Every once in awhile, major, big time magazines like US News and World Report do a bang up job on covering the kinds of things we like reading about. Case in point, in their October issue, they've got a tremendous feature on one of the biggest product design firms you've maybe never heard of, but almost assuredly have a hundred items in your home, IDEO. It not only profiles Tim Brown, the company's CEO, but some of the products and how they were developed as well. Their process and all that. So bravo, big magazine. We salute you! Here's some:

IDEO is all about experiential approaches. Its designers try to see and sense the world by getting inside the heads of their fellow human consumers. The firm-a dream come true for the concerned parents of liberal arts majors everywhere-employs anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, and sociologists, among other right-brain thinkers, to create, improve, or reimagine all manner of products, services, work spaces, and business systems. "It's a very human-centered process," says Tom Kelley, the firm's general manager and brother of founder David Kelley.