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Unintended Uses of Products

September 27, 2012 by Georgia Konzel   

Its always a cool thing to notice that a product can do more that accomplish its intended goals. When messing around with an item, it is possible to find that a product can actually do other strange things than its intended values.  Many  popular things used nowadays, came as a result  as an accident. For example, when Text messages were originally invented by cell phone companies to let their customers know about problems with their phone service. They cell phone companies had no idea that texting would become such a popular thing.

A good example of an unintended use, is the ability to use an empty water bottle to extract an egg yolk from a cracked egg. Anyone who cooks often, would know that certain recipes call for just an egg white, or egg yolk. It is extremely difficult to manually separate an egg white from an egg yolk. The ability to use a water bottle is just an example of how a product can have more uses that the ones intended by the manufacturer.

When a company finds out that its product can be used for more, its kinda like a bonus to them. For example, when Kleenex found out that people were using their product to blow their nose, instead of wiping off makeup. The company regrouped and decided to advertise on that idea. Kleenex’s sales rose greatly from the idea of a disposable hanker-chief.

Link showing how to separate Egg Yolks with a water bottle

https://www.printwand.com/blog/9-stellar-examples-of-the-unintended-use-of-products

http://www.museumofunintendeduse.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AirVOuTN_M


2 Comments »

  1. Josh Baumann says:

    It’s really cool to think that armed with only our fascination and innovation, we as humans attempt to use things that we already have for purposes that we need other tools for. This makes me wonder if we could begin to design with the idea in mind that the technology would be intentionally so broad and versatile that it could be used for an infinite amount of purposes!

  2. Richard says:

    awesome sites. Thanks! great topic

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