UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: Moderating the comments section of any web site is a thankless and un-ending task. But what if there were some way to make it slightly easier? Proposal: Instead of just allowing any comments, we can require that comments be totally unique and never-before-seen. Once a comment is made, or an image is posted, a…
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Background: Print news has unfortunately been dealt a mortal blow by a combination of the Internet and mobile phones. But there’s still one way to take advantage of the physical nature of printed news—a way that cannot be replicated by news on a phone! Proposal: We can bring printed newspapers and promote a healthy lifestyle…
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Background: In the United States, an employed person has two conflicting goals: To commute to their job as fast as possible (ideally by “hyperloop” or helicopter), …and to live as far away from their workplace as possible. To these ends, thousands of man-hours have gone into new legislation preventing residences near places of employment (zoning…
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Background: Part 1: As Internet speeds have increased, web sites have become more and more enormous (Example: Figure 1). Part 2: Additionally, people have become more and more accustomed to impulsively wasting time on the Internet. The issue: Here are the two problems that we can solve simultaneously: Enormous web pages are slow to…
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Background: Sometimes, a game will have a political statement to make, which you might disagree with. For example, in the game “Papers Please,” you must perform bureaucratic duties in a stifling faux-Eastern Bloc nation, and there is a strong negative message about the oppressive regime. But what if you think that totalitarianism is actually a…
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Background: Airport terminals often have small golf-cart-like trams that can be driven around in the passenger concourses. These are often used to help people move around the concourses (for example, one might be used to help a passenger with a leg in a cast who is trying to make it to a connecting flight). The…
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Background: When printing non-color text on paper, you generally want to print the text as dark as possible, for maximum contrast. Proposal: With this new “two-sided mirror printing” idea, text can be printed darker than is normally possible, with this one trick: the printer automatically prints a mirror image of your text on the opposite…
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Get exercise and improve your self-control with this new eco-friendly hand-crank-powered cell phone!
The issue: It is frequently asserted that people are addicted to cell phones. If only there were a technical solution to this problem! Proposal: Here’s a simple solution to discourage casual cell phone use: a cell phone with two features: A strict limit on the amount of time you can use each program. (This feature…
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Background: Online discussion forums often have posts that look like this: Air pollution actually SAVES 10,000 lives per day worldwide >109 Comments [Upvote] [Downvote] [View Comments] Or: Futuristic economic model allows Swedes to make $200,000 a year without having jobs >274 Comments [Upvote] [Downvote] [View Comments] The issue: Crucially, the comment page is usually completely…
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Background: Sometimes, someone will send out a company-wide email that is CCed to everyone else at the company. The issue: Anyone who sends a “reply all” response to that initial email will generate another company-wide email. After a while, people will start getting annoyed by the constant irrelevant emails and will request that people stop…
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