The idea: Create infographics that are street child-friendly. Come up with a scalable/sustainable way to get these infographics to the kids on the street.
We created some initial prototypes based on an iterative user centered design process. The results were encouraging. Based on this we came up with some very basic design principles while designing for street kids. We are working on bringing out more infographics and also creating a space to share these infographics with the urban online population who we plan to leverage on as a resource to get these infographics to the kids on the street.
While we were in the process of developing the idea further, we sent an abstract of our work to IIT Bombay for the DesigningForChildren.net conference. After going through rounds of selection process, the paper was published and we were invited to the conference to present the paper.
That's the short version of what happened in the past 5 months (to an year) :)
One of the most profound learning that I had from attending the conference and presenting was that the idea
had value. When a designer who has been in the field since you were born tells you that he is absolutely
impressed with your idea - your confidence hits roof top!
had value. When a designer who has been in the field since you were born tells you that he is absolutely
impressed with your idea - your confidence hits roof top!
I also saw that a lot of other designers were also focusing on the visual language and they had some
awesome ideas that will help my own project further.
awesome ideas that will help my own project further.
Thanks to the kids at Thara who let us into their world with open arms :)
Please leave a comment with your thoughts!
In case you are interested, the full paper is available here.
The paper presentation is also available online here:
View more presentations from mydh.
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A thought that occurred at a traffic signal
An idea that was discussed over phone
A project that we discussed on and off until it finally found a starting point
A project that was brought up in conversations with friends (some got it most didn't - a lot of them had questions that helped me shape it furthermore)
A social experiment that was run and found success
A paper that was accepted by IIT Bombay
A presentation of the idea that some very senior designers absolutely loved
Our project can be defined using any of the statements above or all of them. I will probably never be able to put a count on the number of hours we put behind this thought that happened at a traffic signal. I can definitely not imagine the number of hours we have to put behind it to take it further.
I remember we were talking about it on the morning of my presentation and we realized that this is only one of the many steps to take before we get this project somewhere.. it eased my mind about me - a design n00b, presenting to a whole room of designers. It was one of the first steps to go a long way down.
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