Refrigerator Flood Protection Concept

Project Overview

This project explores product design from a human-centered design approach. The goal was to create a product to help New York City prepare for recovery from a disaster while drawing on experiences from three major disasters that have hit NYC in the last 25 years: 9/11 in 2001, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the Covid pandemic in 2019. Our group of four decided on tackling the disaster of flooding due to NYC's low lying areas that are flood prone. We started with ideas and iterated these ideas three times after consulting with stakeholders. Based on potential user feedback we found that their biggest concern was protecting inventory as due to exposure to contaminated floodwater causing goods to be thrown out and loss of refrigeration, thousands of dollars are lost. To address these concerns, we designed a waterproof bag with necessary features to protect refrigerators. We made an initial sketch, then implemented a quick CAD model on Solidworks, and refined the concept more with Vizcom and similar tools. Afterwards, we iterated the design more according to customer values and needs such as adding a ventilation and chimney system.

Key Highlights

• Interviewed stakeholders that were restaurant owners in the East Village neighborhood of NYC, which was a flood prone area.
• Iterated design based on potential customer feedback.
• Explored concept refinement and rendering with Figma Make, Vizcom, and Midjourney.
• Presented ideas and progress weekly along with a cumulative presentation to a class of 120 students and a panel of judges from NYC Preparedness and Recovery Institute.
• Won class favorite based on peer grading and ranking out of the 15 groups in the class.