product design · user research

Kalkan

Comfy protection made clear.

duration

3 months

client

IND 601 Design Studio

platform

Face Shield

The Problem

The assignment was to rethink the mask during COVID. Broad research into mask types and use cases revealed that most people could isolate at home, but some groups had no choice but to stay in close contact with others — medical personnel being the obvious case. Given deadline constraints, I narrowed further to the most vulnerable group within that: dentists, who work directly over patients’ open mouths and are exposed to frequent splatter, making them especially high-risk. Dentist deaths during COVID were notably high, at a time when most of the public was safely isolating at home.

Research

I interviewed two dentists to validate the problem before designing, and both confirmed it — they’d recognized the risk themselves in real time, even while it was going largely unaddressed for their specific role.

Ideation

After ideating multiple directions, I brought concepts back to the same dentists and had them pick the one they’d actually want to use — Kalkan’s concept was the one they chose, giving a second layer of validation beyond just confirming the problem existed.

The Solution

Kalkan (“shield” in Turkish) seals around the face, with a filter positioned at the top of the shield — angled and placed the way a snorkel would be — so it sits as far from a patient’s mouth as possible, minimizing exposure to splatter at the source. It was also designed to be autoclave-safe, so it could be sterilized using equipment every dental clinic already has on-site, rather than requiring a separate cleaning process or disposal cycle.