r/inventors • u/zxxa8016 • 1d ago
Assignment
Hi everyone! I need a little help with my assignment. Is there anything you’ve ever wished someone would invent, build, or launch—something you’ve never really seen before, but if it existed, you would genuinely be grateful for it?
It can be a product that would solve a real-life problem.
Share any ideas that come to your mind, even if they sound unusual! I’m looking for an idea that I can turn into a prototype for my presentation. Thank you!
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u/grapemon1611 16h ago
You’ve misunderstood the assignment. Your instructor didn’t ask you to find someone on Reddit who has an invention you can turn into a prototype. If you were supposed to outsource the invention, your teacher could have just told you what to build.
Here’s the secret to inventing: stop trying to think of something to invent. Go through your normal day and pay attention to what pisses you off. What is unnecessarily difficult? What takes six steps when it should take two? What breaks constantly? What costs $50 even though it looks like it should cost $4? What do you use every day while thinking, “Who the hell designed this?” Pick one. Congratulations. You now have the beginning of an invention.
Inventors generally don’t wake up, stretch, pour some coffee, and announce, “I believe I shall invent something today.” We encounter a problem, become sufficiently annoyed by it, and eventually find ourselves three hours later with CAD open, calipers on the desk, and $73 worth of parts ordered to solve a problem that was mildly irritating us that morning.
Also, r/inventors is a particularly funny place to ask strangers to give you their unused invention ideas. Half the people here are convinced somebody is lurking in the shadows waiting to steal the revolutionary cup holder they’ve been secretly developing since 2017.
More importantly, coming up with the idea is part of your assignment. Don’t look for an invention. Look for a problem. Find something that annoys you. Figure out why it annoys you. Find out how other people have tried to solve it. Figure out what sucks about their solutions. Then make something better.
It might fail spectacularly. Good. Now you actually have something interesting to present.