About 1 in 3 Americans make at least one New Years resolution, according to Pew Research. While most of these vows focus on weight loss, fitness, and other health-related goals, many fall into a distinct category: work.
Work-related New Years resolutions tend to focus on someones current job and career, whether to find a new job or, if the timing and conditions are right, whether to embark on a new career path.
Were an organizational psychologist and a philosopher who have teamed up to study why people workand what they give up for it. We believe that there is good reason to consider concerns that apply to many if not most professionals: how much work to do and when to get it done, as well as how to make sure your work doesnt harm your physical and mental healthwhile attaining some semblance of work-life balance.
Country music icon Dolly Parton wrote and sang the theme song in the movie 9 to 5, and had a starring role as well.
How we got here
Most Americans consider the 40-hour workweek, which calls for employees being on the job from nine to five, to be a standard schedule.
This ubiquitous notion is the basis of a hit Dolly Parton song and 1980 comedy film, 9 to 5, in which the country music star had a starring role. Microsoft Outlook calendars by default shade those hours with a different color than the rest of the day.
This schedule didnt always reign supreme.
Prior to the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929-1941, 6-day workweeks were the norm. In most industries, U.S. workers got Sundays off so they could go to church. Eventually, it became customary for employees to get half of Saturday off too.
Legislation that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law as part of his sweeping New Deal reforms helped establish the 40-hour workweek as we know it today. Labor unions had long advocated for this abridged schedule, and their activism helped crystallize it across diverse occupations.
Despite many changes in technology as well as when and how work gets done, these hours have had a surprising amount of staying power.
Americans work longer hours
In general, workers in richer countries tend to work fewer hours. However, in the U.S. today, people work more on average than in most other wealthy countries.
For many Americans, this is not so much a choice as it is part of an entrenched working culture.
There are many factors that can interfere with thriving at work, including boredom, an abusive boss, or an absence of meaning and purpose. In any of those cases, its worth asking whether the time spent at work is worth it. Only 1 in 3 employed Americans say that they are thriving.
Whats more, employee engagement is at a 10-year low. For both engaged and disengaged employees, burnout increased as the number of work hours rose. People who were working more than 45 hours per week were at greatest risk for burnout, according to Gallup.
However, the average number of hours Americans spend working has declined from 44 hours and 6 minutes in 2019 to just under 43 hours per week in 2024. The reduction is sharper for younger employees.
We think this could be a sign that younger Americans are pushing back after years of being pressured to embrace a hustle culture in which people brag about working 80 and even 100 hours per week.
Critiques of hustle culture are becoming more common.
Fight against a pervasive notion
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a lawyer and political scientist who wears many hats, coined the term time macho more than a decade ago to convey the notion that someone who puts in longer hours at the office automatically will outperform their colleagues.
Another term, face time, describes the time that we are seen by others doing our work. In some workplaces, the quantity of an employees face time is treated as a measure of whether they are dependableor uncommitted.
It can be easy to jump to the conclusion that putting in more hours at the office automatically boosts an employees performance. However, researchers have found that productivity decreases with the number of hours worked due to fatigue.
Even those with the uxury to choose how much time they devote to work sometimes presume that they need to clock as many hours as possible to demonstrate their commitment to their jobs.
To be sure, for a significant amount of the workforce, there is no choice about how much to work because that time is dictated, whether by employers, the needs of the job or the growing necessity to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
4-day workweek experiments
One way to shave hours off the workweek is to get more days off.
A multinational working group has examined experiments with a four-day workweek: an arrangement in which people work 80% of the time32 hours over four dayswhile getting paid the same as when they worked a standard 40-hour week. Following an initial pilot in the U.S. and Ireland in 2022, the working group has expanded to six continents. The researchers consistently found that employers and employees alike thrive in this setup and that their work didnt suffer.
Most of those employees, who ranged from government workers to technology professionals, got Friday off. Shifting to having a three-day weekend meant that employees had more time to take care of themselves and their families. Productivity and performance metrics remained high.
Waiting for technology to take a load off
Many employment experts wonder whether advances in artificial intelligence will reduce the number of hours that Americans work.
