There are still parameters to input and many options to choose before we can finally hit the ‘go’ button on many devices. Take a digital camera for instance. Advanced technology must be able to help a camera tell which scene mode the camera should choose. A toaster must know how long it will take to have nicely toasted bread. Recent gadgets are now able to tell where they are, who is there, what they are facing and many other things, so they should be able to do more. It’s like a very intelligent person who is blindfolded wearing earplugs.

I feel that way especially when I put some food to cook in a microwave oven. I know what the food should be like for me to eat. I know it shouldn’t be burned. I know it should be defrosted. But I’m not a cook and don’t know exactly how long it should be cooked. And that’s why I thought of this concept design.

WYSIWYG Microwave Oven Concept

Let us adjust the ‘how-we-want-it’ setting and skip all the details. Or rather, the ‘what-it-should-be-like’ setting because visual aid helps us picture the results much more easily than verbal expressions do.

Put a dish in it and this oven tells what kinds of foods are in it.

All you need to do is to adjust the 'look' of the food displayed on the glass by dragging the button. You can control the cooking time while looking at what it will be like after cooking the adjusted length of time. You'll know exactly when it boils or burns.

By the way, I wish a microwave oven could be movable so that it could get close to the table when necessary.

How can we combine sound and liquid in such a way that it’ll be fun? I came up with two different ways.

A xylophone meets a pitcher

Up until know you had to look inside a container to see how much liquid was left, but that’s over now. Just hit the container and hear the sound, listen to the pitch of when the pitcher is hit. Compare it with the pitch of the handle (working as a tuning bar) to know if it is empty or not.
 The tone of the tuning bar is the same as that of the pitcher body with no liquid inside. That way you won’t bother to open the lid while having fun.

Harmony Toast

This is a champaign glass with four horizontal lines marked on the glass. When making a toast you can change the sound of the toasting by varying the amount of liquid inside. When the champaign in both glasses are at the same level, they will make harmony notes. That way, making a toast will be much more fun and I’m sure we’ll clink the glasses more than twice.

Touch screens allow you to touch anything on the screen, but what you’re touching is only a flat screen. If the object you touch has a height, the user interface will be dramatically changed. You can feel an object (half) reproduced on a flexible surface. Even if it’s not rendered fully in 3D, the feedback you get will be completely different from touch screens. So I came up with a concept called the FiiL.

Not a fake slider on a flat screen, but a realistic toggle switch can be used. Hopefully that click feeling can be realized too.

Buttons are now real buttons that you can feel the height of. You also feel the pressure when you push it.

Not leveled ground can be instantly scanned and rendered on the screen, which must be helpful for visually disabled people. Outdoor signage can also be instantly scanned and the braille is created on the screen.

In the physical world, you always get this type of physical feedback. So if we really want a user interface that can be truly intuitively understood, why not make it tangible?

Have you ever double-checked if you really locked a door? That wouldn’t be necessary if you had a lock with a clear indicator that says “I’m locked.” So is there a way to design this constraint into the product?

In the above example, there is no indicator that says which way you should rotate to lock the door. But even when there is an indicator such as a small circle, it doesn’t always mean it’s “locked”. It might mean it’s “unlocked”. So I was wondering if there was a way for anyone to be able to recognize it’s really locked and came up with the following idea:

Actually this does NOT physically prevent the rotation of the handle around its root. This hook is just a fake, but it makes you easily recognize that the door is locked when it’s at the lowest.

So that’s what I thought when reading Living with Complexity by Donald Norman, which I highly recommend.

Chopsticks always go in pairs. But in a house where all the family members use chopsticks, there are a bunch of unpaired chopsticks in a cabinet drawer or a chopstick stand. For every meal someone has to find right pairs among all those chopsticks. Why not put them away in pairs in the first place?

Jigsaw Sticks

First of all: why aren’t chopsticks made to be bundled by themselves?

This jigsaw-puzzle-like projected part also functions as a chopstick stand. So when you place these sticks on a table, the tips are raised.

