Design
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Background: Nearly all modern cell phones have the same touch-screen form factor. Except for a few buttons of low importance (e.g. volume adjustment, power, camera shutter), all interaction is done through the screen itself. The issue: This style of interaction makes use of only one finger, and leaves the remaining four fingers with nothing to…
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Background: When a person searches for something using an online search engine, their general expectation is to get a vaguely useful answer. However, I checked the blog stats recently, and someone apparently searched for “cutting a poster for carrying” and was directed to the “butterfly” poster design post (https://worstideas.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/poster-tips/). Fig 1: Some unfortunate person searched…
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Background: Different people have different ideas about what constitutes “personal space.” For example, in some cultures, it may be the norm to stand three feet away from a person one is talking to, whereas elsewhere, the standard might be four feet. Or two feet! Unfortunately, this is a subtle feature of interaction that people are…
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Background: “Warning” stickers / “caution” tape are occasionally placed on or around objects to indicate that they are dangerous. The issue: However: what if the tape itself is the source of danger? For example, if a roll of “BIOHAZARD” tape was accidentally dipped in a vat of bubonic plague, there would be no way to…
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Background: Ironing boards are large and unwieldy—even the ones that are just the board surface, without any folding legs. Fortunately, we can solve this problem. Proposal: A rollable ironing board Instead of having a large single-surface ironing board, we could either have a rollable ironing board made of a flexible material or (if flexible materials…
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Background: Although there are many counter-examples, cats are often unpredictable and frequently skittish. Here, we theorize that this neurotic pet behavior is due to the cat’s lack of feeling safe in the domestic environment, and propose a possible solution, which we refer to as CATMOUFLAGE. The theory: Cats are skittish and unpredictable because they are…
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Background: Back in the ancient days before iPhones, people would store files in a hierarchical fashion in “folders” or “directories” on their computers. The issue: Sometimes, despite relatively descriptive folder names, it is not clear what a folder / directory actually is. For example, on Mac OS X, a casual user may be flummoxed by…
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Background: If you stay in one apartment or house for a long time, you tend to accumulate a large number of superfluous possessions. But it’s hard to get an idea of exactly how much stuff you have. Proposal: Moving trucks should have a weight sensor on them to tell you how many pounds of stuff…
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Background: Many cities have serious shortages of buildable space in the most desirable areas—most land that is available for development has already been taken. Proposal: Allow building of a “second level” of city on the un-used space above the streets Fortunately, there actually is a large amount of unused space in each city (generally, approximately…
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