Fast Company

The fast food chain is tweaking the formula for its hamburgers and chicken sandwiches in more than 2,000 locations at once. Easy job.

When you walk into Jack in the Box’s corporate headquarters, two anonymous mid-rise buildings in a San Diego office park, the first thing you see is the branding. Jack, the fast food chain’s mascot and imaginary CEO, is everywhere. Jack has a parking spot outside the building. Jack appears on the wall decorations. Jack appears on signs for every room and office. Jack randomly pops up in the hallways. Jack owns the place.

Read Full Story

After yanking hoverboards from its site, Amazon said it will refund customers who purchased the devices.

After pulling so-called hoverboards from its site in December, Amazon is going another step further and granting refunds to any customer who purchased the two-wheeled electric scooters. The device was yanked from Amazon in response to reports that the hoverboards were exploding and causing fires.

Read Full Story

Architect Fernando Romero tells us what fuels his creative vision, from rapid prototyping to Mayan culture.

Mexico City–based architect Fernando Romero‘s most recent project isn’t a building, but a scintillating orb made from thousands of custom-cut crystals. Illuminated from within, El Sol, as it’s named, features a tessellated surface composed of triangular prisms—a nod to the pyramids that were so meaningful to Aztec and Mayan culture. There’s an aural element to the piece, too: a soundtrack of acoustic waves produced by the sun, which astronomers at the University of Birmingham have recorded since the 1970s. The piece throws light around a room and gives off a disco ball vibe that’s fitting, since Swarovski commissioned it for the tradeshow-cum-social-event Design Miami.

Read Full Story

Before designing a user experience, try “product thinking” to discern whether the experience is worth using.

The term “user experience” often conjures up simple, beautiful, easy-to-use feature sets that make the user’s life easier. But the core user experience is not a set of features; it is the job users “hire” the product for. Uber’s core user experience is to get a taxi. The countdown, displaying when the taxi will arrive, is a feature that expands this experience. But Uber’s product works regardless of the feature. The countdown, on the other hand, cannot live without the product. There is a one-way interrelationship between feature and product: Features don’t work without the product. This is why designers should think in terms of products first.

Read Full Story

Chinese New Year set to be banner day for the ride-sharing giant

Uber China, the ride-sharing company’s unit in the Asian powerhouse, is set to experience massive expansion this year, reports TechCrunch. Currently Uber is available in 22 cities in the most populous country on the planet, but that number is set to rapidly grow to more than 100 cities by the end of 2016.

Read Full Story

Amnesty International says children as young as 7 are used to mine cobalt, a key component in lithium-ion batteries.

Amnesty International has issued a damning report claiming that Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Sony and car makers Daimler and Volkswagen are not doing enough to ensure that minerals mined by child laborers are not making it into the batteries the companies use to power their products. The report traced the sale of cobalt, one of the main components used to make lithium-ion batteries, from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo where children as young as 7 are used to mine the material.

Read Full Story

Here’s why that will never happen.

At a rally on Monday, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump vowed that he would get Apple to makes its products in America if he is elected president, Gawker reports. Speaking to a crowd of supporters at Liberty University in Virginia, Trump declared, “We’re going to get Apple to build their damn computers in this country instead of other countries.”

Read Full Story

Today, Starbucks launches in-store integration with Spotify in 7,500 U.S. stores. The CD era really is dying, isn’t it?

The next time you walk into a Starbucks, listen carefully. The music you hear may not depart too radically from the usual Starbucks vibe, but it will be noteworthy nonetheless. That sound you hear? It’s the death knell of the compact disc, making way for the on-demand, streaming-centric future of music.

Read Full Story

People say they love hard workers but they really love natural talent—a bias with troubling implications when it comes to hiring.

In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of the “uniquely American belief that everybody who works hard should get a fair shot.” It’s a hopeful value we all say we share: rooting for the striver who ascends the corporate and social ladder through years of grit and effort. But it’s also one that past evidence suggests we’re willing to betray—demonstrated by all the companies and colleges that select applicants with natural talent or untapped potential over those who’ve advanced by hard work alone.

Read Full Story

Travel through the space-time continuum in style.

Hollywood often envisions astronauts of the future in bulky, bulbous get-ups—more deep-sea diver than trendsetter—but the new design by Adidas Y-3 for Virgin Galactic looks instead to the sleek, fitted jumpsuits of race car drivers for inspiration. Eventually all astronauts, pilots, operations and maintenance teams, and hosting staff of Richard Branson’s consumer spaceline will don the custom pieces.

Read Full Story