Chopstick Rest & Bundler

What about making a chopstick rest?

Stand it on its side and it works as a chopstick stand.

There is a magnet inside the back of it, so it sticks with another stand to make it more stable to stand.

Who has never pulled a push door? Or pushed a door that is supposed to be pulled to open? If it is a basic knob, it’s hard to know which way it opens.So how about changing the shape of a doorknob to add small constraints on the push/pull actions so that a user can easily notice how to open the door? (I said “small constraints” because there are times when you have to pull a push door and push a pull door, such as when the door is stopped with a door-stopper.) This would be my solution:

Say your TV remote suddenly stops working and you are trying to change the batteries. Then you remember you changed one of the two batteries just a couple of days ago. Which is it? Exchange one of them with a new one. No, not this one…

You might have had that experience. Guessing the right one out of two is okay, but what if there are four or even eight? What if you’re visually impaired? You don’t want to take your battery checker out of your dusty toolbox just to find out one old battery, do you?

So I was wondering if there is a rechargeable battery that can change its form to tell you how “hungry” it is. The thinner it is, the emptier the battery is. When it’s full, it’s just as straight as a normal battery. Even if your eyes are closed, you can feel it and know how much more you can use it until the next recharge.

Another merit is that when it’s thin, it’s much easier to take out from a packed battery room, especially if there are multiple betteries packed tight in line. Fat batteries don’t need to be changed anyway.

With a mobile phone, you can watch movies/videos/TV programs online anywhere at almost any time. That ubiquity has brought tremendous convenience to our lives, but on the other hand, the value of them has been diminishing. We don’t very much/at all care about where we can get a clip or if we miss a drama episode. What if, however, we have a movie that can be watched only when certain conditions are met?

This concept is partly like a concept I’ve already introduced in my blog, but a little different.
OK, so you hold this device in front of you and watch a clip, but the clip can be played only if you are at a particular place. You have to BE there to see the whole movie.

For example, you can see

1. a movie’s secret story at an actual scene
2. a sequel clip to a TV commercial with how to apply for an exclusive present announced at the end
3. your favorite actress choose clothes at a boutique
4. a comedian introduce which spots you should visit in a touristy place

etc. etc.

Or you can shoot a video of yourself for your boyfriend saying “Hey, how long do you think I’ve been waiting for you? I’m going home.” so that he can see it when he finally arrives.

By limiting the geographical conditions for viewing movies this way, you might expect audiences to visit places you like.

It would be so much fun if videos can be seen in 3D from any angle (no, not from below).

It always frustrates me when I find out that a USB stick is full after I’ve tried to put new data on it? Does data have to be so invisible? This frustration was the starting point of a new product, one that visualizes the digital information on a USB stick.

Below you see my ideal USB memory stick, even though I am pretty sure it will be too expensive to develop. Let’s dream:

The light inside the glass represents the data saved, so no light means no data and full of light is no more space. Each type of data is represented by different colors. For example pink is for images, blue is for documents and green for movies, etc.

It syncs with the icon on your desktop.

There are many situations that I can come up with where I would have loved to get instant feedback, but couldn’t get it. In some cases it was a lack of good design or imagination that caused this. I tried to solve two of them.

Clip Watch

Right now it’s really cold outside in Japan. On my way to the station I usually take my iPhone out of my coat pocket to see what time it is. But as you may know: using an iPhone with your gloves on is a tough task. That’s why I’ve been thinking about a watch you can put on your coat or bag, which tells me time only when I need to know.

By making it look like a button, it may go well with many kinds of outer wears.

Click the face once and it displays the time and date on the glass face for a few seconds. (I figured we usually don’t need to stare at a watch for a long time.)

Solar battery panels charges electricity for the display.

Fireworks Pinpointer

Ever wondered if there was a fun way to find out your car in a huge parking lot? I hope there is a projector that throws interesting light pictures in the air. You just find the customized light beam above your car.