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.

Are there ways to have better and more interesting interaction with your lights? That’s what I tried to investigate when I came up with two new inventions, the Touch Switch and Desktop Lamp. Let me know what you think.

Touch Switch

Nobody likes switching on and off all the wrong lights in order to find the right switch. Could a light switch that looks like a trackpad of a laptop solve this? Where you just drag your finger towards the light you want to turn on/off. I thought so…

And could all the relative positions of the lights appear on a screen like this?

Desktop Lamp

One of the biggest annoyances with lamps it that you can’t always control where the light falls. You always have to make a choice between a focused or general light on your desk. But what if you could constantly change this? If a very light material could be used for the light, a desktop lamp like this might be possible.

The lit area can be controlled with the usual “pinch” gesture.

To turn up/down the light, draw a circle clockwise/counter-clockwise.