Vox The Goods

Instagram is reshaping museums. What does that mean for art? There’s a new kind of art installation popping up in cities across the world. It isn’t designed to showcase classical paintings, or to house impressive historical artifacts — it’s designed to be photographed for Instagram. These might not feel like real museums, but they’re a reflection of a real change happening in the museum world right now. Museums — both new pop-ups and traditional institutions — are capitalizing on smartphone culture by creating spaces whose main appeal is being a backdrop for a great selfie. As more kinds of retail experiences move online, spaces like this — where digital reproducibility through social media is an active part of the design — are only going to get more common.

The quiet but powerful industry of scent branding. Marketing is constantly begging for our attention. We’re surrounded by lights, photos, and countless advertisements everywhere we go. The constant traffic in our vision is effective, but there’s another form of marketing that’s almost too subtle to detect, and yet research has shown that it might be the most effective of all: the marketing for your nose.

What would you do to have perfect skin? The pursuit of perfect skin has been deeply rooted in human culture. And while skincare acids have been used for decades, they've surged in popularity in recent years. You see them advertised on products in stores and across the internet. Glycolic acid. Lactic acid. Hyaluronic acid. Salicylic acid. Even though they all have one world in common, they all do different things. But acids should be used with caution. Not everyone would benefit from using them, especially people with sensitive skin. And using acids too often can be dangerous and lead to the opposite of perfect skin.

IKEA has mastered the “Gruen effect.” Researchers estimate that 50 percent of purchases are unplanned. These purchases, especially impulse buys, present an opportunity for retailers who can entice consumers to deviate from their shopping lists. One of the most effective ways to influence this is through a store’s architecture. In the 20th century, the architect Victor Gruen, who pioneered the first American shopping malls, used light and space to dramatically stage goods in storefront windows. His designs were meant to capture the attention of passersby — and convert them into customers. This conversion became known as the “Gruen effect.”

SweeTango, Zestar, Rave, Cosmic Crisp, Evercrisp, Arctic, Kissabel, Envy. These are the names of fancy new apples hoping to satisfy your taste buds. Farmers are racing to grow and sell the perfect apple, one with the best texture, the best crunch, the best flavor — even an apple that won’t brown. The most innovative apples on the market are patented, trademarked, and have catchy names, logos, and slogans. And consumers have shown they’re willing to pay a premium price for an apple that guarantees a flavor-packed bite.

How geotagged photos harm nature. Horseshoe Bend used to be a little-known roadside view of the Colorado River in Page, Arizona. But over the past few years, the spot has witnessed a dramatic increase in popularity. The main culprit for that uptick? Instagram. It’s now one of many hidden treasures across America that have become too popular for their own good — requiring extensive redesign to protect the visitors and the environment. With visitation at a record 84 million in 2017, America’s national parks are more popular than ever — and social media is rewriting the rules of how and why people visit them.

Instant ramen noodles have become like cash among inmates in the US. Cash is illegal in prisons. And that means everything from tuna to stamps to cigarettes have their own unique value in a trade and barter market. But ramen has quickly taken over as the most in demand products the prison system offers.

A thumbnail is worth a thousand words. Netflix has thousands of videos to choose from for a night (or day) of marathon watching. The problem is: how do you pick what to watch? It can be daunting searching through various titles, so much so that you may end up skipping to watch anything altogether. Netflix tries to make it easier to pick titles through personalization of their site—including the thumbnails you’ll see for every piece of content in their catalog. With thousands of videos to choose from, and more than 130 million subscriber in 190 countries, there’s a lot of potential to create some eye-catching thumbnails according to users’ tastes. So the company uses a set of algorithms to determine what images you’re more likely to click on. It’s just one streaming service on the frontier of personalizing how content is served to its viewers. Netflix’s goal is to get you engaged with their content for as long as possible. And ever changing customizable thumbnails is just one of their methods.

This marijuana extract is everywhere. But does it work? Cannabidiol is having a moment. Increasingly common state legalization and loose federal regulation means that anyone in any state can go online or to a physical store and buy CBD products — from oils to dog treats to bath bombs — without fear of arrest. It’s been shown to help treat a number of conditions including psychosis, anxiety, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy and seizures. For years, people have used medical marijuana to address those conditions — but CBD is showing promise as a possible way to get the benefits of medical cannabis without getting high. Here’s the catch: Most of the CBD products that have trickled down to the consumer market are poorly labeled and have extremely low doses. Granted, it’s possible that the placebo effect is providing CBD users with tangible benefits. And it’s also possible that low-dose CBD products can act as a form of microdosing, where users take small amounts of a substance to achieve milder or entirely different results than a full dose. CBD isn’t a scam. It’s a powerful substance with a lot of medical potential. But most of the stuff on the market now probably isn’t worth your time.

Women's minuscule pockets favor fashion over function – and it sucks. It turns out that women went from having what some might call “superior” pockets to the ridiculously tiny versions we have today. We’ve been asking for better pockets since the beginning of the 20th century, but somehow, not much has changed. What’s the hold up?

It’s not just your Google keywords anymore. Advertisers are developing ads to target consumers based on the emojis they use. With Twitter’s new emoji tracking tool, advertisers can track how and when users post emojis and determine users’ emotional state. Depending on those feelings, they can deliver ads that best match their emotions at that time. Advertisers say that this will allow them to deliver more relevant ads, but there are opposite concerns about consumer privacy. Watch this video to learn how advertisers are using this tool and how it changes the ads users see on Twitter.

For a thrifty shopper, a “Buy one, get one” (BOGO) deal can sound like the best way to get more bang for their buck. But the appeal of BOGO is why it’s hard for consumers to see it for what it is. BOGO is meant to get you to spend more money, not less. The deal disguises the fact that, unless you already intended to buy two items, it really isn’t all that big a discount.