for shyam, maya and aayan
Master of Design, Product Design 2013-16 National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. All illustrations and photographs in the document are Copyright of respective owners.
ekprayog by Sahil Thappa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. thappa.sahil@gmail.com +91- 834-724-5329
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and it contains no full or substantial copy of previously published material, or it does not even contain substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or final graduation of any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in this graduation project. Moreover I also declare that none of the concepts are borrowed or copied without due acknowledgement. I further declare that the intellectual content of this graduation project is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged. This graduation project (or part of it) was not and will not be submitted as assessed work in any other academic course. Student Name in Full: SAHIL THAPPA Signature: Date:
STATEMENT OF COPYRIGHT I hereby grant the National Institute of Design the right to archive and to make available my graduation project/ thesis/dissertation in whole or in part in the Institute’s Knowledge Management Centre in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act. I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my document or I have obtained permission to use copyright material. Student Name in Full: SAHIL THAPPA Signature: Date:
SYNOPSIS People construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experiences, in the process maybe changing what we believe, or discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge, perception and consciousness. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know or shall I say what we don’t know. The best way to learn is to simply start doing and tinkering the world surrounding us. Since the Industrial Revolution people have become used to mass manufacturing and use & throw mindset. We humans have become very consumerist and market driven, like machines devouring on natural resources without much thinking behind our actions. There is an eagerness to be better than others around; there is a need of a bigger house, a bigger car and more cash in wallet. Everything is about consumption for majority of people living on planet Earth. This project is my way of questioning the present design practices and experimenting with the alternative practices. The core objective of the project is to explore design through the lenses of human centeredness, sustainability, intuitiveness, co-creation, collaboration, openness, making and tinkering. This project has led to creation of new products, process and systems with various stakeholders. This project or ekprayog (as I refer to my degree project) has become the foundation for the work I imagine myself doing in the coming years. I find sharing knowledge, experiences and making something with my own hands as a karmic and spiritual journey towards something higher in purpose. ekprayog
If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. – Ken Robinson
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my gratitude to the entire cosmos. This degree project is dedicated to Mama, Dada and Chinky. Without their love, affection, efforts and hardwork this and everything else would not have been possible. Masi, Uncle, Mamu, Mami, Bade papa, Ankush and all my cousins thank you for all the care, support and love. I am thankful to my guide and fellow maker, Professor Praveen Nahar for believing in the ideology of the project and accommodating me in every possible way. The systems classes, conversations around the campus, your curiosity and way of looking at things has been inspirational, meaningful and transforming. I’m thankful to Shujoy Chakraborty for broadening my perspective on design. I am thankful to every faculty member who inspired or taught me at NID. All the staff members, kaka’s and ben’s for their help and support. I am thankful to the makers from Fablab (CEPT) for the knowledge and experience sharing. I am thankful to KrishnaTeja Madempudi and Soumeet Lanka of ‘The Makers of Things’ for collaborating on the Makerspace. I am thankful to Kiran Bir Sethi and all the staff of Riverside School for extending all their support and time for setting up the Makerspace. I would like to thank Anahita, Aravind R, Aravind S, Bhuvana, Burhan, Dinesh, Gagan, Jason, Mahima, Nandana, Pooja, Priyam, Rishika, Saloni, Sawpnil, Shreya and Tanisha for all the conversations, the fun time and also for putting up with my eccentricities at times. I would also like to thank all my fellow batch mates, alumni, juniors with whom I had discussion about this project and in general. I would like to thank Neha Singh for changing the very fabric and structure of me. Without you NID wouldn’t have been possible. Finally I would like to thank all the people who have been working tirelessly for an Open and Tinker-able world. 2 Sahil Thappa | Product Design | M.Des | NID | 2016
CONTENTS NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGN
5
THE STORY
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The Backdrop The Makers System Design and Designer The world we live in How many years left? Why do We Make A complex self The Maker Culture Drivers of Maker Culture Open Source Movement Digital Fabrication Sustainability Circular Economy Juggad or frugality Journey through the Project SONIC ARCHITECT
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Inception of Sonic Architect Inspiration: Naoto Fukasawa Inspiration: Dieter Rams Process Sonic Architect: Vai Sonic Architect: Gilmour Sonic Architect: Clampton
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THE MAKERSPACE
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Makerspaces! What are they? Why do we need makerspaces in Schools? Riverside School Riverside makerspace Experiments in the makerspace Samarth: The Tinkerer Sandesh: Agent 100% What we plan to do in Riverside makerspace? Makerspace Furniture: CNC Digital Fabrication Process LT01 Table SU01 Storage SU02 Storage SU02 Storage THE PRISON PROJECT
INTO THE WILD
Hillhacks School Program: Balloon Powered Car School Program: Origami Workshop
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134
Ekprayog Instructables Makerfest & Delhi Mini Maker Faire High Hopes The Bigger Picture 106
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A - Z of Open Let there be Light Leather & Felt iTouch cover Watch straps Wood wonders Additive construction
Design Thinking for Creative Prison Industries Anti-Theft Bags for everyday use Innovate Inside:Towards Creative Prison Industry HILLHACKS
THE LITTLE OBJECTS
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REFERENCES
149
QR CODE
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ANNEXURE
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NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGN The establishment of NID was a result of several forces, both global and local. The late 1950s saw a confluence of these forces, and this time would be a significant one for Indian culture and education. This was a time of reappraisal and reconstruction in a newly independent India. A young nation was confronted with the mammoth task of nation building, of balancing age old traditions with modern technology and ideas. The Modern Movement, the philosophy of Machine Aesthetics, and revolutionary experimentation in the arts, architecture and design were all taking place at the same time. There was a search for the Indian identity across all aspects of life. On April 7, 1958, the Eameses presented the India Report to the Government of India. The Eames Report defined the underlying spirit that would lead to the founding of NID and beginning of design education in India. The Report recommended a problem-solving design consciousness that linked learning with actual experience and suggested that the designer could be a bridge between tradition and modernity. The Report called upon future designers to re-examine the alternatives of growth available to the country at that time. Based on the philosophy of the Bauhaus design movement, the unique curriculum and revolutionary educational philosophy of learning by doing still remain part of NID to the present day. National Institute of Design is internationally acclaimed as one of the finest educational and research institutions providing design inputs from the point of view of using design as a multi-disciplinary integrating force to raise the quality of life through empathetically designed products, processes, services and systems.
