After 18 months in the making, our client Tiller Design are thrilled to announce their latest piece of work, Shark Shield FREEDOM Surf, has hit the market.

From the first sketch to prototype and final production, the product design brief and project posed a number of significant industrial design challenges. The Tiller Design team overcame each of these to deliver a product that each and every surfer in Australia should be proud to use.

Some key product design and development challenges included:

– Develop a sealed waterproof enclosure: Our experience in rugged waterproofing on previous
projects including Epirbs for sub mariner fleets, ruggedised mining equipment and micro engineered sealed medical devices, enabled us to create the compact sealed waterproof enclosure. This sits inside a grip pad and does not impact the size or surfers expectations of a traditional grip pad.

– Design a system that could be retrofitted onto existing boards: In order to remove the need for any board modifications we developed the world’s first adhesive antenna. This is applied by the user, is extremely thin (Only 500 microns thick), yet durable and conductive in certain areas. Several prototypes designs were made and tested before the final was approved.

– Create a design that does not impact the surfer’s experience: Our design team kept everything low profile, thin and easy to use. We designed a grip pad, following the conventional grip pad design but allowed easy insertion and removal of the electronics unit. This allows multiple boards to be fitted with the low costs grip pads and electrodes, while the main electronics unit can move across different boards.