In A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, one of the experiments he suggests in the book is to keep a design journal. Being the activity I chose, I started looking for household items that were perfectly designed or tragically flawed.
Two inventions caught my eye; one was brilliant and the other was not so much.
Brilliant: My bed
With not much space in my room but more than enough junk to fill it, every piece of furniture in my room serves a function; my bed serves several. The first purpose is obvious, sleep. The second is the reason my bed is brilliant. Under my bed where most people have a missing sock or a few spiders, I have four average sized drawers and one endless drawer in the middle. These house a good portion of my clothes and my art supplies, giving me enough room to be able to walk around my room without having to get rid of anything.
Not so Much: The dishwasher
One of my household chores is to clean the dishes. More than once I've had to take the dishes out of the "dishwasher" and scrub the leftovers off the plates, which I always thought was the point of a dishwasher. I've tried different detergents and the result is the same, and I'm tired of washing the dishes before... washing the dishes.
Now that I've started looking for flaws in inventions, I can't stop looking for ways to improve every imperfection.
