Brands take away the flavor

Every city or town had a market place or the Mall road equivalent with a unique flavor of the place and character to its shopping spaces and the things sold. When one has visitors from another town, they would all make a trip to an MG road or Main Street or Linking road or the 17 sector, to check out something which they don’t find in their streets back home or things unique to this town like chikkon kurtas or kolhapuries etc.
Today you walk these roads/streets and find the same brands and the same clothes or accessories any city you go to. Nothing new or novel about visiting a market to shop or browse in a new town. And they talk of shopping experience. Brands can get so boring!!

Design for Need...not Business

There is something fundamentally being missed.
IT media devices and systems are spread across demographics doing their own bit…as programmed. There are researchers in industry and universities working 24/7 (cliché of the century) on the future of these systems and devices extrapolating formulations of the next ethereal environment.
The mobile today allows you to connect with others, gives information, is a personal assistant, etc; the PC connects you to the world web, helps in computing, designing, plays games with you, etc; TV gives you news, infotainment, etc; Ipods, radios, etc provide music, information and so on; and newspapers, magazines doing their own thing.
This was only to put the context in place before I ask the hollow question!
The primary need of food, clothing and shelter, lets for the time being assume has been satisfied for everyone in the world. Then what is the next level of need and are we satisfying it?

A housewife of a mid/upper middle home has all these devices and uses these as situation or mood permits. For information on baby health or to see photos of a family wedding she checks the internet on the PC, to speak to her husband or sister from anywhere in the house uses the mobile and watches soaps on TV. Have we satisfied her needs, one might say, yes we have, her information and entertainment needs. But if one were to probe deeper into her dynamic archetypal self or a collective of such and understand her next level of needs we might come up with propositions for a whole new model of product system. At this point I wouldn’t want to call it anything, but for dialogue sake let’s call it the ‘box’. Here the ‘box’ would grow out of pure need based thinking rather than a business based thinking. The earthen pot has not evolved out of a business need but a fundamental human need. If one were to apply this philosophy then the ‘box’ will be a more meaningful provider. Convergence of technology is being talked about and being implemented today, but it seems to me that it has a business need approach more than the actual human need.
To illustrate an example, a large pc component manufacturer had initiated a project of providing computers for rural school children in India involving other technology and design partners. The PC was designed, fabricated and tested, but the project was later put on hold or shelved as per paper news for business reasons. Now the whole idea in this case was satisfying a need of providing PCs for rural school children, but the point being missed out is that the object or device has already been defined before establishing the real need. Maybe because the project was floated by a PC tech company!!
There is something hollow about this business of tech devices being flooded; if one were to identify the right ingredients of the ‘box’ we have a more meaningful future idea.
These thoughts are my personal deliberations through observations and trying to make connections of things around and more importantly instinctive!!(read Indian or rather human)

Humanize

These thoughts triggered from a meeting I attended and I started thinking about usability vs adoptability.
These times of technology providing innumerable services and products which have eased our daily lives has been and is being further improved for better and better usability. Today tech products are a part and requirement of the generation. Lots has been talked about and invested into innovation for this generation by marketers and researchers.
Lets take the web and mobile media which are as big inventions as the electric bulb. With all the engineering, design and research behind, it remains 'conformed'.
They follow templates and constraints directed by technology to the extent of giving style guides and standards for even Look & Feel. Now that’s boring, especially when we are addressing this generation.
This generation I believe is rational and honest and above all, have choices. Therefore giving a ‘my space’ page which is no different from the newspaper is technology limited.

The idea here is to get emotive. People share less nowadays, with all the urbanized socio-cultural shifts. They share on the tech media in a pseudo community. Emotive interfaces, different from customized, would be something the user would like to adopt rather than giving a usable interface that he can adapt to.
Here I would like to give an example: A probable application or a feature would be to ask the user who he or she IS ('...and UR', as opposed to login) before flashing the home page and providing things that user can relate, share and be with in terms of content and presentation. This question the web service would ask can have drop down options of different categories which could provide a huge qualitative database of the emotion kind. So the shift needs to be from improved usability to improvisation for adaptability.

Design Triggers 1

Random Object

You are in a rush to park your car in your driveway and the gate invariably doesn't stay in place. You look around and find a a stone, wedge it to the gate.
This quick solution and the hero of the event, the stone have put together an essential detail. Also the selection of the device is not random, you tend to identify one which is jagged wedge like and fits well into the gap.
The random nameless object lying around in your garden for years has now become a product, your tool. You realize it was your buddy when suddenly one day you find it missing, and you would always crib to your self, ' that was a perfect piece' and shout at the gardener for it.

