Author: Alec Uitti

Intelligent record paging

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An idea I had maybe 9-10 years ago after designing an interface that had a potential for 10s of thousands of database records built into a spreadsheet-style admin page. I proposed this idea after inheriting the traditional UI of navigating through a set number of records per page via numbers that we’ve all seen and used.

My question to the developers was “How does the user know what’s on page 7, for instance?”. The answer was that they don’t until they click on that number. They have to guess that based on 35 records per page you will probably get to your named record in 6-7 pages.

I thought that sucked. I designed this UI that requires the developer to do a little more work to pull a set of records AND pull the first and last record of each theoretical page in the full set in the db – then apply a tooltip-style popup to the number of the page that includes the first and last record visually. Then the user can hover over page 7 and know exactly what they will see, at least the extents first-to-last and make an intelligent decision whether to click there or not.

Intelligent-record-set-paging

Think Umbrellas

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fresh frozen strawberry umbrella

Who came up with the idea to put mini umbrellas in drinks? ridiculous! brilliant!

When I was a young man (19 I think), I was out to lunch in Atlanta with some work mates and when we came out of the restaurant there was a massive thunderstorm. We had to sprint to our car to avoid having to change our clothes and still we ended up drenched.

I thought – Why not have free single-use umbrellas that shops can give to their customers as a courtesy? They could be super-cheap and silk-screened with their logo (or sponsored by another company looking for exposure).

The good feeling gets translated into a relationship to the brand. right?

Semi distribution hub

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I lived in San Francisco for 6 years and at least once every few months there would be a semi truck full of goods or furniture trying to navigate the crazy steep twisty streets. I have seen a dozen or so of these monsters high-centered on a street top transition – having to get lifted off at great expense I’m sure.

What if large dense cities like this had a hub outside of town where big trucks could off-load their cargo to smaller trucks that can dart in and out of the city and deliver easier/faster?

What if they were electric? or hybrid?

HinoMY2012_HYBRID_BOX_3QTR_HYBRID

I saw this idea on an article about an uber-green city being planned in China (AFTER I had the idea, ahem). I don’t think the city ever got built.

Parking ticket reuse/share

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Living in Boulder, CO, we have these new pay for parking kiosks that dispense a paper ticket with a given amount of time on them.

You are supposed to put them on your dashboard and they won’t ticket you.

Frequently I find that my estimation of the time I was going to spend there is off. Usually in the positive because I have made the mistake of going the other way and getting a fat ticket.

So, I typically have a half hour or more of time left on my ticket that I end up just tossing.

What if we had a way of giving the ticket to the next person coming in, assuming they were going to spend roughly the amount of time on the ticket doing their things.

plastic-holder-thingy

We could use a pocket attached to the kiosk perhaps?

Cafe table solution

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Have you ever been to a restaurant/bistro/cafe and had your drink spill and/or your conversation be interrupted from a wobbly table?

Of course you have.

Well, that irritates me. I have been drawing this out for a while and will get it prototyped at some point. Here it is in its current form:

The Table Equalizer

Table legs can usually be adjusted via a screw-in leg end but that requires you to bend down and grab it with your hand and twist it. gross.

I designed this device to constantly seek a length that will give resistance to the spring. If it reaches it’s limit, it resets and starts over. This requires a person to perhaps force-reset by lifting it up for a second but that’s not a big deal, right?

Simple, cheap. Necessary!

equalizer-02

Complimentary businesses

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A while back I had an agency give me a test of sorts to see if I was creative.

They wanted me to design a furniture site, in theory anyhow. Come up with something cool they said.

So I thought about it and asked what was the biggest issue with online furniture? One of the big ones, aside from not being able to sit on anything or touch it, is that you can’t see it in context. Some big catalogs will make these impressive fake rooms with all of their product in them and little numbers on everything to explain what they are.

How much is professional photography? We’re talking 6 figures at least. Not gonna happen with a typical startup.

I thought why not find a place that needs furniture in a temporary setting so that you can go in there and take some photos yourself. I thought doesn’t the real estate industry do fake setups with furniture and everything so that their potential customers can see what the house looks like? I know they do. They have to buy furniture for that.

Give/loan real estate companies furniture and set things up, take photos and use them in your site. Win-win.

G.E.T.

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A little device I invented called the Gel Extraction Thing (GET)

So, most of my ideas come from being irritated by something which is common.

See if you have the same pet peeve: The carbohydrate gel single-use pack. Great for what it does which is that it gives you a jolt of energy when you’re on a long adventure or race. Awesome.

What it fails at is delivery of the product in a reasonably quick and complete manner. It sucks. You really have to pause your activity/race in order to get it all out or leave a bunch of the goo in there and slam it back into your shorts or jersey or pocket (you would never throw it on the ground, right? right?).

Flashback to when you take your jersey or shirt out of the laundry with a bunch of goo on it and potentially all over every damn thing because you forgot about it.

Enter the GET, a simple plastic device that takes a packet and uses a basic compound leverage technique to enhance your hand’s power and extract ALL of the product out in a few seconds. No pausing/stopping to roll the dang thing up slowly to get all the good stuff. No extra left in to get all over.

I made a 3D printed prototype and put in on Kickstarter in 2011. It didn’t go anywhere, for several reasons. One is that the proto was just a proof of concept and not very sexy. The other is that, yes, it’s a small market and most people get along fine without it.

I believe that if I can get it to market, people will love it and like lots of things that they never thought they would ‘need’ find that they can’t really live without it.

(patent pending)

We’ll see. Anyone willing to write a check and see it come to fruition, please send me a note.

Kickstarter vid:

gotta get G.E.T. from Alec Uitti on Vimeo.

Plane boarding/unboarding solution

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OK, who’s with me? Passenger plane boarding and especially un-boarding is a serious drag. There’s always that person or persons who have all kinds of issues getting their overhead shit down or gathering their personal crap together or just plain have challenges moving their fat ass. amiwrong?

So, submission:

airplane-loading-pod-2

Have planes with detachable passenger ‘pods’ that can be loaded and unloaded via some crane system or retractable arm. This way folks go to the terminal, find their seat, get settled in their own time with access via the side of the pod, then the pod is sealed and slid into the waiting plane like a tin of mints (ok, not the best analogy).

Then when arrived at the destination the whole damn thing is removed from the plane and deposited into the terminal and folks can leave their seats and get their crap at their leisure (to an extent. there should be a time limit when a large volt of electricity is applied to the pod so stragglers are encouraged to move – hehe).

Distopian? maybe. a little.

Happiness quotient

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Being a User Experience designer, I tell my clients often that their user/customer is the most important part of their ‘work’.

On a few occasions I have asked a team “Who is your boss?”, knowing that they will answer something like “Suzie, VP of product blah blah”, which is technically correct.

I say “No, your boss is your customer or user”. Reason is, if you piss them off or they go away because you produce an abomination of UI, you will lose the fundamental reason of your employment: revenue stream.

This doesn’t always produce the ah-hahs that I expect. I have been scowled at followed by that uncomfortable silence we know so well.

This is just to say that I would love to implement a way to analyze a metric that we don’t yet know how to: Customer happiness

There are ways to get close to this. Return/repeat customer data, surveys (see my other post on this), feedback, social sharing and sometimes direct interaction.

Is there a more sure or truthful way? I believe there is. I don’t know exactly what that is but I can speculate and spitball at least.

What if every sale came with a text-only phone number that you had to call in order to get your product/service to work better. or to upgrade to a special “pro level”. Basically a way to enhance your thing with something simple but that required a user to interact and rate your product and give feedback. I feel like this is so valuable, even if it is negative!!