UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: Museums are often large and weirdly laid out, and it’s frequently impossible to see the high points of culture without major hassle. In contrast, amusement park rides are laid out with extreme care to provide an engaging experience the whole way through. Specifically relevant to this proposal are “narrative” rides where a user gets…
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Background: You’re probably familiar with web sites that have very particular password requirements: “Your password must contain a number, capital letter, and special character.” “Your password must contain the name of a Triple Crown-winning horse.” “Your password cannot contain your username.” The purpose of these requirements is usually to either: Require that the password not…
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The issue: Sometimes, when you’re eating an ice cream out of a cone, you will suffer the indignity of having the ice cream drip onto yourself and/or the ground (see Fig. 1). This is especially likely to occur if you are less than five years old. This can be avoided by diligently rotating the cone…
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The issue: Sometimes, you’re looking for a co-worker, and you’d like to know if they’ve gone out to lunch, left for the day already, or haven’t arrived yet. Normally, you’d have to actually send a text message to that person to ask. But that can be overly intrusive. Fig. 1: Your coworker’s chair is empty.…
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Background: Have you ever had to deal with a shared refrigerator? If so, you may be familiar with the issue of old food items piling up in nooks and crannies of the fridge and never being removed. Periodically cleaning the fridge will fix this, but it’s a hassle to figure out which food is old…
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Minimize the tiny remaining inconvenience of your indefensibly opulent Caligula-esque lifestyle with this one weird “how to make a bed” sheet-tucking-in tip!
better way to make a bed, c-clamp sheets and blankets, don’t put deadly snakes in your bed probably, footboard, Goat.io, Goat.ly, GoatStarter, GoatStrtr, GtStrtr, lift a mattress, make a bed, sheets and blankets, tuck in a sheet, tuck in your sheets, use a c-clamp to make a bed, what is it it’s a footboard of course, what is the opposite of a headboard
Background: Putting new sheets onto a bed can be a hassle if your bed has a footboard (Figure 1 and 2). Fig. 1: Putting clean sheets onto a bed is really easy if there’s no footboard. But if there’s a footboard, it’s a hassle to lift up the mattress and cram the sheets and blanket…
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The issue: When you call for transportation in a crowded area (Fig. 1), it’s often unclear both: 1) For you, the pedestrian, which of the numerous indistinguishable late model imported silver cars is picking you up 2) For the driver, which of the many pedestrians is actually the one who summoned that specific car. Fig…
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Background: It’s often hard to assess the total cost of renting vs buying. For example: Renting a house (plus renters’ insurance) versus owning a house (plus homeowner’s insurance, property tax, and maintenance, and possibly offset by property value appreciation) Owning a timeshare versus renting a vacation house once a year Taking a taxi / using…
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Background: In olden times, recordings could only be viewed at home by either personal movie projector (extremely rare) or VHS player. Nowadays, digital video makes it possible for anyone to get on-demand video without the hassle of low-quality video and rewinding tapes. But perhaps the “VHS experience” is integral to getting the full effect from…
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Background: An emoji overview: Fig 1: Current Apple emoji skin tones. Available tones vary by emoji font designer (e.g., Google, Microsoft). Emoji people were originally only available with a light skin tone. Recently, more skin tone options have been added (Fig 1). However, they are just a recoloring of the original emoji, and thus may not have realistic…
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