Might AI relieve us all of the tasks we dread doing, leaving us only with the work we want to doand which, presumably, would be worth spending time on? That does sound great to both of us.
But theres no guarantee that this will be the case.
We think the likeliest scenario is one in which the advantages of AI are unevenly distributed among people who work for a living. Economist John Maynard Keynes predicted almost a century ago that technological unemployment would lead to 15-hour workweeks by 2030. As that year approaches, its become clear that he got that wrong.
Researchers have found that for every working hour that technology saves us, it increases our work intensity. That means work becomes more stressful and expectations regarding productivity rise.
Deciding when and how much time to work
Many adults spend so much time working that they have few waking hours left for fitness, relationships, new hobbies, or anything else.
If you have a choice in the matter of when and how much you work, should you choose differently?
Even questioning whether you should stick to the 40-hour workweek is a luxury, but its well worth considering changing your work routines as a new year gets underway if thats a possibility for you. To get buy-in from employers, consider demonstrating how you will still deliver your core work within your desired time frame.
And, if you are fortunate enough to be able to choose to work less or work differently, perhaps you can pass it on: You probably have the power and privilege to influence the working hours of others you employ or supervise.
Jennifer Tosti-Kharas is a professor of management at Babson College.
Christopher Wong Michaelson is a professor of ethics and business law at the University of St. Thomas.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Ive read a lot of business memoirs. One I keep coming back to is Grinding It Out by Ray Krocthe man who built McDonalds into the global giant it is today.
Kroc was 52 before he even heard of the McDonald brothers who originally started the company. That fact alone says a lot about how he thought: Success comes eventually, but only to those who keep showing up.
Which brings me to McDonalds third-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
McDonalds reported solid results: global comparable sales up 3.6 percent, U.S. sales up 2.4 percent, revenue of $7.08 billion.
The company is outperforming most competitors, but in a brutal environment:
Fast-food traffic is down 2.3 percent industry-wide this year, worse than the 1.6 percent drop across all restaurants, according to market-research firm Black Box Intelligence.
McDonalds Extra Value Meals now account for about 30 percent of U.S. transactions, the company reported.
And, McDonalds spent $40 million this quarter on marketing and expects to provide $90 million in total support to franchisees this year to discount those meals.
Thats real money coming out of margins. Wall Street has noticed.
But McDonalds CEO Chris Kempczinski said McDonalds will measure its success first by gaining share of lower-income consumer traffic, and second by improving value and affordability experience scores.
Traffic first. Profits later. And why is that?
Well, Ive written before about how McDonalds is the undisputed champion of nostalgia marketing.
It brought back the Hamburglar. It made Grimaces birthday go viral. It launched Adult Happy Meals. It returned the Snack Wrap after fans petitioned for years.
Every one of those campaigns was about unlocking core memories in customers. Its a strategy thats paid off, but you cant unlock core memories if they were never created in the first place.
A 7-year-old who comes to McDonalds with her family today because they can afford the Extra Value Meal wont be profitable for decades.
But 20 years from now, when shes shopping for her own kids and feeling nostalgic? Thats when the investment pays off.
Brutal truth: The U.S. economy has split in two.
Lower-income consumers are feeling pressure from rising rents, food bills, and childcare, Kempczinski explained.
Add uncertainty around SNAP food assistance, and these customers will keep pulling back unless they feel their incomes begin to grow.
Meanwhile, higher-income consumers are visiting quick-service restaurants much more often.
So while McDonalds is gaining relative share with both groups, the lower-income segmentthe future nostalgia customersis disappearing from the industry.
This is where Ray Krocs philosophy matters once more.
Because grinding it out sometimes means having the resources to keep going when others cant.
And McDonalds truly has advantages that most competitors dont.
First, international markets are carrying their weight, and then some.
Comparable sales rose 4.3 percent in International Operated Markets (led by Germany and Australia) and 4.7 percent in International Developmental Licensed Markets (led by Japan). Both outperformed the U.S.
