BREATH+ / Product design
Protect more lives from ever-increasing high rise fire
PROJECT DESTAILS
8-week project,
personal project
ROLE
Researcher
Industrial designer
TOOLS
Rhino
Keyshot
Adobe Suite
Problem
With the high-rises becoming popular in China, the fire risk increases rapidly. As a portable-shield to smoke, the breath mask is essential to survive in an emergency. However, customers seem to not like it.
📈 Objective
Facilitate live protection in high-rise fire by designing a more desirable emergency breath mask.
Pain point
Why the current breath masks are not wanted?
📌 Troublesome to activate
To activate it, users need to open two layers of packaging and two separated fuses which can be a dreadful block in an emergency.
📌 Useless in low O2 pressure
In a real fire scene, the oxygen rate can be lower than 17%, which can lead to low reactions and dizziness. However, the filter of the mask is only for poison absorption. When the oxygen pressure goes low, users might still get suffocating.
📌Dilemma on storage
To be easy to find, the breath mask is packed in a big bright red box, which is unnoticeable at night but too eye-catching during the daytime. Either too disturbing or hard to find, storing it becomes a dilemma for users.
Solution
💡 BREATH+: wall-mounted O2 generating mask
BREATH+ consists of an oxygen-generating mask and an adhesive container.
The container is made of a pumping structure and decorated with luminous strips, making the mask can be accessed and activated within 2 seconds, even in a low-visibility environment. The oxygen candle module in the mask keeps producing O2 and absorbing CO2, making sure the user breathes freely in all air conditions.
1. Activate in one step
In an emergency, drag the transparent fuse to activate BREATH+ quickly. After triggered, the flashlight will be on and the oxygen bag is inflated and fulled in two seconds.
2. O2 generator
Besides the regular filters, the BREATH+ mask contains an oxygen candle, one of the most effective oxygen generators. The volume of BREATH+ can supply a 26-min oxygen usage amount for an adult, which is more than enough to wait for rescue.
3. Easy to use, easy to store
BREATH+ can be stuck on the wall. Its unique shape allows a tidy and effective storage for all sizes of families.
At night, the luminous paint makes BREATH+ easy to find but not too disturbing.
Process
- Second-hand research
- First-hand research
- Ideation & storyboard
- Sketch & CMF design
- Prototype test
Second-hand research: Residence fire in future
Second-hand research: Cause of death
Prototype test
Second-hand research: Residence fire in future
Takeaway
👩🚒 Stay real & get hands dirty
The attraction of the Firefighting theme is that, a cliche theme it is, but there are still no effective and mature products in the market.
To avoid stereotypes, I tried my best to get information from first-hand research. Through the interview with fire equipment shopkeeper, I found the breakthrough point.
I also felt puzzled during sketch ideation, didn't know which direction was worth deepening. To collect more clues, I calculated the needed volume of oxygen candles and got the size of the case. How strange, the form was never a problem after that.