Design
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Background: The humble door-locking deadbolt has suffered from a severe failure of innovation and imagination in the last 100 years. Specifically: most deadbolts have exactly two positions (Figure 1): Open (door can be opened from either side) Closed (door requires a key to open from the outside or a switch to be operated from the…
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Background: The stop sign, for all its utilitarian simplicity, has a severe and critical shortcoming: it has two different roles, both marked by the same sign (Figure 1). The two situations, and what the driver must do in each case: All-way stop: driver can casually check for other cars right there at the intersection, and…
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The issue: If you’re wearing headphones, it can be difficult to hear when someone is trying to get your attention. (Similarly, it can be heard to get the attention of someone wearing headphones without startling them.) Proposal: Headphones could have a small microphone on them with a processing unit that could listen for certain words.…
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Background, part 1: Clothing catalogues occasionally provide a summary of the clothes that a model in an advertisement is wearing; usually this will be a piece of text that looks something like “Get this Look: Jeans $100, Shirt $40, Weird Socks $10.” This is a good system: the company can sell you more clothing this…
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Background: When a company offers a rebate (“buy this widget, get $50 back”), only a fraction of customers will actually deposit the rebate check. If customers don’t deposit their rebates, then the company can keep the money. So it would be useful if there was some sort of dirty trick to reduce rebate deposit rates.…
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The issue: In many houses, certain rooms—especially kitchens and living rooms—have a half dozen or more light switches that control a wide array of lights and other accessories. Often, even after many years, the house’s occupant never learns which switch is which. Proposal: Instead of just randomly picking a switch to toggle until the correct…
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Background: If you have a communal coffee carafe at work, you will undoubtedly have encountered the situation where someone poured the last cup of coffee and didn’t make a new pot. With a standard coffeepot or carafe, there’s no possibility of getting “just one more cup” out of an empty container—it’s just empty. But!…
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The issue: It’s quite slow and annoying to unlock a regular rotational combination lock. Also, it’s easy to overshoot your target number and have to enter the combination all over again. There are alternative types of locks, but few of them have the same form factor as the ubiquitous rotating-dial combination lock. Fig. 1: This…
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The issue: For most snack foods, it’s easy to eat a HUGE quantity of the food in question. This is no surprise—snack foods were specifically designed to be easy to eat. Plus even after you’ve eaten a bunch, it takes a minute or two to feel full. Proposal: Here is a technique to eat fewer…
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You won’t believe how I never fell into a bottomless pit again, thanks to this one weird trick. Podiatrists hate it! Probably.
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Background: One of the leading causes of sidewalk-based injury is tripping on uneven pavement and/or falling into a manhole. Figure 1 illustrates one of the dangers inherent in modern sidewalks. This danger has become even more pronounced now that people are more likely to be looking at their cell phones as they walk. Fig. 1:…
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