5 years as an iOS developer has pushed me to understand and improve my product/physical/functional design skills. Especially “industrial” design – problems and solutions.
Here’s a great one I saw the other day: combining a Snellen Chart with Stopping Distances, i.e.:
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Existing (bad) solutions
The status quo on driving “too close for safety” is provocative, antagonistic. Have a look at a search for eBay: “too close bumper sticker”:
There’s a couple of major problems with this:
- It’s wrong. If you’re stationary, 6 feet behind the vehicle, you can read it – but you’re definitely NOT too close.
- It’s combative and offensive. It appeals to the anger and frustration of the driver in front – when we’re trying to modify the behaviour of the driver behind. Offending people who you’re trying to convince to change … is generally unsuccessful.
But combining the charts above, we get…
Net result
A plate you attach to your vehicle that informs the viewer how much too close/far they are right now, using a dynamic scale:
I couldn’t get a close enough photo to show it clearly, so here’s my redrawing of what the plate looked like:
