Protect Our Smile: Innovating Clear Masks for Ann Arbor’s Deaf Community and Beyond
By: Robert Clark (Project Lead), Lucia Choi, Katelyn King, Kiran Kumar, Gopal Parthasarathy, Caleb Steeby, Jayanth Tatikonda, Ben Todd, and Lucy Wang
Read the First Chapter in Our Team’s Progress: https://medium.com/medlaunch/protect-our-smile-blog-post-1-a-window-into-the-clear-mask-design-process-2a9677737ebe
Protect Our Smile was formed to create a clear face mask that is more functional, accessible, and affordable than its market competitors to assist the Deaf community in communication throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the course of the semester, we’ve accomplished our goal of creating a straightforward and inexpensive pattern for producing cloth masks with clear windows. Since our last blog post, we have refined our design to improve fit, added a novel removable window for washability, outlined our manufacturing plan, and created a team website to connect volunteer sewists with those in need of masks.
Our prototyping process has allowed us to significantly improve the fit and functionality of our clear masks. Since we first devised the Frankenstein mask, we’ve continued to iterate upon the design, constructing about ten prototypes and testing new features with each trial. Unique to our current design is the removable vinyl window. Velcro binds the body of the mask to the vinyl window, which is inserted between two layers of cloth that form the front and back sides of the mask. Additionally, the top of the mask is curved to match the architecture of the nose and face, allowing for a better fit and more aesthetically pleasing appearance than the initial design. By introducing an accordion fold into the process of constructing the mask, we have also increased the distance between the user’s mouth and the mask’s vinyl window. Overall, these changes have enhanced the fit and washability of our clear mask. The pattern PDF and video tutorial for the final version of our mask will be available once our website is published!
As we got closer to achieving a final prototype, we began determining the best method to manufacture our masks. Our team identified purchasing materials, creating kits for volunteers to make masks, collecting the masks, and delivering them to people in the Ann Arbor area as components required for successful manufacturing and distribution of our masks. To figure out how to optimize and simplify our process, we decided the best variable to analyze would be cost. We decided to consider variants of purchasing materials and delivering items, both by mail and in person. Our analysis indicated that by-mail purchasing and in-person delivery would result in the lowest cost, with an estimated unit cost of $1.23 per mask. This method takes approximately 16 days for the full process, and along with unit cost, is a metric we would like to improve as to make our process more efficient and affordable. While we still have work to do to optimize our manufacturing plan, we have established a strong base for the rollout of the Protect Our Smile masks.
As the development of our project continued throughout the semester, we realized more and more that our process of creating masks was going to rely heavily on the contributions of volunteers. Rather than emailing our volunteers or prospective users, we decided to centralize our collective project information in a way that was easy to access: a website. The original website design includes our goals for making the masks, introductions to our team, and easy ways to get in contact with us. We believe that all of this would be important background information our potential users and volunteers would want to know. The more interactive features the original design includes are hyperlinks to volunteer applications, as well as step by step instructions, and finally a GoFundMe page to supplement material costs (linked here).
We plan to alter the website information to focus more on how we have accomplished the goals that we set at the beginning of the project, instead of just listing what they are, based on feedback from reviewers. We also plan to spruce up the website a little more with pictures of past and present prototypes, to make it less cut and dry. After making these few changes, we are hoping to publish the website sometime in late December/early January, so we can start spreading the word about Protect Our Smile and begin the process of building a volunteer base and making masks.
After receiving feedback from Design Review 2 (DR 2), three main things came to our attention. One: we need to act, and we need to act fast on implementing our manufacturing plan. Two: funding might be a problem later down the line. Three: we need a plan for if our project expands beyond the Ann Arbor campus.
From the start of this project, we have recognized that the demand for masks increases with the severity of the pandemic. Thus, we’ve sought to operate on a timeline that maximizes the quality of our final product while minimizing the time it will take for us to begin the distribution of that product. The announcement of an FDA-approved vaccine for COVID-19 has driven us to accelerate that timeline. As plans for vaccination distribution for COVID-19 become finalized and executed, we anticipate that demand for face masks will decline slightly. In order to reach as many individuals as possible, we aim to begin distribution while demand remains high. Our initial plans from Design Review 1 (DR 1) were to finalize the mask, recruit volunteers, and implement the manufacturing/distribution process by March. However, the advice of our community partners has prompted us to aim to complete these steps by the end of December and at the latest January, as the vaccine will likely be available to the general public by mid 2021. If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it’s that the spread of disease is more rapid than one might think. We expect that mask-wearing will remain a part of daily life for a considerable time following the distribution of the vaccine, and aim to act now in order to maximize our impact later. We aim for our clear masks to provide protection not only during the pandemic, but long after.
When discussing funding and budgeting, our team came to the conclusion that this project will not be monetized in order to reach the people that need the mask without any obstacles. While this may work on a smaller scale with the help of generous donations and MedLaunch funding, it’s unlikely that this is a sustainable source of funding for our project. A suggestion that was brought up to us during DR 2 was to start a Kickstarter to raise money on that platform (which specializes in crowdfunding for creative projects such as Protect Our Smile). Another suggestion for this issue was to charge the cost of manufacturing per mask. This would allow us to continue making masks without relying on donations to cover our material costs.
Expansion of our project also brings up the issue that our current manufacturing/distribution design is not suitable for large-scale. Our current plan of our role in this process is to distribute sewing kits/masks. We need to come up with a plan that we would implement if this project is to expand outside of the Ann Arbor area. This includes finding more volunteers in charge of cutting and distributing kits and looking into mailing possibilities of this mask.
As we move into our second semester as a team, our first step is to put the finishing touches on our design. We are also looking to complete tests on droplet spread using our design. Once this is completed, we can publish our website and begin to recruit volunteers and collect donations. At this point, we can implement our manufacturing and distribution plan and get clear masks out to the Ann Arbor community and beyond.
