Lifebox, Thesis project
Strate College, 2014
Master Thesis project
Award :
- Master degree Jury 1st pick
- Design Observer award 2015
- Design Observer Museum exhibition 2015
This project was the final project of my master’s thesis on domestic accidents. It’s a two-step solution designed to prevent accidents more effectively and to provide the right response faster when one occurs.
The main cause of domestic accidents
The main cause of domestic accidents is poverty. Interviews and real-life data helped me understand the phenomenon. Poverty translates into older, lower-quality equipment: old stoves are more likely to burn incompletely and produce carbon monoxide, individual heaters are the cause of many fires, and smaller, crowded rooms filled with objects create more opportunities for falls.
No efficient solutions to prevent domestic accidents
For the prevention, I underlined as part of the thesis that devices either created a bad relationship to the danger or the solution only worked in wealthier households. For instance, if you put a cap on an electrical outlet, you hide the danger, there is no education.
The greater the protection system, the greater the accident. If you create a board game around house dangers, you’ll only be able to reach families that can afford it, the less likely to ever need it.
The first-Aid, it’s more of a DIY kit. There aren’t many instructions for legal reasons, and key products such as liquids like alcohol are missing for custom and weight considerations. Nothing to do with convenience or relevance.
How does Lifebox work differently?
One of the key ideas was to reintroduce the oldest form of education: experience. Falling has always been part of learning to walk. Pain is a powerful teacher, whatever the household or lifestyle.
The electrical outlet is a good example. Pain has always been one of the quickest ways to learn a lesson, because it’s strongly tied to memory. With that in mind, I designed an outlet safety cover that looks like a regular outlet. If touched, it delivers a small electric shock. Completely safe for a child, the experience is still unpleasant enough to teach them to stay away from the centre of the outlet.
Lifebox won the Observeur du design award in Paris in 2015.
The first stage of the product is dedicated to a better first aid kit. The three most likely types of emergencies (cuts from cooking or falls, burns from the stove or a heater, and poisoning from medication or cleaning products) all come with visual and written instructions.
Many households still include members who can’t read. The step-by-step guide can be understood without reading a single word.
Accessibility
Redundant information is key to this first aid kit: simple steps, each with a matching slot for the product needed.
This is a collection of devices, each designed to address a specific risk:
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The stove alarm: cooking burns
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The outlet: electric shocks
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The cap and sticker: poisoning
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The fire alarm: fire and flooding
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The toy: bumps and falls
Fire/Water Alarm
The smoke and water detectors
The problem: Smoke detectors need tools, sometimes a professional, to install, and they fail silently when people forget to change the batteries.
What’s different: No batteries, no tools. It screws in between a light bulb and its socket and is set up in 25 seconds.
Stove protection
The problem: Stove guards hide the danger rather than addressing it.
What’s different: It builds the habit of turning handles inward.
Most cooking burns in children don’t come from the flame. They come from pulling a pot down by its handle. So the real fix is changing the cook’s habits. Whenever a handle sticks out past the edge, the device flashes and sounds an alarm until it’s turned back in.
Outlet
What is the issue? Hide the danger
What’s different: Micro dosing pain in anticipation for the rest of your life.
You can find in one of the previous paragraphs the reasoning behind the product. There is also an idea of general emergency about the population that we just gave up on. It’s not meant to feel good as a solution, but it works.
The corner toy
The problem: Corner guards are not the solution.
What’s different: It turns safety into a game that benefits the whole family.
Lower-income homes are often small, crowded and shared with extended family. Tables and chairs everywhere make them tricky spaces for a child to navigate.
The toy releases a glow-in-the-dark sticker only when pressed against a corner. As kids play, they build a mental map of the home’s sharp edges, and leave behind markers the whole family can see when the power goes out.
The problem: Detergents look like fruit juice.
What’s different: It makes detergent look as dangerous as it is.
Child-resistant caps are often bright and noisy, which can attract children rather than deter them. Meanwhile, more and more young children end up in emergency rooms after swallowing detergent or shampoo, drawn in by colourful labels and fruity scents.
The cap uses a fixed combination lock, and comes with labels that state just two things: what the product is, and what never to mix it with.