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PRODUCT DESIGN AT NID Product design is concerned primarily with the relationship between products, systems and those who use them. User-centric approach and processes form the foundation of the programme. Responsibility and concern towards the social, physical and ecological environments is emphasized in the process of developing innovative ideas. The programme assimilates inputs in diverse domains such as form studies, human factors, cognitive ergonomics, studio skills, user experience & user interaction, advanced CAD, rapid prototyping, research methods, design management, materials & manufacturing processes & social sciences. Emphasis is on process centric approach which shapes a student’s education through participation and teamwork. Design projects form the core of a product designer’s education, with gradual increase in level of complexity and covers broad areas that product designers are likely to encounter in their professional careers. Starting from Simple Product Design to Technically Complex Project with the culmination happening in Systems Design. Product design is one of the most diverse field of study as it is at the conjuncture of numerous domains.
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PREFACE The end of the students’ academic time at the National Institute of Design is marked by the culmination of a substantial investigation in the field of design on a topic closely allied to their discipline of study. It is through the degree project and subsequent documentation of the same that this investigation takes place. The degree project is an opportunity for the students to demonstrate their expertise as independent practitioners of design. The project must be done with academic rigour incorporating systemic inquiry and informed design decisions. The phrase ‘systemic inquire’ implies the presence of structure and method by which the student must carry out his/her project. The degree project reflects the ideology of individual manifested through creativity and innovation. The project leads to new knowledge and experience creation and should be for the greater good. This project aims to question the practices in industrial design by developing products, process and systems based on open source and making.
THE STORY
THE BACKDROP During Praveen’s 10 week long systems design course we were introduced to wicked problems. After spending a day on mapping how things affect each other we could feel the interconnectedness of everyday things. Like the butterfly effect it was evident that a small change in one thing could lead to a huge change later as the systems we were looking at were complex and non linear. It made us contemplate on the microscopic and macroscopic scale of the world we live in and the roles and responsibilities we as designers and change makers have. My perception of the world started warping. After further investigation of several topics, I along with two of my friends Swapnil Vibhute and Tanisha Vernekar started questioning the way things were, the way design was practiced and the other approaches. So, finally we decided to look at ‘Making’ and ‘Ahmedabad as a Makerspace’ as our systems design for the next 10 weeks. We worked with various people, made things, met interesting makers, explored various spaces like Fablab and had a lot of fun. It became more than just a project for us; it became a way of living. We are proud to call ourselves as Makers. After systems was over it was time to start thinking about the degree project. Having worked for 2 years prior to joining NID, there was one thing which I was very sure of; I didn’t want to do my project in a corporate setup. So, I started looking at organizations, studios and individuals working on design thinking, open source or making. Mahindra at that time was planning of rolling out an open source platform (Smart Make) along with Local Motor, USA. I went to their Hyderabad campus, saw the work they were doing and what were they looking at in Smart Make. After a month of talks it couldn’t materialize into anything. The Smart Make platform never saw the light of the day.
I stopped looking for places to do my project and started making things and in the meanwhile conducted design thinking workshops with Praveen. In between I started talking to Quicksand, an interdisciplinary consultancy practicing design thinking and innovation. We talked about doing a project on Indian Making scene and Unbox festival. Again after a month of talks it couldn’t materialize as Quicksand didn’t get the funding for the festival. Then one day Praveen gave a call and asked me about my diwali plans and suggested we celebrate it in London. So, last diwali was celebrated in London. Praveen, Mayank and I ended up going to Mozfest (Mozilla Festival, Funded by Mozilla Foudation) for conducting design thinking workshops. Workshops were on ‘Co-Creation as a Design Thinking Tool’ and ‘Slow Ethnography’. It was one of the best experiences of my life. The 3 day long festival was an open source paradise. People were openly exchanging their ideas, work and experiences. Going to Mozfest ended up reinforcing my choice of working with open source. After coming back from Mozfest I decided that I would do a self sponsored project. I wanted to explore the world though my own lens. During systems I had started looking at the different approaches of practicing design. I wanted the project to democratize design and be open; and not be dictated by the few elites, there was a need of human centeredness. Hence, started my adventure down the maker lane.
