Social Innovation Lab

The Social Innovation Lab bridges the gap between neurodivergent populations and the development of products, services, and research.

Our Lab

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"Making good decisions requires input from those impacted."

-Rachel Kripke-Ludwig

The Open Mind Social Innovation Lab is an incubator for new technologies to be designed, tested, and launched with the support of K-12 students. Putting Universal Design into practice, our mission is to develop and disseminate inclusive development practices and push accessibility further.

Current Projects

We have a diverse set of ongoing projects: everything from conducting user-experience research with our partners, incubating new programs as well as developing original projects and research.

Foldscope

Foldscope is a paper microscope that was developed as a financially accessible alternative to traditional microscopes. The Social Innovation Lab is developing accessible biology curriculum in alignment with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Chatbot Accessibility

The Social Innovation Lab is collaborating with researchers at the University of Twente to iterate on a recently developed chatbot usability scale to make it more accessible for all neurotypes (Borsci et al., 2022).

Social Cipher

Social Cipher's Ava is a role-playing platform adventure game following an autistic star mapper that provides students a space to try out social situations and emotional responses. The Social Innovation Lab is evaluating its target outcomes in social and emotional learning (SEL) skills.