Invention Picks of the Week

After careful consideration, the Quirky team decided to undertake these 13 ideas into experimentation to see what potential each one may have as future Quirky product.

Team Lab, made up of Barbra Winston, Matt Murrie, Justin Turnbo, and Sonia Covarrubias-Garcia, hailing from all over the United States, have developed two ideas that Quirky wishes to pursue further.  Their first idea, the reinvention of the fan, when they noticed just how much can be done to improve existing fans.  Fans tend to be bulky, difficult to clean and hard to move around the house.  The cord doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility of where you can put the fan. They wanted a fan that wouldn’t keep you up at night, but would actually help you sleep. By incorporating color, light, sounds, smells, the fan will induce better relaxation. They felt that people are already driven with yoga and meditation to improve relaxation and they do not want to let their sleep problems to affect their life. This would be a soundless product in the house instead of another noisy one that would help people to get to sleep.  Quirky found this concept to be interesting and definitely worth investigating more.

Team Lab’s second idea, the medicine dropper, came to them when team member, Barbra, had to take care of a sick baby.  She struggled to get the last of the medicine out of the bottle since the medicine dropper was not long enough. She brought this problem to the team and they realized that the medicine droppers available and the ones that are included with the bottle are not actually designed that well.  There were a number of problems that they wanted to address such as they usually result in wasting very expensive medicine and the droppers don’t always have the correct measurements that the doctors prescribe.  They collaborated and came up with a design that fixes these problems, plus allows the dropper to close off the medicine bottle so that dropper does not have to be repetitively washed, it can just be left in the bottle.  Quirky saw room for improvement in the way medication is packaged and distributed and decided to look into creating a more user friendly design.

Nicholas Ashley, from Los Angeles, is a videographer who worked in Mozambique, Africa managing an agricultural documentary project. While he was there, they had a great deal of power outages and had to rely on other power sources such as wind turbines and generators.  These alternative methods were not always dependable and he felt that a better solution would be something that completely relied on people to pump their own energy.  So that is how he began to develop the peddle-powered charging station.  The Quirky team was intrigued by this idea and decided that exploring this could lead to some great discoveries.

Douglas Diesel, a prosthetist from Texas, has been doing a lot of work on his house and notice that there are many occasions when someone needs to turn the electricity off or has to for in a shadow and cannot see what they are doing. Also, as a prosthetist, he often has to work in tight, dark areas, and realized so many other occupations require this as well, such as car mechanics. So then he started to design something that would allow the light to focus directly on what he was doing. While he was developing this, he realized it could also help identify tools when you want someone to get one for you, for an example, you could say “grab the tool with the red light on it” rather than trying to describe a wrench. The Quirky team put a lot of thought into this idea, and in the end, felt it would be worth-while to take on.

Patrick Sassano is a money manager from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was using a product similar to his invention idea at home, but it was causing him too much wrist strain.  He set out to alleviate this pain by creating what he thinks is a new angle on push-ups.  Patrick tested his prototype on a few of his friends, who all agreed that it was causing no strain on their wrists or shoulders.  We think this is a big idea because the home fitness market is continuing to grow and we all also think this product has potential to fit in with physical therapy exercise regimens.

Sebastian Wong is currently at law school in California.  He is always wandering around his house looking for products that he thinks he can improve upon.  His girlfriend just so happened to have her pepper spray bottle lying around.  He thought of the pepper spray bottle with a twist, it will active their cell phone and dial 911 automatically when the spray is dispensed from the bottle. We liked this idea because it makes the user safer from danger.  We will look into the proposed technology aspects of this invention and see how we can integrate them.

Michael Klein-Thunholm is a mobility engineer from Illinois.  As a vegetarian, Michael peels a lot of fruit.  He originally got the idea when he cut his finger while peeling.  He thought that there has to be a better way to grip a peeler.  The more he peels the more he finds his current peeler a pain.  Other peelers have poor ergonomic design; Quirky will look into the possibilities for this type of grip.

Melissa Madere, from California, was out of gas and pulled into a gas station. It was pouring rain and she had nothing to wedge the gas handle with, so that it can stay engaged.  She had to stand outside of the car, pouring her gas, while getting soaked from the rain.  The whole situation was very inconvenient and frustrating for Melissa so she came up with a hollow plastic wedge to hold the gas pump handle.  Quirky’s in-house lawyer will check into the possible legality issues if we produce a product like this.

Kim Rumberger is an assessments facilitator for public schools of Hyannis, Massachusetts. She noticed that her ear buds pop out of her ear a lot when she is walking around. She doesn’t like the fact that they just fall all the way to the floor instead of staying by her ears.  She thinks that her comfortable ear bud accessory worn around the back of the neck will solve this problem.   Quirky is interested in the idea that this product could be made so that it integrates with all types of headphone cords.

Don House is a Boxing Coach and Cut Man for the UFC from Las Vegas, Nevada. Don spends a lot of time traveling because of his career working with UFC fighters. He sleeps a lot during plane rides but suffered from head nodding that would wake him up every time his head would fall forward. He tried using a neck brace, a big ugly incline pillow and whatever else he could find on the market to make sleeping while he travelled easier but nothing worked. He decided that if he could design something to keep his head up, he would find sleeping in these situations significantly easier. Ever since he has started using his prototype, he no longer wakes up with neck pain and spends more time actually sleeping- not fussing around to get comfortable. Quirky looks forward to exploring this idea that makes traveling a bit easier for everyone.

Shawn Lee, a Business Student at the University of Hawaii, currently resides in Honolulu. Shawn was frustrated with his computer’s limited audio setup that only had one measly little headphone jack. Shawn, being an audio enthusiast, owns multiple headphones, earphones, and speakers, and found himself constantly needing to switch between them. When Shawn sought out a solution to his headphone woes, he didn’t find anything on the market. Shawn’s idea is one hub that simply allows you to keep everything you need plugged in and switch between your sound equipment with ease. Anyone who listens to music or enjoys any type of media on their computers can benefit from this product and Quirky is pumped to look further into Shawn’s idea.

Anthony Manziano, A CPA tax expert from New Jersey, was giving one of his many seminars about Tax Law when his pants ripped. He was unable to get over to a tailor to sew it back up so he decided to staple it instead. It held together nicely, and it never ripped open again. This inspired Anthony’s idea to create a portable garment stapler that would make clothing quick fixes easy. With this simple and easy to use tool, people will no longer be embarrassed at important meetings or seminars when their shirt or pants rip. Quirky saw some potential in this concept and decided to look into it further.

Marc Rumaner, a graphic designer, inventor, children’s author, from the Midwest, wished there was a way he could conveniently rotate the wall outlet when it was needed. Sometimes the plugs orientation doesn’t allow it to fit into the outlet. His simple ideation would allow the user to rotate the outlet without having to mess around with outlet re-installations. This idea solves a common problem many people face, and provides a way for it’s users to reclaim their outlets! After looking into this idea, Quirky decided that it definitely deserved some thorough research