Pool Baton

The market is full of pool safety devices now — cameras, sonar, wearables, algorithms that promise to spot a struggling swimmer before you do. The technology has gotten good enough that it's easy to see why they're everywhere. But the more I looked, the more one question stuck with me: just because we can put this much technology between us and our kids, should we?

I kept coming back to where the responsibility actually sits. A device that watches the water for you can just as easily give everyone permission to look away. I wasn't sure these products were encouraging a watchful eye. They might be quietly replacing it.

What the research showed

Drowning is more common than I expected, and most of the time it happens to children. When I looked closer at how it happens, the same pattern kept coming up: a group of adults is together at the pool with their kids, and one person ends up carrying the weight of watching everyone. That person is never actually chosen. The role just lands on someone, and everyone else assumes it's covered.

The approach

I decided to try solving this with as little technology as possible — working with a behavior people already understand, and making the responsibility visible and shared instead of assumed.

Pool Baton is built around four ideas:

• Active supervision. One adult is clearly designated to watch the children, so attention has a home instead of being split across the group.
• Responsibility rotation. The baton gets passed at regular intervals, so no single person gets tired or complacent.
• Cue-triggered behavior. Holding the baton is a physical reminder that you're the one watching right now.
• Social accountability. Because the baton is visible, the whole group can see who has it, and that shared awareness keeps everyone honest.

It's affordable, it works with no app, Wi-Fi, or setup, and it's as useful at the beach as it is at a pool.

What I learned

I don't think low tech is the only answer here, and I'm sure the camera-based products save lives too. But working on this shifted how I think about safety problems. Sometimes the gap isn't missing technology — it's missing clarity about who's responsible. Naming that, and turning it into something people can physically hold, mattered more than any sensor I could have added.

Want to know more about this project? Reach out.