FLEETSEAT
The best way to perform a 2-person carry - ergonomic, safe, intuitive and painless for everyone involved. I had the pleasure of being the ID lead and project manager over 18months of development, starting with a very rudimentary proof of concept and a set of requirements from the client, which we developed into a functional and marketable product.
The FleetSeat needed to be able to be folded for storage, worn on the field, and quickly and intuitively deployed for use. It also needed to be ergonomic for the carrier and safe for the injured person - this meant making sure the load was appropriately distributed, the product could be adjusted to different sizes, and that it could be safely used with minimal person to person contact. To bring all these aspects together I took the project from sketch concepts through multiple in-house mockups using my fashion background and soft goods skills to produce prototypes for user testing.
Testing for intuition, comfort and speed revealed some areas for improvement and I made further in-house prototypes to verify these improvements. Once satisfied with the design we were ready to gather suppliers and get production-quality prototypes made for mechanical testing.
Bringing together a BOM that included fabric suppliers, straps, trimmings, fixings and screen printing from local suppliers was challenging but essential to scaling appropriately. The product is now TGA registered, being produced at scale and available for purchase. It has been awarded a Good Design Award which you can read about here.
PROJECT SPECIFICATIONS
Role: Lead designer & Project Manager
Phases: concept exploration, concept refinement, proof of concept mock up, in house prototype, user testing, prototype refinement, production prototype.
Duration: 2 years
Headcount: 1 - 2
