Braille phone for the visually impaired
by Kirti Goel
Technology is about facilitating tasks. Design is about enabling users to accomplish those tasks and hence making them feel empowered. Sumit Dagar, an interaction designer and recently announced as a TED 2011 Fellow, has been working to present technology so as to enable the blind. About 314 million people are visually impaired worldwide, 45 million [...]
Low-cost self-diagnosis tool for rural India
by Ria Rajan
Primary health centers are the cornerstone of the rural health care system. In 1991, India had about 22,400 primary health centers, 11,200 hospitals, and 27,400 clinics. These facilities are part of a tiered health care system that funnels more difficult cases into urban hospitals while attempting to provide routine medical care to the vast majority [...]
Designing Chairs vs Changing the World
by Shagun Singh
When I look back at my time in undergrad school, amongst the endless hours of work and play, I think of the time spent at the canteen. Canteen was the place where we drank tonnes of highly caffeinated chai, sketched design solutions with twigs on the loose soil and chatted about things that interested us. [...]
“A Grand Idea – Inhabit” Competition Brief
by Shagun Singh
What is this competition about? This competition is focused on design solutions that can change our immediate urban environment into places that we can truly inhabit. The first series of ‘The Grand Idea Initiative’ is called ‘INHABIT‘. The ultimate challenge of which is to create solutions that introduce fun, sustainable, and innovative ways people use [...]
BPL StudyLite by Studio ABD
by Ria Rajan
In India, power cuts during exam time is every child’s biggest anxiety. One breaks into a sweat, starts pacing up and down and even goes to the extreme of praying to the Almighty; promising reforms, pledging away a life of sin and the long dreadful countdown to when the lights will turn back on. This [...]
Bambike – A Bamboo Bicycle
by Ria Rajan
Bruce Sterling’s short story The Interoperation , featured in the Technology Review published by MIT, (Massachusett’s Institute of Technology) can be briefly summarized as a tale of a future where robots build and tear down buildings based on pre-set programs and a future where people ride bamboo bicycles. In present times, this story is not [...]
ReThink Waste = Thunk in India
by Ria Rajan
India’s headcount of approximately 1.17 billion people consists of more than one-sixth of the world’s population. In a country as large as this, it is rather alarming that there is no Indian policy document, which examines waste as part of a cycle of production-consumption-recovery or perceives the issue of waste through a prism of overall [...]
Disposable mugs
by Shagun Singh
Unlike the westerners Indians use water to clean themselves after going to the toilet. However while traveling in cramped trains, the toilets have running water, but dont have containers or mugs to store the water to clean with. This unique problem has been addressed by Paul Sandeep. He designed a sustainable, disposable mug that could [...]
Chotukool – nano refrigerator for rural india
by Shagun Singh
The ChotuKool is like no other fridge. It does not have a compressor. It runs on a battery. Utensils and bottles need to be loaded into this 43-litre cool box from the top. It weighs only 7.8 kg and costs only Rs 3,200. A product of Godrej & Boyce, the fridge was co-created with the [...]
The Sun King Solar Lantern – Energy everyone can afford
by Shagun Singh
Greenlight Planet is a startup based in Mumbai that sells affordable solar LED lights targeted at rural India. The sustainable solar design is a substitute for the kerosene lamps widely used in rural india. The lamp provides 16 hrs of electricity on a single days charge and is known to be twice as bright as [...]
Tata Swach – Water purifier for the masses
by Shagun Singh
Another Tata venture after the Tata Nano car and the Tata low income housing. The water purifier is targeted at the lower income rural classes. The product has been named “Swach” that also mean “clean” in Hindi and doesnt require electricity or running water. The two versions of the 19-liter Swach container, priced at 749 [...]
Daily Dump – Compost at home
by Shagun Singh
As a service, Daily Dump helps you manage your household waste and convert it to useful high-quality compost. It supports you with flexible service plans to achieve your goal of becoming a green citizen. Daily Dump is involved in developing a range of composting solutions. The Daily Dump products are designed to ensure that you [...]
The Montblanc $25,000 Gandhi pen controversy
by Shagun Singh
German luxury penmaker Montblanc launched a limited-edition commemorative fountain pen in honor of Gandhi this week, just in time for the 140th anniversary of the birth of the Mahatma — or “Great Soul” — on Friday. The price for the pen happens to be $24,763. The decision to turn a man who shunned foreign-made products [...]
The Bio-Mass Breakthrough
by Shagun Singh
The Chulha is a cooking stove that uses bio mass like dung, wood, agricultural residue and coal as fuel. It is used widely in the rural villages in India. The gases produced are highly toxic and around 1.6 million people in India die annually from smoke inhalation. People from Philips Design Team in India designed [...]
