Designing Protective Headgear for Teachers of Children with Autism

Renee Nassar (left) and Diana Smith (SAR’16) with their finished protective headgear prototype. Photo courtesy of Smith and Nassar

Diana Smith’s summer challenge was daunting: create protective headgear for teachers of children with autism, some of whom occasionally become physically aggressive. The final product had to be easy to wear, nonintrusive, and preferably resemble a baseball cap.

Smith (SAR’16), who is working towards a master’s degree in occupational therapy, was teamed with recent New England School of Art & Design graduate Renee Nassar. They comprised one of eight teams, most with an engineer, a stylist, and an occupational therapist (Smith and Nassar’s team didn’t have an engineer), at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s two-year-old Open Style Lab, whose mission is to create clothes and accessories for clients in the community with disabilities, such as amputations, arthritis, and spinal cord injuries. Over 10 weeks, starting in June, the unpaid staffers were tasked with designing and building creations that had to be both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

Smith and Nassar were asked to design the protective headgear for a school just west of Boston serving children with autism. Last year Open Style Lab had created armbands for the school’s faculty to be worn under long-sleeve shirts to protect against a student trying to bite them. Faculty members were already wearing traditional baseball batting helmets for protection, and this year the school asked the lab to come up with something that would appear less threatening and be more comfortable.

“They asked for protective headgear that was more discreet and professional-looking, and from there it was up to us to decide how we were going to tackle that problem,” says Smith. Staff members also were “uncomfortable because they had to wear these helmets for up to five hours at a time. They would get sweaty and start to get headaches. If they had glasses, the helmet would pinch their head.”

Smith applied to the Open Style Lab at the suggestion of Nancy Lowenstein (SAR’87), a Sargent College clinical associate professor of occupational therapy.

Throughout the summer, the eight teams collaborated in an incubator-like setting. “When I was going through all these anxieties and excitement, the other students in the lab would help to think of solutions,” says Smith, noting that although 90 percent of them wouldn’t work, it was still helpful. “This summer was 40 percent stressful, 60 percent amazing.”

Armed with $500 to create their prototype, Smith and Nasser began by researching what makes headgear safe. They learned that any good sports helmet distributes the force of a blow to the entire head. Typically, sports helmets consist of two layers of foam: closed cell foam, which is dense and protects the head by absorbing the force, and open cell foam, which ensures a close fit.

Smith, who earned an undergraduate degree in psychology at Marist College and studied fashion design for a short time, quickly familiarized herself with plastics. “I was on the phone with this company we ordered the plastic from, and I never thought in a million years I would be saying, ‘I need 1/8th inch polycarbonate,’” she says. She and Nassar became models for each other as the prototype moved through the design and construction process.

The school wanted the new headgear to resemble a baseball cap as much as possible. The women added details like the signature button at the top and stitching on the visor and covered the headgear with a blue fabric.

The cap’s visor posed one of the biggest design challenges. In their interviews with various school staff members, Smith and Nassar learned that students sometimes grabbed onto a helmet’s visor, inadvertently jerking the staff member’s head, which could lead to a concussion, whiplash, or neck pain.

The visor, the two decided, would have to be about a half inch shorter than a traditional baseball cap visor to promote visibility, and would need to be attached with magnets. It would be made of soft craft foam so that it wouldn’t become a hazard if it were broken off.

Smith and Nassar checked in with school personnel every few weeks during the summer to discuss their progress and for feedback. Interviews with staff members were invaluable: one staffer noted that an early prototype was exerting pressure on his glasses and some female teachers asked for room in the back of the helmet to accommodate their ponytails, which students could grab if they were left dangling.

Among the other projects this year’s design teams worked on were creating special pajamas for a child with an artificial bladder and constructing a mask for a woman whose botched oral surgery caused chronic facial pain. The teams met with mentors from a variety of fields, including industrial design, art, and orthotics, for feedback and advice.

“If we felt like we were stuck, they would brainstorm with us, and they’ve been great about giving us resources, both places to purchase from and what materials to use,” Smith says. For example, she and Nassar had initially planned to make their headgear using a 3-D printer. Their mentors warned them that building the required digital file would take too long, so they opted instead for a traditional plastic mold.

Toward the end of the program, Smith acknowledges, she had dreams for three nights straight about the headgear, which they finally named EduCap. “I would wake up, realize where my brain was at, and make lists of what needed to be done,” she says with a laugh.

The school is happy with their finished result, she says, and she and Nassar plan to continue working on EduCap, perfecting their design and creating small, medium, and large versions. The women also recently connected with a manufacturing engineer that designs and develops medical equipment to talk about next steps.

“This summer’s work at the Open Style Lab was a way to express myself artistically and creatively, but also to make something purposeful,” says Smith. “We made someone’s day a little bit better, which, I think, is the best thing you can do.”