PROJECT: SAFE TOUCH KEYRING
Navigate the world without touching infected surfaces and screens.
Everyday life can be a nervous experience for many in the age of COVID-19. Every surface you touch might have the virus on it, from the doorhandle you use to go into work, to the touchscreen in the supermarket’s self-checkout area. Using high-strength alcohol on your hands every time you touch something would do considerable damage to your skin. We knew there had to be a way to allow people to continue their lives without having to fear coming into direct contact with an infected surface and washing their hands to the point of injury.
To this end, the safe touch keyring uses a simple hook design to allow users to use the handles on pull doors with an additional flat front for applying force to push doors. However, life is not just about doors. We are in the digital age and screens are everywhere. For some, the standard flat front of the key would work just fine. However, despite their name, not all touchscreens respond to just touch. Many, such as smartphone screens, rely on detecting the tiny amount of electrical charge which naturally occurs in our bodies. In order to make this a one-size-fits-all device, a second material was needed which we had not printed with before: conductive TPU. By incorporating a conductive material into the product, a first for us, the keyring became a capacitive stylus. Users were now able to transfer a tiny electrical charge from their body through the keyring and onto the touchscreen they were using, all without risking infection themselves from direct contact.
Ultra-fast iteration was needed to take the project from design to production, we experimented with different shapes of both the primary keyring piece itself as well as the conductive tip. Without Additive Manufacturing, it would have taken much, much longer to find the placement and integration of the two pieces which was the most ergonomic and effective at transferring the tiny amount of electricity needed.