That geographic diversification gives McDonalds room to breathe while competitors suffocate. Heck, CFO Ian Borden said it directly:
Our unique positioning is that weve got the financial strength to make these types of investments, when maybe others are gonna have to be a bit more defensive.
Compare that to others in the industry:
Chipotle just reported slowing sales. Yum Brands is exploring a sale of Pizza Hut. Investors took Dennys private after several quarters of declining sales.
In his remarks during the McDonalds earnings call on Wednesday, Kempczinski brought it full circle back to Kroc:
Thats a powerful 13-word sentiment, calling back to a nearly 50-year-old book.
Sacrifice margin today to keep families coming through the doors. Bet that keeping kids visiting noweven at discounted priceswill pay off in 2045 when they bring their own kids back.
Bet that you can outlast competitors who dont have the same international strength or financial reserves to weather years of pressure.
Bet that, eventually, our bifurcated economy heals, anxiety eases, and families feel less squeezed.
Theres something almost poetic about a company built on nostalgia thinking at least in part in decades rather than quarters.
Thats how nostalgia actually worksits long-term. We look back at the past through rose-colored glasses and remember it better than it really was.
Maybe someday, we hope, todays kids will look back fondly.
Even if today doesnt always look so rose-colored while were living it.
Bill Murphy Jr.
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Wall Street was largely unchanged early Wednesday as markets hovered near record levels on a holiday-shortened trading day.The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.1% as of 9:45 a.m. Eastern. The S&P 500 index was up less than 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.1%.Markets will close at 1 p.m. ET for Christmas Eve and are closed for Christmas. Markets will reopen for a full day of trading on Friday, however volumes are expected to be light this week with the holiday and most investors having closed out their positions for the year.Much of the focus remains on the state of the U.S. economy and where the Federal Reserve will move interest rates. Investors are betting the Fed will hold steady on interest rates at its January meeting.Recent reports show high inflation and shaky confidence among consumersworried about high prices. The labor market has been slowing and retail sales have weakened.The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week and remain at historically healthy levels despite some signs that the labor market is weakening.U.S. applications for jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 20 fell by 10,000 to 214,000 from the previous week’s 224,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. That’s below the 232,000 new applications forecast of analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.Dynavax Technologies soared 38% after Sanofi said it was acquiring the California-based vaccine maker in a deal worth $2.2 billion. The French drugmaker will add Dynavax’s hepatitis B vaccines to its portfolio, as well as a shingles vaccine that is still in development. Sanofi shares were unchanged in the premarket.European markets were moving slightly between slight gains and losses. Asian markets were also quiet, with Hong Kong moving up 0.2% while Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.1%.Both gold and silver futures were higher, with silver prices rising more than 1%. U.S. crude oil rose 0.4% to %58.61 a barrel.
Associated Press
Nike shares ticked up 2% in premarket trading on Wednesday after Apple CEO Tim Cook bought nearly $3 million worth of the sportswear maker’s stock.
Cook, who has served on Nike’s board since 2005 and is its lead independent director, bought 50,000 shares at $58.97 each, according to a regulatory filing published on Tuesday.
Nike shares were trading at $58.49 on Wednesday.
The purchase comes just days after Nike reported weaker quarterly margins and sluggish sales in China. Its shares have slumped nearly 13% since it reported results on December 18.
Cook now holds about 105,000 shares in Nike, as of December 22, the filing showed.
Aishwarya Venugopal, Reuters
During the week of Christmas, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced food recalls for several holiday treats.
Before you begin enjoying your holiday snacks, its a good idea to check whether any of the goodies you have at home were recently recalled. Heres what you need to know.
The following food products are part of recent food recalls:
Atwaters cookie tins
Choceur cookie butter holiday bark
Choceur pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday park
Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies
You can find more details about each product recall below.
Atwaters cookie tins
On December 22, 2025, Baltimore-based Atwaters recalled 197 of its cookie tins because the cookies contain almond, pecan, and walnut allergens.
People with an allergy or severe sensitivity to tree nuts, almonds, pecans, or walnuts are at risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume the recalled product.
