betweensketches

Process work and documentation of the thesis project is available at:

https://issuu.com/betweensketches/docs/degreeproject-betweensketches

Digital technology is pervasive and continues to be a part of our everyday lives. As much as we benefit from it, they call for our attention, interrupt the activities that we are engaged in; We choose to stop and disengage from the activity we are doing, attend to it and then bring our attention back and then continue to engage in the activity. How can interactions between the user and the artefact be more fluent, non - disruptive and less attention seeking? How can this “fluency” be researched in the context of a body?

This project is inspired by the paper on “Fluency as an Experiential Quality” by Jonas Löwgren. Fluency, a use quality or aesthetic interaction quality is a concept developed by Jonas Löwgren with respect to the use of digital artefacts. He defines fluency as the degree of gracefulness with which the user deals with multiple demands for her attention and action, particularly in augmented spaces where the user moves through shifting ecologies of people, physical objects, and digital media. With respect to fluency, I chose to understand the role of body in bringing out fluency in interactions with digital artefacts while also engaged in a bodily intensive context. 

The research focus for this project is similar to the Quiet Calls - Talking Silently on Mobile Phones, a study and a prototype set in a social context to understand and explore the interaction possibilities for graceful transitions from being part of an ongoing meeting to attend to an incoming phone call. 

The research area and focus of this project is to study fluency as an experiential quality in a physical context such as climbing the stairs. 

Through this project, I aimed to address: 

If, how and what is the role of body that is already engaged in an bodily intensive activity such as climbing the stairs, thus bring about fluency in interactions with digital technology (through artefacts) while attending to an incoming phone call? 

What are the alternative possibilities of interactions and experiences that can be explored with wearable technology while exploring the role of body in the interactions with the digital technology in the context of design - climbing the stairs? 

In this service design and experience design studio class, we chose to study the availability and accessibility of information for passengers in Indian Railways from the booking stage until the time the passenger reaches the destination. Applying UX principles and service design frameworks, charting out customer journey maps, we learnt how service based experiences happen. By identifying gaps and opportunities, we proposed a detailed UX blueprint that applies across different touch points of the service.  

Team members: 2, Process documentation available as PDF.

In-situ: Collaborative Diet chart making for preventive healthcare

Process work available for this project. (Includes sketches & ideations, task flow, information architecture, low-fi wireframes)

Team members: 2

Interactive prototype of this design is available at

https://invis.io/T693X823G#/200008264_Home_Screen

Sustainable product service system design - Distributed health system.

Location: Channapatna

Process documentation available for this project. Team members: 3

Interaction Design for Screens - An end-to-end conceptualization, research, visual and interaction design of a real-world design situation by applying Interaction Design principles, frameworks and methods.

Self initiated project. Process work available for this project.

In this project, we were introduced to primary and secondary research methods. Through field visits and applying one or more research methods that were relevant to the context, we explored how research methods can be employed to observe, communicate, record data, analyze, synthesis to make meaning and generate concepts by brainstorming and ideations. 

Design research workshop, a team project.

Involved in the understanding of the product and re-design of the website for Desktop and Mobile devices.

Duration of internship: 8 weeks.

Applying Visual Design and Interaction Design principles - Information Architecture and Task-flows to propose a redesign of Indian Passport Seva Website.

How do we look beyond mobile screens, laptops? How can digital information be made a part of everyday objects? 

For this project, we sketched with code to make story-telling finger puppet(s), a physical mock-up of the products using IoT (ThingSpeak Cloud Platform) and Arduino UNO and Arduino wifi shield.

Team members: 3.

Service Design Thinking; Self Initiated project.
Process documentation available for this project.

How do we understand messy and complex contexts through design? Complex in terms of the infrastructure, systems, one that is heavily influenced by the behaviors of users. An example of such context is a freeway system that is inspired from the west. How does such a infrastructure solution place itself in a context like India? What influences or changes or effects does it bring to the contexts? In this project, I explored the context to understand possible techno-tales that can be thought of, with respect to road safety on freeways.

Self initiated project. Process work available for this project.