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First assignment in NID
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THE MAKERS SYSTEM After we finished the mapping of wicked problems, we found that there were certain things which bothered us or which caugh our attention. There were certain things which triggered us to explore the domain of making. We narrowed it down to five. • Consumerism to Constructivism: “A man’s greed knows no end “ , and its precisely this truth that hurls us towards ever increasing consumerism. With increase in standards of living this greed is further drilled deeper into our lives. • Mindset towards products: Use and throw is the mantra that mass producing corporations are driving us by. A phone with cracked screen is rendered useless and disposed off without a second thought. • Changing Business Models: Business is not conducted in the same way as it was done 2 years back. Due to the proliferation of technology and resources the business models are changing. • Decreased Socialization: Though communication technology has brought us closer but it has widend the phyical connect between us. We maybe connected to a person on another continent but not to our neighbour. • No more hand me downs: We no longer wish to give our kids toys used by their older siblings. We want everything new, there is very less value or meaning attached to objects Based on these triggers we started forming our ideas and concepts and for empathic purpose we also put ourselves in the shoes of a makers. We went to various parts of the city to explore the potential it had to offer. We found huge markets specializing in selling one single type of product and at the same time a market where you could
almost find everything. We explored the making potential of the city from getting a tiny electronics to huge 5 feet diameter gears. We met wonderful makers like Shakeeb Bhai (an electrician), Wahid Chacha (a fabricator), Salim Bhai (Bike part dealer), Ajay (a bike builder) and a lot more. What all these people had in common was the intention of doing things with their own hands and also being open to sharing the work they were doing. The knowledge and skills they had to offer might have put an engineer to shame. These people were doing work while having hard fun. While we were exploring the city we were also making a map of it with details of all the makers, tinkerers, markets, fabrication facilities etc. we were coming across. We were also looking at makerspaces and we made a comprehensive list of tools and consumables which would be required to set one up. This 10 week long course lead to a lot of questions as well.
• Will making become mainstream? • Where will making take place? • What will makers make? • What will making do to education? • Can fabrication be done on the go? • Will makers be the changemakers? • What role can a designer play in making? I had no clue that I would be taking my systems ahead. And during the scope of ekprayog I tried to probe these questions a bit.
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DESIGN AND DESIGNER According to Oxford dictionary, ‘Design is the arrangement of the features of an artefact, as produced from following a plan or drawing’. This is the Victorian definition of design, a definition which was fuelled by industrial revolution, mass consumerism, use and throw attitude and disregard for nature. ‘Designer is a person who plans the look or workings of something prior to it being made, by preparing drawings or plans’. Designers were the few creative elite who were entrusted with the job of creation. Designers created want for objects which were not needed. A lot was being made without any thought for its existence. Designers were playing god. Machines were constantly being improved. Abacus gave way to mechanical calculators, which in turn gave way to electronic calculators and finally arrived the computers. Initial computers were huge and humans had to be trained to find ways to interact with them. Within the realms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), sprouted human centered design, a widely practiced design philosophy rooted in the idea that users must take center-stage in the design of any system. Users, designers and technical practitioners work together to articulate the wants, needs and limitations of the user and create a system that addresses these elements.
our world. It changed the very core of communication and sharing. Internet provided new tools for creation of knowledge, information, technology and skill sharing. For the first time in human history any creative person could become a creator. Internet empowered people to give form to their ideas and then disseminate them across the world. Design is becoming more democratic, a more bottom-up approach. Any new tool comes with its pros and cons. The technology and design has shrunk the physical dimension of our world, but at the same time it has broadened the physical disconnect among humans and nature. We’ll have to find a middle ground before one side over-weighs the other. Technology and design has to transform into a platform for bringing the entire planet together.
How will design, technology and designers evolve? This is one of the question I have been trying to explore for the past one years. There is no right or wrong approach to it.
Design was morphing, rather than just creating a want, it was creating universal products, services and systems which were human centered. Advancement in HCI and HCD lead to the infiltration of digital devices in our lives. Alongside came the next big revolution, The Internet. Internet connected the entire world; it shortened the physical dimensions of
3D Printed prosthetic hand. Is this the future?
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Oxo Good Grips peelers
Apple, Inc iPod Classic 5th generation
Bang & Olufsun Beolab 5 speakers
Leica M3 camera
Motorola StarSTK mobile phone
Vitsœ 606 Universal Shelving System
Braun T3 radio
Coca Cola Contour bottle
Oculus Rift virtual reality headset
Fender Stratocaster guitar
Nintendo Gameboy gaming console
Volkswagen Beetle car
Apple, Inc Machinosh computer
Confederate G2 P51 motorcycle
Charles & Ray Eames Lounge chair & Ottoman
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Some of the most iconic products
Chanel fashion show set in a supermarket setting
Black friday sale in London
ARE WE EVER GOING
STOP ? A girl with a discarded keyboard in China
A man trying to salvage rare earth metals from e-waste in Guangdong district in China
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THE WORLD WE LIVE IN At the moment we live in an economy which is overwhelmingly linear. It is a take-makeand-dispose system powered by fossil fuels. It is like a machine: the bigger it is and the faster it runs, the more efficiently it runs, and the more it produces- so long as there are resources to transform and sinks for the wastes, credit for investment and enough economic growth to pay for it all. In the entire market and profit driven world, designers are creating desire and aspiration for objects which have no absolute necessity in our lives. Everything is about consumption and to be better than the others around us. The use & throw mindset in getting heavily ingrained within the population. And the way the population is on the rise, soon we’ll be covered in huge rubble of discarded objects. Consumerism is a complex and wicked entity. Consumerism indirectly leads to the withholding of information, knowledge and technology. Corporations want to maintain
their supremacy and market lead. So, in a way consumerism leads to an iron curtain for any sort of open dialogue. We have no regard for nature and other species living on our planet, we have become like machines devouring on natural resources without thinking of the consequences. We have already destroyed a lot of biodiversity around us. The rate at which the natural resources are depleting and the e-waste is increasing is alarming and daunting. Mass consumption and consumerism is what has created the modern world and its comforts. That is also why we need to think it through afresh. Resources are expensive and getting more so, waste sinks are full, credit limited and growth stumbling.
