Blister Labs

Blister Labs is a partnership between BLISTER, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the brand-new, state-of-the-art engineering facility at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, Colorado. Over the past 13 years at Blister, we have worked to raise the bar for gear testing in the outdoor industry, and we are raising the bar again through Blister Labs. 

For more on the backstory, goals, and future of Blister Labs, click here

Current Projects & Latest Updates:

Too often, the consumer reviews you find online are incomplete and unhelpful. But through our Blister Labs partnership with Western Colorado University & the University of Colorado Boulder, we’re working to change that. With Blister Community Reviews, we are creating a better method of gathering, synthesizing, and displaying user feedback from people of all shapes, sizes, ability levels, and locations, to produce even more helpful consumer product information for outdoor enthusiasts all around the world. On GEAR:30, Luke Koppa and Jonathan Ellsworth discuss the origins of our Blister Community Reviews initiative; the takeaways from our beta testing at Blister Summit 2023; our goals for the future; and more.

Blister Labs: Blister Community Reviews Update (Ep.257)

Too often, the consumer reviews you find online are incomplete and unhelpful. But through our Blister Labs partnership with Western Colorado University & the University of Colorado Boulder, we’re working to change that.

Can engineering actually help us discover real-world characteristics about products that will be meaningful to end users? Or, when we incorporate quantitative data, do we mostly run the risk of having that data leading people astray? We discuss with Thomas Laakso, the vice president of product and operations at DPS Skis, and Dr. Sean Humbert of Blister Labs.

Blister Labs: Product Manufacturers vs. Researchers & Reviewers (Ep.213)

Can engineering actually help us discover real-world characteristics about products that will be meaningful to end users? Or, when we incorporate quantitative data, do we mostly run the risk of having that data leading people astray? We discuss with Thomas Laakso, the vice president of product and operations at DPS Skis, and Dr. Sean Humbert of Blister Labs.

An Update on Blister Labs’ Mountain Bike Wheel Testing

Blister Labs: MTB Wheelset Testing & Establishing Proof of Concept (Ep.211)

Greg Vanderbeek is back with a Blister Labs update on our mountain-bike-wheels testing. We discuss why the dynamic modeling we’ve been doing in the field is a critical component for ongoing testing back at the lab; what our test results are revealing about carbon vs. aluminum wheels; and more.

An Update on Blister Labs’ Mountain Bike Wheel Testing

An Update on Blister Labs’ Mountain Bike Wheel Testing

Our Blister Labs team is well underway with mountain bike wheelset testing that is going to provide far more detailed information and real-world quantitative data than anything that has previously been available to consumers. Here’s an update on what we’re up to and how it’s going.