Co.Design

Ikea doubles down on smart homes

This dystopian film was supposed to critique today’s tech. Instead, Silicon Valley loved it

‘Sight’ rocked the internet in 2012. Now its creators are back for a sequel.

I’ve been designing offices for decades. Here’s what I got wrong

Verda Alexander questions the cushy, amenity-laden offices that her interior design firm helped pioneer. The way forward, she argues, is to introduce a little friction into the workplace.

Here’s why we need more diversity in AI

At the Fast Company European Innovation Festival in Milan today, tech executives discussed how artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that trains it.

Remembering Phil Freelon, a visionary architect who championed diversity

Freelon has died at the age of 66. He worked tirelessly to make architecture more diverse and inclusive—and designed some of the most influential American architecture of the 21st century.

Scientists built a car that drives like a human. Here’s how people reacted

People trust robot drivers more quickly than you might expect.

Networking sucks. This app could turn it into the best conversation you’ve ever had

Quilt is a platform for women to meet up in each other’s homes and discuss everything from perfectionism to spiritual breathwork.

This portable bidet is the iPod Nano of butts

$79 for eternal butt bliss.

This new app helps you talk to the vaccine skeptic in your life

One in five Americans disagree with a family member or friend about vaccines, according to a survey by the health website Verywell. Its new choose-your-own-adventure tool could help facilitate those tricky conversations.

Meet Matt Mason, the Mattel toy that brought space to life for boomer kids—and then disappeared

Mattel found savvy expats from the effort to get astronauts on the Moon to create the interplanetary future everyone dreamed of . . . for kids to play with in their sandboxes.

The world’s aging architecture is a $21 trillion risk

The cost of making buildings more energy efficient can seem staggering—until you look at the cost of not retrofitting them.

The hidden way cabs could promote healthier cities

An MIT research team has discovered that taxi rides could give urban planners a cheap, effective way to monitor the health of a city.

A hospital introduced a robot to help nurses. They didn’t expect it to be so popular

Moxi is a robot designed to make nurses’ lives easier. But the friendly bot is turning out to be a welcome presence for some patients, too.

This AI can tell a store you’re going to return those shoes before you even buy them

Are you addicted to free online returns? Researchers have developed a tool that predicts with 83% accuracy the likelihood you’ll return something in your shopping cart.

We design our life. Why not design our death?

From our need for shelter, we’ve built Fallingwater; from our need to eat, soufflé. What art of living could we occasion out of knowing we must die?

Welcome to post-reality: Apple will now fake your eye contact in FaceTime

In its new iOS 13 update to FaceTime, Apple is experimenting with altering your face so it looks like you’re looking directly at the other person.

The Band-Aid of the future knows when you’re healed

It’s easy to imagine these wearable circuits on the shelves of CVS.

How Costco quietly became a $7-billion fast-fashion powerhouse

Millennials are rejecting fast fashion, but their parents are still into cheap clothes—which helps explain Costco’s unlikely rise as a fashion retailer.

Jony Ive’s real legacy, according to Apple designers who worked with him

“I thought to myself, Jony has no idea how we work in software.”