Case Studies
Prototyping
Testbed for Organisational Behavior researchers
using ML/AI with
Purdue University, USA
#P1
Context
As the design engineering community is intersectional with its expertise, there is a dearth of Socio-behavioral research in understanding the decision making process that goes on in a team comprising both technical and design specialists.
Storyboarding
Build with Balu
The promo video
For the promotion of a 2-month long masterclass by Balu Subramaniam on wood-working and artisanal techniques of innovation, this video was designed to encapsulate two major elements: the old ways of making with the new tools of today.
Wireframing and Feature Design using Balsamiq
Aesthetics and Style Mock Up
using InVision
Research
#R1
The Indo-Japan Driver Exchange
Narrative Journalism
A creative non-fiction journalism project done for GlobalHobo, an Australian travel magazine: The project involved Immersion methodology, User Interviews and Storyboarding for a commentary on the socioeconomic and cultural state of Japan ahead of the Tokyo2020 Olympic games.
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Sardar Ji Autodriver: *Practising British English from Youtube* “Beauuuu-tiful Landscape, Beauuuu…”
Gangtok Lad: “But Sardar Ji, Japanese don’t speak English like that.”
Telangana Bus Guy: “What are you saying man, they don’t speak it at all. Urghh.”
Sardar Ji Autodriver: “Arre, who’s telling my family that? I should look like a Foreign-return man now, regardless where we were.”
Faced with a declining population and an economy that’s still the third highest in the world, Japan’s President has finally been successful in passing the Immigration Bill. Since the economic boom in the 1990s, Japan has been trying to overcome its labour shortage by re-employing retired workers for low-skilled jobs, encouraging part-time positions and bringing in blue-collar workers from overseas.
The idea is to augment the book reading experience for readers of paperback/hardbound editions, with the help of targeted acoustic and visual prompts. The project was a part of a presentation at FabLab Fest 2017, Toulouse, which is one of Europe’s biggest Maker movement celebrations.
Also, building community engagement using context-specific trivia and employing existing social media resources like Goodreads and Twitter is one of the distinctive features for the app-based product.
Design
ANE
A Novel Experience
#D1
She turned the page and a slow and sinister beat played out right as her heartbeat jumped at the words in front of her eyes, the scene vividly etched in her mind...
Why don't we add to our reading adventures?
#D2
ALZheal
Caring for Alzheimer's
Design
ALZheal is a combination of windows phone app and smart band/watch that is designed keeping Alzheimer’s patients as well as their caretakers in mind. It helps them find their way home, keeps a record of their medicines, food intake, reminds them about their meetings and other easily forgettable things in daily life.
User Flow Diagram
Research and Design Journey
As Alzheimer's is a disease with an uncertain progression model, it is commonly detected and tracked using cognitive assessment tests. The major challenge as a team lead that was faced here, was to bracket the patient/user journey into categorized behaviors and incidents.
The project research involved User Shadowing, profiling, and survey interviews with stakeholders like Dementia patients, caretakers and doctors to develop a thorough user journey map, stakeholder analysis, market evaluation, value proposition and research for the tech stack to be used.
#R2
Maker Community profiles
Ethnographic Research
Commissioned by Workbench Projects Pvt Ltd. for their company brochure. The project involved stakeholder mapping, demographic user interviews and persona profiling. The 10 personas are inspired by real people and are reflective of characteristics often found in a certain category of maker in the ecosystem. My role had been to identify and verbally paint the caricature of these dominant personas.
Research
A graphical representation of the movement of topics spoken about by a single speaker in a conversation
The goal of this project has been to improve the research outcomes for studies conducted on these intersectional teams and has been conducted as part of an NSF grant and supervised by Jitesh Panchal, Associate Professor at DELP labs. This project is also in the process of an active academic publication. My role was more focused towards analysing speech content i.e. Discourse Analysis conducted on the DTRS7 conference dataset and literature research on Organisational Behavior methodologies like Team Design, Speech Act characteristics etc. for this project.
#P2
Upcycled Table
Using scrap harbor wood
Prototyping
designed and built primarily using scrap harbor wood panels. This project was done as part of a learning experience with a woodworking artisan and used traditional techniques of design in carpentry. The materials research concluded pine wood and particle boards to be complimenting candidates, both in terms of endurance and stress testing as well as availability. With the objectives of functionality and portability, the table is designed to fold in itself and uses elements of Japanese carpentry like the screw-less wooden joinery techniques (Mortise & Tenon and Sliding Dovetail)
Design Rationale:
- To encourage the right audience, a diversity of age and gender was skillfully portrayed, conveying competency in the same vein.
- As there is an overshadow of boredom and seriousness associated with woodworking, an element of fun was encrypted into the messaging using the approach of actually showcasing the different build processes of 'build with Balu' lettering