How To Build Innovate Travel Luggage
This is a guest post by our friends at Pacsafe, who are on mission to create innovative, reliable and safe gear for global travellers. We’ve been lucky to partner with them during Hack Horizon and have our participants test their anti-theft luggage products as we moved between Hong Kong and London!
Some people think the threat of getting ripped off is all part of the adventure when traveling. But, if you’ve ever felt the gut punch of having your gear stolen on the road you’ll know there has to be a better way. If you can take some extra security with you, then it frees you up to enjoy the ride to its limits. You might even push further out of your comfort zone and experience something new. Something life changing.
Pacsafe’s mission is to help people enjoy life’s adventures knowing their gear is safe. For us, that means designing on-the-go security that helps protect your gear while trekking the world (or even while you’re at home). For 20 years we’ve managed to consistently innovate the travel security space and deliver award-winning designs that feature anti-theft technology. The approach to how we do this isn’t rocket science, but it does take some creative thinking, the willingness to fail and a whole lot of persistence.
Here are a few basic steps we always walk through, when figuring out how to design something new.
1. Start by defining the problem.
The key here is getting specific. Start with the actual problem you’re trying to solve, then figure out what causes that problem. For example, if you’re trying to combat pickpocket theft out of a backpack, then it’s figuring out a way to stop sneaky fingers opening zippers without you knowing. If you’re looking to stop people from breaking into your luggage even when it’s locked, then the first weak point to look at is the zippers and how to make them puncture resistant. Other entry points might include stopping people prying open locks or even slashing the bag.
2. Narrow down possible solutions to the problem
For every problem there are a bunch of ways you can solve it. However, some solutions might be too expensive, too flimsy, or simply too hard to use.
The trick here is finding a good balance between cost, durability and ease of use.
If you can get all three, then you’ve hit pay dirt. Using the pickpocket example above, two possible solutions are that you can either put zip clips on every zipper to make them a bit trickier to open, therefore discouraging those looking for an easy target, or you can use a single anchor point that all zippers can latch onto and then can be locked with a padlock (our patented Roobar design features on our Intasafe backpack).
For making locked luggage more secure a solution would be to add puncture-proof zippers to the bag to stop people sliding a pen between the zipper teeth, or adding interlocking zipper heads that seal tight and stop people from wedging them apart and breaking the padlock that held them together. You could even use a fabric that’s hard to slash open (eg our eXomesh® material).
For every option above there are more than one way you can solve the problem. The trick is running through each one, assessing which is going to provide the best balance and then testing from there. Which brings us to point three.
3. Test your designs
Once you’ve figured out a solution (and built it), you need to test it. More often than not things will fail where you don’t expect them to, forcing you to go back to the drawing board. So, test designs, putting them through as many hard tests as you can to see if your new design will hold up. After you’ve exhausted possibilities in a controlled environment head out into the real world to test it, or better yet, give it to someone else to put it through its paces. Your average backpacker will be tougher on your invention than you will ever be. We’re fortunate enough to have some rough and ready explorers as advocates at Pacsafe who love testing gear. But, if you don’t have that luxury then friends and friends-of-friends are generally more than willing to get a ‘free’ sample in exchange for some honest feedback.
4. Iterate, retest, iterate, retest
This isn’t as much a single step as it is a series of repeating ones. However, the key to testing something is making sure that you actually improve your designs once you identify weak points. Fix problems, make things more user-friendly, and make your designs elegant if you can. Nothing is ever perfect, but make sure it does the job and does it well before you release things into the world. It took our team a year of rigorous testing how to imbed our eXomesh® into fabric before we were happy that it would maintain the lasting quality we needed. Another thing to think about here is whether your solution can potentially be applied to a range of designs. For example, the RFID blocking material we use in our wallets to guard against scan scams is also used in protective pockets in our bags as well. The more it can be scaled to multiple uses the more cost effective it will be in the long run. If it can only be used in a specific circumstance that’s fine, but the problem it’s solving needs to be big enough to warrant that much attention.
The final step would be to launch your design into the world. That involves a bunch more steps that we won’t detail here. Suffice to say that it’s a lot like going through childbirth- plenty painful and at times you want to give up and ask for drugs, but it’s totally worth the joy you receive in the end.
So, get out there, think about hard problems, brainstorm potential solutions, test your ideas and refine your designs. The more problems you can solve the more people will be able to enjoy the essence of travel and embrace the adventure of life.
Two of our Hack Horizon participants enjoyed jetsetting with Pacsafe so much that they created this fun video on our way back to Hong Kong!
For more on Pacsafe’s anti-theft technology head to our website here. By signing up to their newsletter you not only get the scoop on our newest designs but receive travel tips, special offers and more.
