Computers
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Background: A common issue in many interactions is that different people have different ideas of what is enjoyable. This comes up a lot when multiple people are trying to decide on a single dinner location, pick a movie to watch, etc. The Issue: In particular, let’s investigate the situation where two people want to go…
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Background: “Augmented reality” (“AR”) headsets (e.g. the Oculus/Meta Quest or the Apple Vision Pro) are capable of overlaying computer screens on top of a view of the real world. From the perspective of the headset-wearer, the virtual screens can entirely cover up any real world objects behind them. The Issue: If a person wears an…
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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: Vendors at stadium events often wander around the stands, selling hot dogs / popcorn / etc. to sports fans. Since a cart is impractical due to the stairs, vendors typically carry their products using a special-purpose carrying harness. The Issue: For many office jobs, a person needs access to a keyboard in order to…
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Background: In today’s allegedly modern world, when people encounter technical problems with their computers, they usually either check for a solution on the Internet or instantly give up in frustration. What they DO NOT typically do is begin a magical ritual to placate the angry spirits! This is surprising, as, for, thousands of years, humans…
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Proposal: Illustrated children’s books usually consist of two main things: Unfortunately, books written before the advent of computer-generated images are stuck with “stale” illustrations: each page contains a single fixed image that will never change. But thanks to machine learning, we can fix this! Observe the new style of children’s book, where instead of an…
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Background: Certain types of office jobs, such as data entry, are limited by the typing speed of the operator. This is generally acceptable for humans, because human hands are adequate for keyboard typing. The smallest common keyboard has 61 keys (a so-called “60%” keyboard: https://www.google.com/search?q=60%25+keyboard). So the maximum possible human key coverage (Figure 1) is…
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Background: In smaller homes and apartments, it is likely that most rooms are multi-purpose: a “dining room” might also include a sofa and TV, and a “bedroom” might host an artist’s easel, work desk, yoga mat, exercise bike, and more. This is a practical method of using limited space, but people often find it unpleasant…
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Background: Many programming languages allow extremely long user-defined variable and function names. Frequently, companies will have a specific policy on naming: for example, forbidding abbreviations and requiring descriptive variable names (e.g., “CALCULATE_TOTAL_COMPOUND_INTEREST” would be OK, but “COMPINT” or “CCI” would not). The Issue: Normally, this makes sense: if someone has to read a bunch of…
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The issue: The presence of windows in a house is a major factor in determining of whether a house is dark and cavern-like or bright and uplifting. Unfortunately, it is usually impractical or impossible to add windows to a home after its has been constructed. Additionally, windows generally have a negative effect on climate control:…
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