Will the superfluous consumption come to an end or will it eventually lead to the downfall of the human race? This is a question only time will answer.
The things you own, end up owning you
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Earth’s natural wealth: an audit by David Cohen, 2007. Source: New Scientist
HOW MANY YEARS LEFT?
SCOPE OF CHANGE Beside consumerism there are other ways of living. There are people who have an inclination to observe and learn. These people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences and are not driven by the pure consumption, marketing propaganda, resource exploitation or the set practices. When they encounter something new, they have to reconcile it with the previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what they believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. There is an amalgamation of different school of thought happening. Constructivism, constructionism, making, open source, tinkering, DIY, circular economy and
sustainable design are synthesizing into a significant movement. The connections these have with each other may not be visible but they exists. These paradigms are altering the way products, processes, systems or economies are being conceived. Rise of Conscious Consumerism. I’ve been following these schools of thought for quite a while and they form the bases of my project.
We have to take a leap of faith and do our best to be the change we wish to see.
Sarah Lazarovic’s “buyerarchy of needs” presents a new schematic for consumption
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WHY DO WE MAKE Make. Just make. This is the key. The world is a better place as a participatory sport. Being creative, the act of creating is actually fundamental to what it means to be human. Physical making is more personally fulfilling than virtual making. According to Jean Piaget1 (Constructivism) and Seymour Papert2 (Constructionism) building knowledge structure occurs best through building things that are tangible and shareable; Learning-by-Doing. People learn effectively through making things. Knowledge and the world are both constructed and interpreted through action, and mediated through symbol use. Each gains existence and form through the construction of the other. Knowledge structure building happens felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it’s a sandcastle or a theory of the universe. Making is not just learning-by-doing, but engaging reflexively and socially. Both the creation process and the produced artefacts ought to be socially shared. Once you make
something, there is a sense of achievement, whether you make a notebook or an insanely complex contraption. We as a race are driven by reward system, when someone appreciates our work and efforts we lower our guards and engage in conversations. So, act of making something eventually leads to act of engaging into conversations, idea and knowledge sharing. And this entire process taken on a macro scopic view leads to formation of collective consciousness. Jay Silver3 states making leads to re-seeing (lens) the everyday world as something we can re-make (block)
Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make, create, and express ourselves to feel whole. There is something unique about making physical things. Things we make are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our soul.
Jean Piaget was a Swiss clinical psychologist known for his pioneering work in child development and Constructivism. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called “genetic epistemology”. 1
Seymour Aubrey Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He has developed a theory on learning called constructionism, built upon the work of Jean Piaget in Constructivism learning theories. 2
Jay Saul Silver is an electrical engineer, toy inventor and hacker from Florida. Silver is the Founder and CEO of JoyLabz/MaKey MaKey and was the first-ever Maker Research Scientist at Intel. 3
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The cycle of learning by David Kolb
A number of learning cycles build into a course to create a spiral of continuous learning
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Happiness is by absorption.Written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Designed by IraniSangham Source: http://visual.ly/
A COMPLEX SELF Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi1 three decades of work on psychological concept of Flow establishes a link between happiness, creativity and making. Idea of an optimal learning environment is one where the activity engaged in is perceived as meaningful, one’s abilities are in balance with the challenge at hand, and one has the tools to express the emerging knowledge. While making people experience the state of flow in which they are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems. Selfconsciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. The experience itself is so gratifying that they will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Making leads to higher form or complexity of human consciousness and to the growth of self. Complexity is the result of two broad psychological processes: Differentiation and Integration.
A complex self is the one that succeeds in combining these opposite tendencies. Flow helps to integrate the self because in a state of deep concentration consciousness is unusually well ordered. Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. Experience is in harmony. Once experience is over; one feels more together, less predictable, possessed of rarer skills and unique than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.
Differentiation implies a movement towards uniqueness, towards separating oneself from others. Integration implies a union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian psychologist. He is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, but is best known as the architect of the psychological concept of flow, a highly focused mental state. 1
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THE MAKER CULTURE The Maker Culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technologybased extension of DIY culture that intersects with hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. Maker culture emphasizes learning-by-doing in a social environment. Maker culture accentuates informal, networked, peer-led, and shared learning motivated by fun and self-fulfilment. Maker culture encourages novel applications of technologies, and the exploration of intersections between traditionally separate domains and ways of working including electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of CNC tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, the traditional arts and crafts. The rise of this making subculture is rooted in the phenomenon of hackerspaces emerging themselves from the counter-culture movement.
sustainable development, environmentalism, local culture and can from that point of view also be seen as a negative response to disposables, globalised mass production, the power of chain stores, multinationals and consumerism. Maker culture has its roots in the fifties and sixties. Magazine like The Whole Earth Catalogue offered something very precious to the non-professional practitioners: the access to tools and information. The maker culture is a social movement with an artisan spirit in which the methods of digital fabrication - previously the exclusive domain of institutions - have become accessible at a personal scale, following a logical and economic progression similar to the transition from minicomputers to personal computers in the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.
