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Fresh off her French Open win, and before she gets rolling on the green grass of Wimbledon, tennis star Coco Gauff is launching a new three-part content seriesalong with entrepreneur Emma Grede and UPSwhose aim is giving advice to small-business owners. Created by The Martin Agency, the campaign kicks off with an anime-inspired spot featuring the 20-year-old phenom announcing her collaboration with Grede. Gauff, who first signed on as a brand partner with UPS in 2023, says she was really excited to work with Grede, cofounder of Skims shapewear and the Good American clothing line. She’s such a powerhouse in her world of business, so it was awesome to help give the opportunity to small-business owners to work with her, Gauff tells Fast Company. The campaign follows Gauff and Grede as they meet with the owners of three different small-businessesAnima Iris, Petrova Chocolates, and Classy Casitafor one-on-one mentoring sessions with Grede. Highlights from these sessions will be part of the campaigns content, which will roll out throughout Gauffs tennis season. [EMBED] Tennis Star-preneur Gauff herself is a big business. Last year, she reportedly made $30.4 million, including $9.4 million in prize money and an estimated $21 million from brand partnerships, appearances, and bonuses. In April, she launched Coco Gauff Enterprises with William Morris Endeavor (WME). She says she was listening closely to Gredes advice to the UPS campaigns three entrepreneurs. Honestly, I was just listening to what she was telling everyone else and taking notes, Gauff says. I learned a lot about working in bigger organizations and marketing, which is what she’s really good at, especially with Skims. I have her contact [info] for the future, and definitely want to dive more in depth with her. Gauff works with a long list of brand partners covering a variety of product categories, including Rolex, Bose, Head, Barilla, Carols Daughter, and Naked Juice. Her first deal, at age 14, was with New Balance. The two most important criteria for how she picks a brand partner are whether she has a connection to the brand as a customer or in some other way, and that the commitments cant interfere with tennis. Because tennis doesnt have a traditional offseason like football or basketball, Gauff says it can be tough to balance her time. It’s about finding the fine line to make the most of what you’re doing and your opportunity, but also making sure it’s authentic to you, she says. Because there have been some people who maybe got too overwhelmed with all the commitments. Trying to find that balance of keeping your career first and not wasting opportunity is very hard. I’m still trying to navigate it. More immediately, Gauff is focused on navigating the WTA’s No. 1-ranked player Aryna Sabalenka and the other contenders at Wimbledon.
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E-Commerce
The succession of layoffs at AAA game studios might seem to have no bottom, but jobs data shows that theres still plenty of opportunity outside of Ubisoft. The demand for game designers has increased over the past year in industries outside traditional gaming. According to a Fast Company analysis of 176,000 job listings gathered from Google Careers between fall/winter 2023 and fall/winter 2025, the percentage of postings for game designers rose significantly in several non-gaming sectors in the past year. This came at a time when listings for game designers within the gaming industry itself experienced only a modest, 4% increase. The technology sector, which accounted for 41% of all game designer listings in 2024, increased its share by 20%; tech represented 61% of all game design postings in 2025. The most dramatic shift occurred in the education industry, where the share of game design job postings soared from 9.12% to 28.81% of all listings. The media and publishing arena also showed increased demand, with its share climbing from 4.18% to 9.30%, a 122% surge. Then there are sectors that seem even further afield from gaming, which are also increasingly hiring game designers as well: electronics (rising 2.38% to 7.23%) and hospitality and tourism (from 3% to just under 6%). !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); Game designers help companies level up Game designers are unique in the design world for their ability to create whimsy, engagement, and some type of narrative progression. Its a formula that perhaps no company understands better than Duolingo, the gamified language learning app with 116 million monthly active users, 9.5 million paying subscribers, and $748 million in revenue in 2024. Unsurprisingly, when it comes to hiring, the company actively seeks out game designers, specifically. While were not actually building games, we see that there are some good synergies, says Liz Talley-King, the companys vice president of talent acquisition. The design elements, the product design elements, the stickiness factor, the joyful and fun productsits one of the reasons why we continue to tap into [that] talent. Digital learning platform Stride also seeks out the expertise of this cohort to enhance its educational offerings. Who better to hire than a game designer, who lives and breathes immersive worlds and can craft engaging content for all ages? asks Nikoya McCoy, the companys chief learning officer. She says that game designers are particularly adept at keeping students engaged, since they understand how to design experiences that capture attention for long periods of time. They play a huge part in the brainstorming and design process,” McCoy adds, “and their creativity and problem-solving abilities are invaluable.” Stride notices higher engagement and satisfaction rates when game designers help create the content. Using games for change Game designers will tell you that they don’t just create games, they design experiences. And sometimes those experiences can influence behavior, leading to real world impact. Larissa