Culture
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Background: A cat owner may install a “cat door”—a cat-sized flap—in a door in their house (Fig 1). This allows a cat to travel freely even when the human-sized door is closed. A cat door also removes the need for the cat to carry a set of keys. Proposal: But why should cats get all…
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The Issue: Frequently, people are reminded of tragic events in their past on the anniversary of that date, e.g. “August 1…. ahh, that was the day that my beloved dog was eaten by a crocodile… I’ll never forget the trauma of AUGUST FIRST.” Proposal: As world-renowned therapists and psychologists would presumably agree, the important thing…
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Background: History, as it turns out, is both long and (generally) not well-recorded. We only have very fragmentary information about events that occurred more than a couple thousand years ago. For example, historians argue about some sort of gigantic invasion around the Mediterranean in ~1000 B.C. by the “Sea People” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples), but the actual identity—or…
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Background: Typing emoji (e.g. 😀😑😬😭😱) on a desktop computer’s physical keyboard is a surprisingly involved process. The Issue: On a phone, a user can invoke a special emoji keyboard. But on desktop computers, there are only two solutions: 1) selecting the emoji from a giant on-screen list or 2) hoping that the application you want…
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Background: Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles all share the roadways.However, drivers often entirely fail to notice bicyclists and motorcyclists. One study even suggests that drivers may often literally tune them out entirely: https://www.google.com/search?q=car+drivers+don%27t+notice+bicycles+study. For this particular idea, let’s focus on motorcycles, although the same general principle will also apply to bicycles. The Issue: At night,…
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Background: When the weather is cold, it’s often unappealing to wake up and get out of bed (Figure 1) to start your day. Proposal: The proposal is simple: a person needs something to look forward to when getting out of bed. This is essentially a “waystation” or “halfway point” of waking up. A person can…
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Background: The current “casual” style of watching movies at home is very convenient, but lacks much of the impressive and ostentatious style of films in the golden age of cinema. Typically, the “film watching” experience is as follows: 1) turn on TV (Figure 1), 2) press “play” on a remote. Proposal: Let’s bring back classic…
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Background: Modern technology is often extremely convenient. For example, in a house with some type of central heating, you can heat the entire house by just pushing a couple of buttons on a thermostat (Fig. 1). The Issue: However, this system might just be too easy and convenient: there’s no sense of accomplishment in pressing…
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Background: It is not always easy to interpret the emotional state of another person. For example, a person might not realize that their coworker is extremely annoyed or unusually morse. This can lead to misunderstandings and hard feelings that could have been avoided if it were somehow unambiguously obvious what a person’s emotional state is.…
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