The recalled product is sold in a circular metal tin with a bow tied around it. The cookie tin has an Atwaters cookie tin label on the bottom of the package. However, the packaging failed to identify the nut allergen.
The cookie tins were distributed from December 13 through December 22, 2025, in Baltimore, Towson, and Catonsville, Maryland. They were sold at retail stores and “gifted” to three wholesalers, the notice says.
Consumers who have purchased the cookie tins are encouraged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.
More information, including product images, can be found in the recall announcement on the FDA’s website.
Choceur holiday barks
On December 22, 2025, Silvestri Sweets of Illinois expanded its voluntary recall of Choceur-branded holiday barks to include additional lot numbers and best-by dates. The company recalled the following products for the following reasons:
Choceur cookie butter holiday bark. This product may contain undeclared pecans, the notice states.
Choceur pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday park. This product may contain undeclared wheat.
The recalled items are sold in 5-ounce stand-up pouch bags. They were distributed nationwide at Aldi grocery stores.
Products with the following lot numbers and best buy dates are affected:
Cookie butter holiday bark:
Lot #: 28525 Best By May 2026
Lot #: 29925 Best By May 2026
Lot #: 30625 Best By May 2026
Pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday bark:
Lot #: 28525 Best By August 2026
Lot #: 29925 Best By August 2026
Lot #: 30625 Best By August 2026
To date, no illnesses have been reported.
Consumers who have purchased the recalled products should throw them away.
More information about these recalls, including images, can be found on the FDA’s website.
Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies
Troemner Farm of Atlantic Mine, Michigan, has recalled its Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies because they may contain undeclared milk, wheat, or soy.
People with allergies or severe sensitivity to milk, wheat, or soy are at risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume these recalled products.
The products were sold in 6-ounce and 12-ounce packages. They were distributed to retail locations in just two cities: Hancock and Calumet, Michigan
A missing labeling was revealed during a routine inspection, according to the FDA’s notice.
Consumers who have purchased Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies are encouraged to return them to Troemner Farm for a refund or replacement.
More information, including product images, can be found on the FDA’s website.
California officials and weather forecasters urged holiday travelers to avoid the roads and reconsider Christmas travel as a series of powerful winter storms brought relentless rains, heavy winds and mountain snow.Storms began to move in late Tuesday evening and were expected to intensify into Christmas Eve. Authorities said the millions of people expected to travel across the state will likely meet hazardous, if not impossible, conditions as several atmospheric rivers were forecast to make their way through the state, the National Weather Service warned.“If you’re planning to be on the roads for the Christmas holidays, please reconsider your plans,” said Ariel Cohen, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Los Angeles, during a Tuesday news conference.Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding, mudslides and debris flows in areas scorched by last January’s wildfires. Los Angeles County officials said they were knocking on the doors of some 380 particularly vulnerable households to order them to leave.Much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area were under a flood watch and a high wind warning through Friday. Forecasters warned heavy snow and gusts were expected to create “near white-out conditions” Wednesday in parts of the Sierra Nevada and make it “nearly impossible” to travel through the mountain passes.There’s also a risk of severe thunderstorms and a small chance of tornadoes along the northern coast.Heavy rain and flash flooding already led to water rescues and at least one death in Northern California, local officials said. Shasta County Sheriff Michael L. Johnson on Monday declared a state of emergency to prepare for more rain and allow the state to help with hazard mitigation and search and rescue operations.Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters), National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said. It could be even more in the mountains. Gusts could reach 60 to 80 mph (96.5 to 127.8 kph) in parts of the central coast.Officials expect multiple road closures and airport delays during the storms. Downed trees and power lines are also possible. Parts of Los Angeles are under evacuation warnings this week.The county put up K-rails, a type of barrier, around the burn scar to help catch sliding debris during rainstorms. Residents could also pick up free sandbags to protect their homes, said Kathryn Barger, a Los Angeles County supervisor representing Altadena.Many people in burn scar areas decided not to leave after receiving the evacuation notification, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said. He urged them to reconsider.“The threat posed by this storm is real and imminent,” he said.Local and state officials are gearing up to respond to emergencies through the week. The state has deployed resources and first responders to a number of counties along the coast and in Southern California. The California National Guard is also on standby to assist.An atmospheric river is a long, narrow band of water vapor that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky, transporting moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes.
Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, and Jessica Hill in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
Trân Nguyn, Associated Press
The great power competition in the AI Age will probably be between OpenAI and Google, and one of the main battles may be over advertising dollars. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed to describe the world in those terms during an appearance on the Big Technology podcast Monday.
OpenAI, which is not yet profitable, is reportedly getting set to sell ads within ChatGPT in an effort to monetize the many free users on its platform. ChatGPT now has an impressive 800 million weekly active users, but only 35 million of them buy subscriptions. The ads, which could help pay for OpenAIs plan to spend $115 billion on infrastructure by 2029, could show up as soon as early 2026.
As Altman pointed out on the podcast, Google was slow to put generative AI at the center of its products, especially search, its cash cow. Google has probably the greatest business model in the whole industry, and I think they will be slow to give that up, Altman said. Google became a two trillion-dollar company selling ads around its traditional ten blue links search results; answering search queries with AI-generated results would have meant lost revenueespecially for product searches. (Google has since developed its own AI search experiences and is experimenting with ads to match.)
Altman believes Googles hesitation to go hard on infusing its products with generative AI has bought his company time and staying power. If Google had really decided to take us seriously in 2023, lets say, we wouldve been in a really bad place, the CEO said. I think they wouldve just been able to smash us.
OpenAI believes (as Perplexity does) that Google will struggle to monetize AI search ads after spending decades perfecting a massive apparatus for selling ads around traditional search results. [B]olting AI into web searchI may be wrong, I may be drinking the Kool-Aid hereI dont think thatll work as well as reimagining the whole [business]. Altman said. He seems to suggest that his company is better positioned to reinvent web search and advertising because its a pure AI play.
Its true Google was slow to evolve search (and search ads) toward AI, but the company still has some massive advantages when competing for brand advertiser dollars. It has amassed databases full of custom information that it can serve for certain searcheslike local business searches, weather, or mapping. And it has more ad targeting data than anyone else.
There are very legitimate reasons to be concerned that OpenAI is going to eventually succumb to the Google behemoth, just as Yahoo, Microsoft, Blackberry, and countless others have, writes Stratechery analyst Ben Thompson in a recent newsletter. I still want to believe that OpenAI can be an aggregator, but they dont have the business model to match, and that may be fatal.
Altman has said he has reservations about putting ads within ChatGPT, worrying that it might erode trust in the chatbots outputs. But it may be that advertising will be the way consumer AI is paid for, just like its the reason that much of the web has been free for decades.
Ad dollars may let OpenAI maintain its pace in pursuing human-level AI models, its major goal. But going head-to-head with Google in web ads is a daunting task, and it may be one of OpenAIs biggest tests yet.
A news segment about the Trump administration’s immigration policy that was abruptly pulled from “60 Minutes” was mistakenly aired on a TV app after the last minute decision not to air it touched off a public debate about journalistic independence.The segment featured interviews with migrants who were sent to a notorious El Salvador prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, under President Donald Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration.The story was pulled from Global Television Network, one of Canada’s largest networks, but still ran on the network’s app. Global Television Network swiftly corrected the error, but copies of it continued to float around the internet and pop up before being taken down.“Paramount’s content protection team is in the process of routine take down orders for the unaired and unauthorized segment,” a CBS spokesperson said Tuesday via email.A representative of Global Television Network did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the story, two men who were deported reported torture, beatings and abuse. One Venezuelan said he was punished with sexual abuse and solitary confinement.Another was a college student who said guards beat him and knocked out his tooth upon arrival.“When you get there, you already know you’re in hell. You don’t need anyone to tell you,” he said.The segment featured numerous experts who called into question the legal basis for deporting migrants so hastily amid pending judicial decisions. Reporters for the show also corroborated findings by Human Rights Watch suggesting that only eight of the deported men had been sentenced for violent or potentially violent crimes, using available ICE data.The decision to pull a story critical of the Trump administration was met with widespread accusations that CBS leadership was shielding the president from unfavorable coverage.The journalist who reported the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, said in an email sent to fellow “60 Minutes” correspondents that the story was factually correct and had been cleared by CBS lawyers and its standards division.CBS News chief Bari Weiss said Monday that the story did not “advance the ball” and pointed out that the Trump administration had refused to comment for the story. Weiss said she wanted a greater effort made to get its point of view and said she looked forward to airing Alfonsi’s piece “when it’s ready.”The dispute put one of journalism’s most respected brands and a frequent target of Trump back in the spotlight and amplified questions about whether Weiss’ appointment is a signal that CBS News is headed in a more Trump-friendly direction.
Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press
Michael Graves once said regarding a mens suit, You can buy a lot of cheap ones, or you can buy one great Armani suit.
He was not just talking about tailoring. He was talking about time, and about the value of design that endures functionally, emotionally, and aesthetically long after the first moment of use. At Michael Graves Design, we have always believed that the best designs are not those that just capture attention for a moment, but those that quietly support you over years, as your life evolves.
As we look toward the future of accessibility, this idea becomes more urgent. The truth is simple: Every body is either disabled, or not currently disabled.
DESIGN THAT LASTS MUST ALSO ADAPT
Accessible design is not a niche strategy. It is a philosophy of foresight. Just as quality design anticipates wear and tear, accessible design anticipates change. Our abilities shift over time: a disease diagnosis, a broken wrist, aging eyesight, a dimly lit room, or the fatigue that comes from multitasking. These are permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities that remind us that accessibility is not for some people, it is for every body, all the time.
When you buy something thoughtfully designed, you are not only purchasing an object for today. You are investing in your future self. A well-placed grab bar or an ergonomically-contoured handle may seem unnecessary now, but design that is inclusive from the start ensures your environment keeps working for you as life evolves. That is not a limitation; that is liberation.
THE BLUE SKY FALLACY
Every designer learns that constraints fuel creativity. The most overlooked constraint is time itself. Great design considers not only how an object is today, but how it ages, how it feels after a decade, and how it fits into new phases of life.
The products that endurethe teakettle you reach for every morning, the cane that becomes an extension of confidence, the accessible bed that becomes invaluable when you are pregnant, recovering from a sports injury or dealing with arthritisearn their place through empathy and endurance. Like copper developing a natural patina, they do not lose their shine with age; they gain depth, character, and meaning. Time reveals what is truly human in design: the capacity to keep serving, delighting, and belonging.
When we prioritize quality over quantity, we move from consumption to connection. The inexpensive object may fill a need, but the well-designed one creates a relationship. It gathers meaning through use, through memory, and through time.
THE 10-3-1 RULE: DESIGN FOR DISCOVERY
From 10 feet away, a product should make a striking visual impression that draws you in. From three feet away, you begin to notice the finer details that make it beautiful and unique. From one foot away, you experience the tactile qualitiesthe feel in your hand, the sound of a lid closing, the subtle comfort of balancethat turn interaction into attachment.
This layering of experience also connects design across time. The first impression creates desire. The first touch confirms trust. Over years of use, the subtle discoveries and enhancements continue to reveal themselves, deepening the relationship between product and user.
When we design with this rule, we are not creating for novelty. We are designing for longevity, ensuring that the product continues to surprise and delight in small ways long after it is first used. The more you live with it, the more reasons you find to keep it. That is how great design resists obsolescence and becomes part of your life story.
DESIGN WITH: CREATING FOR THE LONG JOURNEY
Product designers often start with ethnographic research. It means we observe, listen, and collaborate with users to uncover product opportunity gaps that real life exposes. During this process, we create journey maps for all stages of use to ensure that, over time, the product continues to delight and exceed expectations.
This approach turns empathy into strategy. When we design with people, rather than for them, we learn what they reach for first, what they avoid, and what frustrates them as time goes on. Designing with time in mind ensures that function and emotion evolve together. Products should not simply age well; they should grow more meaningful as users do.
