Given the option of designing any product of my choice as part of a senior design class, I wanted to tackle an outdoor sporting good. I chose this category since I had not had an opportunity to design a sporting good, and also since I like playing outside, my two most favorite activities are roller hockey and paintball. I found a bigger need for some innovation in the field of paintball, since it is a rather new sport and most of the equipment has been transferred from other sports such as motocross. I wanted to design a paintball mask that's function and form was optimized for paintball.

Specifically I wanted to resolve many of the problems with current paintball masks such as, breathability, easy clean up, and range of vision. The design needed to incorporate many safety and human factors issues while improving camouflage and creating a new style.

- Cover and protect: eyes, temples, ears, nose, and mouth.
- Allow user to wear glasses under mask.
- Keep lens free of condensation.
- Increase air flow into and out of mask.
- Allow total field of vision to be viewable.
- Easy to clean.
- Adjustable to fit any size head.
- Camouflage head and face.

Research:

A lot of my research centered around paintball masks past and present. But I also looked at other types of head protection, including: firefighter, police, and armed forces gear. I also looked at futurist types of masks in fictional situations, the best source of this type was the Starwars Trilogy. Materials research comprised of every thing from paintball clothing and gear to the Aeron chair, which lead me to my final design utilizing a stretched fabric. Below are a few sample pictures of my research.

Good sources of paintball equipment on the web.