This project contains the graduation project of Fokke Jongerden as part of his curriculum of the master Integrated Product Design at the TU Delft. The project consists of a reflection and redesign of the Air-Wave.org Protector (AWP), a respiratory protection device designed by th
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This project contains the graduation project of Fokke Jongerden as part of his curriculum of the master Integrated Product Design at the TU Delft. The project consists of a reflection and redesign of the Air-Wave.org Protector (AWP), a respiratory protection device designed by the non profit Air-Wave.org. The AWP is developed to protect hospital staff that cares for Covid-19 patients from contamination. The trajectory from idea concept to product implementation into hospitals, a process which normally takes several years, only took 8 weeks for the AWP. Many design and management decisions contributed to this success, which this project aims to analyse. This project has two goals: Crisis Design analysis In this part, the process that resulted in the Air-Wave Protector is analysed, and the strengths and weaknesses of this process are determined. Firstly, the entire timeline of the project was mapped to create an understanding of all activities of the development process. The relation and codependency between management related activities and design development were analyzed and critical moments to the project’s outcome were established. Secondly, the management method of the AW.org was studied, to identify the key elements of their management approach. These elements were compared to integral aspects of crisis design according to literature. This resulted in the distinction between methodized crisis management with the focus on threat control, and a newly formulated model for crisis opportunity management. Thirdly, the desing method of the design development team of Air-Wave.org was analysed. Their applied model was deducted, and insights were generated on the benefits and weaknesses of their approach. Lastly, the analysis was supplemented with a research on user appreciation of the end product of the management and design methods; the Air-Wave.org Protector. By pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses in the design, a reflection was made on missing elements in the approach of the organization. It was concluded that the use of repurposed elements in the design was one of the key factors in achieving fast market implementation. However, future projects could benefit from a context analysis, an explorative study to search for existing products to repurpose, in combination with a predefined List of Requirements to evaluate both developed and repurposed product components. AWP Redesign The second part of this project proposes a redesign of the Air-wave.org Protector. This redesign is based on literature studies, user research, method analysis, empirical insights gained during the development of the previous design and extensive prototyping. The result is a respiratory protection mask which can be interchanged with the current mask used in the AWP. The remaining product components remain unchanged. The new mask improves the field of sight, the comfort and the ability to communicate, both verbally and non verbally. Furthermore, this design allows the user to wear glasses. A functioning prototype was developed and user evaluation was performed. The report concludes with recommendations on future concept development.