FROM TIMELESS STYLE TO SUSTAINABLE EMPATHY
Design that lasts is also sustainable. Durability is the quiet partner of accessibility. When an object is built to last, both physically and emotionally, it reduces waste in materials and in meaning. A timeless product avoids obsolescence not because it resists change, but because it anticipates it.
Michael Graves understood that beauty and practicality are not opposites. They are collaborators. His philosophy, that good design belongs to every body, was not just about cost or availability. It was about longevity. The most democratic design is the one that remains useful and dignified across the entire arc of a persons life. When we think beyond immediate needs to what those needs might become, we create environments that nurture resilience rather than replacement.
DESIGN AS AN INVESTMENT IN YOUR FUTURE SELF
When you buy an accessibly-designed product, whether a piece of furniture, a bathroom fixture, or a cooking tool, you are not only investing in quality. You are investing in your future independence, comfort, and dignity.
As Michael reminded us, you can buy a lot of cheap ones, or one great Armani suit. The suit, like great accessible design, carries you forward. It becomes part of your story. It fits you today, and it will still fit, both metaphorically and emotionally, when your needs evolve.
The fifth dimension of design is not about style that never changes. It is about care that never expires.
Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
You came, you ate, you sat through Uncle Bob’s crass jokes. Youve earned yourself some alone time.
If the holidays prompt you to research “solitary retreats near me,” or if you find yourself utterly bored with dinner table conversationhow are we still talking about Wicked?!here are four games you can play on your phone or computer.
Heads-up: The last one requires a minimum of two people, so save it for when you’ve recharged your social batteries.
[Image: The New York Times]
1. For those who are sick of Wordle
Domino fan? Sudoku fan? If you like either or both of those games, youll love Pips, a new logic puzzle game from The New York Times. The rules are simple: Place your domino tiles on a game board to meet a set number of conditions. Some regions must have the same number of pipsthose dots that make up the face of your domino tile; others must add up to a certain number.
You have to satisfy all requirements in order to win. If one puzzle doesn’t scratch the itch, you can play two more on the same day, though you have to pick a different level of difficulty.
If you’re looking for a Wordle alternative, or want something more numerical that’s not good old Sudoku, this one’s for you.
[Screenshots: Neal Agarwal]
2. For those who want to fight a machine
You know that really annoying CAPTCHA puzzle you have to sometimes complete to prove you’re not a robot? Well, game designer Neal Agarwal has turned it into a mischievously addictive computer game.
I’m Not a Robot features 48 puzzles that become increasingly difficult as the game progresses. One minute, you’re checking boxes with stop signs on them; another, you’re trying to park a Waymo with your keyboard’s arrow keys.
The action culminates in a frantic Dance Dance Revolution game, but its so difficult that only 1% of people had reached that level within a month of the game launching. If you find yourself sucked in, and your family keeps growling at you for being antisocial, just tell them youre on a noble mission to prove your humanity to a machine.
[Images: courtesy Colin Miller]
3. For transit nerds (or those who loved The Sims)
Are you old enough to remember SimCity, or progressive enough to find public transit cool? Then youll love Subway Builder, a new simulation game that lets you design, build, and operate subway systems in more than 20 cities across the United States. But here’s the best part: Unlike other transit games, this one uses real-life data to map where residents and workers live, as well as building foundations, road layouts, and existing tunnels that may impede construction.
The game gets so realistic you have to contend with signal failures, broken down trains, and operational costs in a way that might just help you gain an ounce of sympathy for the folks who run the actual subway in your city.
Transit experts believe the game could start a transit revolutionso hop on quick.
[Photo: Hasbro]
4. For those who hate being the Banker
Do you still carry cash? Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly, figured you’ve upgraded to mobile banking, and decided to make a version of Monopoly that meets you where you are.
Meet: Monopoly App Banking, a version of the classic board game that eliminates both paper money and the dreaded role of the banker, instead delegating transactions to a free mobile app. In this case, the app is both the bank and the banker!
The app-assisted game promises faster, fairer playno more power grabsand augmented-reality enhanced mini games you unlock every time you land on Free Parking, Jail, or Railroad spaces. Don’t worry, though: The board itself remains.
