UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: Many foods require a certain minimum amount of cooking time, yet there isn’t always an obvious visual indicator of “done”-ness. The Issue: As a result of the lack of a visual indicator, a chef must laboriously inspect food by (for example) cutting into it, poking it with a fork, or tasting it. These time-consuming…
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Background: Many types of commonly-available vitamins and medicines are deadly if ingested in large quantities. Unfortunately, small children generally do not understand the concept of “LD50,” and may eat an excessive number of pills. It also doesn’t help that many medications are candy-like in appearance (e.g. compare a coated Advil tablet to an M&M). The…
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Background: People frequently listen to music during their day-to-day activities. In olden times, a person was limited to whatever was playing on the radio, but in the post-iPod world, it’s very straightforward to load up an entire day’s worth of personalized music ahead of time. However, such music can’t react to the events of the…
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The Issue: When creating figures, it can be tempting to use misleading techniques in order to bolster one’s own agenda. But it can be hard to create a misleading figure while technically representing the facts correctly, at least from a certain point of view (Figure 1). Proposal: A popular—yet rarely formally acknowledged—method of creating misleading…
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Background: Vinyl records have gained in popularity in the 2010–2020 timeframe, perhaps because people enjoy the tactile sensation and ritualistic elements of playing music on a traditional record turntable. The Issue: This style of tactile interaction is unfortunately unavailable in the streaming music space, where the only user interaction is “push button → hear song.”…
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Background: Most standard “utility” programs (word processors, spreadsheets, photo editors…) haven’t been substantially improved since approximately 2005. The Issue: Unfortunately, in order for the companies that sell these programs to survive, they need to somehow get paid. But this is a difficult argument to make when the 1997 version of a spreadsheet program is essentially…
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Background: Video chat is now relatively widespread. Frequently, people on a chat will be muted and/or have their video off. The Issue: The terminology for “a person is muted” is straightforward: “muted.” However, English currently lacks short terms for “I am muted” versus “I have the audio turned off for the remote speaker.” Additionally, there…
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Background: When people go out to restaurants in groups, it can be hard for a waiter to keep their order straight: there might be a dozen people at a table, all with slightly-different (yet easily confused) orders. The Issue: Normally, it’s easy to fix a dish that was given to the wrong person—just swap it…
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