Pulaski Redesign
A safety-focused case study of a common firefighting tool.
Overview
By interviewing professional firefighters, we were able to find pain points in wildland firefighting tools. Loose hoes and short handles impose risks on firefighters who are creating firelines. The Pulaski is uncomfortable and inefficient for some users.
By considering these pain points in our design, we improved firefighters' safety.
Roles
User Research, User Testing, Product Design, 3D Modeling
Tools
Adobe Suite, Rhino 3D
Duration
6 weeks, 2021
Team
4 people, concept
Research
Initially, we explored technological innovations, tool improvements, and health tracking. Interviews, observations, and survey responses helped us comprehend wildfire firefighting, its dangers, its important tools and necessary improvements, and its distinctions from other firefighting types. We identified a need to redesign the Pulaski, the most crucial and frequently used tool, to address safety issues and improve situational awareness.
Ideation
Observations helped us get a clearer image of where we wanted to take this project and to learn about the current market and areas that require improvements. Doing field research was not possible due to time constraints and fire season coming to an end. Therefore we opted to watch videos of firefighters on the field sharing their experiences and opinions. We gathered information into a list.
Testing
After sketching hundreds of possible designs for a new Pulaski tool, we complied the most important features into three main versions. With these sketches, we returned to our interviewees from the first stage of the process to get their responses and feedback. This served as our user testing to help us keep iterating until our final version.
Final Design
We compiled the features that worked well in our user testing into a final design. This design addressed the pain points we identified earlier—comfort, force, and situational awareness. The handle is interchangeable to accommodate firefighters of different heights, which allows it to be more forceful. The reflective and bright colors make it more visible in wildfire conditions.
Takeaway
This project created a strong foundation in my design practice as I started to understand the process of designing something that is meant to be used by the hands of someone other than myself. I'm not a firefighter and know very little of the profession outside of my research, but being able to break down this design process into small steps gave me every chance to empathize with the users' challenges.
If I were to do this project again, I'd like to be able to talk to even more users about their experience. While we had a variety of first-hand and second-hand sources, I still believe that there is a lot more to learn about how this tool works—I'd even like to be able to use it in my own hands.