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2019’s Best Examples of Rethinking an Existing Object, Part 2

(Part 1 is here.)

If you’ve ever gotten stitches, you know it’s time-consuming process that must be done in-hospital. Now there’s an alternative: ZipStitch is a brilliant, self-appliable non-invasive substitute for stitches–based on zip-ties.

In “Every Bottle Pump Should be Designed Like This,” we saw that peanut butter lover and inventor Andrew Scherer created a vacuum-based pump that scrapes the insides of a jar completely clean, cutting down on product waste.

A practical advancement for snowboarders: Ross Snow Tech designed a snowboard binding that transforms into snowshoes.

Japanese stationary company Seed developed a transparent eraser, so you can actually see what you’re erasing.

Solar Brother devised this ingenious, eco-friendly solar-powered lighter.

Is your kitchen too small? Adriano Design’s Ordine are induction stove burners that hang on the wall when you don’t need them, saving space.

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And this complicated drawer design uses every square inch of “blind corner” cabinet space.

Canadian company Transformer Table designed a big improvement for the expandable table, addressing an issue that’s often overlooked: Where to store the extra leaves when they’re not in use.

Safrut’s Mini Max Stool is a great take on collapsible portable seating, relying on a repeating, interlocking injection-molded element for ridigity.

After Living in a tiny NYC apartment, Australian industrial designer Zev Bianchi invented these incredible folding stairs.

The Oregon Ducks, flush with Phil Knight’s Nike money, don’t have to go off-field to use the bathroom. Nor do they use porta-potties, which would block the view of the field for the crowd. Instead they’ve got this fancy disappearing portable toilet.

A neuroscientist working on retinal chip implants came up with a less-surgically-invasive idea: Using a smartphone and VR-like-goggles to feed algorithmically-modified images specifically tuned to the user’s species of visual impairment. While it isn’t an elegant solution, it’s a good example of using existing technology–and it avoids having to get your eyeballs sliced open.

A final example of outside-of-the-box thinking: While we think of pixels as 2D squares on a screen, these researchers have created a levitating 3D pixel that can move fast enough to draw images with light.