unprojects
---------------------- Data Viz / GFX -------------------------------------------
Sankey Diagram Generator
Make flow diagrams for publicly traded businesses (or private w/ public info available). Looking at this kind of diagram automatically switches people from brain fog to "Oh interesting, I wonder why this is so much?" where they feel like they have an entry point / way to start thinking about, analyzing, understanding the fundamentals of businesses
Would also be really cool to have 'typical' sankey diagrams for small businesses, side hustles, contracting, etc etc
Skillset Roadmaps
Make (or crowdfund paying a designer to make?) roadmaps showing the typical path of skill acquisition in different fields
Related: if you’re trying to get more people to become micro biologists or whatever, getting a really nice one of these made is probably a pretty good price per impact intervention
1-Page, Full-Year Calendars
A 1-week-wide, 52-week-long calendar is much nicer than 12 1-month calendars. Not sure whether these want to be sold as pre -made, print-it-yourself PDF, or made freely available and people can try to figure out printing on their own.
Open-Source Oblique Strategies
----------- Art -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Explore mass-produced ice sculptures
Before a week of continuously below-freezing weather, 3Dprint/vacform a few molds of little gnomes (or eggs, dog poops, lightbulbs, insert thing of your choice here). For a few days, pour water into the molds at night and take the sculptures out in the morning. Then you either get to 1. carry a wicker basket around like the easter bunny leaving eggs for people or 2. lay them all out in a park or something like an invasion
More tape sculptures
Make some more tape sculptures a la Mark Jenkins. Ideas include climbing things, riding on another sculpture’s back as if receiving a piggyback ride, hanging like spiderman upside down from one hand from somewhere high up.
Carve wood sculptures designed to burn in a cool way
------------------------------- Video Games ------------------------------------
Thomas Jefferson Airplane
A verbal or text-based flight simulator game where you're sitting on back the founding father + author of the declaration of independence as he flies around. The game is entirely speech based so you have to speak into a microphone "Go left, Thomas Jefferson!" The main challenge is that he's really confused and keeps asking what's going on and if you stop reassuring him then he starts to crash. So you have to get really tricky about "Okay Mr Jefferson I know this is all very confusing but if you don't go left right now we're going to crash into that building"
------------- Business Ideas ----------------------------------------------------
Physical Escape Room
Climbing routesetters and choreographers are the only people who get paid to recommend interesting bodily movements. Competition climbs take a step in an interesting direction by divorcing the sport from mere training for outdoor, "real" rock. But could we take that a step further. A central appeal of Ninja Warrior is that everybody thinks, watching, that they can do it. People love watching parkour because we get to watch people do impossible-looking things with their bodies.
Two versions of this idea: 1) a modular Ninja warrior course where regular people come in and try a new course (combine with workouts / CrossFit crowd?) or courses. Tentative business model is membership style like a climbing gym. 2) is almost like an escape room, but it's all about physical puzzles (almost like how to break out of prison). See the jump in the Batman cave prison, imagine having to pole vault out of a pit, etc etc. Further thought: would VR add anything or be too delicate? Protectors?
Native Bouquets / Smells Like Home
Bouquets of plants native to particular regions instead of from everywhere / tropical. More compelling than regular bouquets in two main ways: 1) Scent. When you step off a plane in your home area, you know immediately. Bringing the scents of a place you love into your home or office would be great. 2) Visually. San Diego plants are weird: succulents and Yucca and reeds in lagoons, and there’s very little outside of Italy or Southern Spain that would have the same effect. Other biomes have other distinct looks cementing the familiar vibe for someone who’s spent time in them.
Alt: Instead of bouquets, it’s more permanent planter pots created for plants to live there permanently. Put in a windowsill and water, giving a southwest / southern / eastern / northwestern / whatever vibe to a house or room.
Take Me Out, Coach
Use wearable tech to track alertness in games and have a simple, cheap product to track players' alertness over time (like HS Volleyball). Main goal is to be able to predict and take people out as needed if they're getting mentally fatigued.
------------------------ EAish ------------------------------------------------------
Blue-collar B-Corps
Start alternatives to businesses that are generally bad to people people. For example, towing company that doesn't charge 200 bucks to tow five blocks. One meta-level up better, try to instill norms that cities need to use towing as a physical movement necessity, not as a penalty. Relevant businesses: prisons, reposession/payday loans?
---------------- Placeholders ----------------------------------------------------
Platonic solids
Are all spherical shapes the result of the same underlying physical forces / generative conditions?
Unreal product design - ideally an art collective, make a new fake / silly / impossible product /startup every week until one generates traction, then ???
Cloud machine - idk who the right expert two talk about this next is. Smilde nicely emailed me back but seemed like his process was a trade secret: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRHWCcOktHI
Open-source industrial design
Vending machine that sells feelings
Blog on game-theoretic problems in different industries (lobster fishermen, overproduction of designers in my industry, etc) talking about their causes and how / if they have been solved
retvrn