Fire Safety for Aspiring Chefs

An interactive fire safety project where students in "Allergic to Salad" learn to handle different fire types and extinguishers through a hands-on simulation game.

Project type: Learning Design + Physical Computing
Role: Designer
Industry: K12 Education, Public Education

Background

"Cooking classes were seen as a valuable educational opportunity rather than just recreational."

Stacey Ornstein, the Founder of Allergic to Salad, shared the quote in the initial interview, and it became the inspiration for this specific project.

Allergic to Salad started as a vegetarian-forward program that emphasizes life skills and healthy eating. Over the years, it has grown significantly, now serving about 160 public schools and involving 60 educators. Now the program focuses on both after-school and some in-school enrichment, teaching students from pre-K to high school. While the program continues to leverage hands-on, interactive methods and wishes to expand upon in-school experience to at-home exploration, the team and I started thinking about the fundamental concern: how to ensure students' safe exploration without an facilitator present?

Delivery

Learning Design

Based on vast research on public policies and the expert knowledge of an internal consultant, a former firefighter, I designed a pre-training orientation for at-home fire safety education, targeting K12 students. In the 45-minute session, students will explore fire safety through a simulation that combines hands-on problem-solving and analysis. They’ll handle different classes of fires commonly found in real-life settings by identifying and using the correct extinguishing tools.

Artifact Design & Prototyping

I designed and prototyped a portable household fire simulation device that recreates the designated gamified learning with an embedded Arduino board to offer an interactive, affordable experience through these functions: