Design
-
Background: Almost everything in the world is designed for people of average adult size. As a result, most everyday objects (furniture, stairs, door handles, etc.) are a totally inconvenient size for children or the extremely short. This is somewhat surprising, since everyone spent many years facing these problems as a small child. But it was…
-
Background: Some smartwatches now have a sleep tracking feature (Fig 1): the watch is able to figure out when you fall asleep and record how long you’ve slept. The issue: It’s easy to fall asleep while watching streaming video or listening to a podcast. But sleeping while a podcast plays may result in your podcast…
-
Background: It is often recommended that pet owners buy “challenging” toys to keep their pets mentally stimulated in a world where the owners take care of all the pet’s needs. Although an owner could simply put a dog biscuit in a bowl, it would be more exciting for the dog if the biscuit were inside…
-
Background: Some widely-used computer programs are free, and are supported exclusively as hobby projects by unpaid developers. The issue: Unfortunately, there is no financial mechanism to encourage further development and enhancement of these programs. Even if a hundred million people depend on a program, there is no simple way for them to support the developer.…
-
Background: The same amount of money can represent vastly different things to different people. For a minimum-wage earner (in 2019), $10,000 represents roughly 65% of a year’s total salary. But for the very top level of executives at one of the top 350 U.S. firms, that number represents less than a day’s salary. The issue:…
-
Background: Liability law is extremely complicated and counterintuitive. However, one common factor is that it appears to generally be beneficial—or legally required—for the owner of a potential hazard to warn others about that hazard (e.g. the omnipresent California Prop 65 warnings: “Warning: This location contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer”). The issue: Unfortunately,…
-
The issue: Sometimes, a college lecture or work presentation goes far over the allotted time (Figure 1). Frequently, the presenter doesn’t even realize that they are over time. One simple way to prevent a presentation from going over time would be to just have the power outlets turn off at exactly the designated end-of-presentation…
-
The issue: When selecting an individual for a job, an unavoidable aspect of the process is the physical appearance of the candidate. A job candidate might be unfairly penalized because of preconceptions about their age / sex / race / etc. Not only is this unfair to the candidate, but the overall situation also opens…
-
Background: Some gangs are known for wearing specific colors. The issue: It occasionally happens that a non-gang-affiliated passerby’s clothing happens to match local gang colors by chance, which can lead to various unfortunate encounters. Proposal: Although it is unlikely that any existing gang will change its colors, if creating a new gang, a new “gang…
-
Background: In today’s highly computerized society, it’s easy to make an expensive purchase or a life-changing decision with minimal effort. The issue: Sometimes, the importance of a decision is out of sync with how much work is required to make that decision. For example, now that online purchases are extremely “low friction,” it is possible…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 