Sit down, if you can, and read this study about what it takes to get a folding plastic chair to the point where you can sit in it: “A study of design demand of applying quality function deployment in plastic folding chairs,” Chun Tung Chen, Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 284, pp. 3632-3636. The author, […]
Our beloved graphic designer, the modest and sublime Geri Sullivan, is retiring. We at the magazine Annals of Improbable Research are looking for an improbably great graphic designer to join our gang. The main duty is to lay out each of the six new issues we create every year. (One of those six issues focuses […]
US design patent 720760S1 for a “Bagpiper Thumb Drive,” was granted to Thomas Paul Caldwell and Thomas Paul Caldwell, on January 6, 2015. The patent document explains: “[This drawing of the] ornamental design for a bagpiper thumb drive… [shows] a lower section disconnected to reveal a Universal Serial Bus (‘USB’) connector protruding from beneath a kilt […]
Different engineers have different ways of having fun. This is one way: The design engineer, Julijonas Urbonas, gives it a simple description: “Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetic death machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being.”
What would be the point of designing and developing “Magic Machines” in the form of a “Poo Detector” … Or an “Eyes and Ears” gizmo? … One reason would be to draw attention to the effects of so-called ‘Solutionism’ – prevalent in today’s world where technological ‘solutions’ (esp. gadgets) are constantly presented to solve problems […]
Back in 2011 Improbable drew attention to the ubiquitous (though at the time somewhat under-investigated) social phenomenon of ‘Door Holding’ see : Etiquette and effort. At the time. a research team from Penn State University, US, proposed that ‘Door Holding’ may have evolved because its perceived effort-saving efficiency might be uplifting for society. (press release […]
Ethnomusicologist Dr. Verna Gillis (previously an assistant professor at Brooklyn College and Carnegie Mellon University, US), has just recently been granted a US design patent for her ‘Ball’. (Jan. 7th, 2014) More accurately named as the Kick Butt Ball™, which is described as “… a novel spin on a stress ball, with one side shaped […]
“How to Kill People” is a TV documentary made in 1960. The underlying theme: how to design weapons that kill people, but — as the occasionally-coughing on-camera host George Nelson, himself an influential product designer, explains — does not murder them. The passing years have added blurrgh-blurrgh-blurrghiness to the sound track: (HT Paola Antonelli) BONUS […]
What is Hortipornography? We can do no better than consult the word’s coiners – Dr. Paul Hewer, now Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Strathclyde University, Scotland, and Professor Douglas Brownlie, at the University of Stirling, Scotland, who originated the term in their paper ‘Constructing Hortiporn: On the Aesthetics of Stylized Exteriors’ (in: Advances in Consumer […]
Two eminent invention/design firms are quarreling very much in public about a dustpan. In form, this is a classic tit-for-tat battle: TAT: “Rise Up! Quirky Seeks Justice for Inventor Bill Ward“, which begins: As a haven for transparent online collaboration, Quirky must strive to protect the interests of its inventors and influencers. While this customarily […]