Portfolio - Early 2013..

Akshay Roongta // akshayroongta@gmail.comAkshay Roongta // akshayroongta@gmail.com
My name is Akshay
and I’m an aspiring
everythingist.
Product Designer
Clown
Travel Agent
Design Researcher
Photographer
Wordpress EvangelistHi }

Fixing vintage cars at 16, auditing defunct textile
mills at 18 and writing google ads at 19, I’ve had
an interesting journey getting into design.
Following are some of the projects that chronicle
my work in different roles, contexts and
organizations over the past few years.

The Potty
Project }
A user-centered research study
to understand the experience of
sanitation and hygiene in slums
in urban India.
Done as part of a team at Quicksand
Design Studio // 2010-11

Akshay Roongta // akshayroongta@gmail.com
The Potty Project } Overview and brief
About 2.5 billion people use unsafe toilets or defecate in
the open. Poor sanitation causes severe diarrhea, which
kills 1.5 million children each year. The Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation believes that smart investments in
sanitation can reduce disease, increase family incomes, keep
girls in school, help preserve the environment, and enhance
human dignity.
Keeping that in mind, they contracted Quicksand to carry
out the Potty Project which is focused on understanding
sanitation in urban slums in India from a user-centered point
of view.
The study explored people’s experiences around
sanitation and hygiene in urban slums—in particular, the
motivations, behaviors and attitudes that influence the
choice and use of facilities for defecation along with other
sanitation related activity.

The Potty Project } Research Approach
The study relies on observational, user-centered research
to gather empirical data on experiences around sanitation
and various interconnected issues. Data collection was done
using a mix of ethnographic methods—including extended
observation, semi-structured interviews, participatory
research and rich media documentation.
A set of activities were conducted in different phases to
understand users and their contexts—the experience of
using a sanitation facility or open defecation, interaction
with amenities and other users while conducting sanitation
related activities, perceptions of health and hygiene
for themselves and their family and dynamics of the
community within which they reside.
2 3
1
1. A video that briefly captures the
processes and tools that we used.
2. Neha in conversation with a
public toilet caretaker in Bangalore
3. Designing the ideal toilet, a
co-design tool we used as a
catalyst for conversation

The Potty Project } Insights
After a process of coding and synthesis using methods
such as affinity mapping, a set of insights was gleaned and
articulated.
We were thus able to document key insights on the daily
lives, routines, and preferences of users interacting with
sanitation in urban slums in India. These insights were then
placed in categories depending on what scale they were
affecting or being experienced in.
An example of an insight from the section
‘Community Cohesion’:
Insight: Tenants within a slum tend not to get too involved
in the running of sanitation, waste and health infrastructure
within a community and don’t work towards improving
them. Most of the initiative to improve these facilities comes
from home owners living in the slum.
Evidence: In Vatsaltai Nagar, Mumbai, the slum is a mix
of rented housing and small industrial units such as
shoe-makers. There are very few residents who are the
actual owners. The community toilet in this slum was in a
dilapidated state, and most tenants are reluctant to spend
any money other than the daily usage fee.
Hypothesis: Facilitating greater investment in housing
or participatory activities, through schemes such as low-
interest loans, will lead to greater involvement in the
management of community assets.
1. An infographic that captures the
typology of slums that were a part
of the study
2. A panorama that captures the
synthesis from two of the five cities
that we visited
2
1

The Potty Project } Key Areas of Intervention & Scenarios
The study culminated in early 2011 and identified
innovation opportunities within the following four areas of
community toilet management:
1. Toilet Facility Design
2. Communication
3. Operations & Maintenance Models
4. Business Models
Each of the four areas of intervention were represented
with indicative manifests, all of which are possible
interventions but in addition, are also representative of
other context-specific interventions that could evolve from
the hypotheses.
} Adopting preferred properties of the outdoors such as natural lighting,
ventilation etc could increase user adoption and reduce operational &
maintenance expenses
} Using architectural principles such as the “Panopticon” to enable
instantaneous discovery of such vandalism induce a slight feeling of being
monitored in users could reduce vandalism at toilets and lead to better
maintained & thus better used facilities
} Designing an accounting + collection system would bring greater trans-
parency around usage and revenue collections at community toilets and
improve operations
} Toilet pass uptake could increase if users were given additional incentives
such as discounts on groceries, health checkups upon consistently purchas-
ing toilet passes

