Industrial - Bachelor
SANARA is a low-profile Individual First Aid Kit pouch for people in remote areas, from soldiers and police to an emerging civilian market of hunters, bushwalkers, and more. Its two-piece, tear-away construction has no clips or zips to slow access under pressure, and its self-healing Squadron® material lets every component be replaced repeatedly.
Outdoor recreation in Australia continues to grow. In 2025, 3.8 million adults went bushwalking, and over 640,000 Australians hunt or shoot recreationally, contributing $2.4 billion to the economy each year. These activities increasingly take people beyond mobile coverage, driving a growing need for injury preparedness. Meanwhile, police and military personnel across Australia and New Zealand face conditions that are more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than ever. Yet despite major advances in materials, the Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs) these users rely on still let them down: cheap components wear out years before the fabric does, and some officers leave their kit in the vehicle rather than carry the bulk.
SANARA aims to modernise the IFAK through user-centred design. It targets the most demanding users, law enforcement and military personnel, on the basis that a kit meeting their standards will also serve the wider civilian market. With little peer-reviewed research on IFAK design, the project drew on grey literature to identify four persistent issues: construction quality, integration flexibility, form factor simplicity and manufacturing sustainability. It then investigated these through benchmarking and through interviews and observations with end users and industry experts.
To understand the needs, constraints and everyday realities of IFAK users, the project used both primary and secondary research methods. Qualitative research took the form of semi-structured interviews with end users and industry experts. Four interviews were conducted, alongside two observations of how end users carry their kits in the field. Twelve market-leading IFAKs were benchmarked, and the findings were synthesised through abductive thematic analysis.
Depending on the scenario… like if I
QLD Drug Enforcement Officer
was going into a search warrant or a
tactical intercept… I would probably
leave my IFAK back in my vehicle…
the reason: … mobility.
This Velcro has come off on
NZ Infantryman
both ends. You can see where the
stitching once was… [this is after]
like a week out of the year … just
strictly [training] with the IFAK.
An IFAK only saves a life if it’s on the person who needs it. Research found that some officers leave their kit in the vehicle because it gets in the way, gambling that they won’t need it. SANARA removes that trade-off. It sits low and close to the body, so wearing it stops being a calculated risk and becomes the default. In a life-or-death situation, when nobody knows how much time is left, that difference matters most.
Law enforcement, armed forces, and civilians alike face the same problem: a serious injury, far from help, with only what they’re carrying. SANARA serves all of them with one platform. Interchangeable patch cards adapt the pouch to the role, from a police vest to a hunting belt, without changing how it works. Australia’s outdoor gear market is worth around $12.3 billion, and the tactical and outdoor markets increasingly overlap. That opens a path for trusted, professional-grade trauma care to reach the millions of Australians who head beyond mobile coverage each year.
SANARA was developed with the support of an Australian tactical equipment manufacturer. The pouch was shaped by the people who make, sell and carry these kits every day. It answers a gap the benchmarking made clear: not one of the twelve market-leading IFAKs was designed for repair. For manufacturers, that’s a chance to stand apart in a mature market by offering a product built on longevity rather than replacement.
Today’s IFAKs are treated as consumables. A single failed strip of Velcro can send an otherwise sound pouch, made of fabric rated to last for years, to landfill. SANARA breaks that cycle. With some heat and pressure, any worn component can be replaced, so the pouch lasts as long as its toughest material, not its weakest.
SANARA turns the most essential pouch a person can carry into one they’ll actually wear, can rely on under pressure, and won’t need to throw away.
Ethan is a team-focused Industrial Designer who values what works over what he likes. A self-described “design chameleon”, he aims for solutions so well integrated they become invisible. Multidisciplinary studio projects taught him that the best outcomes come from bringing out the best in others.
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