In the end maker culture isn’t about robots or 3D printing or STEM1 or even building things. It’s Community interaction and knowledge a new Renaissance, post-industrial, sharing are often mediated through that is led by each person and networked technologies, with websites and social media tools forming the basis of every person being fluent with knowledge repositories and a central channel the idea of meaning making, for information sharing and exchange of ethics, politics of technology, and ideas, and focused through social meetings in conscientization. shared hackerspaces
Some say that the maker culture is a reaction to the de-valuing of physical exploration and the growing sense of disconnection with the physical world in modern cities.
The maker culture is not about the STUFF we can make, it’s about the MEANING we can make.
Many products produced by the maker communities have a focus on health (food), STEM is an acronym for Science,Technology, Engineering and Math education.The term is typically used when addressing education policy and curriculum choices in schools to improve competitiveness in science and technology development. 1
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David Gauntlett & Mitch Resnick: Six amazing things about Making Souce: http://davidgauntlett.com/
Maker Movement Manifesto by Mark Hatch Source: The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers
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Makers Gigamap by Sahil Thappa, Swapnil Vibhute and Tanisha Vernekar Source: http://themakersystem.weebly.com/blog/gigamap
DRIVERS OF MAKER CULTURE What defines the influence, scope and power behind this movement is its optimism in action-the-belief in individuals’ ability to enact change, and then do it. Three driving forces pushing the maker movement forward at both the individual and systemic level: • Economic Individuals are empowered by a growing array of alternative ways to engage in the economy — taking advantage of new services and marketplaces to share, shop, sell and scale.
Massive person-to-person interactions are changing the landscape of information exchange and political action. Rather than waiting for institutional change, individuals are banding together to initiate social reform. • Technological The barriers of access to making have come crashing down, as simplified design tools and cost-effective DIY kits provide individuals with cheap means to make extraordinary projects.
Communities are championing maker efforts to revitalize urban centres, stimulate small business and provide a competitive advantage to attract even more business.
Makers and hackers are pairing indigenous materials, found artefacts or re-purposed tools with lab-grade technology to tailor solutions to local community needs.
• Societal Curiosity, ideology, necessity: whatever the reason, people are relying more heavily on their own hands and brains to meet daily needs. By experimenting with selfsufficiency, individuals are recognizing their own power through everyday action.
Knowledge of making, once passed down through specialized guilds, is being digitally codified, documented and shared. The global community of makers radiates outward from these digital networks, transcending both language and geography.
Makerspaces and private/public fab labs are popping up everywhere, allowing communities to teach themselves new skills that could revive local business or traditions in craftsmanship.
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OPEN SOURCE MOVEMENT Open Source refers to the model of providing goods and services which includes the possibility of the end-user’s participation in the production of these goods and services. Open participation and collaboration – which implies the vulnerability to share work in progress, without ego, power struggle, and insecurity. The core values are efficiency, and the ethics and wisdom to understand what we should be efficient about. In practice, we should strive to find effective ways to document our work – to create an open collaboration platform – where collaborators can come on boards rapidly. While it is difficult to document – the real-time, online collaborative tools (like Instructables) of the information age make it easier – and we should aim to tap these new tools to document and develop together. This concept has already been demonstrated in open source software and hardware. The crossover between software and hardware has lead to Open Design. Open design is the development of physical products, processes and systems through use of publicly shared design information. Open design process is generally facilitated by the Internet. The goals and philosophy is to lead to the development of physical products rather than just software. Open design is a form of co-creation, where the final product is designed by the users, rather than an external stakeholder such as a private company. Open source movement has lead to opening access to the information and technology which enables a different economic system to be realized, one based on the integration
of natural ecology, social ecology, and industrial ecology. This economic system is based on open access- based on widely accessible information and associated access to productive capital- distributed into the hands of an increased number of people. Companies like Local Motors, Esty are practicing this. A highly distributed, increasingly participatory model of production is the core of a democratic society, where stability is established naturally by the balance of human activity with sustainable extraction of natural resources. This is the opposite of the current mainstream of centralized economies, which have a structurally built-in tendency towards of overproduction. The integration of the natural, societal, and industrial ecologies - Open Source Ecology- aims at sustainable and regenerative economics. We are convinced that a possibility of a quality life exists, where human needs are guaranteed to the world’s entire population- as long as we ask ourselves basic questions on what societal structures and productive activities are truly appropriate to meeting human needs for all.
At the end of the day, the goal is to liberate our time to engage in exactly that which each of us wants to be doing- instead of what we need to do to survive. All have the potential to thrive. Today, an increasingly smaller percentage of the world’s population is in this position.
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Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
Shields: Are third-party add-ons which can expand the functionality with Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sensors, LCD-screens, buttons, motor control etc.