The Potty Project } The Web Platform
One of the objectives of the project is to be able to make
the findings from this research accessible and easy to
disseminate within a larger community, for the purpose of
which an online publication in the form of an interactive
research knowledge product has been created. This online
publication has been designed as a ready-reckoner for
interested stake-holders of urban sanitation. It breaks
down the user experience around urban sanitation into its
various components and highlights likely but untested
opportunities to improve the same.
The data from the research is presented in the form of
evidence-based insights from the field, which are further
synthesized to create testable hypotheses based on findings
from the research as shown in an earlier slide.
} Pottyproject.in, the platform where all the research and hypotheses is
available

Project
Sammaan }
Bringing dignity to the lives
of the urban poor through the
eradication of open defecation

Project Sammaan } Overview
Project Sammaan is an urban infrastructure project that
seeks to design and build improved sanitation facilities in
the city of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, in Odisha, India.
Project Sammaan is a collaboration between the
following organizations
1. Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation
2. Cuttack Municipal Corporation
3. Quicksand Design Studio
4. Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
with support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
119 public and community sanitation facilities will be
built in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack between 2012-2013
under Project Sammaan.
60,000 + people are expected to directly benefit from this
in both cities.
The project is born out of the insights gained from the Potty
Project. Where the Potty Project left ideation and further
research open, we took some of the most compelling
insights forward with this project.
Project Sammaan Blog

Project Sammaan } Champions Of The User
Besides the consortium of partners who were mentioned
many aspects of the project have various other agencies
work on them. For example, a firm that is working on
land approvals from the government, will also work
on construction and quality management. Given that
everybody comes at the problem from many different
angles, it becomes essential to safeguard the interests of the
most important stakeholder in this project, the user.
Having spent time with users understanding and
internalizing their points of view on sanitation, hygiene and
routines, we worked hard to make sure that there was some
way to bring people on the same page. Our attempts to do
that began with sensitizing partners to our research. The
research findings took on a different role during the design
phase through the creation of ‘User experience blueprints’
and ‘personas’ that helped champion the cause of the user. } Persona and User Experience Blueprints for ‘Tonni Rai’

Project Sammaan } Sketch Design
In the first phase of design, we created a sample design.
The idea being that we could use it to see how much of
the UX Blueprint we could really achieve through design,
given constraints of space, cost and usage capacities.
We decided to create a model ’10-seater’ design which
would consist of the following:
- 10 toilets (5 men + 5 women)
- 10 bathrooms (5 men + 5 women)
- 1 universal access stall (toilet + bathroom)
- Kids’ Toilets (2 boys + 2 girls)
- Clothes washing areas
- Space for a shop
- Space for a drinking water dispenser
- Caretaker living quarters
Further, the idea was to do this on 2 sites that were
constrained for space which resembled sites that we would
eventually be building on. The exercise helped us create a
set of principles and a model against which future designs
could be compared.
1. The facade of one of the designs
2. A cutaway of the plan-view
showing the placement
of amenities
2
1

Project Sammaan } Community Feedback
Engaging with communities is, in my opinion, by far the
most fun and challenging part of the projects we do at
Quicksand. After the sketch design phase, for the community
feedback we created a guide and toolkit to elicit and record
community responses during feedback sessions. Besides
feedback, we gathered further details around menstrual
hygiene management and internal details of toilet and
bathing stalls.
We created a toolkit consisting of various exercises, but
by far the most interesting for me amongst these, was
the ‘building blocks’ exercise that we created. In our
experience and that of the architect, getting users to give
feedback on architectural drawings and renderings ended
with them asking for more utilities and not much by way of
meaningful feedback. We realized that the best way to get
feedback was to put them in our shoes, and design
their own toilets using which we could validate our user
flows while creating a truly participatory design
process.
1. Meeting users in
their community
2. Users walk us through their daily
routine from waking up to going
to sleep
3. A video explaining the building
blocks exercise
2 3
1

