Tesla Model S

I think the Tesla Model S is one of the most beautifully designed cars. The body of the car itself is pleasing to the eye with its sleek and subtle curves. The interior is the full of technology, yet comfortable and relaxing.

One of the greater things about the exterior of the Model S is the panoramic sun roof. The Model S comes with one of the largest sunroofs ever made for a car. It extend from the trunk to the top of the car. Its made of strong safety glass so you don’t loose any protection or structural integrity. To make things more interesting, Tesla’s innovative sun roof does more than just add safety and look pretty, it adds to the user experience. The huge open sun roof makes the car feel even more spacious than it already is. Its a lot more welcoming than some of the other cars I’ve seen with sunroofs and adds to the overall experience of the users.As mentioned before, this car is loaded with technology. The implementation of it, though, does not detract from the driving experience. Its simple and intuitive. The last thing you want to be doing is messing around with your dashboard whilst your driving.

I wish I had one of these myself.

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2014 Audi S6 Sedan

As our computer technology advances, we can see that our the technologies in our cars advance as well. New and old technologies are used in innovative ways to make our vehicles more safe and comfortable. The Audi A6 Sedan serves as a great example of this. For example, it has a smart key that lets you lock, unlock, and even start your car without the need for a traditional key. In addition to that, the care also comes with a different type of drive selection; it allows you to change the characteristics like steering and throttle to fit your wants. The care even comes with a heads up display that gives you updated information right on your window. I cant wait to see what else they add on to their future cars.

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Web Browsing Cognitive Affordance

Here we have another case of brilliant design. When your browsing the web on your favorite browsers, everything is simplified and layed out in such a way that makes navigating a breeze. One of my favorite web browsers is Mozilla Firefox and it is no exception to this design. The main reason, I think, it is easy to find everything on your browsers is that they contain cognitive affordances. Firefox, like Microsoft Word, has icons that help users identify the different buttons and options that are given to them.

On the left, you find the more commonly used navigation buttons. The arrows allow you to go back and forward though the pages. The little house icon leads you to your “home” page.  The circular arrow lets you refresh the page to show any changes that have been made. The star further to the right lets you easily bookmark any pages that interest you so that you easily return to them later. On the far right, you see a little magnifying glass. This icon lets the user swiftly navigate to the search mechanism found on most browsers.

Its simple and easily recognizable icons like those in Mozilla Firefox that make browsers great. It’s nice to see that other applications aside from web browsers are adopting the popular icons.

Microsoft Word Cognitive Affordances

Every day when we interact with technology we are met with affordances that help us accomplish tasks. Most of the time, it seems, we don’t even notice their guidance. So, what is an affordance? An affordance is essentially a design aspect of an object that helps the user understand how to interact with it. They can be physical, cognitive, sensory, functional and even emotional. The ones that I would like to point out in the image above are cognitive affordances. These type of affordances are meant to help us with our cognitive/mental abilities. They often take the form of icons, menus, lists, or directions.In the case of Microsoft Word, we find that the toolbars are full of affordances. On the top left, we see the very common save icon. It is an icon that is easily identified these days. On the top right we have the icons that control the window where Word is displayed. They can close, minimize, or maximize the window on your desktop. Aside from those, we also find icons on the central toolbars. The most common ones are those that deal with text fonts, sizes, color, and organization. Even in other text editing programs we find similar icons. The use of common icons help us users work much faster. They take up a lot less space compared to having to have descriptions. Microsoft has made it very easy to find all the different options on their document software and I’m positive this design is one of the things that has led to its popularity.

Business Card Speaker

I’ve always wanted to have an extremely portable speaker; something that would fit inside of my wallet like a credit card. I’ve had other portable speakers before, but they are always too bulky. They have large designs and typically weigh a bit more than necessary. These days, however, we have the technology to make things extremely small.

I thought up a design for a new portable set of speakers. It would be close to the size of a business card. In this design, the speakers would be made nearly flat using some of the newer flexible loud speakers. Power for the device can come from thin film battery technologies. Controls could be simple buttons or even touch sensitive. As far as connectivity goes, Bluetooth is the popular option.

Its a simple design that hopefully someone will adopt in the future. Even if its not made to be a commercially available speaker, It could be used as a great business card. Imagine installing pre-recorded messages and handing out these things out to clients. I’m sure they would be impressed.

Restroom Door Upgrade

One of the things I have always hated is the design of restroom doors. I just don’t understand why most building and homes have door handles on their restroom doors. It would be nice if everyone in the world would wash their hands properly after using the loo. Unfortunately, not everyone does and its disgusting. This means that every time the exit the restroom and have to use a handle to open the door, they leave their germs behind for the next person. This goes on for days, weeks, and sometimes months before some places clean the handles. So then if we get rid of handles, what can be done?

One of the easiest solutions I thought of would be to incorporate a double hinge to restroom doors. In addition to the hinges, a metal plate could be added to the bottom of the door. Why a metal plate?  The metal plate could then be used to open the door using your feet. Simply, give the door a nudge. This will work for both entering and exiting the restroom thanks to the new hinge. Problem solved! That would reduce the amount of direct contact your skin would have with the door. As some people might be handicapped, I think it would also be a good idea to include a button or hand sensor to open the door.

One thing I have noticed is that many doors do have metal near the bottom, yet still retain their handle locking mechanism. This means that the handle still has to be used when you want to open the door using your feet. Hopefully we aren’t too far from seeing a different implementation.