When I was a kid payphones in NYC were a big part of life. It was how you’d change plans with a friend, make reservations for dinner, or dozens of other small social connections that have collapsed down into our mobile phones.
But the cases and frames for all of these phones still exist, even if the phones themselves do not.
A design competition in NYC has five different designs for the ‘payphone’ of the future. You can vote on your favorite.
You can vote here.
As anyone who tries to read a bad restaurant website menu knows, menu design in print or on the web is a craft unto itself. The challenges rise if the menu has to be interactive too.
At King Noodle in Seattle the premise is you can be the King (or Queen) of your own soup. When you sit down you’re handed a nicely designed sheet of paper with their array of ingredients listed for you. 
While there are complete soups you can order, the spirt of the place is to build a soup yourself. You pick from 5 broths, several different kinds of noodles, and a wide range of other ingredients.
I went for the spicy broth with noodles, wontons, bbq pork, beansprouts and cabbage. I was worried about how well my choices would blend together but those worries were unfounded. The broth was good, balancing all of my choices together, and all of the ingredients tasted fresh (or fresh enough to pass the ‘be in soup’ bar). It was an excellent meal for a cold winter day. 
While I talked with friends Chad and Kav as we waited for our food, I mentioned how the menu could encourage customers to experiment. Why not offer recipies to try in the future that were known to be interesting? Something like what Jelly Belly does on the back of their jelly bean packages.
Long ago I learned the travel tip of grabbing a card from the hotel front desk. if you get lost you always have the hotel phone number and address handy. This is extra valuable in foriegn counties. To get hom when lost or drunk, just show a cab driver the card. Without knowing a word of their language, you’ll get safely home.
On a recent trip to China, I discovered a well designed card for all these situations and more at the Bayshore Hotel in Dalian.
One side has basic instructions in Chinese and English.
The other side lists several popular locations in the city. 
Completed Project: Poland’s Most Narrow ‘Keret House’ | Inthralld.
Constraints can help creativity. They force you to try things you’d never consider otherwise. This house in Warsaw was designed to fit between a 5 foot cavity between two existing buildings.
Designed by Centrala, it has a private entrance, a workspace, a loft bed, a kitchen bathroom and storage space, all fitting in less than 44 square feet.
This video shows the design and a brief interview with the designer:
More photos and details here.
This art project in Russia suggests a unique alternative to your commute: a 50 meter long trampoline. While you might need to invest in an ankle brace or two, it’d be a win to arrive at work with a smile.
[via thisiscolossal]
Every time I’ve been to the hospital they just ask on a scale from 1 to 10, no visual aids at all. This chart offers a different approach.
Some poking around revealed of course its not real, however you can buy one. It’d make a good joke gift for your favorite doctor or dentist’s office.
This student project from Germany raises as many design issues as it solves. It keeps you occupied while waiting for the light to change, and also indicates how much time is left. The project was for a course in interactive media.
The good: it likely prevents jaywalking. It’s a thoughtful use of design to fill dead time. It’s interactive.
The bad: the wait isn’t quite long enough to justify it.
Watch the video anyway. There’s some clever thinking here.
The irony of this instructional diagram is it would be needed today for anyone who had never seen one before. The rotary UI reached is primacy in the late 1970s, before push button phones took over. For anyone born today, and never saw it used in a movie, would have a hard time figuring it out.
The problem of course is the diagram fails to explain the most important thing: how to actually dial a number.
The design itself had the curious side effect of making 0′s the most expensive number to dial, as it took the most work and the most time.
(Source: unknown)
At Seattle Barcamp held at the Adobe office, I discovered StepNPull, a clever device that solves a common problem. After you wash your hands in the bathroom, should you touch the door handle when you leave?
Instead of using your hands, you put your foot on the petal, pull forward, and open the door. Worked great. Only wrinkle is while you are figuring it out the first time, if someone opens the door in that moment they’ll hit you in the face.
The low frills version of this is smart placement of the trash.
Chinese food menus in NYC are surprisingly complicated, which makes this staircase even more bizarre. If ever there was a reason to simplify, putting text on the side of each stair would be it. And curiously SLUSH doesn’t earn it’s own letter/number code.
It’s a quiet spot, so I didn’t get to observe anyone walk up the stairs to see how well it worked for them, or even if they noticed.
Found at Empire cafe, NYC.
