fire safety masters thesis

20% of all deaths in home fire occur when the smoke alarm battery is missing or dead. People tend to remove the battery due to nuisance smoke alarms that are difficult to silence, rendering the alarm useless in an actual fire. In particular, the elderly and mobility impaired have difficulty reaching smoke alarms to silence them. My Masters thesis explored ways to improve fire safety, making it easier to silence smoke alarms when a nuisance alarm goes off. For example, I designed Smokey, a smoke alarm silencer that doubles as a magnetic kitchen timer for your fridge. Most nuisance alarms are triggered by kitchen activity. When the alarm goes off while you’re cooking, simply press Smokey’s hand to silence the alarm. Also, I designed an app and smart smoke detector, so that smoke alarms can be easily managed and silenced from a phone.

Things I did: User Research, Competitive Analysis, Ideation, Model Making, 3D Rendering