// set pin numbers: int buttonPin = 2; int ledPin = 13;
// the number of the pushbutton pin // the number of the LED pin
int buttonState = 0;
// variable for reading the pushbutton status
void setup() { // initialize the LED pin as an output: pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // initialize the pushbutton pin as an input: pinMode(buttonPin, INPUT); }
A0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5
void loop(){ // read the state of the pushbutton value: buttonState = digitalRead(buttonPin);
6~ 5~ 4
3~ 2 TX1 RX0
}
// select the input pin for the potentiometer int sensorPin = A0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor int sensorValue = 0; //Read a value (0-1023) from “sensorPin” sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
Reserved IO ref Reset 3.3V 5V Ground Ground Vin
// check if the pushbutton is pressed. // if it is, the buttonState is HIGH: if (buttonState == HIGH) { // turn LED on: digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); } else { // turn LED off: digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); }
SCL SDA Aref Ground 13 12 11 ~ 10~ 9~ 8
7
Crystal
Digital pins Software: The Arduino IDE is a simple to use programming environment. It allows a user to write code, to test & compile and to upload the program into the microcontroller on the Arduino.
ICSP Header Microcontroller Analog pins
Reset button
USB: Programming, data & power
m
75m
53m
m
Power pins
Arduino Uno Mounting holes
Power: 7-25V
// Useful functions: +-/* delay(1000) millis() constrain(value, low, high) map(value, fromLow, fromHigh, toLow, toHigh) Serial.begin(9600) Serial.print() Serial.write() Serial.read()
Arduino’s come in various forms, made by Arduino and other companies. Arduino Mega 2560 More pins and speed
Overview An Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform, running an Atmel ATMEGA microcontroller, which can sense the environment through sensors (light, sound, pressure, force, voltage, etc.) and can change its environment through actuators (motors, lights, etc.). It can also communicate with the outside world through USB, and, with the addition of shields, over Ethernet, Wi-fi, GSM, and a lot of other options. It is programmed with the Arduino language and the Arduino Development Environment (IDE). Designers, tinkerers and artists have used the platform to create numerous interactive installations, measurement devices, internetcontrolled cat feeders and much more. Over the years, the Arduino platform has grown to become a building block of the most open-source hardware projects and an ecosystem of developers, designers and sellers emerged. Community One of the key strengths of the Arduino platform is the existance of a very large and vibrant community. These hobbyists and professionals support each other and develop new hardware and software. This means that it's very easy to get started developing something for the average user; whatever you're trying to build, someone else probably already worked on that before you and shared their work.
Arduino Micro Smaller size
// // // // // // // // //
arithmetic wait for one second (1000 milliseconds) returns the time since start constrains a value Re-maps a number from one range to another Opens a serial port with a 9600 baudrate Writes human-readable text to the serial port More advanced alternative Read one byte from the serial port
Arduino Lilypad For wearable electronics
Shields & Libraries Over the years, both Arduino (the company) and third parties designed hundereds of shields for various purposes. These PCB's can be stacked on top of the Arduino board. There are shields to connect to networks (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM), to control things (servo's, motors, lights, electrical appliances), to interact with users (screens, buttons, audio, LED's), and to store information, provide power, read RFID-cards etc. Usually, a shield is provided with a software library which makes it easy to write software for the hardware in the shield. This way, a user can simply plug in the shield, load a library and get started with his program without having to think about the complex details of interfacing with e.g. an LCD-screen. Hardware The Arduino Uno board has: - 14 digital inputs and outputs (IO). These are used to interact with buttons, LED's etc. Of these, 6 have PWM "analog output" capability which are marked with ~. Can source (supply) or sink (receive) a maximum of 40mA per pin, 200mA for all pins combined. - 6 analog inputs. Mostly used to read analog sensors such as potentiometers, temperature sensors, and force sensors. Can also be used as digital IO.
- USB connection (B-type female), to provide power (5V, 500mA), programming and a serial data connection up to 115200 baud. - Barrel power jack, to provide power between 7-12V from an adapter or battery. This is regulated on the board to 5V (200mA) and 3.3V (50mA). The board automatically switches between power from USB or barrel. - ICSP header, to program the bootloader and as an alternative programming method. - 16MHz crystal, to provide a steady clock signal to the microcontroller. - Reset button, which restarts the microcontroller and the software. - A small LED, connected to pin 13, for testing and debugging. - 32KB of flash memory. Contains the "sketch" that you program and the bootloader for programming. - 2KB of SRAM. Used as the working memory to perform functions of the software. - 1KB of EEPROM. Used as long term (parameter) storage, which "survives" programming. Several protocols are available to communicate with peripherals, such as UART (also used for programming, pin 0 and 1), SPI (pin 11, 12, 13), Two Wire, One Wire, I2C.
Arduino Uno blueprint poster by Elektor.labs Source: http://circuitcellar.com/cc-blog/arduino-uno-poster/
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DIGITAL FABRICATION Digital fabrication is a type of manufacturing process where the machine used is controlled by a computer. The most common forms of digital fabrication are: • CNC Machining It is a computer controlled cutting process that uses a milling cutter to remove material from the surface of a workpiece. The milling cutter is a rotary cutting tool, often with multiple cutting points. As opposed to drilling, where the tool is advanced along its rotation axis, the cutter in milling is usually moved perpendicular to its axis so that cutting occurs on the circumference of the cutter. The milling process removes material by performing many separate, small cuts. This is accomplished by using a cutter with many teeth, spinning the cutter at high speed, or advancing the material through the cutter slowly; most often it is some combination of these three approaches. Shapes are cut out of wooden sheets • 3D Printing Some times also called Additive Manufacturing (AM), are processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object in which successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create the object. These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced from digital model data 3D model. Commonly used methods to melt or soften material to produce layers are Fused
Deposition Modelling (FDM), Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Objects are built up out of layers of metal or plastic • Laser Cutting It is a technology that uses a laser to cut materials, it works by directing the output of a high-power laser most commonly through optics. The laser optics and CNC (computer numerical control) are used to direct the material or the laser beam generated. CO2 and Solid State are the two main types of lasercutter used. Materials like metal are burnt or melted by a laser beam There are a huge range of digital fabrication techniques. The important aspect that unifies them is that the machines can reliably be programmed to make consistent products from digital designs.
