Guardhat Safety Ecosystem

Digital Experience Design

Thousands of people are seriously injured in manufacturing plants every year, yet the design of the hard hat has hardly changed in over a century. Detroit-based startup Guardhat engaged my team at frog to take on that challenge by partnering to bring to market a smart hard hat with a robust suite of embedded sensors and communication technology that wirelessly communicates with an enterprise software experience to give safety managers and factory workers actionable intelligence that empowers them to prioritize risks and take immediate action to save lives and keep everyone safe.

Year: 2016 Agency: frog Client: Guardhat

Year: 2017 Agency: frog Client: Guardhat

Understanding our Client and our Users

We began the project with a multi-day on-site workshop with the founders of Guardhat. Through a series of collaborative activities, we learned about the strategic business goals of the young company and we aligned on what success would look like for our partnership. We also co-generated a set of hero user flows that established a strong foundation for the software experience. And we spent a couple days visiting some local manufacturing plants to observe and interview safety managers to better understand the problems they deal with on a daily basis.

Our team visiting some local manufacturing plants to observe and interview safety managers to better understand the problems they deal with on a daily basis.

Key Insights

Through our observational research and semi-structured interviews with safety managers and plant workers, we came away with four key insights to focus on when designing our solution:

Provide meaningful data.

"You need to balance the need to see and have immediate access to a ton of data, with having it be meaningful and absorbable."

- Bryan, Safety Manager

Provide meaningful data.

"You need to balance the need to see and have immediate access to a ton of data, with having it be meaningful and absorbable."

- Bryan, Safety Manager

Provide meaningful data.

"You need to balance the need to see and have immediate access to a ton of data, with having it be meaningful and absorbable."

- Bryan, Safety Manager

Provide meaningful data.

"You need to balance the need to see and have immediate access to a ton of data, with having it be meaningful and absorbable."

- Bryan, Safety Manager

Enable quick decision-making.

"There's no on-site emergency dispatch center, so it fell on my shoulders. When there was a severe laceration on someone's hands, things have to happen very quickly."

- Jason, Safety Manager

Enable quick decision-making.

"There's no on-site emergency dispatch center, so it fell on my shoulders. When there was a severe laceration on someone's hands, things have to happen very quickly."

- Jason, Safety Manager

Enable quick decision-making.

"There's no on-site emergency dispatch center, so it fell on my shoulders. When there was a severe laceration on someone's hands, things have to happen very quickly."

- Jason, Safety Manager

Context is key.

"Seeing a safety summary when we arrive to work every morning gives us a high-level overview of how our plant is doing."

- Mike, Steel Mill Worker

Context is key.

"Seeing a safety summary when we arrive to work every morning gives us a high-level overview of how our plant is doing."

- Mike, Steel Mill Worker

Context is key.

"Seeing a safety summary when we arrive to work every morning gives us a high-level overview of how our plant is doing."

- Mike, Steel Mill Worker

Don't forget the people.

"Safety to the management is about statistics. I don't care about statistics, I care about human beings."

- Nathan, Safety Officer

Don't forget the people.

"Safety to the management is about statistics. I don't care about statistics, I care about human beings."

- Nathan, Safety Officer

Don't forget the people.

"Safety to the management is about statistics. I don't care about statistics, I care about human beings."

- Nathan, Safety Officer

Our Users

We identified two distinct user groups for the software, each with unique goals and values that we would need to address: Safety Managers whose primary goal is to monitor, prevent, and respond to critical events in order to prevent injuries. And Executives whose primary goal is to analyze data across multiple sites in order to have greater transparency, to instill accountability, and to discover insights into ways to make their facilities safer.

I created a set of three low-fidelity user flows to map out the prioritized needs of each user group and to visualize the interactions between the software and the hardhat.

We identified two distinct user groups for the software, each with unique goals and values that we would need to address: Safety Managers whose primary goal is to monitor, prevent, and respond to critical events in order to prevent injuries. And Executives whose primary goal is to analyze data across multiple sites in order to have greater transparency, to instill accountability, and to discover insights into ways to make their facilities safer.

I created a set of three low-fidelity user flows to map out the prioritized needs of each user group and to visualize the interactions between the software and the hardhat.

We identified two distinct user groups for the software, each with unique goals and values that we would need to address: Safety Managers whose primary goal is to monitor, prevent, and respond to critical events in order to prevent injuries. And Executives whose primary goal is to analyze data across multiple sites in order to have greater transparency, to instill accountability, and to discover insights into ways to make their facilities safer.

I created a set of three low-fidelity user flows to map out the prioritized needs of each user group and to visualize the interactions between the software and the hardhat.

We identified two distinct user groups for the software, each with unique goals and values that we would need to address: Safety Managers whose primary goal is to monitor, prevent, and respond to critical events in order to prevent injuries. And Executives whose primary goal is to analyze data across multiple sites in order to have greater transparency, to instill accountability, and to discover insights into ways to make their facilities safer.

I created a set of three low-fidelity user flows to map out the prioritized needs of each user group and to visualize the interactions between the software and the hardhat.

I created a detailed information architecture map to document all of the pages and links between sections of the software.

Throughout the project, I used marker sketching as a tool to rapidly explore ideas for interaction models, navigation structures, content heirarchy, data visualizations, and responsive layouts.

By digitizing and explaining the structure of the interaction model we deemed most successful, we were able to communicate the merits of this solution clearly to the client and development teams.

As a team, we arrived at a holistic design principle to drive the visual design of the Guardhat software: Rugged Intelligence. Embodying the combination of precision, confidence, durability, and industrial intuition. Living comfortably in the gritty work environments of safety managers and factory workers while exhibiting the cutting edge technology that powers it.

These four key features served as a basis for applying the visual language.

To assist the Guardhat development team with the extension of the visual language to additional screens and flows not delivered in this phase of work, we created this light style guide with documented typography, iconography, component, and color guidelines.

TEAM

Myself: Design Lead

Diny Huang: Project Manager