Design
-
Background: Since laptops are so convenient and portable, many people work in locations that are not set up for long-term ergonomic comfort (for example, dining room tables or coffeeshop counters, e.g. Figure 1). The issue: Since these locations were never designed for laptop use, they are typically set up in such a way that the…
-
Background: Elementary school letter grades theoretically indicate the achievement of a certain degree of competency in a subject (e.g. a fourth-grader receiving an “A” in math would have learned all of the math that a fourth-grader is expected to know). The issue: There are a couple of immediate problems with the way report cards present…
-
Background: Phone map apps often have a few optional settings for a route, such as: Avoid highways (for driving) Fewer bus transfers (for public transit) Avoid hills (for walking) The issue: Sometimes, you want drive on the most scenic route from point A to point B, without too much concern about efficiency. For example, you might…
-
Background: It’s well-known that presentation affects the perceived taste of food (Figure 1). Can this be used by retailers to increase customer satisfaction? Proposal: In order to leverage the same instincts, we propose that all foods should be presented in grocery stores in a “natural” environment to satisfy human hunter-gatherer instincts. In Figure 2,…
-
TITLE: Never be annoyed when emptying an over-full trash can again, with this new “screaming trash can” technology! The Issue: In shared-living or office situations, there is a strong incentive to wait for someone else to empty a full garbage can: the person who discards the last piece of trash has only contributed a tiny…
-
Background: At many companies, employees take a laptop to/from work every day. In the past, laptops were heavy enough that it would be incredibly obvious whether a laptop was in a bag or not. The issue: Modern laptops are light enough that it is possible to take a laptop bag (Figure 1) to work without…
-
Background: In most American cities, four-way intersections with stoplights are the most common form of traffic control. The issue: As a pedestrian, these intersections are frustrating: if the stoplights are not synchronized, you’ll randomly encounter red lights while walking from block to block. But even when lights are synchronized, they are synchronized for car driving…
-
Background: In a hypothetical future where self-driving cars are increasingly common, they’ll have to do a really good job of automatically distinguishing between things that require sudden braking (e.g. a person in the roadway) and things that are OK to hit (e.g. a tumbling empty cardboard box). The issue: This is a hard problem. When…
-
The issue: Once in a while, people accidentally forget to turn off a water faucet (e.g. a bathroom or kitchen faucet) and leave it running all day. This wastes water, and is unacceptable. Proposal: There are existing solutions to automatically turn off faucets, but generally they are either incredibly annoying (the motion-activated faucets that work…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 