Design
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Background: It is not always easy to interpret the emotional state of another person. For example, a person might not realize that their coworker is extremely annoyed or unusually morse. This can lead to misunderstandings and hard feelings that could have been avoided if it were somehow unambiguously obvious what a person’s emotional state is.…
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Background: Home ownership is frequently promoted as a “can’t lose” investment that always increases in value. The Issue: Unfortunately, it’s difficult—some might even say mathematically impossible—for housing to always increase in value, which means that some people will have bought housing and not reaped returns from it. It’s possible to increase housing values by improving…
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Background: One popular genre of clickbait article / clickbait video is the shocking reveal that some normal everyday thing is “wrong” in some way (Fig. 1). Popular topics include “the normal U.S. electrical power outlets are actually upside-down!” and “you’re peeling a banana from the wrong end!” (https://www.google.com/search?q=peel+banana+wrong+end). Proposal: Despite this “you’re doing it wrong”…
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Background: Some modern countries are “missing” areas of territory that belonged to the ancestral inhabitants of their region. This inspires citizens of that country to look at a map, compare it to an old map, and say “hey, we should invade that area and take it back over—it was ours in 1648, so it should…
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The Issue: A common user complaint about “Big Tech” is that it can be literally impossible for customers to contact an actual human for tech support. For example, a user may have literally no recourse if: 1) their email account was terminated (e.g. due to “spamming”), 2) their video hosting was deleted (e.g. due to…
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Background: Certain types of apartment / home arrangements are rare in the United States (e.g. courtyard apartments or a second “back” unit behind a front house). Such residences are often not directly visible from the road, and accessing them may require going through a gate. They may also have addresses that include fractions or letters,…
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Background: Certain sequences of Unicode characters are displayed as flags. Although most flag emoji are national flags, there are also a few other types, like the European Union flag (🇪🇺), U.S. territory flags (e.g. Puerto Rico: 🇵🇷), and a pirate flag (🏴☠️). The Issue: Although U.S. territories have emoji, states do not! This is a bit of a surprise,…
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Background: Many types of candy come in pre-wrapped miniature single-serving (or “fun sized”) pieces, especially as Halloween candy. The Issue: For many people, it can be difficult to avoid eating an entire bag / bowl / other-type-of-container of candy. Proposal: We can create a candy dispenser that works as follows: first, the user fills the…
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Background: When talking to a digital assistant (e.g. Siri, Alexa, Google Home, probably dozens of others), the user can generally speak in a normal human language. For example: “Alexa, play ‘Cool Music for Cool People’.” The Issue: Unfortunately, thee ability to use natural language to communicate with these digital assistants is currently somewhat misleading: they…
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