Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Was trying to get to my plane at Dulles International airport in Washington, DC. There are a number of terminals, and a train connecting them. So we got on the train, expecting it to do the usual thing – run in a (topological) circle, or maybe back and forth along a line, between the terminals … Read more
Lately the electrical system in my home got in the habit of shutting down unexpectedly. This did not happen by some faulty appliance tripping a fuse; we soon found that it was the Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI, that anti-electrocution safety device) that was deciding to trip, but when we reset it the power stayed … Read more
My Commonsense Design blog has been active since 2008, sharing my views and observations on product design and the occasional off-topic thought. To my delight, it created discussion when readers cared to share their comments and critique. At this time the blog is moving – with all its content – to the blog section of … Read more
The humble clothespin is a ubiquitous item that has been with us for generations; and it is simple enough that you’d think it’s reached the point if utmost reliability. And yet, it seems that it is in fact very unreliable: clothespins break, they fall apart, they need constant replenishing… but I seemed to remember that … Read more
See this water tap. Now when you want to turn it on, what do you do? What I did, is grab the handle and try to turn it anti clockwise, around its vertical axis. And nothing happened, it refused to budge. Here’s how you turn the water on with this tap: You see, it has … Read more
We all buy LED light bulbs these days (remember the days of CFL and tungsten filament bulbs?). And we buy them in little cardboard boxes made from dead trees. You have skinny single-bulb boxes, and you have twice as wide two-packs. So imagine my surprise when I saw the in-between box at the left in … Read more
Eating at a restaurant can be a romantic occasion, but restaurants seem to feel that justifies keeping a low lighting. Which is fine for romance but annoying when you need to peruse the menu. However, this one restaurant in Milano solved the problem! They had low enough lighting, but on each table they had this … Read more
Here are two boxes of vitamins I take, separated by a few months in production time, newer version on the right. Same product, one change: The original version is marked “Age 50+“, denoting the people it’s optimized for: those aged 50 and above (“+”). The new version is marked “SLVR+“. After some thought I figured … Read more
Here is a screenshot from my Lenovo ThinkPad computer. The computer was running a self-test using the incorporated Lenovo utility, and I tried to abort this test by exiting that utility. And then I got this dialog box: Read it carefully: If you continue, all the tasks … will be canceled. Are you sure? And … Read more
