Culture
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Background: Architects normally design homes and offices primarily to suit the needs of their occupants. The issue: Unfortunately, an easy-to-navigate floor plan is also easy for burglars to navigate! Proposal: Luckily, we don’t have to make any architectural changes to fix this problem—by adding a few strategic (and cheap!) furnishings, a house can become MUCH…
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Background: It is common for people to be glued to their cell phones for nearly 100% of their waking hours. This is especially true now that phone batteries last for hours even under heavy use and fast video-capable cellular data is available in most populated areas. The issue: It is commonly suggested that people should…
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Background: When sleeping outdoors, humans often enjoy sleeping inside an insulated sleeping bag (Figure 1), rather than directly on the ground. Fig. 1: A basic sleeping bag—now obsolete, thanks to advances in science! The issue: The problem here is that, to a gigantic man-eating carnivorous animal, the sleeping bag is just an inedible wrapping surrounding…
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The issue: Frequently, people lose track of time while giving a presentation or running a meeting, and it goes over (potentially WAY over). This situation can occur in both in-person meetings and in video chat meets. Proposal: In order to make it intuitively obvious to a presenter that they are going over time, we can…
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Background: In today’s decadent sedentary world, it’s easy to barely walk around at all. This puts humans in danger of having their legs become vestigial, atrophying and causing the species to evolve into a slug-like form. Proposal: In order to solve this, we need to get people walking again. And what better way than by…
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Background: Cell phone interfaces seem to inexorably become more complicated as time goes on. The issue: The 2010-era smartphone relied on a small number of obviously-interactable elements, but 2020’s smartphones are quite sophisticated (and complicated) from a UI standpoint, with finger-sliding gestures, multiple screens of icons, and even the possibility of splitting the screen to…
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Background: It is generally understood that a person who finishes the last amount of something (e.g. milk, soy sauce, driving a shared car until the tank is empty) is also responsible for refilling the substance. The issue: This system is frequently gamed by the lazy, who will leave a tiny amount remaining so as to…
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Background: Thousands of hours of food-themed television shows exist. Not all of these are strictly utilitarian “how to cook” shows, either—many consist of a charismatic host going from country to country and describing the fine tastes of exotic foods. The issue: This is a bit strange, isn’t it? Television is completely incapable of conveying taste,…
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The issue: It’s time-consuming—and potentially expensive—to maintain long hair to the exacting standards demanded by society (Figure 1). If one could somehow distract and/or obscure the true status of one’s hair, the tyranny of personal hygiene would be escaped! But is this an impossible dream? Proposal: No, it is possible! Specifically, through the means of…
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Background: Extremely large TVs have now become cheap enough to use as gigantic computer monitors. It’s possible to find a 55+” television with high enough resolution and low enough latency to work as an external monitor for even the most discerning computer-ologist. The issue: Most desks are not set up to accommodate a 55″ television…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 