Project Sammaan } Potty Lab
Potty Lab is a prototyping environment that we developed
in our studio, where we would build and test internal
fitouts and features of the toilet facilities with slum
residents from Delhi. We started with toilet, bathing and
children’s stalls, but what I found most interesting in the
process was designing a stall for disabled users.
Users living with physical disabilities, arising from disease
(such as polio), accidents, and old age, get the shortest end
of the stick in urban slum sanitation.
We met disabled users in many slums while conducting our
research and realized that designing for this small group
is essential. Otherwise the project would fail to live up to
its name and its associated goal of providing dignity to all
through better sanitation access.
Like most space design exercises where one designs for
disabilities we made the error of designing for wheelchairs.
After some interviews with experts though we realized we
were on the wrong path and that we must be designing for
users who use canes, crutches and wheeled platforms as the
proliferation of wheelchairs in these contexts is unlikely.
With the new direction we added this as a component to
the Potty Lab. The main features we tested were storage
preferences, appropriate height of a modified WC and
bathing area modifications for the disabled-friendly stall.
After testing, we made certain changes to the design and
created a modular design with four zones, making it easy
for the architect to adapt based on the context of the stall in
the toilet complex.
} A video that shows the process of testing the prototype with disabled
users
} Discussing the use of low-height WCs with Monu and Bablu
} Bishwanath, who lost the use of one leg to polio waits his turn at the
toilet

Project Sammaan } Design to Implementation
We are currently in this phase, and it has been a very
interesting journey in the last few months, where we have
been working to translate the sketch designs into site
specific designs that can be tendered out to contractors
through government sanctioned processes.
We have been also hard at work trying to convince the
government to adopt more environmentally suitable
decentralized sewage treatment technologies. Besides
being neck deep in understanding, learning and then
disseminating these technologies, what has been really
interesting for me has been getting an inside look on how
government processes work. It’s been a frustrating couple
of months, but understanding the system of letters, the role
that hierarchy plays in decision-making dynamics at every
level, has been extremely illuminating.
At the time of submission of this portfolio, we are working
on finalizing the sewage details for the toilets while they
are being submitted into the bureaucratic machine to be put
out for tender.
} Discussions while finalizing the design} At a meeting with the Cuttack Municipal Corporation talking about the
issue of sewage

The UnBox
Festival }
Action at the intersections.
Exploring and celebrating
interdisciplinary practice.

The UnBox Festival } The Spiel
UnBox began in 2011 as a festival to explore the possibilities
of interdisciplinary approaches, defined by its tag line—
Action at the Intersections. UnBox is an immersive journey
through ideas embedded in multidisciplinary processes &
innovation.
UnBox is a festival managed by an alliance of leading
creative practice studios based out of India.
Quicksand: A research driven design & innovation
consultancy based in Gurgaon and Bangalore.
Codesign: A multi-disciplinary branding and
communication design practice.
B.L.O.T: An electronic and visual arts collective bringing
their Basic Love of Things to India and the world through
music, film, art & design.
UnBox uses multiple, nonlinear formats that encourage
conversation, interaction and ideation such as fellowship
programmes, workshops, conversations, multi-sensorial
experiences and public art projects.
The UnBox Festival Website
1. Blow-up organized in Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi
2. Setting up an installation at the British Council in New Delhi
3. Marije Vogelzang telling the UnBox audience that ‘Food Design is Shit’
4. The Food Lab, an immersive take on social and cultural traditions around
food and culinary experiences
5. LATCH, a workshop about information heirarchy taken by Catalogtree in
progress
1 2
3 4
5

