Future of Public Safety

Wearable Communication design

Context:

This project was developed as a part of a 14-week design co-op internship at Motorola Solutions. I was asked to develop a smartvest to suit the needs of the future public safety officer. I worked closely with one senior designer on the Industrial Design team as mentor for this project. I performed as researcher, designer, fabricator, and led the presentation of the final appearance prototype.

Based on information that I gathered of both historical and cultural markers, I decided that indicators pointed to officers and agencies of the future prioritizing a minimized, professional appearance. Functionally, the design should also solve for some physical pain points of obstruction hazards and equipment weight. Examining the structure of internal body armor revealed the strap area of body armor carrier as an opportunity space for development.

Result:

A lightweight, minimized communication platform that integrates into standard soft body armor in order to give the public safety officer the benefit of haptic feedback and biosensor data, while maintaining balanced weight distribution and a clean, professional look for interfacing with the public. Platform structure reduces choking, entanglement, and obstruction hazards to the officer and can be used unobtrusively with any exterior collared uniform from any agency.

Project resulted in a Final design that is being developed further internally.

Research Process

Methodology

I used a variety of secondary research sources to begin the project.

History and Context: Compiling a timeline of the history of uniforms as used in law enforcement in America.

America versus the World: Creating a competitive analysis of uniforms across different cultures.

Tasks Day by Day: Studying a selection of public safety officer logs and daily activity reports to understand the multitude of tasks that each person could be expected to perform within the day.

Insights:

Uniforms are Emotionally Important

Agencies represent their communities that they serve. Optics are important in an increasingly social media driven world.
Community policing strategies require civilian buy in. In times of strife, agencies and individual officers are make the choice to go towards professionalism in appearance, away from tactical/militaristic visuals

A modern day police belt versus a vintage belt

Volatile Equipment Burdens

“Start of Shift around 15 lbs. At the end of a 12 hour shift, approximately 1.5 tons.” - Spooner Advocate

Constantly changing policies of equipment are dependant on national and local politics.
The trend is for constantly increasing weight to be borne by individual officers as more duties are piled onto the policing profession, and more items are needed to counter the threat of death by gunfire.

Officer with concealed internal armor carrier

Injury by gun

Increasing risk of injury or death by gunfire = body armor increasingly worn
Items to counter gunfire include body armor and additional ammo, which adds to the weight of carry

Armor as Opportunity Site

During an in-person interview with a police officer, I observed that there was a space gap at the strap of the body armor internal carrier that could potentially be used for creating a new function, since body armor is a now a modern policing constant as civilians gain access to increasingly heavy firepower, while uniforms change in look from area to area and time of year.

Ideation

Sketching phase happened throghout the resarch and design process, withthe goal of finding ways to reduce the physicality of the equipment functions.

Physical prototyping Process

The final prototype was completed after 14 weeks of research, ideation, and prototyping via a combination of hand-sewing, laser-cutting, combined with 3-D modeling and rapid prototyping. 17 mockups were made in the course of the project.