Daily 10 “Back-of-Napkin” Ideas

• Chair that monitors your posture and gave you vocal, or better, haptic reminders when you were not sitting in an optimal position. Or a range of sensors perhaps. I’m really keen to explore this given my struggle with sitting down for long periods of time, suffering from chronic back pain.
• Similar to above, but passively embedded into clothes or skin on the back. Ensuring position of back, shoulder blades etc. are at their most optimum.
• Muscle sensors that determine to what extent you are flexing / using the muscles, sending you instant stats and tracking your progress as you go about your day. A lot of pain comes from over exerting certain muscles over long periods of time, tiring them out to the point they become sore and you need a deep tissue massage to loosen it up. Stats can show correlations to time of day, certain locations or even, when coupled to mood wearables, to when you feel stress, or a certain feellilng. Body and Mind are intricately linked in this sense, the tech can help us understand our own bodies more.
• And as above, although there are startups working on it already, mental wellbeing sensors which track your mood based on several biometric signs, such as blood pressure, interval between heart beats, heart beat, and other non-invasive sensory metrics. Apple will be releaseing headphones that you can keep in at all times, that will track a lot of that stuff!
• Biodegradable packaging. Seriously, how is this still not a thing? There are startups expertimenting with this, funghi amongst others. Issue: cost and production. But there can be more done with this!
• On above plastic goods (e.g. supermarket bags), make people pay $0.2 for each plastic bag. Germany does it and it reduced plastic bag consumption (read: non-biodegradable trash) by a huge amount!
• Related to the above, we still have a trend of 1-time-use of products. Plastic bags, coke cans, soft drink cups etc. Hydiene is one issue. Idea: make having your own small cup/utensils sexy. Make it a status symbol. Make it cool again. The Apple of personal, portable utensils. Work with stores to offer discounts to those that use their own!
• Back to healthy backs. So much of our chair designs are based on an average human being. There is nothing average about a human being, we all come with unique a physique. Idea: create a platform for easy, accessible and affordable custom chair design & production.
• Affordable standing / sitting hybrid desk. Current ones are way too expensive.
• This one came from Miroslav who I met yesterday: many doors in coffee shops and other public areas do not have a ‘Occupied’ sign when the bathroom is being used. Frustration of trying the door, realising it’s locked, coupled with the mild embarrassment of disturbing in this moment might be small on a personal scale, but collectively this adds up to many tens of thousands of people facing this every day. Idea: cheap LED light on the outside, with a button (Occupied/Unoccupied) on the inside. Better yet, a touch sensor linked to the lock of the door, automatically showing the status of the bathroom.