Design
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The Issue: Many laptops have ports on one or both sides: chargers, USB ports, a headphone jack, video out, etc. However, it’s often quite annoying to find the ports. People often forlornly scratch at the side of their laptop for several seconds while trying to attach a cable to an out-of-view port. The difficulty of…
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Background: Pointing with an outstretched index finger is a common gesture used by humans to direct another human’s attention. The Issue: Since pointing is so widespread, a human being pointed at will usually also recognize the gesture. Depending on the circumstances, pointing may be considered to be rude and accusative. For example, imagine that you…
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Background: Many workplaces provide coffee makers or espresso machines for their employees to use. The Issue: The process of setting up a drip coffee machine or making an espresso can take several minutes, during which the employee is not toiling productively. Even the single-use-coffee-“pod” machines (famously, the Nespresso brand) take at least a few seconds…
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Background: Computer speakers can play high-frequency sounds that a dog can hear, but a human cannot. (This will be important later.) The Issue: People often wish they spent less time casually browsing / “doom scrolling” on the Internet. Unfortunately, it’s a hard habit to break! Proposal: This solution is very simple: an operating system can…
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The Issue: Climbing tall mountains is inherently unsafe. Dangers include falling, high winds, frostbite, venomous snakes, attack by eagles, and the high altitude “DEATH ZONE,” which really makes the whole peak-conquering thing seem like a bad idea. Additionally, this high degree of danger makes it impractical for children, the elderly, and the handicapped to fully…
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Background: In some languages, there are several variants of words (like “this” or “that”) that give you additional “implicit” information about the world. For example, if a person says “this notebook,” it indicates a notebook that is near them. If they say “that notebook,” it indicates a more distantly-located notebook. Even though a language can…
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Background: Some animals communicate at frequencies outside of the normal range of human hearing. For example, bats are constantly flying around and emitting shrill echolocation “pings,” but humans typically can’t hear them. Proposal: Electronic hearing aids have existed for many years, but they’ve always focused on enhancing hearing in the normal human ranges—no one has…
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Background: There are a number of YouTube exercise-routine channels where the presenter demonstrates some sort of activity, and you, the viewer, are encouraged to contort your body into the same position. The Issue: Humans are quite bilaterally symmetrical. If a yoga presenter is facing sideways, it’s not always extremely obvious which arm / leg is…
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Background: In some languages with non-phonetic elements (e.g. Japanese kanji), there can be additional phonetic annotations above the symbols (Figure 1) to clarify the pronunciation of a non-obvious word. This is particularly useful for students, and for clarifying the pronunciation of rare words. Proposal: Strangely, the English language does not frequently employ this style of…
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Background: Waking up to the horrible “RRRRRINGGGG” or “BEEP BEEP BEEP” sound of an alarm was once an unavoidable feature of the alarm clock. The Issue: Nowadays, most people use their phones as alarm clocks, and the various “alarm” ringtones have become substantially more pleasant, but the problem remains—even a once-pleasant sound becomes annoying and…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 