CONNECTED BREATHING APPARATUS

In the majority of incidents firefighters gear-up and enter the danger being responsible to monitor and track the equipment, such as the air level and time remaining on breathing apparatus (SCBA), themselves, Their only communication is via a radio system which is heard by other firefighters and the incident commander working out of the control center. For the firefighting team this means the leader is doing regular radio checks to get the status of his team, poor visibility means this is the only way to be aware of what is going on. The danger occurs if a team member falls, is trapped, panics, or runs out of air, it can be sometime before the team leader is aware of this. Equally the incident commander is only aware of the radio traffic, and with multiple teams on site for a large fire, there is a lot of radio chatter to sift through to spot signs of any danger or firefighter in trouble.

What is needed is a way for each team member to be aware of the other and alerted to the presence of key information such as SCBA air pressure, or fall indicator, without the need to do all this via radio check, and for the incident commander to have heads up overview of all firefighters on site and their vitals such as SCBA air pressure, time remaining, fall detection, and even heart rate and breathing rate.

I was the Lead Product Designer working with industrial designers, product managers and specialists on a new range of SCBA equipment with inbuilt telemetry providing real-time feedback between firefighters and the command center of their status.

To fully understand the problem facing firefighters and capture their needs, pain points, behaviours required getting out of the building and performing observational voice of the customer (OVOC) interviews. This meant visiting fire stations and both observing the routine in a practice fire drill, followed by talking with different members of the team, to learn and understand the issues they face. Different size and types of fire crews were observed from small town fire stations to large city fire crews, and specialist biological & hazard chemical teams.

In addition interviews were conducted with specialist on breathing equipment, radio telemetry, and biometric tracking. Another activity was the tear down and detailed assessment of competitor equipment, and personal telemetry systems that existed for professional athletes, military, and consumer products. To being all the data together. create insights, and share knowledge with the hardware designers required a number of workshops in different locations.

From the workshops a series of concepts were created and the most viable was then prototyped with wireframe designs. The prototype along with early new hardware designer was tested with users to get early feedback on the concept, validate assumptions, and high-light any gaps.

Following several rounds of testing and iterating the design concept, the MVP designs were creating using an agile (Scrum) process for design & development, and alignment with the hardware design and certification process.