UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: When traveling in a vehicle, a person’s intuitive sense of speed is partly determined by the feeling of air movement. For example, going at 30 miles per hour on a bike (enclosed cabin: no) may feel faster than going 600 miles per hour in an airplane (enclosed cabin: yes). The issue: It’s important for…
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Background: Sometimes, getting technical support from a company requires making an actual phone call. Like the audio / voice kind that people used to do in old movies! Typically, one ends up in an “on hold” scenario in which soothing music is intermittently interrupted by the message “representatives are busy, your call will be answered…
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Background: The financial model of the video game industry now makes heavy use of in-game purchases (“microtransactions” / “DLC” (downloadable content) / “loot boxes”). These supplementary purchases frequently bring in more revenue than traditional sales. Most transactions fall into these categories: Pay for additional content: the “expansion pack” model. This is old-fashioned, but still exists.…
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The issue: Imagine that you are driving a car down a narrow road and you see a person unloading groceries from a car trunk. There are two common options: Continue driving: hope the person unloading the car doesn’t walk out into the street Honk the horn, to inform the person unloading the car that you…
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Background: There are many phone apps that provide neighborhood-focused local news updates in real time (e.g. “Nextdoor” and “Citizen”). This can make a person aware of every single burglary, car accident, “suspicious dog,” and other strange happening that may occur in their general vicinity. The issue: While this information can be useful, it often leads…
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Background: When on a meeting with video chat, people generally like to look at least vaguely professional / presentable, even if they just rolled out of bed 5 minutes before the meeting. The issue: There are two main problems in video chat for people who want to project a corporate-approved professional image: The background should…
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Background: One popular method of organizing items that need to be done is the “Kanban board” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board) (e.g. the web site Trello). Conceptually, this resembles a to-do list with categories as columns. Each item to be done a single sticky note (Figure 1). The issue: Unfortunately, it’s often hard to get motivated to do items…
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Background: Part 1: Some credit cards provide special bonus features, such as a discount on certain purchases, “airline miles” that can be redeemed for plane tickets, or extended warranties on certain purchases. Part 2: When attempting to eat healthy foods, the battle is often lost at the supermarket: it’s easy to buy a gallon of…
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Never get on the wrong train again (assuming your city has a functional public transit system), thanks to these new musical cues—enjoy country music and/or smooth jazz on your entire commute! Also, it’s the same songs every single day.
country western, green line, japanese subway jingle, jingle, metro, metro stations, Music, music for subways, rail line, red line, sgt. pepper, stations, subway, subway line music, subway music, subway stations, subways, train jingle, train music, train theme, trains, transit line leitmotifs, transit theme
The issue: In cities with extensive public transit systems, it can be easy to get on the wrong bus/train/subway or miss your stop. Obviously, an astute transit-taker could realize their mistake by noticing the following: Stop names being verbally announced Stop names being indicated on a screen, even on buses. In some places, different metro…
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Background: Most laptops include a built-in camera, typically located just above the top edge of the screen. This type of camera is generally marketed as a “video chat” or “conference call” camera. The issue: When a person is on a video call, they tend to look at the image on the screen instead of directly…
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