My favorite design story is, alas, also from the New Yorker–Malcolm Gladwell’s 1996 piece called The Science of Shopping.
Malcolm Gladwell – Home | Malcolm Gladwell.
Extremely thought-provoking and a great primer on design research. I love the “Invariant Right” (the phenomenon of people almost always turning right when they enter any retail environment), and the “Petting” tables (jargon defining those hip-high tables with sweaters on them at the Gap, etc.)
In a way, I think that almost ALL of Wired Magazine is about design.
The Rem Koolhaas issue is a classic. The “Color Space” map is unbelievable, but it looks like the graphics for that one aren’t online.
But many of the other “spaces” are.
Recently in Wired, this was a curious story:
Not really about a design artifact per se, more about human interaction with a smart machine-coach. Makes one rethink the notion of the kinds of relationship we can have with designed objects–in this case, a piece of software.