Metaphor

U have finished your work in the kitchen and look around for something to latch the old weather worn door in place. You find a spoon and just slip it in the latch. Done.
The object, the spoon has done the job of locking as it has an appropriate shape to slip in and stop. Also a nice finger grip to pull it off.
The object besides all this is saying something more.....maybe about the contents of the room and the activity.
This casual spoon act can trigger bundle of ideas and thoughts to work on.

Applied science

The rear view mirror is one of my favorites. It fascinates me. Its just a convex mirror fitted to the incredible complex machine doing a life saving job. Science and simplicity at its best.
Its a twin of the wind screen capturing everything behind , sincerely doing its job, engaging yet not looking back at the driver!
Very soon technology will out date it taking away its buddy relationship with the driver.

Mark

The grand and mammoth temple of Tanjore must have engaged several stone and wood carvers, temple artisans & architects working on dedicated modules of the structure.
In the orderly proportions and measurements of architectural elements was freedom of expression in the figurative carvings seen on the walls, pillars, gopura, etc.
But this off beat carving in front at a random location is vague and doesn't fit a pattern.
Was it a mark to ward off an evil eye, or symbol of luck or superstition or was the carver playing a prank.

Walk-in Rack

It was in Tanjore temple premises I found this interesting system of footwear leaving method. The designer, the shoe-keeper himself thought of this numbered grid idea.
Though there is scope for improvement, the idea is intelligent and lateral which can trigger many parallel concepts for other domains.

Thinking Mason

If the door was not visible in the picture would you see it as the doorway! You would. A deliberate and conditioned pattern of laying by the mason suggests that he is a thinking man. Does he want you pause at the entrance to check whether your feet are clean or pause to view and check out the room or is it simply his signature style in flooring art.

People Friendly

When ever I went to an MNC bank the chained barricades to form ques put me off and a red line at the end of it telling you to wait for your turn was intimidating. While working on visual merchandising solutions for a bank I decided to tackle this (though the client ignored it). This was one of the solutions I cracked which would, guide people, allow for branding/ promo and liven up the space.

Mindset

This door mat I found in a guest house in Delhi.
What would be your first reaction. Depends on beliefs, context, culture.
Whoever the designer, has challenged the mindset, maybe, or just done it for Fun!!

Romantic Thought

My friend Dhuli in college applied for a design competition for which the topic was WIND.
He chose to work on Paper Weights. This selection I believe is a totally lateral thought.
Solution: A regular form with a flag, when there is wind the flag would flutter and the paper weight trys communicate with you.

Semiotica 1

The task was to design planters for the NID campus in Bangalore. After a lot of design deliberation I questioned the object's participation with the surronds and the design people on campus, I said its going to be a tea cup.

Where Time Stands Still

Far from the madding crowd as the old phrase goes, is Dubbaguda, a self contained small hamlet in the midst of the hills of Adilabad district of AP, India.
30 km from Adilabad town and bus or jeep ride of 45 minutes across dry copper coloured landscape and blue sky, you get off at this fresh ground water bore well point, with a view of Dubbaguda on the hill side across a spring water stream. You walk crossing the stream along cotton fields and reach this lovely set of houses, clean, paved in dung and bamboo thatch. You go sit in one of the patios of the houses and time stands still for next 15 days we spent there.
People of Dubbaguda belong to the kolam tribe of the region engaged primarily in agriculture cultivating cotton and pulses. Since bamboo is abundant in the forests around, it is a common household material used by all to make thatches, baskets of different sizes, fishing traps, etc. There are about 70 families in this hamlet.
The most fascinating thing of Dubbaguda is; the place is clean, no plastic wastes, no open dirty drainages, no TVs, no mobile signal, the bore water is mineral water and is very tasty clean, they don’t wash clothes or vessels at the bore but at the stream,no perceived politics as they all belong to the same community maybe, no daily drinking, happy drinking on festivals only, mango crop is plucked only after doing a ritualistic puja to the tree, same for tree they make their local liquor out of! They shop once a week in nearby Saidpur weekly market, eat 4 to 5 jawar roties with vegetable curry in the morning before work and eat again only in the evening after 8, mutton or chicken once a week, women wear captivating tattoo below the lower lip and above the eyebrows, there are rmp doctors visiting daily, a school for children with mid day meals, electricity though not so regular, no regular temple, mosque or church, only their village spiritual installations on the periphery of the hamlet, dead people are buried with all their belonging in the persons own land with not much cry, they smoke !! and are existential. This is the life in Dubbaguda in times when the world outside is at acidic pace.