Finished PPE Gown
Overview
Elder Care Alliance is a senior living facility based in Oakland, California which gives value to self expression through clothing and discovered the lack of variety and comfort of clothing for the older population. I was unaware of this gap in the market prior to Elder Care Alliance presenting this issue to us Honors Fung Fellows and felt the need and motivation to take on this new challenge.
My team and I were in the stage of testing our prototypes for adaptive clothing when the COVID19 pandemic hit and our front line workers at Elder Care alliance were experiencing a shortage of PPE so we shifted our efforts instantly and explored the options of sourcing materials and volunteers to sew non-surgical emergency PPE. We produced 200 gowns in a month. I will be covering the PPE project in this page as we had the opportunity to complete it.
Project Length: August 2019 - June 2020
Client: Elder Care Alliance
Role: UX Researcher, Scrum Master
Collaborators: Yoyo Ko, Shirley Jiang, Josie Lee
Tools Used: Notion, Google Forms, Canva, Zoom, fabric cutting patterns
Secondary Research
Through meetings with our partner organization's VP of Business Development and Strategy - Rosemary Jordan on a weekly basis we kept receiving updates on their facilities' inventory of various PPE. They were working tirelessly to find Face Shields, Masks, Gowns, Booties and Caps but shipments were falling through, prices were rising and ECA's inventory was dropping tremendously so we had to move fast with our strategic planning and research.
The beginning stages of the pandemic were filled with unknowns about the virus and a lot of explorations on alternative PPEs. We wanted to welcome new ideas but be 100% sure these ideas protect the frontline workers. Time was of essence and we had to know everything there is to know in a weeks time so we split up based on the PPE.
My Role In Secondary Research
I was responsible for learning all there is to know about face masks.
1. safety requirements according to the CDC
2. alternative face masks the community was making for frontline workers
3. materials used and their filtration capabilities
4. Whether materials were readily available
5. The cost of making each mask
6. Time needed to make each mask
7. Guidelines for sterilization of spaces where these masks would be made
8. PPE required for volunteers making them to ensure non-symptomatic persons do not infect PPE
After finding this information and coming together we made 5 different google docs outlining our plan for that particular PPE. Below images are a few screenshots of a few parts of the face mask plan which I created.
More details to come!