The UnBox Festival } My Involvement
Being part of a large team that believes in a democratic
form of decision making, I was involved with the
programming for the festival for both years (2011 & 2012).
Being a muti-disciplinary event, the programming is open
to a wide range of varied content allowing us to explore
individual fields of interest.
Besides organizing workshops in improv theatre and
clowning at the two editions of the festivals, I was quite
involved in the following:
1. The Sustainable Lifestyles Fellowship: I co-created and
anchored this fellowship at UnBox 2012. We tried to get a
group of professionals from a variety of backgrounds, to
meet experts and experience Auroville. The idea was to help
professionals learn about sustainable lifestyles and see
what they could take away from that experience in their
own lives and work.
2. The Spoon Project: This was an attempt to have a bit
of fun with food, trying to create new ways of consuming
liquid food at UnBox 2011.
3. Oh shit! kit: While running the UnBox 2012 travel desk,
a colleague and I went off on a tangent to create a kit
that speakers flying in from outside India would receive
when being picked up at the airport. The kit comprised of
some basic things like power adapters, mouthwash and
emergency contact numbers amongst other things.
1. The Oh Shit! ‘I just got off a long flight to India’ Kit
2. All the fellows cycling around in Auroville
3. The fellows with Dharmesh, an architect based out of Auroville
4. The mess while trying to create interesting forms for spoons at the studio
kitchen during the Spoon Project
5. Finally, the idea we demoed at lunch during the conference, was to inject
different liquids into fruits
1 4
2
5
3

The UnBox Festival } UnBox 2013
This year, we’re taking a departure from the standard
format of conference + workshops + evening performances.
There will be a greater focus on workshops and open
labs such that the entire festival is more hands on, and
participants will be encouraged to learn new skills through
building and creating, whether in digital or physical
formats.
Some things that I’m particularly excited about are:
1. TechPlay Lab: Interactive technologies demonstrated
and applied to challenges such as the Kinect GamesLab and
Mozilla HackJam.
2. SoundCamp: An electronic music production space
hosted by Border Movement and Goethe-Institut with
international artists.
3. DigiForm Lab: A digital manufacture facility that
includes 3D Printing, Laser Cutting and 3D workstation.
} Rethinking not just formats, but how that manifests in terms of the visual language

Systems
Design }
Designing delivery aids
for postmen of the Indian
Postal Service
Project at design school, as part of
the course // 2008-09

Systems Design } Objectives and Scope
This project was done as part of a course in design
school called ‘Systems Design’ wherein a group of
4 students collectively studied a large system and
then identified sub-systems for stand-alone design
interventions. Some of the systems studied included the
Indian Railways pantry, a school for special-needs children
and a prison.
Our group chose to study and research the Indian Postal
Service. As a group we carried out a number of interviews
in Pune and Baramati, both cities in Maharastra, based
on which we were created systems maps that helped us
identify distinct sub-systems. Within these sub-systems we
were able to probe for potential design interventions.
The four sub-systems we identified were:
1. Collection of post
2. Sealing and stamping
3. Mail sorting
4. Delivery of mail
While my teammates worked on the first three, I worked
on ‘Delivery of Mail.’ Through processes including passive
observation, user shadowing, interviews and role-playing
I realized that the major areas of focus were, firstly, the bag
and its connect with the postman’s mode of transport and
secondly, how individual bundles of post are carried.
1. Annabhai during the interview
2. A cycle at the Baramati Post Office, before departure for postal delivery.
3. Annabhai delivering post, during the shadowing exercise
2
3
1

Systems Design } Ideation and Paper Prototyping
Having worked out the opportunities and problem areas, I
began the ideation process, which included building quick
and dirty paper prototypes. Not an integral part of my
process earlier, it has now become a mainstay, where I go
from sketches to building prototypes, constantly iterating.
Some of the most important criteria by which the
ideas were judged related to the ease with which the
same product could be adapted for those on bicycles,
motorcycles or foot, and the ease with which bundles of
mail could be accessed.
} Sketches of the selected concept
} Nikhil, a classmate, with one of the early prototypes} Sketches of the handheld accessory

Systems Design } Prototypes and User Testing
The concept that was selected was a bag with a system of
straps that made it easy to be used as a pannier as well
as a backpack. Along with the bag, I designed a small
tabletop accessory that helped the postman sort mail into
smaller bundles depending on his route, and could easily
fit into the bag.
The postmen who had been shadowed and interviewed
tested the prototypes and made recommendations. Based
on these recommendations, changes to design were made
and a report was submitted to the local officer who had
helped us gain access to the post offices for research.
1, 2 & 3. The postmen testing how the bag would work on a cycle, on a
motorcycle and on foot
2
31

