Culture
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Background: Camouflage is a useful tool for hiding something in a distracting pattern that it blends into. Most frequently, camouflage is used to hide a person (for example, a hunter or soldier) in an environment where they would prefer not to be spotted. Fig 1: Traditional forest camouflage, used to hide from snakes, owls, and…
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Background: When packing for a trip, it’s easy to forget something. One way to solve this problem is to make a list, but even that requires planning ahead of time and is prone to error. Proposal: To solve this problem, we will adopt a technique that is seen in prison kitchens (at least, the one…
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Background: Sometimes, a difficult task or obligation hangs over a person, and is said to be “heavy” or “crushing.” The issue: However, until now, there has been no way to properly represent a person’s currently unresolved obligations in a three-dimensional space. Proposal: In order to reduce procrastination and make it easier for a person to…
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Background: In many office environments, communal coffee is brewed periodically. But it is difficult to tell how old the contents of the carafe are (or if it’s even coffee from the day before). Fig 1: The classic coffee carafe. No bells or whistles. How barbaric! Proposal: The carafe should be able to easily tell you…
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Background: Many recurring obligations in modern society require significant amounts of waiting. For example: Waiting in line at the DMV Waiting to be interviewed during the jury selection process, for jury duty Getting your car’s oil changed The issue: This time is generally not put to productive use (perhaps due to its unpredictable duration). Millions…
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Background: Nearly all modern cell phones have the same touch-screen form factor. Except for a few buttons of low importance (e.g. volume adjustment, power, camera shutter), all interaction is done through the screen itself. The issue: This style of interaction makes use of only one finger, and leaves the remaining four fingers with nothing to…
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Background: When a person searches for something using an online search engine, their general expectation is to get a vaguely useful answer. However, I checked the blog stats recently, and someone apparently searched for “cutting a poster for carrying” and was directed to the “butterfly” poster design post (https://worstideas.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/poster-tips/). Fig 1: Some unfortunate person searched…
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Background: Different people have different ideas about what constitutes “personal space.” For example, in some cultures, it may be the norm to stand three feet away from a person one is talking to, whereas elsewhere, the standard might be four feet. Or two feet! Unfortunately, this is a subtle feature of interaction that people are…
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Background: “Warning” stickers / “caution” tape are occasionally placed on or around objects to indicate that they are dangerous. The issue: However: what if the tape itself is the source of danger? For example, if a roll of “BIOHAZARD” tape was accidentally dipped in a vat of bubonic plague, there would be no way to…
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Background: Ironing boards are large and unwieldy—even the ones that are just the board surface, without any folding legs. Fortunately, we can solve this problem. Proposal: A rollable ironing board Instead of having a large single-surface ironing board, we could either have a rollable ironing board made of a flexible material or (if flexible materials…
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