“Let’s Design for the Developing Countries”

We had a brief brainstorm this morning on possible categories and areas of intervention for a sound and design project. Along with suggestions like designing credit card readers, CPR machines, games, someone suggested “designing for the developing countries”. I was confused and amazed at the same time. Coming from India, I am very curious to know what people’s perception of the country is and this particular statement disturbed me on a lot of different levels. I was amazed how  people think designing for the developing countries is a category in itself and how ALL of these countries could be put in one bucket. It sounded as lame as saying “lets design for Sweden”. What’s even better is when the ideas started pouring in for cheap products for poor people. I wonder if that truly is the perception in the west of what design could be for the developing countries. I don’t know if its the shear lack of awareness or high handedness that makes people think this way.

NODE- GUI Project for Umeå Police

I recently concluded a project for Umeå Police’s District Command and Communication Center. It was a GUI project aimed at providing a much smarter and intelligent interface for their work. The project was done in a team with Adam Henriksson, Doris Feurstein and Marlene Kettner. More on this project along with the process once we get a go ahead from the police. As for now, this brief snippet from the project.

Shadow At My Feet

My vision on future of navigation

I have one of the most exciting jobs in the world, I create products for all sorts of people… from different socio-economic backgrounds, age-groups & demographics. The part I enjoy the most is creating experiences that redefine certain aspects of people’s lives & affects them in a positive manner. My proudest new creation is the “Navi”, it’s still a prototype & undergoing user-trials right now… actually only one user… “me”. The biggest problem that I have had with technology in my life is the way that it creeps in to other facets as well. The biggest reason for creating Navi was to try to create something that would assist me through the day, without it getting in my way.. it probably sounds hypothetical so let me run you through a day in my life & explain how Navi assists me.

Navi wakes me up at the appropriate time by monitoring my REM sleep cycles, it takes into account the time that I actually dozed off & wakes me up at approximately the same time every morning for work, ensuring that I have enough time to get ready. While I take a shower Navi quickly gathers information on what the weather forecast for the day is like, so that I can dress appropriately & be prepared for drastic weather changes. I have two portable prototypes for Navi, one on my phone & the other on my watch.. I wanted to develop two concepts so that I could validate if it was more intuitive to have a device that was more technology oriented or if it needed to be more ubiquitous.

Once I leave home Navi asks me if I want to take the shortest route to work or if I want to take the scenic route while picking up a cup of coffee. I have a presentation to make at noon that needs a few finishing touches so I go with the fastest route to save me time. Navi syncs with the public transport system & tells me that the subway is pretty packed & suggests that I should take the bus instead, it tells me that I need to make it to the bus-stop in 7 minutes or I’ll have to wait 13 minutes for the next bus. The way I have configured Navi is to allow me to chose how it works for me, if I wasn’t in such a hurry I might have chosen to take the scenic route which goes past a flower show. I don’t want to be prompted or nudged faster.. I just want to be able to make better decisions after being presented the available options.

Navi also acts like a home-manager, telling me on my way back from work that I have an 8 minute wait before the subway arrives & that I should probably pick up some milk form the grocery store… what I love about this interaction is that Navi simply isn’t acting like a to-do list, rather its keeping a stock of what supplies are running low at home & simply suggesting that I should pick up that item. With these smartly cataloged requirements I don’t end up carrying tonnes of groceries & supplies in huge shopping bags & I never feel that I’m running out of stuff at home either.

One of the major goals that I have set for Navi, is that it needs to feel as ubiquitous as sunglasses… it’s got to feel as unobtrusive as putting on a pair of shades when the sun is too bright & taking them off when you are indoors. There are so many times when I feel the heavy overlay of technology, at times I feel like I’m at the dinner table with sunglasses on… out of place & out of context.

I truly believe with the race for better search algorithms & data mining, the essence of what is being “searched” for or the topic on which guidance is sought is lost to a certain extent. I often wonder at times about my childhood & how my dad would put me in the car & off we went searching for our destination. These were days without GPS, cell-phones or even accurate city-maps, we relied on basic human communication… asking for directions, following instructions like “take a right, then the 1st left followed by the 3rd right..”. Why I look back so fondly at those times is because of the richness of information that I got from interacting with real people with their personal experiences. It included suggestions for alternatives, alternate routes, new options & we probably even got to know if these places had moved to other locations.

I finally hope to make Navi smart enough to be able to differentiate what high internet rankings are & what would be high on my preference list. I really hope that someday I wont have to sit through a boring action movie just because 500 action star fans recommended it highly. I really would rather watch that French-Indie film that’s only been reviewed by 2 people, if it was more suited to my tastes. Anyway those plans are for the future, right now I’m off to meet a couple of my friends at this new cafe that Navi suggested. I have my jacket on because I’m told that its an open-terrace place & the nights going to be a bit chilly. I’m taking the scenic route.. its a lot longer & less efficient but this one takes me past a street performer who plays the most heart rendering jazz this side of town. For all you know Navi has picked a fast-food joint & the street performer is long gone, but that’s what I enjoy.. playing an almost parent-like role in bringing up my navigation device.. I plan on calling it “Chayya”.. it means ‘shadow’ in Hindi. I feel its an apt name…always there. Sometimes a big presence & at other times almost invisible, but it never gets in your way, its quiet & reassuring, which is just the thing that I feel will help people navigate the world better.

