An App to use when you run into a stupidly designed Website

 

Image from ciphr.com through Wikimedia Commons, CC by 2.0 Licence 

We often encounter poorly managed Websites, and waste hours trying to carry out a simple transaction online. Your blood pressure goes up, you shout at people at home who try to help, and you barely preserve your sanity for the day. I offer an excellent design for an App you can use on these occasions. A possible name for it is Constru, as it has a constructive intent.

The App consists of two parts:

a) Maintains your sanity by letting you curse the manager concerned

b) Helps you publish constructive suggestions.

Maintain your sanity.

People do not realize it, but curses serve a great purpose: maintaining sanity under pressure! However, you cannot publish a curse on a feedback page, email, or whatever. The wonderful law may punish you for doing that.

Don’t worry; our App’s first section allows you to register curses in the privacy of your cell phone in an encrypted form. Curses are stored only on your phone. You can always read back the curses you have registered in your life, giving the date, time, and name of the party concerned. I give two sanitized examples:

11-03-2024 11 AM. Party: --- Retail: You are a bunch of idiots!

12-03-2024 12 noon. Party: --- News portal: Hope you are fired before you get your next salary!  

Of course, the App will register all kinds of curses, including unsanitized ones.

Publish constructive suggestions.

11-03-2024 11 AM. Party: --- Retail: The local phone number given for contacting you does not work. I searched the Web for a contact number for your company. That number rings and rings and does not answer.

12-03-2024 12 noon. Party: --- News Portal: You should not have so many advertisements popping up that the user does not get any news to read in peace.

As the person who will implement the App and run a business based on it, you must make a few decisions:

a)   Should the Website where the constructive suggestions are published indicate that there is a separate, unpublished part where curses have been recorded?

b)   Should the constructive suggestions always indicate the sender’s name? Or should this be done only when the user concerned permits it?

c)   Should you moderate constructive suggestions so that you do not get you into legal issues?

d) Should your users register by providing an email address or a phone number that your system verifies?

Srinivasan Ramani

 

Improving the Design of Ceiling Fans

Ceiling fans seem to attract dust from the air. Even a little trace of oil in the air due to cooking in the kitchen causes the dust on the fans in all rooms to become a thick greasy deposit. The dust deposits seem to form mainly on the upper surfaces, and leading edges of the fan blades. A lot of time gets wasted cleaning fan blades. In addition, cleaning fans is a risky operation as people climb on plastic chairs and flimsy stools. Visit this newspaper report for an example of a death from a fall. 

https://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/woman-falls-to-her-death-while-cleaning-ceiling-fan/58565865.html

We believe that fan makers should do adequate R&D to reduce the need for cleaning ceiling fan blades. Making fan blades very smooth is one way to reduce grime collection. Preventing the build-up of static electrical charges is another. Do fan blades need painting? Perhaps blades made of stainless steel would be worth testing. They should not need painting.

High-end cameras use a technique to get dust off the sensors. When you switch off the camera, the sensor vibrates for a short time to shake off the dust. We should consider using this technique with fans. It is worth trying aerodynamic techniques which will make the fans self-cleaning to some extent.

K Chandrasekar and Srinivasan Ramani
Chandrasekar is a wildlife expert and a wildlife photographer.