Nokia:
Swayam }
Future-scoping scenarios
that make technology
more personal
Project at design school, as part of a
team // 2008-09

Nokia: Swayam } Overview and outcomes
This project was done as part of a team that researched
several domains trying to understand and project how
mobile technologies could impact how a person experienced
their environments.
The domains we studied and designed for were:
1. Retail Environments
2. Medicine and healthcare
3. Health and Wellness
4. Payment systems
5. Social events and planning
6. Transport
7. Food and eating
I worked on ‘Health and Wellness’ as it is something
that I am deeply interested in. The project started with us
interviewing some users, mapping out how they interact
with these environments and going further to abstract a
scenario in which their environments are more aware of the
user and his preferences.
This is where the name of the project comes from, where
‘Swayam’ in Sanskrit means Self.
} Part of a chart that mapped all the technology in the gym and exercise environment and how it interacted with each other and the person
} Early sketches turned into more fleshed out scenarios } ‘Harsh’ getting feedback on how he needs to be stretching
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
a a a a a a a a a a a a ab b b
b b
Senses pressure Instruction to click
picture.
Senses congestion.
Starts timer.
Fixes common time. Feedback to crowd
flow.
Seat availability
Instruction to check
crowd flow
Instruction to
capture video and
still movements.
Tracks bookings.
Instruction to book
movie ticket.
Indicates location Reveals location in
and around space.
Confirms on
identification of digi
ticket.
Tracks digi ticket
and indicates
position of other
device.
Syncs with CFS of
other device.
Indicates location
and clearance of
number of doors or
security
walkthroughs.
Identification of
movie time
crossover to CFS.
Digi ticket info.
Activation of Google
map.
Identification of
seat.
Makes cell silent.
Identifies duration
of missed movie.
Stores offers.
Senses volume
comfort level.
Detects
intermission.
Puts phone on
general mode.
Displays known
contact info.
Displays offers from
food court.
Identifies
intermission
duration.
Activates timer till
resuming of movie.
Measures time of
intermission.
Sends warnings
before last few
minutes to movie
commencement.
Detects crowd at
toilets and works
out percentage of
crowd flow.
Syncing time
remaining with
percentage of crowd
flow.
Suggesting visit or
not to visit loo.
Makes phone
general after movie
ends.
Displays offers
related to choice.
Transfer offers or
comment on film to
known contacts.
Allows security
clearance.
Clearance to general
mode.
Stores refused offer
data.
Detects
intermission.
Puts phone on
general mode.
Displays known
contact info.
Displays offers from
food court.
Sends missed movie
clip duration to
required device.
Informs on offer
details.
Adjusts overall
volume of hall.
Identification of digi
ticket.
Identification of
cross over time.
Security clearance
confirmation.
Identifies ticket
bearers in space but
not in hall.
Supplies Live feed to
those handsets.
Accepts or refuses
tracking request.
Sends info on
location and time.
Sends‘Trade Ticket’
option to IRISNet.
Transfers digi ticket
to required device.
Displays users
wanting to‘Trade
Ticket.’
Display of money
info transaction
debited from or
credited to users
account.
Passes info of digi
ticket to admins
mother application
i.e. IRISNet.
Confirms and allows
clearance in security
at walkthroughs.
Identifies digi ticket
embedded on
device
Instruction to start
time to movie.
Display warning
messages if late.
Indicating time to
movie.
Digital ticket
embedded on
phone.
Senses traffic.
Suggests detour.
Instruction to
display movie
schedules and
details.
Records and
documents pictures
and clips.
Indicates commonly
fixed time eg. 5pmIdentifies object.
Tracks object
Activates voice rec.
Records key words
of conversation
Instructruction to
record clip.
Detects closest
multiplex location.
Records video clip.
Identifies object.
Tracks object.
Level of pressure
Mirror Space
GEM
LifeSuit
Watch
DAfTA+
FR+
Smart Mirror
Jog Simulator
Smart Mirror TV
RFID Tags
Shoes
DAfTA
1a
2a 3a
4a 5a 6a
7a
8a
9a
10a
11a
12a
13a
14a
12b
8b
7b
5b4b
1b
1c
1a 2a 3a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12a
12b
13a 14a
8b
7b
5b
4b
1b
1c
a
G G
G G
RSS Feeds
DAfDA
b b

