Black Heron Protection Unit
Project type
Industrial Design
Brief
Design and fabricate a Mobile Liquid Vessel for a unique user of your choice. The finished product is a containment vessel, cap, and a purposeful method to dispense the liquid. The design should explore form unique to the user in how it will be used in motion, stored, cleaned, filled, dispensed.
The Black Heron Protection Unit is a system engineered to defend against high intensity burn overs that are inescapable for wild land firefighters and their engines.
Phase I : Research
Need Finding
I started drafting a story to understand who may be by target users, their needs, and the type of product that could potentially aid them. I knew the story revolved around forest fires and the people affected by them both civilians and by first responders. Watching several documentaries and reading about forest fires I started learning the technical specification required when dealing with forest fires.
Phase I : Research
Market Research
I did a market graph to see what is out there currently to help fight and protect people from forest fires.
Phase I : Research
Ergonomics
I deep dived in to the various equipment used by forest rangers, to forest firefighters, and the vehicles used in fighting forest fires.
Phase II : Ideation
User Profile
I divided the story up into three personas I could design for. I narrowed my design to help protect a vehicle from burn over fires.
Phase II : Ideation
Design Objective
Phase II : Ideation
Thumbnail Sketches
I sketched ideas from boring to absurd to find a unique proposition to this design challenge. In the end I came to three concepts that I favored in their functionality probability.
Phase II : Ideation
Concept Sketches
Phase III : Prototyping
Mechanism Exploration
From these concepts I started thinking how I could combine the ProCover concept and the fortress concept to create a barrier for the fire trucks against the fire.