May, founder of #HalfTheStory, a nonprofit focused on fostering digital wellness among youth, says that, ironically, the same game design principles that often keep users hooked can also play a pivotal role in helping young people develop healthy, boundary-establishing relationships with technology. “We needed games that would act as a Trojan horse to get kids to act differently in the digital world,” May says. One example is Crash Out, a role-playing game that uses a Jenga tower to represent digital well-being. Wade Kimbrough, head of game design at #HalfTheStory, explains that when the tower falls, their character crashes out, leading to a conversationwhat if this were real life? Could you rebuild trust and relationships as easily? What consequences would a comment or post have in the real world? That reconciliation of the game and reality creates a eureka moment that can lead to behavior change. More broadly, he adds, by making a game analogous to a real-world system, you can see how players think about that system and how they approach problems. The future will be gamified The rising demand for game designers across industries may simply be a strategic response to the evolving needs across the business landscape. So many young people spend so much time gaming that they may be starting to expect the same level of interactivity and engagement in everything, from education to finance and entertainment. Interestingly, academia and retail showed movement in the opposite direction. Job listings for game designers in these fields declined year over year. With more people entering college who grew up using Duolingo, however, and new products like gamified candy now all the rage, perhaps next year well see more universities and e-commerce sites press start on hiring game designers. This article is part of Fast Companys continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this years comprehensive analysis of 170,000 job listings.
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E-Commerce
Some unusual witnesses helped convict Alex Murdaugh of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. The first was Bubba, Maggies yellow Labrador retriever. Prosecutors used a recording of Bubba to place Alex at the site of the murders. Given Alexs presence at the crime scene, other witnesses then revealed his movements, tracked his speed and explained what he had in his hands. Those other witnesses were a 2021 Chevy Suburban and Maggie, Paul and Alexs cellphones, which all provided data. Theyre all part of the Internet of Things, also known as IoT. The privacy implications of devices connected to the internet are not often the most important consideration in solving a murder case. But outside of criminal prosecution, they affect peoples privacy in ways that should give everyone pause. The Internet of Things The Internet of Things includes any object or device that automatically sends and receives data via the internet. When you use your phone to message someone or social media to post something, the sharing is deliberate. But the automatic nature of connected devices effectively cuts humans out of the loop. The data from these devices can reveal a lot about the people who interact with themand about other people around the devices. As an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, I have watched as new kinds of connected devices have entered the market. New devices mean new ways to collect data about people. Connected devices collect information from different contexts. Take your refrigerator. As a non-IoT device, your fridge generated no data about your kitchen, your food, or how often you peeked inside. Your relationship with the fridge was effectively private. Only you knew about that midnight snack or whether you ogled a coworkers lunch. Now, smart refrigerators can respond to voice commands, show images of the items in your fridge, track who opens it, suggest recipes, generate grocery lists and even contact your car to let you know the milk has expired. All these functions require continuous streams of data. Device data and your privacy Connected devices generate lots of data in contexts that have typically produced little data to make those situations legible to whoever can access the data. In the past, if you wanted to monitor your heart rate, blood oxygenation, sleep patterns, and stress levels, you might have undergone a battery of tests at a hospital. Specialized equipment in a controlled setting would have measured your body and make these parts of you visible to highly trained, licensed professionals. But now, devices such as the Oura Ring track and analyze all that information continuously, in non-health care contexts. Even if you dont mind sharing data with an Internet of Things company, there are privacy risks to using a device like this. In the health care context, a series of rules enforced by several groups make sure that connected equipment and the data the equipment generates have adequate cybersecurity protections. Away from that context, connected devices that perform similar functions dont have to meet the same cybersecurity standards. The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark program, administered by the Federal Communications Commission, is developing cybersecurity standards for Internet of Things devices. But the program is voluntary. In some states, such as Washington, state laws set standards for protecting health data from connected devices. But these laws dont cover all data from all devices in all contexts. This leaves the devices, and the data they generate, particularly vulnerable to unwanted access by hackers. Your inability to control who sees the data that connected devices gather is another privacy risk. It can give advertisers insights about potential customers. Absent a mandated opt-out, each device provider can decide what it does with customer data. Amazon, for example, recently removed the Do Not Send Voice Recordings option from the privacy settings of its popular smart