The Consumer Innovation Laboratory

The purpose of the Consumer Innovation Laboratory is to create a forum in which Consumers and engineers may work hand in hand in order to create marketable devices that meet the needs of Consumers with disabilities.

The Consumer Innovation Laboratory is an initiative of the Applied Science and Engineering Rehabilitation Robotics Laboratory. It consists of a governing body called the Assembly, as well as a set of design teams that are responsible for the detailed management of a particular design. These design teams meet according to the schedules and needs of each individual group.

The Consumer Innovation Laboratory puts out a newsletter, The Innovator, that keeps consumers informed of the progress of the design teams and new projects currently being done in Rehabiliation Research.

What is consumer innovative design ?

We believe that the best designs for products are consumer initiated and have significant involvement of consumers in their design. The Consumer Innovation Laboratory won't make you a design engineer but you will learn to work with engineers and have lots of fun in the process.

I have this great idea! So we will sit down, draw a few pictures, and then build it. Right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately designing products takes a long time and needs to go through a set of stages. These stages (although not necessarily in sequence) include:

• Defining what the problem is!
• Writing down what is needed
• Looking at what is out there.
• Brain storming what might work and what won't
• Evaluating different ideas
• Detailing how things fit together
• Finding someone to manufacture the product.
• Building a mock-up to see if it will look and feel right.

Click here to view Project Spotlight article on the Consumer Innovation Laboratory from the Winter/Spring 1997 issue of The Innovator.