Hasta La Ideas

The marks of someone new to New York are manifold, and usually just marginally annoying: The hipster who cannot make the distinction between the East Village and the Lower East Side, the tourist who cannot accurately swipe a Metrocard when the train is arriving and you’re behind him on line. But nothing drives me crazier than the group of slow-moving tourists walking four abreast on the sidewalk, carrying on an oblivious conversation and preventing those in a hurry from passing.

I doubt that they were prompted by this particular problem, but researchers at Japan’s University of Electro-Communications have created a flooring system designed to encourage pedestrians to move to the right. Flooring tiles printed with lenticular lenses—you know, those striated surfaces that look different from different angles—created the illusion of a pattern that moves to the right when you move across them, and supposedly, “Since people have a tendency to give priority to their visual sense to maintain their balance when they walk, their eyes will be attracted in that direction” and their feet would follow suit.

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