I’ve been thinking a bit about ingenuity this week, which my mac dictionary tells be means ‘he quality of being clever, original, and inventive’. I have in mind collecting some examples of ingenuity as a blog topic and an inspiration.

Here are two I stumbled across at Tecznotes blog while researching Modest Maps which was used to build the Oakland Crimespotting map, both ingenious bits of tech in themselves.

Wooden maps carved by the Ammassalik of east Greenland
The image to the left above is of one of these wooden maps. Bill Buxton describes these ‘maps’ in hi book Sketching User Experiences.

…shows the coastline, including fjords, mountains, and places where one can portage and land a kayak. Such maps can be used inside mittens, thereby keeping the hands warm; they float if they fall in the water; they will withstand a 10 metre drop test; and there is no battery to go dead at a crucial moment.

Also they’re beautiful. Not much I can add to that, I just loved this bit of low-tech genius.

More from Tecznotes on this.

Federal building in San Francisco

This one is a piece of ingenuity to combat a thoroughly modern problem. We all work in office buildings and we’re getting fat, generally speaking. To work against that problem the new Federal building has elevators that only stop on every third floor.

The elevators only stop on every 3rd floor, “to improve worker health by nudging them to use stairways - and also create crossroads where employees run onto each other, since each three-story segment includes a lobby with art and a viewing platform.”

More from Tecznotes on this.