Aside from wearable social distancing designs, institutions like restaurants and shopping centers had to modify their environments this year to keep people separated. As you'd expect, the solutions ranged from clever to kooky.

Restaurants led the way, like this one in Maryland that introduced "bumper tables" made from tractor tire inner tubes.

This restaurant in the Netherlands went with outdoor greenhouse dining pods and extra-long serving boards.

A French designer came up with these pendulum pods for indoor dining. I felt they made zero sense, for these reasons--but the design went into production all the same.

To protect drive-thru window tellers, a restaurant in the UK installed this mechanical contraption.

To keep the servers away from the customers and do away with physical menus, QR codes and diners' smartphones were employed in a number of restaurants.

Multi-story institutions needed to devise ways for citizens to social distance while riding an elevator. A hospital in Thailand solved this with floor stickers and politely compliant citizenry.

Also in Thailand, this shopping mall replaced their elevator buttons with foot pedals.

This retail outlet in the U.S. decided to encase their shopping mall Santas inside transparent plastic boxes.

In India, Tata Motors dealerships have been delivering new cars in plastic "safety bubbles."

In Japan, an amusement park has been renting out their ferris wheel compartments--hooked up with wi-fi--as social distancing office pods.

Social distancing isn't really possible in certain transit situations, giving transportation companies a stiff challenge. Lyft supplied their drivers with plastic partitions to assemble and install themselves. We felt that some design help was needed here.

This "Pure Skies" concept for airplane interiors featured staggered seats in Economy, curtains in Business Class and other design tricks, but we felt it was a case of design without engineering.

Mass transit authorities in Berlin threw up their hands when faced with how to get riders to social distance. Instead, they banned deodorant--with the idea being that if everyone stinks, everyone will keep their masks on.