Don’t know what about you but I can get fairly irritated at the odd tube station that doesn’t have the next train display - I don’t mind waiting, it’s part of life, I just hate not knowing how long I have to wait… I’m therefore a sucker for everything that makes your ‘dead time’ moments in life less dead by either entertaining you or, more importantly lifts you out of the misery of uncertainty and lack of control over your time.
In Zurich airport for instance, in the designated belt at the baggage area there is a count down clock that tells you exactly when your luggage will turn out(the flight’s luggage of course, it’s not personal). The time display on Firefox when you download something or the rare customer service line that keeps you informed of the time it will take the next available person to answer you etc.
All of these are the little things that make dead time more bearable.
Eko light by Damjan Stankovi does just that only on an even more prevalent situation:
Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well. Eko can be easily installed onto existing traffic light systems without much effort while significantly improving overall traffic dynamics.
There are many benefits of the Eko light, the main ones being:
Less pollution.
Drivers can turn their engines off and cut carbon emissions while waiting for the green light.Less fuel consumption
Turning off your vehicle while waiting on the traffic light can lower fuel consumption in the long run.Less stress Since you know exactly how long you have to wait you can sit back and clear your head for a while. No need to keep your foot on the gas. Relax.
Safer driving- With the Eko light both drivers and pedestrians can be fully aware of how much time they have left before the light changes and that way reduce the chance for potential traffic accidents.
Slightly less practical but nevertheless awesome is EggWatcher - one of the projects that came out of Poke’s recent hackday. Good work mate!
What / where else we could use a time indicator?
Comments 2
thanks dude, but I was only one of about 6/7 in my team.
Posted 14 Dec 2009 at 10:06 pm ¶Kudos to chums http://www.wellcooked.co.uk and http://migrantroo.com/ amongst others.
On the Mumbai roads most of the signals at important junctions have count-down timers on the signals to indicate the time left for the signal to go green. This is very useful when you are speeding and you know it will turn Red in 5 seconds giving you enough time to slow down.
Sadly could not get a picture.
Posted 06 Jan 2010 at 12:01 pm ¶Post a Comment