Researching

We decided that we would solve the issue of foggy glasses for three types of glasses: sports goggles, safety glasses, and everyday glasses.

Justifying the Problem

Before we could begin our research, we had to justify our problem to make sure that what we chose was a legitimate issue.

Sports Goggles

When sports goggles fog up, it hinders an athlete's performance in practices and games by obstructing their sight. This could cause an injury such as being hit with a ball or tripping and falling down hard. One might say that the wearer should just take the goggles off for them to defog, but that cannot happen in say a basketball game, without slowing their team down. Slowing down a team does not get a player any minutes in a game.

Safety Glasses

When safety glasses fog up, it becomes a huge safety concern. When working around a lot of dangerous machinery, sight is essential to being safe. One might say that this problem could be solved by taking the glasses off to let them defog, but in a workshop, taking off safety glasses could also cause an injury.

Everyday Glasses

Everyday glasses fogging up can be an everyday occurrence, especially in colder weather or humid areas. Fogging up happens most often when going from a colder environment to a warmer environment. For everyday glasses, there is still chance of an injury if you accidentally walk into an object, but more often than not, there is usually an opportunity to just wait for the glasses to defog. However, that can be annoying to have to do every single day.

What Causes Fog?

We had to start our research by finding out the causes of foggy glasses. We found that there are five main causes for foggy glasses.

Difference In Temperature

When the temperature of the glasses' lenses is cooler than the surrounding air, water in the air will condense on the cooler surface. This is why glasses fog up when a wearer goes from a wintery environment into a warmer building.

Proximity of Glasses to Face

The closer the glasses are to the face, the more restricted the air flow is. Stagnant air will be warmer than moving air and will cause condensation on the cooler lenses because of that temperature difference.

Dew Point Temperature

The dewpoint temperature is the temperature in which water condenses. This value will change depending on where one is. When the temperature of the lenses are below the dew point temperature, water droplets will form on them.

Humidity

Humidity is often represented as a percentage called the relative humidity. Relative humidity shows how much water is in the air in relation to how much the air can hold. When the relative humidity is too high, water condenses onto the lenses.

Scratches and Cracks

Any scratches or cracks on the lenses of the glasses creates more area for fog to exist on the glasses.

Previous Patents

We then researched previous patents that dealt with defogging glasses.

Chemical Solution

This patent has a Plexiglas bond with an aluminum cross linker which allows for moisture absorption. In addition, this solution provides an abrasion resistance to an extent. Our issue with this design, and many other similar ones, is that they don't provide enough durability. Anti-fog solutions tend to wear off after a certain time, especially in a warm environment.

Electronic-Heat

This patent requires the wearer to flip a switch when they experience or anticipate fog. Electricity is then run through a conductive, transparent film on the lenses to heat them until the fog goes away or cannot be formed. Our issue with this, and many other electric-heat based designs, was that it was not automatic. However, we did find a patent for defogging glasses that was automatic, but we thought we could better the process of determining when the lenses would activate the defogging mechanism as that design relied on temperature alone.

Electronic-Fan

The electronic fan design works by heating up air inside an air duct within the frames and blowing it through a fan at the lenses. This helps heat up the lenses and create steam out of the existing fog which then quickly evaporates off of the lenses. Our issue with this design was that it is not automatic and requires the wearer to flip a switch to make it work. Additionally, the fans protrude from the sides and disrupt the aesthetic look for a wearer.

Problem and Invention Statements

From our research, we were able to write our problem and invention statements.

Problem Statement

Currently, people who wear glasses or goggles (safety, sports, prescription, etc.) may experience fog on their lenses while going about their day, engaging in strenuous activity, or going from a cold environment to a warm environment. Fogginess on glasses and goggles can obstruct the wearer’s view for a period of time, creating a safety concern or prohibiting them from engaging in an activity due to a lack of visibility.

Invention Statement

A solution must be designed for glasses or goggles (safety, sports, prescription, etc.) that can keep lenses clear or automatically defog the lenses in a timely and unobtrusive manner in order to maintain visibility and safety while people go about their day, engage in strenuous activity, or go from a cold environment to a warm environment.

Functional Requirements

From the invention statement, we pulled out six functional requirements our final design needed to have.

1. Keep Lenses Clear

If our design could stop glasses from fogging up in the first place, then the problem would be solved.

2. Automatic

When we looked at the electronic-heat based patent, we noticed that it required the user to hit a switch to activate the defogging mechanism. We want our design to be hands-off for the user.

3. Timely

One of the issues with foggy glasses is that the fog can last a few seconds or a few minutes. We want our defogging glasses to clear the lenses in ten seconds or less.

4. Unobtrusive

When we looked at the electronic-fan based patent, we noticed that it had fans protruding from the sides, which did not look good. We wanted to have our glasses still be aesthically plaeasing for the wearer and not have any protruding parts.

5. Maintain Visibility

Our design needed to provide a clear patch of lens that allowed the wearer to function as close as possible to when their glasses were totally clear. However, we had no data to direct us in where that patch should be on the lens, or how big that patch should be on the lens.

6. Safe

Keeping the wearer safe is the main goal of our design and to achieve this, we have to look back to "Maintain Visibility" and what that operationalized definition is because safety is equivalent to clear vision. Additionally, the product itself cannot be dangerous for the wearer.

As we identified our functional requirements, we realized that we needed to conduct our our research into understanding what "visibility" meant for foggy glasses.

Conducting Our Own Research

We would like to note that due to COVID-19 restrictions, we were unable to test the number of people that we had planned for. The data we were able to collect before restrictions was the only data we were able to draw conclusions from.

For every procedure that we designed, we followed the same set-up for the overlays, constants, and listed all the materials together in one document.

Sports Goggles

The Procedure:

The Data Collected:

The Conclusion:

The average line in the graph shows that the three circle diameter and lens locations closest to the control were 3/4" Center, 3/4" Inside, and 1/2" Center. Therefore, for the sports goggles, the 3/4" diameter with a center location on the lens was most similar to clear vision and the design should be focused on clearing the center of the lenses the fastest.

Safety Glasses

The Procedure:

The Data Collected:

The Conclusion:

The average line in the graph shows that the three circle diameter and lens locations closest to the control were 1/2" Inside, 3/4" Inside, and 1/4" Inside. Therefore, for the safety glasses, the inside location on the lens was most similar to clear vision and the design should be focused on clearing the inside corner of the lenses the fastest (we can ignore the diameter because the top three closest to clear vision were all below zero).

Everyday Glasses

The Procedure:

The Data Collected:

The Conclusion:

Unlike the other graphs, there was not a clear trend that the data was following. When we tried to figure out what happened in our testing, we realized that we had confounding variables that prevented us from isolating the variables we were testing. Since the data we collected was not accurate, we could not use this data in our final conclusion.

Final Conclusion

Our data showed that the inside area on the lenses was the location we needed to clear of fog the fastest. Therefore, in our final design, we must have the mechanism clear the inside corner on the lenses first to maintain visibility and make the wearer safe as quickly as possible.

A Few Images from Our Testing

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