GAS CONTAINER

2020
Brief: To design a tangible product that will protect its user (a human being) from a defined situation or threat
This ad-hoc gas container designed for protestors protecting themselves against law enforcement, aims to mitigate the indiscriminate effects of tear gas by containing its spread and stopping the chemical reaction itself. The project also aims to be communal, shareable, and open to modification.

INVESTIGATING PROTEST

With social upheaval and general discontent with governments worldwide, protests have become more and more common in recent years. With this surge in protests, we have seen the consistent deployment and abuse of tear gas by law enforcement. Protests, particularly those involving direct political conflict between protestors and law enforcement, have a great propensity to turn violent. To narrow in on a focus on for my project, it was important to recognise the dichotomy between those who are a part of direct conflicts and indirect conflicts during protests; from this dichotomy I decided to mainly focus on a product that would contain crowd control weapons that create indirect conflict and and collateral damage.

EXISTING SOLUTIONS

Protestors across the world are no strangers to tear gas and over the years, many have come up with innovative solutions using mainly ad-hoc methods. In designing a product to minimize the impact of tear gas, I found it crucial to investigate these existing solutions. Out of these solutions, there were two types: re-direction and containment/mitigation. In re-directing the tear gas, protestors often end up disseminating more of the tear gas, increasing the collateral impact. Therefore, I instead opted for a solution that focused on containment and mitigation. I was inspired mainly by the methods that Hong Kong protestors developed during the “Umbrella Movement” protests as seen below.

IDEATION TO DEVELOPMENT

I started my ideation process based on all my research, mainly trying to focus on containment, incorporating water as an external component. I ideated these under the pretense that plastic water bottles would be included in the paraphernalia of the user, based on my primary research.

After my ideation stage, I mostly developed my ideas in 3D physical prototyping. I wanted to refocus these ideas using specific ad-hoc materials and thus ended up with using the milk jug as a primary container for the gas. I also made a prototype with a detergent bottle, however it’s dimensions I tried to incorporate various functions of several of the ideas into one design. From there I refined the ergonomic details through physical testing, subsituting tear gas cannisters with soda cans.

FINAL DESIGN

In addition to the actual design of the gas container, I wanted to incorporate a communal aspect to it. Taking cues from democratic design theory and companies like Ikea, I made an infographic of how to make the design yourself at home, so that it can be shared through various social media platforms, depending on the context of the protest.

An additional dissemination strategy for the DIY instructions was to use stickers with scannable QR codes that lead to a shared online document that contained the infographic, as well as the ability for users to share their own suggestions to one another. Protestors could generate their own QR codes and their own stickers, sticking them onto jugs in supermarkets guerilla style. The QR code is currently scannable and active.