What is Consumer Focus Labs?
Consumer Focus Labs builds online tools to make people’s dealings with companies fairer, save them money, or keep them informed about products or issues that are important to them. We are a project of Consumer Focus, the new statutory organisation campaigning for a fair deal for consumers in England, Wales, Scotland, and, for postal services, Northern Ireland.
What kind of projects do you work on?
They fall into 3 categories. 1. Websites that let people find out information about products, companies or issues important to them, in as simple a way as possible. 2. That let groups of people join together to campaign for their rights 3. Open up raw data for other computer programmers and organisations to build their own projects with.
How can I get involved?
We want to be an open environment where everyone has the potential to contribute to the work we do. Anyone can submit an idea to us. We’ll pick the best ones and build them. If you work for a company or organisation and think you have some useful data we can work with you to help open it up.
Is anyone else doing this kind of stuff?
People like mySociety and FarmSubsidy.org build tools like to open up politics, we want to do the same for companies and products.
Oh, and what exactly is a consumer?
In the sense that we use the word consumer, it is defined as any person that uses goods or services. Therefore, we are all consumers, and can all play our part in making the consumer experience as positive, easy and rewarding as it can be.