“I don’t know”…Really?

In today’s day and age where internet and hence vast resource of information is omnipresent on our mobiles, laptops, iPads, kindles and other tiny gadgets, how relevant is the reasoning that ‘you don’t know’. Would it at some point become a part of our culture to check up on our devices what ‘it’ really is before we utter those three words. Would it be taken for granted that we know it all? or CAN know it all? Would anyone be ready to hear that someone doesn’t know about ‘it’. Would those three words become a sign of ignorance or incompetency? Well…I really don’t know.

Two Right Hands- An Experiment in Ambidexterity

For a long time I have struggled drawing symmetric objects absolutely symmetric and drawing the same thing twice in its mirror image always seemed sort of boring to me. I must confess that I haven’t mastered this skill in spite of years of design drawing.

To tackle this, I tried to draw symmetrical figures with both my hands at the same time. I realised that it is quite natural for both hands to work parallel and in mirror to each other. After a little struggle initially, in a few minutes my left hand was surprisingly well-coordinated with my right one.

In the experiment here, I used a pen and a pencil to differentiate the output later.

I am guessing that if I train myself long enough, I might be able to make pretty neat symmetrical drawings in half the time

This is easy enough for anyone to try….so if you do try your hands at ambidexterity, please let me hear about your experience.

Why Study History of Design?

Most of us in design fraternity have at some point contemplated on history of design. Some of us did in school, watching power of 10 by Charles & Ray Eames, others while on projects trying to figure out a logic in the evolution of a specific product. I did my history of design study on the idea of time and how it manifested and reflected through different products and architecture over time. One important learning through this exercise was how political, social and economic conditions (religious too sometimes) along with more obvious technical advancement  and several others affect evolution of any product.

This one learning makes such a strong case in going back and looking at the evolution of products in most projects. Analysing the before mentioned conditions that lead to the current form of the product could help us in two ways. One, it will tell us how this product is going to evolve based on the current trends of its shaping factors. Two, if we look at all other ideas for that product that have been discarded over time, not because they were less efficient but because they didn’t go well with the shaping factors at that time but sometimes were way better than the one that went ahead, could give us a strong breakthrough.

I know while doing most professional projects there isn’t much time to do this kind of a study but looking at the potential value it could create, it might just be worth the time and effort.

On a similar note, here is an interesting movie made by the Found Collective on the evolution of mobile phones.

Workshops Licenses

I didn’t get a chance to write about this earlier, but before we could start making any cool stuff, we had to go through workshop training in all of our workshops- wood, metal and interaction design.

For wood workshop we made a box out of a birch log. I had worked more with metal during my industrial design degree than with wood, so it was quite fascinating to do some of the processes that I had never done before and make a finished box right from a wooden log, even though some of the machines were quite daunting. It was refreshing to find subtle patterns in the wooden planks to match and glue together.  I have always looked up to Scandinavia when it came to  elegant wood work and I was glad that I got a peek into it during this workshop. In India and at my old school (National Institute of Design), teak and rose wood are more common types to work with, so it was a new experience working with birch.

Metal workshop license demanded work on lathe and milling machine primarily. We started with working on PVC rods to make something that Shelagh refers to as ‘Princess’s tower’ due to it’s obvious resemblance. This part was more to get familiar with the material and the machines. The bigger task for metal license was to make a clamp out of stainless steel. I have worked quite extensively with lathe in the past so it was fun to use them again, they are undoubtedly my favorite machines.

To prevent us from helping any lazy soul in future, we were required to air brush our names on the clamps .

Our license to the interaction workshop was much quicker. It was half an hour’s task of soldering a tiny circuit board…which according to Rickard (‘introduction to prototyping’ faculty/ more like our buddy actually ) we will be using sometime in future. 

Touch of Colour

Very few things these days are more thrilling for me than controlling electronic behaviour of stuff. These are some of the first things I have started playing with…still discovering the magic of sensors!

8-bit for Christmas

This was a quick workshop taken by Camille Mousette (guchmu.com/) on a super packed day of user testing session and literature circle. We were exploring working with ATtiny microcontroller to produce ‘annoying christmas music’. Camille’s initial idea was to have all our music devices activated with IR sensor at the same time, but I guess we were all too fried by the end of it.  It was the first time I worked with any micro controllers besides Arduino and also the first time working with fabulous copper tape…they do make life a hell lot easier.

Peer Portrait Exhibition

After many weeks of using different mediums to represent each other, it was time to put all the portraits together and see each person through the filters of all of those mediums. The exhibition was decided in two parts. All the static representations for each person, text, photograph and poster were put up on a triangular prism and all the motion graphics were projected on a screen through a really cool interactive podium designed by Jules, Doris and Kilian. 

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