speaker, Alexa. Some connected-device providers participate in data markets, selling your data to the highest bidder. Sometimes those purchasers include government agencies. So, instead of needing a warrant to track your whereabouts or learn about activity in your home, they can purchase or access Internet of Things records. A connected device can also compromise the data privacy of someone who just happens to be nearby. Connected cars Cars have joined the ranks of the Internet of Things. The 2021 Chevy Suburban that helped convict Alex Murdaugh simply tracked information about the vehicle. This included the vehicles speed, the turning radius of the steering wheel, and time stamps. Most modern vehicles also incorporate data from external sources. GPS data and infotainment systems that connect to cellphones also track the vehicles movements. All of this data can also be used to track the whereabouts and behavior of drivers and other people in the vehicles. And as vehicles become increasingly automated, they need to make driving decisions in increasingly complex situations. To make safe driving decisions, they need data about the world around them. They need to know the size, speed, and behavior of all the nearby vehicles on the roadway, moment to moment. They ned to instantly identify the best way to avoid a pedestrian, cyclist or other object entering the roadway. If you and I are driving in separate cars on the same roadway, it means my car is collecting information about you. And if my vehicle is connected, then data about you is being shared with other cars and car companies. In other words, if a Tesla had been present at the scene of the Murdaugh murders, its outward facing cameras could have captured footage. Bubbas testimony might not have been necessary. Spillover data collection Internet of Things devices generate data from similar situations in a highly structured way. Therefore, what data collectors learn about me from my connected device may also give them insights about someone else in a similar situation. Take smart meters that share information with the water utility every 15 minutes. Imagine a subdivision with a narrow range of house and yard sizes. Water usage should be relatively comparable for each household. Data from even just a couple of houses can give a good sense of what water use should be for everyone in the neighborhood. Without actually collecting data from each house, data from connected devices reveals potentially private information about similarly situated people. Data from IoT devices can also fuel insights into people who never use or make contact with these devices. Aggregated data from Oura Rings, for instance, could contribute to decisions a health insurer makes about you. Connected devices are also changing. In addition to collecting data about the person using the device, a growing number of sensors collect information about the environment around that person. Some of my research has examined what privacy means for people observed by vehicle sensor systems such as radar, lidar, and sonar. These technologies capture potentially very revealing information about people and their property. Even the most comprehensive privacy laws in the United States offer people little recourse for the impact to their privacy. Civilian drones are capable of gathering data about other people. But people observed by drones would have a tough time learning that data about them exists and an even harder time controlling how that information might be used. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence systems are expanding the ways Internet of Things data can affect the privacy of other people by automating the process of training IoT systems. AI chipmaker Nvidia has created a digital environment, or model, where people can upload their connected device data. This environment can help train IoT devices to predict the outcomes of the devices interactions with other people, according to Nvidia. Models like this make it easy for AI devices that you dont own to collect data or reach conclusions about you. In other words, IoT data processed by AI can make inferences about you, rendering you legible to the AI system even before you interact with an IoT device. Looking forward Internet of Things devices and the data they generate are here to stay. As the world becomes increasingly automated, I believe its important to be more aware of the way connected devices may be affecting peoples privacy. The story of how vehicle data combined with cell data in the Murdaugh trial is a case in point. At the start of the trial, prosecutors came ready to show phone call logs and texts, steps recorded, apps asking for information, GPS locations, changes when the phone went from vertical portrait mode to horizontal landscape mode and back, andkey to the prosecutions casewhen the camera was activated. But that was probably not enough to merit a conviction. During the trial, GM called and said something like oh wait, we found something, according to the prosecution. That vehicle data, combined with the cellphone data, told a story that Alex Murdaugh could not deny. There are at least two lessons from this story. First, not even GM fully realized all the data it had collected in its vehicles. Its important to be aware of just how much information IoT devices are collecting. Second, combining data from different IoT devices revealed incontestable details of Alex Murdaughs activities. Away from criminal court, combining data from multiple IoT devices can have a profound effect on peoples privacy. If peoples data privacy matters, how do we address this reality? One way of potentially protecting peoples privacy is to make sure people and communities observed by connected devices have a direct say in what data the devices collect and how the data is used. This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it. David Sella-Villa is an assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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