Fire-safety product design: alerting people who are deaf when there is a fire

Design a fire alarm system that people who are deaf can rely on. Decide which users and which setting you are designing for, find where today's alarms let them down, propose and prioritize solutions, and explain how you would know the product works. ```hint Follow the alarm's whole life Walk through installing and testing the alarm, the moment it goes off, getting out and calling for help, and silencing it afterwards, then rank where the loss of sound does the most harm. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is this for homes, workplaces or public buildings such as hotels, and who buys and installs it? - Are the users completely deaf, hard of hearing, or both, and should I consider people with other disabilities such as low vision? - Should the product work alongside the smoke alarms already installed, or replace them? - Is it a physical device, software, or either? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A setting and user group chosen with a stated reason - Pain points across the alarm's life cycle, ranked by how severe a failure would be - Several solutions built on senses other than hearing, compared on reliability, cost and fit with existing alarms - Life-safety requirements: behavior when power or connectivity fails, false alarms, testing and certification - Success metrics that show whether people are alerted in time, with guardrails ### Follow-up Questions - How would you prove before launch that the product alerts people in time, without waiting for real fires? - How would the design change for a hotel or an office building? - How would you get the product to people who cannot afford it?