UI / UX
User interfaces and “user experience” ideas.
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Background: Many countries today have incredibly old leaders. This isn’t a problem per se, but as elected representatives (and un-elected dictators) reach their 80s and 90s, the likelihood of them not being mentally sharp enough to reliably run a country greatly increases. Most people would be skeptical of allowing a 10-year-old to run a country,…
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The Issue: Thousands of pedestrian fatalities occur every year. It can be easy for the driver of a fast-moving car to not see a person crossing the road ahead until it’s too late. Often, these collisions occur at night, even in areas with good streetlight coverage. But if streetlights aren’t sufficient, what else can be…
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The Issue: In the “open plan” office (a more-cramped version of the classic “cubicle” office plan), there are typically there are many rows of desks with narrow aisles between them (Figure 1). Often, these aisles are quite long, and they may be completely cluttered with office chairs. Proposal: Although in a perfect world, people would…
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Background: Vertical blinds (https://www.google.com/search?q=vertical+blinds) are a popular method of providing privacy for a large window or sliding door. These blinds are usually controlled by two different looped cords: The Issue: Unfortunately, since these cords are both loops, they really appears as TWO cords. The user must somehow know which of these unlabeled-and-often-twisted cords is the…
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Background: A year is apparently around 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long. This is annoying, since that isn’t an exact multiple of 24 hours. To account for this situation, February will occasionally have either 28 or 29 total days on it. Aggravatingly, the exact calculations for 28-vs-29 are based on several…
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Background: Diligent coworkers frequently set their email system to auto-reply with a specific “out of office” message when they’re on vacation. For example: “I’m gone on vacation until July 25, please email me after that.” The Issue: It can be annoying to have to wait for a coworker to return from vacation to ask them…
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The Issue: The human body is relatively fragile and generally does not like collisions with pointy things. Unfortunately, in the modern world, there are a huge variety of dangerous objects with sharp edges, metal spikes, thorns, and more (Figure 1)! Although it is theoretically easily avoidable by paying attention, a person must be on guard…
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Background: The ability to clean bedsheets is what separates humans from the animals. But removing, washing, and replacing bedsheets is a hassle. Who has time for it in this modern world!? If only there were some way to replace the sheets on a bed without all the work! Proposal: Shockingly, a technology that almost solves…
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Background: There are a surprisingly huge number of emoji for expressing relatively rarely-used concepts, such as 🎍 (bamboo decoration), 🤾🏻♂️ (handball), 🎠 (carousel horse), 🛖 (thatched-roof cottage), and 🛋️ (couch and lamp). The Issue: Weirdly, there is no “standard” emoji for unambiguously expressing the concept “thanks!” or “you’re welcome!” One commonly seen approximation is 🙏…
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Background: In ancient times, there was the “scroll,” which is basically a super inconvenient book where you can’t arbitrarily access information on a particular “page” without some laborious scrolling. Later, the “codex”—or “regular book”—was invented. It’s basically a stack of identically-shaped pieces of paper that are bound together on one side. So far, so good.…
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