The Auroville
Experience }
Looking inwards, while
learning about innovation
in sustainable lifestyles
Done as part of different teams //
2009-10

The Auroville Experience } What is Auroville?
Officially, Auroville defines itself as wanting ‘to be a
universal town where men and women of all countries
are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above
all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of
Auroville is to realize human unity.’
It takes off from the teachings of spiritual teacher, Sri
Aurobindo of Pondicherry, moulding his lessons in a
unique manner—altered from its practice at the ashram for
education that he instituted in Pondicherry.
Since its inception 40 years ago, Auroville has become a
hotbed for innovation and experimentation in sustainable
lifestyles. The areas that were of maximum interest to me
were renewable energy, waste management, community
living and education.
} The Solar bowl that is used to cook food for about 1500 Aurovillians daily
} An early morning at the Matrimandir in Auroville } Volunteers building a solar cooker at Aurore, where I worked
} Education about permaculture at ‘Litter Free Auroville’ 2010

The Auroville Experience } Why did I go?
The first time I went to Auroville was while I was in college,
to work on a bikescapes project. At the time I was very
clear that I did not want to work in a standard ‘industrial
design’ agency that made ‘pretty’ products and promoted
the needless desire for objects and material consumption.
At the time of the workshop, I met a group of very
interesting people who offered me a chance to work with
them for a few months, giving me a small stipend, a cycle
and a small hut in the forest.
It is one of the best decisions that I ever took, as Auroville
gave me the chance to be on the front lines of work and
discussion within the area of sustainable lifestyles
happening globally.
Besides learning about sustainability, there were other
reasons for going to Auroville, chief among them was to
spend time alone and get to know myself better. Besides
this I had many unique experiences, such as the week long
clowning workshop, swimming in abandoned quarries and
acting as one of the most complex characters in Hindu
mythology, Duryodhana for the play Chakravyuh.
2
1
1. Presenting Clown Big Mole
2. As Duryodhana, appealing to
the audience against the injustice
doled out to him

The Auroville Experience } The Bikescapes Project
The idea for this project stemmed from exploring new
modes of collaboration between local experts from
Auroville and external partners, and how much could be
achieved within a short span of time and limited budgets.
The team consisted of 10 mentors from Auroville and a
mix of 16 students and professionals all from varying
backgrounds. The task that had been put forward to us was
to understand the challenges faced in creating a bicycle-
friendly urban environment including the products,
systems and spaces that facilitated cycling as a primary
mode of transport.
Besides the process itself, this was the first time I worked
in a truly multi-disciplinary team, consisting of
entrepreneurs, product and graphic designers, architects,
urban planners, and web developers.
Our team of 16, broke out into smaller groups and through
interviews, experience and observation, put across the
following list of issues that we wanted to address:
1. Bicycle paths and roads
2. Barriers that prevented motorcycles from entering
bicycle paths
3. Better lighting on bicycle paths
4. Bicycle shelters and parking solutions
5. Cycling accessories that can be manufactured locally
6. Wayfinding for cyclists
2
3
1
1. The team experiences the bicycle
paths firsthand
2. An interview with a long time
cyclist from Auroville
3. The team presenting the
synthesis of research

The Auroville Experience } The Bikescapes Project
I took on the challenge of working on the path lighting,
addressing the main concern that Auroville is not evenly lit,
and there are many routes that are dark at night and hence
unsafe. An additional concern raised was that there would
be a lot of electricity wasted if all the lights were simply
left on through the night.
The solution we came up with was to have designated
lengths of the path lit by LEDs close to the ground. These
LEDs were timed (based on the length of the path) and the
lights were triggered when the cyclist crossed the first
granite milestone.
2
3 4
1
1. Working with Aurore electronics whiz, Mani on laying the wiring for the
lighting system
2. A resident tests the speed breaker + crossroads design
3. A bicycle parking station that celebrates chaos and allows for cycles to
be parked in a disorderly yet secure fashion
4. The map redesigned to call attention to cycling paths

