Design
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The issue: Imagine this situation: You are a high-ranking member of the royal family. One day, you drive your expensive sports car to your downtown office, park it in the garage, and head to the elevator. You get in, and press the “6” button, to take the elevator to your sixth-floor office. But as soon…
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Background: Most methods of catching fish—with the notable exception of bare-hand catfish noodling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodling)—do not involve direct contact with the to-be-fished aquatic life. Proposal: In order to both: make humans more attuned to nature and to promote a fishing method that discourages overfishing… …the following “baleen fishing attachment mesh” is proposed. This “baleen mesh” is a…
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Background: Something that is difficult to obtain tends to be appreciated more than something that is easy to obtain. For example, people rate the same wine more highly when it has an expensive price tag. We can use this information to design a new style of art museum that will be a huge hit with all…
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Background: On many web sites for automotive parts (e.g. Amazon, AutoZone), you can specify the exact car that you own. Then, the web site will only show results that work with that car (Figure 1). Fig 1: You can specify the details of the cars in your “garage” and will only see car parts that…
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Background: The Indiana Jones movies (especially #1 and #3) have taught that it’s a serious liability for an adventurer to acquire a phobia against any animal that may be seen in the course of adventuring (e.g., snakes, rats). Proposal: In order to avoid these problems, we can easily desensitize a future adventure to dangerous animals…
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Background: You’ve probably heard of a “washer-dryer” combination, an existing one-stop-shop appliance for cleaning clothes. What if we extended this philosophy to other categories of home appliances? Proposal: Sometimes, a frozen food requires a lengthy defrosting period. So if you want to eat that item, you must laboriously: Remove the item from the freezer Place…
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Background: Supposedly, the proliferation of ubiquitous GPS has lead to humans being worse at navigating, the presence of calculators has rendered most people incapable of doing even basic mental math, and the existence of written language has made humans worse at remembering things more generally. Proposal: In order to combat this “things are too easy”…
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The issue: It’s difficult to fully appreciate certain types of art from just a photo, especially large pieces or three-dimensional works like statues. For example: Picasso’s Guernica (11 feet high, 25 feet wide) Michelangelo’s David (17 feet tall) The Sistine Chapel ceiling The Cave of Hands Unfortunately, these famous works are spread throughout the world,…
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Background: Many web sites require a user to agree to a long and incomprehensible “terms of service” before they can use the site. Since these contracts are dozens (or hundreds) of pages, everyone just scrolls to the end and clicks “AGREE.” (See two examples in Figure 1). While you’d think that a company could slip…
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Background: Essentially all major programming languages exclusively use keywords written in English. (For a couple of exceptions, see the addendum at the end.) But this doesn’t have to be the case! Proposal: By using symbols instead of words, we can convey a concept both more concisely and more easily across languages. See below for a…
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