Household
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Background: When air conditioning is not available, fans (Figure 1) are the next best thing. The Issue: For a fan that is intended to cool off exactly one person (e.g. while they work at a desk, or sleep in a bed), it can be time-consuming to set up a fan and accurately aim it across…
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Background: One common feature in terrible dorm rooms and outdated rental units is the over-the-door towel hanger (Figure 1), which is a practical yet annoying way of adding hooks to a door without having to drill holes into the door. The Issue: These over-the-door hangers are finicky to hang just right, and tend to have…
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Background: Many common household pets have the properties of being soft, furry, and generally snuggleable. These also sound like the properties of a well-designed fuzzy throw pillow, but the pillow lacks at least two sensory properties that a real animal (such as a dog, in this example) can provide: the propensity to lick things, and…
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Background: In most houses, the process for starting a shower in the morning is as follows: If your shower has separate hot & cold taps: turn the hot tap on first, and wait for the water to get hot. Then, turn on the cold water tap (while avoiding being scalded by the hot water that…
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Background: Modern households have many “always on” appliances that generate waste heat. Although some devices can sleep in a low-power mode (e.g., laptops, game consoles), others (e.g. WiFi routers, Figure 1) are warm to the touch 24/7. Proposal: Let’s harness some of that wasted energy and use it to heat a cat bed! This can…
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The Issue: Typically, opening a garage door requires either a key, remote control, or phone app. But wouldn’t it be convenient to be able to open your garage door just by knocking on it in a special pattern (Figure 1)? As it turns out, it is NOT convenient at all! (But read on anyway for…
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The Issue: People living in small apartments frequently have to deal with a lack of storage space. While it’s possible to “just” add cabinets and bookshelves, these take up valuable floor space and make the apartment more cramped. Proposal: There is a surprisingly underutilized storage method that preserves your limited floor space: “just stick things…
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The Issue: Ovens and stoves can be dangerous home appliances. They can get extremely hot and they typically operate completely silently. This makes it easy for people to forget that they left the stove on! Interestingly, a similar issue exists for electric cars: they’re SO quiet at low speeds (as compared to a gas engine)…
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Background: Some vacuum cleaners are capable of measuring how much junk they’re currently pulling up off the floor. These vacuums will usually turn on a “this surface is now clean!” light to notify the user that their vacuuming job has been sufficiently through on a particular tiny section of the floor. The Issue: The “floor…
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The Issue: It can be easy to run out of certain household consumables without realizing it. For example, a person may think they have six more rolls of toilet paper, but they’re actually using the last one. It can be quite annoying to run out unexpectedly! This impacts many categories of product: soap, dental floss,…
