Free Face Mask Creator

[diafygi]

What problem are you trying to solve?

Despite strong recommendations or requirements by health officials, many people are hesitant to wear a face mask in public because it feels awkward and ugly and uncool.

However, as communities begin to open up, ubiquitous use of facial coverings will be critical to preventing new waves of coronavirus outbreaks.

We need to accelerate social adoption of wearing face masks in order to prevent additional waves of infections.

This project, Free Face Mask Creator, will make it easy for individuals and businesses to design their own unique face masks that will give them pride and enjoyment so they hopefully overcome the hesitation to wear masks in public.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?

In communities that are beginning to lift shelter-in-place requirements without having adequate testing, face masks are the best defense we can take as individuals.

Specifically, this project will target people who think face masks are dumb or boring or uncool, by allowing them to design their own cool or clever or flamboyant mask they can easily make at home.

Additionally, this project will lower the barrier for small local businesses to design and self-make branded masks for their employees in small batches.

What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?

Mass-produced professional-quality face masks (N95, surgical, etc.) are facing shortages and often not easily accessible to the general public as they are being reserved for front-line and essential workers. Additionally, they are usually plainly designed, so they are usually avoided by people who are hesitant to wear masks because they don't like the look of them.

Hand-sewn fabric masks are becoming more and more popular, and many people are making masks out of colorful fabrics to give their mask a bit more "pop". However, finding that perfect fabric pattern for your fabric mask can be quite challenging unless you already had it handy.

Recently, there have been some custom-designed masks that are being worn by artists or celebrities. However, these designs were made using one-off templates designed by that one person. Which means the time involved in making the custom design mask was quite high.

This project aims to lower the time-investment for making a custom-designed mask, so that many more people (grandparents, kids, teens, small businesses, etc.) can create their own awesome masks.

There are already many print shops offering custom face mask design tools (see links below). However, they all require that you purchase your mask from them, they make it, and then ship it to you. This project will allow you to make your design, print out the template, and then make the mask yourself.

Additionally, since this will be an open source mask design tool, it can be embedded into other websites to allow many other websites to offer and promote custom mask design to further accelerate the adoption of wearing masks.

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

• Coronavirus in Austin: Continue wearing masks, avoiding gatherings, local officials say
• This mask made by a movie FX artist
• Domino’s-branded face mask

Paid mask designers (e.g. you have to buy your mask from them):

• Zazzle
• Contrado
• Signs.com

What help do you need now?

Will open github issues with a more complete list, but here's some initial items:

• 3d model that can convert a UV maps of the design onto 3d-modeled masks (of various styles).
• Video tutorials of making a mask using the templates at home.

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

• Purchase the domain (freefacemaskcreator.com) DONE
• Create a code repo for the website (ideally open-austin/freefacemaskcreator)
• Write MVP mask creator tool (almost complete, just a jekyll site)
• Write website page content (landing, about-us, etc.)
• Write 3d preview feature
• Write social media sharing links feature
• Write embedding docs and features

How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?

danielroesler on OpenAustin Slack

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Project management

Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:

Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).

• [x] Create this idea issue
• [x] Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
• [ ] Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.

Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:

Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:

• [x] Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
• [ ] Take 30 minutes to complete Open Leadership 101
• [ ] Create a GitHub repository. Ask for help setting up permissions if you want your repository to be within the Open Austin Github organization.
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• [ ] Create a team for your core contributors
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• [ ] Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @leadership on Slack to get this set up.
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Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:

To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.

• [ ] In your README, link to the Open Austin Code of Conduct or write your own code of conduct.
• [ ] Create file: LICENSE to give your project an open license, allowing for sharing and remixing.
• [ ] Create file: CONTRIBUTING.md so others know how they can contribute.
• [ ] Create an easily shareable project management artifact, like a Civic Tech Canvas or Open Canvas
• [ ] Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:
• [ ] Tell the City of Austin. If your idea is in a shareable format and can benefit people around the city, go to that site and follow the instructions on the bottom of the page to showcase your work there.

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.

[diafygi]

Closing this project. Unfortunately, never had an adequate amount of time to work on it, and the time for it seems to have passed as most people have accepted mask wearing (and those who haven't are refusing for political reasons, so a fun wesite like this would be unlikely to persuade them otherwise).