UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: In video games, a major user interface innovation was to color-code different item qualities (or “tiers”). This was popularized (and possibly invented) by the 1996 game Diablo, where boring non-magical items were gray, while enchanted objects were color-coded by quality “tier” (Figure 1). The Issue: The difficulty of evaluating confusingly named objects is not limited…
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Background: A party host might invite a guest to an event that one mile, ten miles, 100 miles, or even 1000 miles away. In most situations, the key factor in determining whether or not the guest will actually attend is the relationship between the host and guest. For example, most people would probably drive 100…
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Background: Sometimes, restaurant menus will list a dish as “market price,” rather than giving a specific set price. (This is most commonly seen for seafood.) In such a situation, a diner would have to inquire as to what the specific price would be on a given day, based on the relative supply and demand of…
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The Issue: Ovens and stoves can be dangerous home appliances. They can get extremely hot and they typically operate completely silently. This makes it easy for people to forget that they left the stove on! Interestingly, a similar issue exists for electric cars: they’re SO quiet at low speeds (as compared to a gas engine)…
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Background: Some people have noticeably different behavior depending on the amount of caffeine they have ingested so far that day. An person’s level of caffeination may be useful information to others, allowing them to discern the reason for the under/over-caffeinated individual being overly lethargic or excessively manic. Proposal: Obviously there is no easy way for…
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Background: The term ”helicopter parenting” refers to an intrusive style of overprotective parenting where a parent is constantly micromanaging their child’s every activity. (Metaphorically, the parent is “hovering” like a helicopter around their child.) Proposal: Until recently, this was just a metaphor: it was simply not technically feasible for a parent to supervise and express…
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Background: Textbook publishers will often issue a new edition of a textbook every few years. Sometimes, this is necessary to reflects new developments in the field, but for many topics, the field has been static for hundreds (or possibly even thousands) of years. For example, it is unlikely that the 15th edition of an “Introduction…
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Background: Some vacuum cleaners are capable of measuring how much junk they’re currently pulling up off the floor. These vacuums will usually turn on a “this surface is now clean!” light to notify the user that their vacuuming job has been sufficiently through on a particular tiny section of the floor. The Issue: The “floor…
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Background: Job-related social media sites (the largest of which in 2025 is LinkedIn) typically have a newsfeed that shows users what their former co-workers and classmates are working on these days. The Issue: There is a strong selection bias for what actually gets posted: most posts are from people reporting their successes in business. This…
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Background: A common issue in many interactions is that different people have different ideas of what is enjoyable. This comes up a lot when multiple people are trying to decide on a single dinner location, pick a movie to watch, etc. The Issue: In particular, let’s investigate the situation where two people want to go…
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