Tinkerine Face Shield - Lite

The landscape of PPE face shields has been changing over time. The needs of front line healthcare facing COVID patients are very different to the ones that businesses, consumers even though everyone needs a layer of protection to keep themselves or their employees safe.

As the attention starts to shift towards the opening of the economy, it's important to look and adjust the needs of the products to those that are looking to get them.

The key features of a face shield doesn't change. It must offer coverage and protection against COVID, but still be comfortable to wear for hours on end.

We wanted to build an addition to our face shield line that gives value in terms of price but the product is still Tinkerine quality. It looks, functions, and fits the way we would expect it to and our customers expect no less.

I wanted to share the process photos we captured along the way. While the change may look simple. We went through hours of design and adjustments, user and assembly testing, and material selection and testing. All the while ensuring we can do this at scale, and those that get these face shields can reuse them mutliple times over.

We didn't want to design a brand new clear visor. We like the way our visor functions...so the natural thing to do is adopt it.

The hardest part is getting the installation done right. But there was still a mountain of questions to be asked. Do we bend the tabs? snap the parts in? What about durability and repeatability? How about sanitation? For us this is a process of design thinking sprints. Do we laser cut? die cut and stamp? What about the access to materials? What about the cost? How do we get something priced in a way that is competitive and still offers a good experience for the customers. What we know is that cutting corners at this stage is NOT the right move.

The result? An easy to install, standard coverage (front and side), reusable face shield that we can offer at a extremely valuable price. Oh did I mention this also lowers the packing space! which is a plus.