts to level the gap in their Hollywood salaries. Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times Emma Stone has become the latest woman in Hollywood to speak out about gender pay inequality, saying…

The “travel screen” from The Oregon Trail is an iconic image, instantly recognizable to millions of people — a small, blocky representation of an ox pulling a covered wagon across an abstract landscape. The scene is so familiar that it has permeated our culture, featured in countless internet memes.…

What??? I can only carry 100 pounds of meat back to the wagon!?! And why do those dead buffalo stick their legs straight up in the air? Have you ever wondered how the designers of the classic versions of The Oregon Trail came up with decisions such as these? If so, then you have come to the right…

The phone booth installation “Once Upon a Place” in Times Square examines the immigrant experience, broadly touching on themes of belonging and displacement. Vincent Tullo for The New York Times Even amid the cacophony of Times Square, the sounds of telephones ringing every seven to nine minutes are…

Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture A few weeks after the release of Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble,” the hard-charging lead single on his fourth album Damn. , the song landed at No. 1 on Billboard ’s streaming chart. It’s been on the chart ever since, never falling below No. 3 as users have played it…

It’s clear we’re living in a golden age of bailing. All across America people are deciding on Monday that it would be really fantastic to go grab a drink with X on Thursday. But then when Thursday actually rolls around they realize it would actually be more fantastic to go home, flop on the bed and…

Yesterday I was very excited to see that the comedian Patton Oswalt had announced his engagement to Meredith Salenger. Now, anyone who know’s me knows that I don’t follow the lives of celebrities at all. I’ve made an exception for him. Our spouses both unexpectedly died within 3 days of each other…

Tom Holland in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” Chuck Zlotnick/Sony Pictures - Columbia Pictures, via Associated Press Sony’s latest Spider-Man movie is kind of like the first and fourth, even if it’s hard to keep track of what happened when in this on-and-off again series. Once more, it spins on Peter…

“Clown Car.” Image courtesy of Neil Kremer & Cory Johnson. All rights reserved. Longtime collaborative partners Neil Kremer and Cory Johnson are the creatives behind Kremer Johnson Photography . They founded the Los Angeles-based agency to explore their shared vision, specializing in character-based…

Syrian Democratic Forces soldiers push past debris in Raqqa, the site of fierce fighting with the Islamic State. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post) The fight against the Islamic State for control of the Syrian stronghold is a daily replay of horrors. Photographer Alice Martins captured them for…

The best thing I ever did in college was attend a lecture by Chuck D, who had been booked to speak at my campus for reasons I'm not even sure he understood. Rather than rapping, he just talked to the audience for an hour straight, free-associating through a laundry list of topics––he told us about…

Builders erecting the frame of an S House, a project by Vo Trong Nghia Architects that aims to provide affordable, durable and easily built houses for people in slums, remote areas or refugee camps around the world. Amanda Mustard for The New York Times BA VI, Vietnam — Just below a hilltop pagoda,…

PowerPoint, the much maligned and misused presentation platform, is harming people's perception of you and your brand, according to new research from Harvard University. The research team at Harvard conducted a double-blind study to answer the immortal question: "How effective is PowerPoint as a…

The first thousand times I was accused of being a politically correct, anti-free-speech censor, it seemed silly. The charge was always in response to some relatively innocuous bit of cultural criticism — like, say, that racism is bad and artists should try not to make racist art if they don’t want…

(Ringer illustration) There’s a new ritual in media. A Silicon Valley plot point becomes an actual, journalistic homicide becomes gallows humor on media Twitter. Over the past couple of weeks, this is what happened with the "pivot to video." On Wednesday, MTV announced it was trashing MTV News ’ hub…

T hese moments don’t happen. Hip-hop is a young man’s game. But for one night, the music universe revolved around JAY-Z , the sport’s finest elder statesman, with the release of his 13th studio album, 4:44 . The 10-track 4:44 is the most emotionally taxing project of JAY’s ( he’s back to all caps )…

Volvo Cars on Wednesday became the first mainstream automaker to sound the death knell of the internal combustion engine, saying that all the models it introduces starting in 2019 will be either hybrids or powered solely by batteries. The decision is the boldest commitment by any major car company…

Over the past few months, as the disturbing prospect of a Trump administration became a disturbing reality, I decided to reach out to Noam Chomsky, the philosopher whose writing, speaking and activism has for more than 50 years provided unparalleled insight and challenges to the American and global…

North Korea, a small and poor country facing far stronger adversaries and the perpetual threat of its own collapse, would not seem a likely state to defy four consecutive American presidents. Yet it is precisely that weakness, analysts say, along with the country’s history and internal dynamics,…

Talk less, Do more Along with many in the tech community, I’ve been preoccupied, surprised and disgusted with all the news about sexual harassment and other discriminatory behavior. It’s clear to me that we all need to do more to change this paradigm — what’s less clear is how to institute…

I really enjoyed the job I had in 2015. I was a principal engineer at a health tech company, with a polyglot team comprised of Ruby and Clojure developers ranging from very early career to very seasoned. I was learning a lot and doing really interesting work. I felt like I had finally found a…

28 Answers 28 active oldest votes 589 You don't sell time! You sell results! But producing sub-par results to conceal the amount of time you actually work is unethical! Despite what everyone says here, you do not sell 40 hours of data entry per week, you sell the result processing X spreadsheets.…

On the seventh floor of a building in downtown Manhattan, Paris Hilton holds scissors over a male model's head. She wears a black bustier, but only tighty-whities and twinkling light body hair cover the model's skin. "Are you ready for a haircut?" Paris asks. He nods. What else is a straight man to…

SEOUL, South Korea — The Trump administration on Tuesday confirmed North Korea ’s claim that it had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, and it told Pyongyang that the United States would use “the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat.” The administration…

5 Lessons learned from studying avatar creation flows I’ve been creating virtual versions of myself ever since I can remember. Growing up as a gamer, I get excited every time I am presented with a “Create New Character” prompt. With the rise of X Reality , I am tempted to re-examine the systems…

‘A blast’: Jamie Foxx, left, and, right, Ansel Elgort as the eponymous Baby Driver.Photograph: Allstar/Sony Pictures A fter wisely walking away from the car crash of Marvel’s 2015 film Ant-Man , Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright is back in the fast lane with his most thrillingly cinematic…