Design
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Background: One major concern for any civilization that lasts for more than a few billion years is: what is the best long-term method to reliably store and retrieve energy? Solar panels on a planet work great, but only capture a tiny fraction of total solar output. Some ideas exist for working around this (Figure 1),…
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Background: Many people find the relentless piling up of emails in their inbox to be stressful. There are various approaches for dealing with this. The most well-known is probably “inbox zero,” which recommends triaging emails when they’re relatively new (instead of procrastinating and letting them pile up). Although “inbox zero” doesn’t require that you should…
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The Issue: When a person is walking around a corner, there’s always a chance that they’ll unluckily collide with someone walking the opposite way (Figure 1). The fundamental problem is obvious enough: there’s just no way to see around the corner. Hospitals and parking garages frequently solve this issue by placing a big convex mirror…
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The Issue: Washing machines and clothes dryers save an immense amount of time. But there’s still a significant bottleneck in the pipeline from “dryer” → “pile of clothes” → “dresser / closet”: specifically, the process of actually identifying each article of clothing (Figure 1). Before the pile of clothes can be sorted and put away, the clothes-washing individual will…
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Background: Many common household pets have the properties of being soft, furry, and generally snuggleable. These also sound like the properties of a well-designed fuzzy throw pillow, but the pillow lacks at least two sensory properties that a real animal (such as a dog, in this example) can provide: the propensity to lick things, and…
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Background: A simple observation: as creatures have become more complex and develop advanced societies, they tend to use fewer limbs for locomotion and more limbs for manipulating the world. Compare these ”civilizational” achievements: From this data, we conclude that the key element in the progress of civilization is the number of arms. More arms =…
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The Issue: Income sources and expenses often operate on mismatched schedules. For example, a person might receive a paycheck every two weeks, but need to pay rent monthly and car insurance every six months. These differing schedules can make it difficult for a person to visualize their cashflow. There are lots of ways to visualize…
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Background: In most houses, the process for starting a shower in the morning is as follows: The Issue: The fundamental issue is that the initial “flush the cold water out of the pipes” handle position (hot water only) is different from the final “taking a shower” handle position (mixed hot & cold water). See Figure…
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The Issue: Video meetings can be long and boring, and it’s easy for a participant to drift off while a presenter rambles. Unfortunately, the disengaged participant might be suddenly asked a question: they will then need to either reveal that they were spacing out or to provide a feeble excuse to have the question repeated.…
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Background: Sometimes, people make references (“literary allusions,” if you prefer) to well-known books, movies, or other shared cultural elements. If the listener recognizes the reference, this can either be a convenient shorthand for describing something: e.g. “it’s a ‘Groundhog Day’ situation“ instead of “it seems like a scenario in which the same occurrence repeats over…
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