Customer Co-design of Computer Mouse for Mass Customization without Causing Mass Confusion

By considering the customer as a partner in value creation, co-design, as a customer-supplier collaborative design endeavor, is becoming more common to integrate users into design and production processes as a promising strategy for companies to react to the growing individualization of demand. The computer mouse, a critical human-machine interface device, still has very little choice in terms of end user customization even though mouse designs have branched away from a single design to multiple designs, types, and sizes. This paper proposes a co-design method for engineered products that can be parameterized and illustrates the application of the method for the customization of computer mice. An interactive co-design tool was developed that allows customers to customize the size and shape of a mouse to suit their needs. The tool also provides interfaces to manufacturing for 3-axis tool path generation and for additive manufacturing. Examples are presented to demonstrate the tool’s capabilities.