In the first week of March, I wrote about the devastating misapplication of modern technology in cars, and the ample opportunity for car manufacturers to improve the capabilities of rear-view mirrors.

Today, Kevin points me to this Co.Design article which proposes the same: Use cameras, reduce/obliterate blind spots. The article also talks about reduced drag, which I think is a relatively minor issue, and about many governments’ legal requirements for cars to have side view mirrors installed, which could be a substantial roadblock. Nonetheless, it sounds like we’re headed down the right path.

I think I’ve always wanted to write a post with that title.

As many of my friends — and especially my food-enthused colleages at Farmigo — are acutely aware, I’m a sandwich kind of guy.

What especially piqued the interest of my Farmigo crew, though, was the fact that I’d tend to eat the same exact sandwich for lunch every day of the week: Turkey, ham, swiss, hummus, with some week-to-week variation.

I don’t progressively benefit from eating the same meal several days in a row.[ref]This isn’t going On Fire we’re talking about here.[/ref] Rather, it’s the result of my own sandwich hacking: I figured out that I could cut down precipitously on sandwich-making process time if I made a week’s worth of sandwiches all at once as soon as I unpacked my groceries.[ref]Here’s Brian Regan who better articulates all the time I’m saving.[/ref]

Recently I took another critical look at my sandwich-making process, and as the post title states, I literally came upon the best thing since sliced bread.

Here it is:

The Tortilla. It’s AWESOME.

Here’s why:

1. Since I’m just going to roll everything up at the end, I can be even lazier about building my sandwich — I don’t need to fold oblong-shaped slices of turkey to fit my rectangular bread.
2. On a related, but subtly distinct note: Sandwiches prepared tortilla-style have walls. In the past I’ve never really invested in complications like tomatoes, which on a normal sandwich are all but guaranteed to slide around, fall out, or leave one really strange bite at the tail end. But now, an entire world of slippery supplements is possible. (Thanks for reminding me, Peter.)
3. I know exactly how many sandwiches I can make. Tortillas come in packs of 4, 6, 8 — you name it. I have no idea how many slices are in a loaf of bread. I can’t imagine there’s an industry standard (though at least the bread gods all seem to have agreed that there should be an even number). And I’m not about to sit there and count individual slices by looking through the plastic bag.
4. No crust. I’m over the hurdle of eating the crust on the individual slice of bread, but I still don’t like the crusty slices at the ends of the loaf. I throw them out, which makes me feel bad because it’s clearly wasteful. But at the same time, why should I subject myself to a clearly inferior — and inherently avoidable — sandwich experience on at least a weekly basis?
5. You know what the absolute worst part is about bread? It’s the crumbs. Crumbs which fall out of nowhere and spill everywhere. Crumbs which wind up spread all over the counter just densely enough to be a clear nuisance but not enough to really merit cleaning up. Crumbs which are magnetically attracted to the little cracks underneath the keys on your keyboard if you so much as think about taking a bite out of your sandwich and you’re standing anywhere in the same timezone as your computer. Tortillas? No crumbs.

Apparently, NASA feels the same way. I suppose they’ve been too busy playing with the dirt on Mars to clue the rest of the planet in on the fact that they knew the best thing since sliced bread — and have been using it for over 30 years.

Or maybe they just figured “The best thing since flour tortillas” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily.

Dear iOS & Android,

Please fix this garbage.

How impossibly stupid is it that the only time that you are ever—EVER—explicitly told that you can’t use your phone’s Airplane Mode is when you’re actually sitting on an airplane?

“Airplane Mode is not enough; your phones have to be turned all the way off,” says every poor flight attendant across the entire country, for every flight, every day, as planes are preparing for takeoff.

Look, I get why this setting is secretly brilliant. Modern smartphones depend on a steady signal connection in order to update mountains of inane app updates, tweets, emails, whatever. When this connection is lost, the phones are designed to exhaust all effort possible to reestablish connection—which is fine if you’ve, say, stepped into an elevator and you’re in the middle of a thing. But it’s a battery-crippling disaster if you’re somewhere like an airplane. Airplane Mode turns off most of the signal transmitting functions while still affording people the opportunity to keep their phone on so they play Angry Birds or whatever the hell.