The Auroville Experience } Mission Tejas
Mission Tejas was a project started by the unit in Auroville
where I was working, called Auroville Renewable Energy
(Aurore). The primary aim of the project was to bring light
(Tejas in sanskrit) though renewable sources such as solar
powered LED lamps to eliminate the need for kerosene
based lighting. When the project was initiated in 2006, this
was a movement in its nascent stages, and Mission Tejas
and Aurore played a big role in creating awareness about
the issue through different outreach programs.
When I joined in 2009, they were looking to update the
website with new content and a redesign. At this point
though, through research and questions with the team
behind the project, we realized that what was required
was a complete rethink of the project. This was primarily
because the initial goal of creating awareness was no
longer a problem, as the issue had gained prominence
through policy, media and had the attention of many
different CSR programs.
What had started out as a simple aesthetic rework and
content update turned out to change the project and what
it was going to pursue. The new objective was to create
a platform where people could meet other practitioners
in the space and fostering increased collaborations and
partnerships.
This platform included the building and access of
a searchable database of practitioners and other
stakeholders as well as a user/author friendly blogging
platform.
} An LED lantern that was tested and reviewed for Platform
} A set of icons that was developed based on the Mission Tejas logo for the website
} Screenshot of Platform, the blog section of Mission Tejas

The Auroville Experience } Rebooting the Eco-exhibition
One of the other projects that had been started by Aurore
was an eco-exhibition in the Visitor’s Centre, which was the
first point of contact for tourists who came to Auroville. The
intention of the exhibition was to communicate issues and
solutions around sustainable lifestyles in Auroville. With
an initial burst of activity by volunteers, space was cleared
in the gardens of the Visitor’s centre and basic exhibits were
designed. The work on the exhibition stopped when that set
of volunteers left.
When I joined Aurore, I was supposed to work on the
exhibition, adding exhibits during my time there. While
coming up with ideas for exhibits, we realized that we
needed a better system that allowed even short term
volunteers to join in and execute small projects. As a
result, we conceptualized small projects such as a kitchen
garden, waste composting pits and then using someone in
the capacity of an educator who could teach kids visiting
the exhibition about sustainable lifestyles.
This idea was tested when Divya, a volunteer, worked with
us for 2 months, performing the role of the educator. She
was given a small space in the exhibition area, where she
developed, tested and refined games and training material.
The material can now be used for any new volunteers
interested in the role.
2 3
1
1. The exhibition space on Day 1
2. Divya working wih children, teaching them about waste
3. The solar water cooker exhibit and panels has a unique visual language
as different volunteers are allowed to work on different panels

Working with Chandran, Dyuman and Zubin
Besides the projects that had been conceptualized, there
were smaller projects that I worked on. The most interesting
one was mentoring a group of 10 year olds who were
interested in electronics to rework an exhibit about energy.
The original exhibit as it had been conceptualized, simply
converted ‘pedal power’ into electricity but did not
communicate too much about it. Through a process of
ideation, the kids came up with the idea of having an
integrated system of LEDs and infographics which would
show how much electricity was being generated and what
it would be able to power.
It was a great experience, handing over a camera to the
kids and asking them to document the exhibit, their process
and helping them ideate along the way. What was most
interesting though was, how engineering driven their
thought processes were, and how it took time and a lot
of explanation and discussion for them to try the design
process, which they did to great effect.
2
31
1. Chandran and Zubin interviewing tourists at the Visitor’s center
2. A video of Chandran and Dyuman working on the circuit
3. The finished exhibit with the inforgraphic and a more comfortable
repurposed exer-cycle

Creating Branding and Signage
Perhaps one of the main problems of the eco-exhibition,
which lead to fewer footfalls, was that there didn’t seem
to be any connect between that and the original exhibition
about Auroville located inside the halls of the visitor’s
center. Besides that, there was a lack of coherence in the
visual language and branding of the exhibits within the
space.
Working with the Aurore team, ideated a new name that
made the space more intriguing, and got a graphic designer
to help us create a system of branding and visual language
for the exhibition. Also, we created a set of signage that
would create a connect between the 2 exhibitions, using the
visual language and photographs from both.
} Signage with the new logo
} The new system of branding along with icons for each of the 7 major focus areas of the exhibition
} Signage leading from the main exhibition to the ‘Garden of E.D.E.N’

