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Bringing Back Hands-On Creativity in the Touchscreen Age

Awards often mirror the cultural moment, and Fast Company’s Innovation by Design 2025 list captured a powerful shift: the hunger to bring hands-on making back to childhood safely. Its Product Design winner, ChompSaw, embodies that ethos. Described by its creators as “a kid-safe power tool for cutting cardboard,” it transforms an everyday material into a gateway to creativity. No spinning blades. No fear. Just motion, noise, and the satisfying feeling of turning a box into something entirely new.

That’s the whole idea: taking the world’s most accessible material and giving young builders the means to master it.

ChompShop began as a graduate project inside the Integrated Product Design (IPD) program at the University of Pennsylvania, where founders Kausi Raman and Max Lietchy shared a frustration familiar to any educator who prototypes with kids: cardboard is perfect for building—but nearly impossible for children to cut safely. As Kausi explains on the company’s blog, “The tools that currently exist are either too dangerous or too ineffective, and kids often end up asking the adults around them to do the actual cutting part.” That insight set the pair on a two-year sprint of prototyping, testing, and refining.

From the right: Max Lietchy, Co-Founder & CTO and Kausi Raman, Co-
Founder & CEO of Chompshop

Kausi Raman and Max Liechty’s appearance on season 16, episode 5 of
ABC’s Shark Tank.

By September 2023 the project hit Kickstarter, drawing viral attention and funding in the platform’s top 0.1 percent of campaigns. Within a year it had moved from prototype to full production, with the founders featured on ABC’s Shark Tank and the product crowned by TIME’s Best Inventions 2025 and Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Winner, accolades prominently displayed on the ChompShop homepage.

Engineering Safety Into Curiosity

Everything about the ChompSaw’s form speaks to control and confidence. The cutting area is limited to cardboard about “two pennies tall”. The torque is low enough that small fingers aren’t in danger, but strong enough to zip through a cereal box panel.

That physical safety layer is matched by a design-thinking mindset. The company’s tagline, “By Inventors, For Inventors,” sums up its goal: to make the act of inventing feel attainable, not intimidating. Accessories like the Hole Punch and Scoring Tool, Inventor’s Workbook, and downloadable Project Pattern Packs expand the system into a hands-on learning kit.

On its Learning Hub, ChompShop hosts free project tutorials (bridges, creatures, minivehicles) each showing how to turn an ordinary shipping box into a functioning idea. The emphasis isn’t on perfection; it’s on iteration. Cut, fit, tape, repeat.

If the founders’ credentials establish credibility, the user testimonials sell the dream. “Calling ChompSaw a toy is an understatement,” one parent writes. “We love seeing Mia working for hours and coming out with a huge smile and confidence on her face because she brought her ideas to life.”

Another reviewer describes a six-year-old “playing for hours on day one and asking to use it every day.” The feedback paints a consistent picture: long attention spans, genuine engagement, and visible pride—rare commodities in the touchscreen age.

“There’s a huge movement right now getting kids and adults alike to build and learn with
their hands. We are so excited to be a part of that. Let’s get making!”
ChompShop’s mission statement

The company positions the ChompSaw not as a gadget but as an entry-level fabrication tool, the kind of device that could sit as easily in a makerspace as in a living room. And the choice of material matters: cardboard is cheap, recyclable, and everywhere. That makes experimentation nearly consequence-free. A mis-cut isn’t waste; it’s iteration.

Safety certifications (ages 3 +) and simple controls mean children can operate it with minimal supervision, while adults can relax knowing the “power” in this power tool has been engineered out of harm’s reach.

Cutting a New Path

ChompSaw doesn’t reject technology; it reframes it. By engineering a motorized tool to be genuinely safe for children, ChompShop reminds the design world that innovation isn’t about adding complexity, it’s about removing fear.

The ChompShop team shows off the creations they made with ChompSaw.

In a year when headlines were dominated by artificial intelligence, one of the most resonant inventions turned out to be beautifully human: a small orange saw that gives a child agency, teaches respect for tools, and transforms cardboard into confidence.