You have to fix this.

See, I can’t blame the users here. You’ve clearly designed this feature to give them the impression that it’s acceptable for use on airplanes—there’s that neat little airplane logo that you utilize, and the whole using the word “Airplane” in the name thing. People have been trained for millenia to pick up on those sorts of signals. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for an average consumer to conclude that Airplane Mode is an appropriate alternative for the flight attendants’ hopeless “turn all your stuff off, for the love of god, I’m begging you” plea.

I’m certainly not asking the airline people for help. They’ve demonstrated sufficient evidence of significant mental trauma already. That’d be a hopeless endeavor. So it’s you guys.

I don’t want to ask for much. For sure, you all might be able to invent a smarter algorithm for checking data signals. But that sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not technologically sophisticated enough to make a sound recommendation here. So how about this: Turn your airplane logos into traincar images, and re-brand your feature as “Subway Mode.”

Thanks.

(One first-world problem down, infinity to go.)

Yesterday, I investigated the travel bag, and re-framed the problem of designing a travel bag that best suits the size and portability needs of modern tourists to also include the needs of several other parties involved, including airlines, airports, and airplanes.

Here’s a creative matrix I used to brainstorm some ideas.

Along the X axis, I asked myself questions critical to the value proposition for each of the stakeholders. Along the Y axis, I listed the most likely levers available to drive change. Then I used my brain for 15 minutes.

Once those ideas were down, I sorted them chronologically by importance—in other words, “how likely is it that this idea will result in a significantly improved overall travel experience?” From there, I ranked by ease/affordability, with the most points going towards ideas that might have the lowest cost barriers. I could have been wrong at any point. Then, I found a sum using a skill called “basic mathematics.”

Interestingly, seven of the fourteen ideas I’d come up with all received a fairly high allocation of points (20+) and as such might merit future consideration. At the conclusion of my rankings, I was surprised to find that altering an entire culture—the idea to eliminate the norm of bringing overhead bags—was only the sixth most expensive idea to implement. But to be fair, I did come up with a few especially strange ideas. Having circus muscle men to help people load luggage in overheads would be pretty funny.

With these in mind, I came up with a pair of possible product prototypes.

Solution Alternative #1: The top of the travel bag detaches and doubles as your TSA bin.

First, I focused on the top two ideas: TSA branded, approved product and a travel bag with TSA security parts (bins, liquid baggies) built in. It seems likely that the two might be built in chorus.

One critical aspect the two have in common is that they address a human problem. For the former: Airline passengers hate the TSA. They’re the enemy. People feel personally violated by the TSA (probably because they physically are personally violated). It seems like the TSA exists with the sole purpose of making things slow and difficult. As a result, the passengers treat the security process like they’d treat anything they don’t like: begrudgingly. Many are willfully ignorant of TSA officers’ requests to remove belts or jewelry, or otherwise partake in assorted small acts of anarchy.

Aside from potential advances in check-in rapidity, a TSA-approved luggage series might provide another more important benefit: an olive branch, and the notion that the TSA actually wants a speedy, painless process just as much as the passengers do!

As for enhancing rapidity: What are the true causes of such lengthy lines at the security check step of the travel process? My first thought goes to the exhaustive laundry list of demands that the TSA has created (ziplock bags for all liquids, separate crate for laptops, etc.), but I assume these are immobile—in fact, I felt these were so entrenched that I (perhaps foolishly) actively chose not to address this issue in my creative matrix. My gut’s next instinct is to blame the on-site TSA team…but upon reflection, I don’t think they’re necessarily the second biggest contributing factor to lag. Checking passengers’ ID and processing them through the human-size metal detector are I think actually fairly speedy processes. I think lag comes in as a result of the way passengers pack and unpack their bags.

