"I think the main thing to focus on for an inventor is providing a solution to a problem. So first, gather a list of problems that are in urgent need of solving—you should have no trouble with that. Then brainstorm some solutions—a lot harder, but if you have an inventive mind, you should be able to at least come up with some ideas," Steven, from the Omni Calculator team, shared with us how an inventor thinks and begins working on their ideas.

"Making ideas into reality is a lot harder, and that's where the real work of an inventor happens—prototyping, testing, and refining."

Steven was kind enough to share how he got inspired to create the Weird Units Converter. "The idea for the Weird Units Converter came from the observation that journalists and popular media like nothing more than to write about the size or the number of things in something else that people can relate to," he said. "So with the calculator, you can convert boring regular units into weird and wonderful units."

Bored Panda wanted to get Steven's opinion on the right balance to have between function and form.

"For me, functionality is essential. The item needs to do the job that is required of it," he said. "However, it does need to look good, too; otherwise, nobody will buy it or be seen using it. So aesthetics really helps the marketing of a product."

He warned us that focusing too much on how the products looks, however, can detract from the overall functionality. "If you make aesthetics too much of a priority, but the product fails in the user's hands, the bad reviews and user feedback will crash sales," he said that there's an ever-present danger of ruining your reputation if your product doesn't do what it's meant to do.

The Odditymall project was founded all the way back in 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the decade since then, it has grown to massive proportions.

The news outlet has nearly 3.2 million followers on Facebook, and continues to surprise them with the weirdest products that can be bought online. It just goes to show that there are truly creative people out there in the world who break the boundaries of what’s possible every single day. Well, that and they prove that there needs to be a proper balance between function and form when you’re designing a product.

It’s impossible to know for sure what products and technology will be popular in the future. However, even though we don’t have a crystal ball, we’re also not completely blind when trying to determine what the near future will look like.

Aaron Genest, an expert on labor in the technology and innovation industry for Siemens Software, previously explained to Bored Panda that if we want to know what the future might look like, we have to look ‘upstream’ at what’s being invested in.

"I'd argue that most people underestimate the timelines necessary to produce the technological goods on which we rely and the investment made to allow them to exist. By looking 'upstream' in that investment space, we can have a pretty good idea of what whole industries are betting on," Aaron explained to us.

"For instance, it takes almost two years to develop and produce a computer chip and get it to market for a phone, and five years to get something into a new kind of car. So if we want to have a sense for what, for instance, the gadgets in our cars will look like in 2026, we just need to look at what the car manufacturers are asking their suppliers to design today,” he said.

Aaron pointed out that technologies like 5G and certain chips might be around for a long, long time if the industry is investing billions of dollars into the development of these products. That’s because the companies need to (at least) recoup their investments. In short, follow the money.

Meanwhile, Ramona Pringle, the Director of the Creative Innovation Studio and Associate Professor at the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University, elaborated in an interview with Bored Panda about the changes in technology and entertainment over time.

“We don’t know what the future holds, and anyone who says that they do is selling snake oil. But, there are certain things we can count on: we love stories, and we love to be part of something biggest than ourselves. Be it oral storytelling, books, blogs, movies, or video games, we’ve never lost our love of narrative,” she said.

“Equally true, even when we can’t go into a concert hall or colosseum, we look for ways to be together, connected, and part of a communal experience. The tech might change, but these will continue to be the drivers of our entertainment experiences,” Ramona explained what drives the development of tech and products.

In her opinion, we’re likely to see big changes in the entertainment tech industry over the next decade. “Immersion and interactivity have long been goals for creators and media makers when it comes to how technology can influence entertainment,” the expert said.

“For the last decade, we’ve leaned into virtual reality because of how it enables both of these. We can step inside a world and have influence over it, and the story or experience that unfolds. I think one of the things we can expect moving forward is, in a sense, the opposite of virtual reality. Instead, more of an enhanced reality or fictional reality, wherein the entertainment isn’t in a headset, but instead, all around us,” Ramona told us.