Designing and pitching a model home
One of the things that Auroville is most famous for is its
innovation in sustainable architecture and its application
across all the structures built there. We brought on an
architect to work on the design and proposal for getting
funds to build a model home in a section of the exhibition
area.
The design of this home used vernacular forms of
architecture, technology and materials. Along with the
structure of the house itself, it would showcase living off
the grid, with technology for rainwater harvesting, on-
site sewage management, renewable forms of energy and
waste management.
+298
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Bamboo matin built
furniturewooden door
old
wooden
column
granite stone
for lintel
potted filler slab
Bamboo Roof
jack arch Roof
wooden window
country tiles and
Palmira rafters
PDFcreatedwithpdfFactorytrialversionwww.pdffactory.com
} A tertiary sewage treatment system (photo by Erik Conesa)
} A section view of the model home with indications of some materials and treatments
} Solar panels set up by Aurore (photo by Erik Conesa)

Side
Order }
a blog to document the
meanderings and projects that I
do outside of work
Self initiated // 2010-13

Side Order } Camera Obscura
Having discovered photography and a love for it in the
digital era has had its advantages. I didn’t go through the
usual slow, sometimes frustrating but rewarding manual
route of learning the art. Having reached a point where I
stopped taking photos with my trusty and very loyal Sony
DSC-H1, I realized that I needed a different route to rekindle
my love for photography, and that is when I discovered
pinhole cameras. Going from failed first experiences
of building pinhole cameras and initial successes with
setting up a dark room in the studio these posts chronicled
my misadventures of DIY-photography and as well as
interesting panorama and animation exercises using my
phone.
Side Order
} Shot a panorama using a cheap plastic camera and assembled it manually
} A quick experiment with multiple exposure, where a friend and I shot over the same film once each and then developed it in our
in-house darkroom

Side Order } Mixtapes
This set of posts started life as a mixtape project for my
cycle rides in Auroville and a sneaky way to discover
new music based on people’s suggestions. The only
manifestation of which was a Grooveshark playlist and
album art that never really got done.
Through all its avatars, the mixtape project has been a
way to create small artworks for album art. Having spent
sometime on the internet, I found an interesting collection
of websites that are doing some interesting mixtapes and,
also in some cases, album art. ‘Inspired’ by that I realized
that rather than making a list of songs, I should try create
30-minute mixes based on a theme.
In its latest version though, it has become a way for me to
learn the basics of sound-editing software and working
with tracks. I have been experimenting with loops and such,
and am deeply interested in audio formats for reporting
such as I’ve experienced with podcasts such as Radiolab
and 99% Invisible. } Mixtape #1: Redux, the first mixtape in the new series } Mixtape #2: Suprabhat, which means ‘Good Morning’ in Bengali, is my
take on music I like listening to on my morning walk to the studio

Side Order } Field Recordings
My interest in music and working with audio and exposure
to ethnomusicology projects such as ‘The Travelling
Archive’ and ‘Excavated Shellac’ culminates in a series of
posts and recordings I’ve made over the last 5 months.
There are two kinds of posts that I try and make. One is a
way to capture an event, a journey or a place through video
backed with a field recording of local music experienced
in the context. The other, which I have just started work
on is to express the experience of a place by capturing its
soundscape such that it is experienced without visual cues.
Soundscapes for me are quite interesting because in terms of
media that people use to express themselves online, visual
media take precedence, while sound is a more engaging
experience in a way that it challenges the audience, as
literature did, to fill in spaces with their own experiences
and imagination.
} A still from the video about my
train journey from Delhi to Pune
through Mumbai where I met and
recorded Ajay (below) singing
} A still from another video which documents scenes I witnessed while
traveling through Rishikesh and Haridwar in Northern India
} The Flutist, Gobind, who played a beautiful melody which became the
audio piece that tied all the footage from the Rishikesh trip together.

{ Thank You }

Portfolio - Early 2013..

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