While queuing for the metal detector, passengers must unpack hurriedly and haphazardly. Quickly, I must stuff my shoes, belt, cellphone, wallet, jacket, travel size shampoo, toothpaste and more into one bin, while unzipping my carry-on to remove the laptop which must get stored in a second bin. Moments later on the other side of the metal detector, I have to undo this entire process. Awesome times.

Bags can move slowly through the carry-on metal detector and may need to be re-screened by the TSA expert. Why? Because the inside of a typical travel bag is a mess. Check out what these guys have to sift through. I couldn’t find Waldo in here, much less a concealed weapon. The TSA officer has to sift through piles of junk to try and detect anything suspicious, and there’s no way she might standardize this process.

A TSA-approved travel bag could feasibly solve both these problems at once. With consideration under the guidelines of subtraction and closed-world conditions: What if the airport didn’t provide bins? What if all we had to work with was our travel bag itself?

I made a very crude mock-up. Seriously, the most crude mock up of all time.

The idea is as such: When you arrive at the metal detectors, you simply detach the top of your travel bag and flip it upside-down to use as a bin. In my vision, the inside of the top might be stitched with suitable elastic bands and clear baggies, or otherwise have explicitly designated cubbies for most of the core pressure-point items, such as my laptop and toothpaste. This gives the TSA agent an easy rubric to follow and check against for aberration. As this type of bag proliferates, there’s reduced need for bins, which means reduced clutter, transactional labor and friction.

On the other side of the equation, this solution relieves me of the burden of having to open and sift through a bunch of things—critical items would be proactively packed neatly and accessibly. I’d envision this top might not have to be attached to the bag by much more than a few straps of Velcro—sturdy enough to withstand the modest rigors of commute and overhead storage, easy enough to undo and redo in a flash without even requiring precision. Before the final product is publicly unveiled, I’d foresee numerous iterations here in order to cater to style and personal security needs, etc., but at some level, the bag should devolve to “TSA mode,” which might only need to hold up long enough for you to get from the metal detector to your gate before you armor up.

Reaching back into my bag of ideas, this might be a clever way to simultaneously implement expert traveler fastlanes. Allowing travelers toting TSA-approved luggage to use the first-class lane (or otherwise, a separate lane just below first class) would be a terrific way to align TSA and passenger interests, rewarding patrons who seek to expedite the process and creating value for both parties.

Solution #2: Travel bags contoured for overhead storage.

More crude mock-ups!

The idea here is that many airlines use a very specific set of planes in order to increase operating efficiencies, and as such, probably very readily know what the overhead storage capacity is for their fleet. JetBlue comes to mind as an airline that only flies two different models of plane. Could they not design and propagate a carry-on bag that fits perfectly?

Similar to the TSA problems above, much of the lag in boarding planes is the result of human error. We pack enormous carry-on suitcases hoping to avoid checked baggage fees. In fact, often enough, an overhead bag that fit perfectly on one plane can be too large for the overhead on another—yet how should we know? Rampant is the problem of customers squandering time and holding up the entire boarding process by trying to shove these bags into the overhead, worse still the time and effort exhausted when an oversized bag must be taken from the cabin and moved into the checked luggage post-facto.

Suppose JetBlue said “this bag will definitely fit into our planes.” Oversized bags: eliminated. Bags checked post-facto: eliminated. Customer confidence, happiness, and loyalty: skyrocketing. If I know my bag is guaranteed to fit JetBlue, and I don’t want to invest in a whole portfolio of bags catered to each airline, I’m overwhelmingly more likely to seek JetBlue flights.

One interesting correlated thought: As far as I can remember, the overhead storage space in most or all planes is shaped like a trapezoid (like the mock-ups above). Why is the standard profile shape of a carry-on bag rectangular? My guess is that this is to aid stacking and shipping. But a carry-on travel bag should never need to be stacked…so is the rectangle necessary? Generally, the clothing on the inside will be folded and stacked to meet a rectangular profile; is the bulbous part of the luggage’s profile rendered useless? Or could it be used to store my toothpaste, hair gel, and other odd essentials?

Perhaps, ideally, this bulbous part could be used as the aforementioned TSA tray, and we might kill two birds with one stone.