the most we can talk about? Even as we’ve had our vaccinations (and boosters), COVID has kept coming, and in the past few weeks with Omicron, it’s gone up again. Times are bleak. But I encouraged the changes I saw in 2021, led by designers and scientists who learned quickly from this pandemic, and built a more resilient world for it.
The greatest innovation I saw in 2021 was within the user experience, specifically the cleanliness user experience. We’re learning that we can clean our personal airways to breathe more safely, and monitor our environments to detect COVID before it spreads. The larger world is waking up to realize that germs are real, that air quality matters, and we have the technology to live a safer life than most of us do — without sacrificing every comfort and social connection to get there, as we did at the start of a pandemic.
To see how far we’ve come so quickly, just go back to early 2020. With the spread of the coronavirus, we knew very little about the virus. Many experts insisted that it spread primarily through contact only. We were instructed not to buy masks, lest we take them away from health care workers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not acknowledge that COVID was airborne until May of that year.
So the first wave of hygiene focused on “flattening the curve” by washing hands. (I can still appreciate the well-intentioned, sharply choreographed information being packaged into meme form at the time—even if it ended up being wrong.) We counted and sang songs as we cleaned them up, and trained ourselves on how to effectively wash our hands.
The next wave of UX brought personal protective equipment – masks and face shields. This approach has been shown to work. It’s also brought us plexiglass dividers across stores and offices, along with the promise of frequently sanitized surfaces. Once again, we were wrong in our approach here. As it turns out, plexiglass can prevent air from circulating, creating particularly dangerous hotspots for the virus. And disinfecting surfaces doesn’t fix our air issues (although upgrading the HVAC system to the correct MERV filter can!). Sadly, the plexiglass approach has stuck with us as part of the rise of the COVID scene. It’s a way for business owners and communities to pretend they’re doing something good for public health, other than reducing capacity, upgrading HVAC systems, or shutting down completely.
Despite this ongoing public health situation, 2021 has brought new hope to the hygiene user experience — which begins with recognizing when you contracted an infection. Rapid test kits debuted this year, giving people at home the ability to wipe their noses and test themselves for COVID with respectable accuracy. Sure, as a society, we’re used to testing groups like this for pregnancy or blood sugar. However, allow yourself to pause for a moment, and appreciate how wonderful it is that companies like Abbott have developed a way for anyone, without scientific training, to self-examine the pandemic of our time. This is a virus that may spread if you have few or no symptoms.
We can’t just test if we’re infected; We have new tools to prevent infection in the first place (other than masks!). Take fend. This is a $13 nose master — born from the mind of a Harvard researcher, and brought to market by the same design firm that created Beats by Dre. It sprays the salty, ocean-like air with a very special volume of vapor, allowing it to reach through your nose and into your windpipe. Several studies show that it appears to prevent airborne infections by boosting your body’s natural immunity: especially its ability to trap viruses in your mucus before they fly deep into your lungs. user experience? Just two pumps and a deep inhale boost your immunity for hours at a time, from a device that slips easily into your pocket. It couldn’t be simpler. The most difficult thing for Vindt is the playing field itself. How do you introduce the concept of nasal hygiene? How do you know that something superficial can prevent infection? Then again, Fend sold out her first run of 10,000 units in a matter of days.
Another startup that comes to mind is Poppy. In a previous life, its founders sold the research firm Meta (yes, Meta) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. A poppy is a simple piece of hardware that resembles a smoke detector. It takes continuous samples of the air to detect COVID as it floats in space. Samples are sent to the lab daily for testing – the system uses advanced microbial DNA analysis to identify COVID or other airborne pathogens on demand. Although not completely instantaneous, Poppy allows anyone who manages a space to see if COVID is present, and send alerts through an easy-to-read dashboard. Within the next year, Poppy plans to improve its hardware, so that all testing can be done on the device (reducing costs and speeding up results).
What attracts me most about Poppy and Fend is that they don’t just work in times of COVID. These devices represent a rethink of hygiene as an ongoing problem facing society – even though it is one that can be lived with. Each platform can be equally effective in protecting us from seasonal flu, and any pandemic that comes next. These are ideas born in 2021 that I think will feel quite mainstream by 2030.
And how can I talk about the cleanliness user experience without mentioning Razer? Razer is a computer gaming peripherals company that manufactures glowing mice and keyboards. that’s them Thing. But with COVID hit, their industrial design team took on the task of building a high-tech mask called the Zephyr — a mask that’s easier to breathe and express yourself than a stock N95 or other option.
Yes, a lot of unexpected companies made masks in 2020 and 2021, but most of them were either made for indoor purposes, or were just another option for cloth masks produced by a fashion company. Razer focused on innovations: especially fans that suck in air to make it more comfortable to breathe (and most importantly, LED lights that can glow any color you want). This $100 mask feels excessive in many ways. But it is also undoubtedly wonderful, a kind of passing of peace, Mary, for fighting the epidemic with technology. Zephyr is as symbolic enabler as it is just as clever in its implementation. Whether or not Zephyr is something you’ll wear, his approach is brimming with good ideas, namely that we should all wear reusable masks that feel more airy and reflect our personalities.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be living without the coronavirus anytime soon. But 2021 wasn’t a completely wasted year. We are learning how to prevent and respond to serious viral diseases. And yes, it’s a lot more complicated—but not necessarily more taxing—than just washing your hands.