Lydia Callaghan’s father passed away four years ago. For most of his life, he was remarkably healthy and active, spending much of his 73 years swimming, biking, and playing tennis. He did not, however, take care to protect himself from the sun's damaging UV rays, and ultimately lost his life to skin cancer.
Callaghan wants to save avid cyclists from her father's fate. She’s created the Bouclier visor, a snap-on screen that blocks 98 percent of UV rays and attaches to any bike helmet. Bouclier isn't a dorky plastic rim found on golf courses; the minimalist, chrome-colored shield makes your standard headgear look more like a motorcycle helmet.
Scan the market for clip-on bike helmet visors, and you'll find few products bigger than a typical baseball hat brim. You'll even find floppy hat brims that wrap around helmets. Those are all stop-gap solutions—accessories that will tide you over until it's time to apply more sunscreen. Callaghan wanted something with full coverage, akin to the solar face shields women often wear in Asia.
To reach as many people as possible, Callaghan decided against designing a new helmet, which would have entailed a bigger initial investment and competing with established brands. Instead, Callaghan, who lives in Palo Alto, California, settled on creating a product that works with any existing helmet. She assembled a crack team to do it: a product engineer and adviser who had worked at design consultancy IDEO, two mechanical engineers formerly of design firm Frog, and an industrial designer from Huge Design. Callaghan is currently raising funds on Kickstarter, where the visor costs $49; at retail, it'll go for $75.
A slew of design considerations go into making a one-size-fits-all accessory people will wear over their face while in motion. The visor had to fit both athletic, aerodynamic helmets and the rounder, more fashionable ones. "We wanted to keep the footprint on the helmet as small and elegant as possible," Callaghan says, so Bouclier hinges on a pair of mounts permanently attached to the helmet using the same 3M adhesive GoPro uses as its mounting material. Callaghan says her design team initially tried magnets (“because they’re so delightful and gadgety"), but they failed to stay put. The actual snaps also had to have a Goldilocks-like level of snugness: too loose, and the visor would fly off in high winds; too tight ,and it wouldn't pop off in the case of a collision, creating the risk of further crash-related complications.
The visor also needs to allow for plenty of airflow, so that cyclists don't feel claustrophobic and short of breath while pedaling. Callaghan says getting the shape and angle of the visor right was a matter of iterating again and again. The final device tapers up toward the wearer's cheeks, letting air breeze through the side. If more air is needed, the pivot mechanism should come in handy.
To those loathe to wearing helmets—half of American cyclists don't wear them—Bouclier could be a hard sell. After all, they could just wear sunscreen. But Callaghan says that sunscreen is effective only when consistently reapplied, and that a Bouclier visor “can’t sweat off or degrade over time.” That might not entice a commuter who rides for 15 minutes to and from work everyday, but it could appeal to serious riders pedaling long distances. To riders worried about their looks, Callaghan would point out that once upon a time, sunglasses were thought of as a safety measure. "They protect us all from melanoma of the eye," she says. "However, most of us wear them because they look cool."