Digitisation of fabrication is where you don’t just digitise design, but the materials and the process. The computer program doesn’t just describe the thing but becomes the thing.
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Opendesk CNC milled Edie stool
KAFO Splint 3D Printed leg brace
Desinature Bud lampshade
Lasercut Waterbomb origami fold
Sugar Lab 3D Printed edible geometry
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Lasercut flexible double curvature wood surface
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United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Source: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
SUSTAINABILITY It is an approach to design and development that focuses on environmental, social, and financial factors that are often never addressed together. Sustainable solutions strive to improve the many systems that support our lives, including efficiently using capital and markets, effectively using natural resources , and reducing waste and toxins in the environment while not harming people in societies across the Earth. Sustainability focuses on efficient and effective solutions that are better for society, the environment, and companies. Sustainability implies responsible and proactive decision-making and innovation that minimizes negative impact and maintains balance between ecological resilience, economic prosperity, political justice and cultural vibrancy to ensure a desirable planet for all species now and in the future. Sustainable development is the organizing principle for sustaining finite resources necessary to provide for the needs of future generations of life on the planet. It is a process that envisions a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use continue to meet human needs without undermining the “integrity, stability and beauty” of natural biotic systems. Sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of social, economic, and ecological sustainability. The intention of sustainable design is to “eliminate negative environmental impact completely through skilful, sensitive design”. Manifestations of sustainable design require renewable resources, impact the environment minimally, and connect people with the natural environment.
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Great design is sustainable design: Rather than considering green design as an externality, designing better user experience and comfort, doing more with less to enable the objects to easily achieve peak performance, and maximizing the effectives of durable, quality materials. Rather than the well-known edict “form follows function,” it’s time to think “form follows environment” and “form follow meaning.” Values and meaning run deeper than emotions and require careful consideration. Meaning is the deepest level at which people engage with a product, service or event. It is the most important aspect of the experience created between people and objects or between people and others. If we consume less when our meaning and value needs are satisfied, then meaningful experience and solutions can lead to more sustainable ones.
Those who engage the world in meaningful ways don’t look to products and services so much to satisfy their core meanings. Sustainable living is fundamentally the application of sustainability to lifestyle choice and decisions that attempts to reduce an individual’s or society’s use of the Earth’s natural resources and personal resources. Sustainable design and sustainable development are critical factors to sustainable living. Sustainable design encompasses the development of appropriate technology, which is a staple of sustainable living practices. Sustainable development in turn is the use of these technologies in infrastructure.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY A circular economy is an industrial system • Power of cascaded use that is restorative or regenerative by intention Diversifying reuse across the value chain and design. It replaces the ‘end-of-life’ and substituting for the inflow of virgin concept with restoration, shifts towards the materials into the economy before safely use of renewable energy, eliminates the use returning to the biosphere. of toxic chemicals, which impair reuse, and aims for the elimination of waste through • Power of pure circle the superior design of materials, products, Uncontaminated material streams increase systems, and, within this, business models. collection and redistribution efficiency while maintaining quality, particularly of The linear ‘take, make, dispose’ economic technical materials, which, in turn, extends model relies on large quantities of cheap, product longevity and thus increases easily accessible materials and energy and is material productivity. reaching its physical limits. Circular economy encompasses four sources of value creation that offer arbitrage opportunities in comparison with the linear product design and material usage. • Power of the inner circle The less a product has to be changed in reuse, refurbishment and re-manufacturing and the faster it returns to use, the higher the potential savings on the shares of material, labour, energy, and capital embedded in the product and on the associated rucksack of externalities (such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water, toxicity).
The principles of the circular economy - if thoughtfully applied - can provide short-term cost benefits today and some striking longer-term strategic opportunities.
The concept of a circular economy promises a way out. Innovative product designers and business leaders are already venturing into this space and are the changemakers we need.
• Power of circling longer Maximising the number of consecutive cycles (be it reuse, re-manufacturing, or recycling) and/or the time in each cycle.
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The Circular Economy technical and biological nutrient cycle Source: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
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Six Principles of Jugaad
‘Mochi’ or a cobbler in a typical Indian small shop setup
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JUGGAD OR FRUGALITY Jugaad or Frugality is the quality of being frugal, sparing, thrifty, prudent or economical in the consumption of consumable resources such as food, time or money, and avoiding waste, lavishness or extravagance. The Hindi term “Jugaad”, in a broad sense, refers to a certain resourcefulness and innovation found in Indian cities. Jerryrigged cars, homemade stoves, and do-ityourself water filtration are all examples of citizens making do with what they have on hand. Jugaad solutions emerge from the crisis; citizens respond to issues of sanitation, shelter, energy and water, with improvisational energy, cobbling together materials and resources by their own means to improve their living situation. I read somewhere that “Indian have PhD’s in frugality” and when you contemplate on this statement, it really makes sense. We have been practicing frugality since generations. We have a rich tradition of making, crafts and practices which have been helping us lead a sustainable life. In India everything can be recycled. Wedding gifts, birthday gift, gifts for any occasion: all of them are forwardable. Plastic shopping
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bags are reincarnated as garbage bags. And what cannot be reused whole often can be recycled for parts. Dharavi, the largest slum in the world, has an active informal economy in which numerous household enterprises employing many of the slum residents sort jettisoned goods. Every shard of every ware has value. Each part is disassembled, then melted, reassembled and sold. The total annual turnover has been estimated at over US$1 billion. We have an army of skilled professional “walas”, who have spent majority of their life fixing and tinkering with things. You can find them in every city, fixing one thing or the other. And because of technological infiltration, we have a new generation of repairwalas who are tinkering with the huge amount of electronic devices.
But increasing westernisation is steadily estranging us from frugality, especially in the urban settings. What will be the future of frugal making in India?
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The connections: How things are connected Source: https://kumu.io/ellenmacarthurfoundation/
CONNECTING THE DOTS We live in a complex and dynamic world, things which may seem to be disengaged initially but on further probing the connections surface. Making, open source, sustainability, DIY, and circular economy all have connections which may not be visible on a surface level. All of these schools of thought share a common denominator, the human willingness to create and change the world around, for the greater good. They have a sort of cause and effect on each other. Systems can be built based on all these schools of thought which can be financially, socially and ecologically rewarding.
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JOURNEY THROUGH THE PROJECT As this project was based on making and open source, I was looking for people and organizations to collaborate. I was interested in a myriad of things. There were a few things which I wanted to explore since my systems design course. I wanted to explore my childhood fascination for acoustic devices, I was interested in building furniture and then I wanted to do something within the realms of education. I had a vague idea about my project, nothing concrete. So I decided to write a few e-mails to people who I thought would be interested in helping me or collaborating. I wrote to the following people • Kiran Bir Sethi (Riverside School) for setting up the makerspace. • Workbench Project (Makerspace, Bangalore) for working on open source furniture. • Professor Anil Gupta (National Innovation Foundation) for open sourcing some of the NIF projects. • Autodesk India for helping me with software, material and prototyping. • Bosch India for helping me with tools and equipments. • Rajputana Custom Motors for building a motorbike. • Asha Jadeja (Jadeja Motwani Foundation) for helping me with the finances for the project. • Infinity Hackerspace for doing workshops with kids and community. I got positive reply from most of them and I ended up collaborating with a few. I started my project with researching about various types of speakers and their configurations and I built a few of them using Fablab CEPT. In between I went to Rajputana Custom Motors, Jaipur to talk
about motorcycle building, crafts and design. I along with Burhan (a fellow NID student) kept our speakers in the Makerfest. We got amazing response from people, some of them were interested in buying them. And during the Makerfest only I met Krishna, with whom I ended up collaborating for setting up the makerspace in Riverside school. It was just by coincidence that we met. I spent almost 3 months working on the makerspace. We were taking courses for the kids and parallelly setting up the makerspace, developing the curriculum, and training teachers. During this period I designed and built CNC milled furniture for the makerspace. In between I did the Creative Prison Industry project with Praveen and Lorraine Gamman (Professor, Central Saint Martins, London). We ended up co designing a series of anti-theft bags with the inmates of Sabarmati Central Jail. We had the opportunity of sharing our projects with Ms. Kiran Bedi (India’s first woman Indian Police Service officer) and a lot of high officials, NGO’s and media. I ended up going to Infinity (Dharamshala) organized HillHacks, which is a gathering of people from different backgrounds, places, countries and age. It’s an open source paradise with people hacking, coding and making stuff. I as a part of the school program did a couple of workshops with kids from the local government schools. I was also publishing the objects I was making on Instructables. The response has been well. Majority of my instrucables were featured. Instructables is a community built resource and they run a lot of contests. I’ve been asked to judge a few of them along with fellow publishers.
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I’ve been maintaining a blog to document my journey. I’ve been writing about the things I’ve been doing, curating videos, Instructables, methods & toolkits, and interesting articles. This project has been very organic and dynamic. There were certain things which I wanted to explore but I couldn’t within the timeframe. They are work in progress. Ekprayog will continue over the years to come. Origami workshop, Government Primary School, Naddi, Dharamshala
Anti - Theft Bag
Riverside School Makerspace
CNC milled storage unit, Riverside Makerspace
Sonic Architect acoustic systems
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Tools of the trade
A - Z of Open Booklet
SONIC ARCHITECT
INCEPTION OF SONIC ARCHITECT I’ve been exposed to a various forms of music, some because of my parents & friends and some by sheer coincidence. Since childhood I’ve come across different set of acoustic systems: radio, cassette player, walkman, discman, CD players, micro hi-fi system, portable speakers, and Bluetooth speakers. These objects have played a significant role in my life, they give me a chance to be in a world which was created according to the emotions and feelings I had at that particular time. They have been an escape to an alternate dimension. During our systems design course we made an electric uke and we connected it to an ipad and in a matter of minutes we were creating our own custom effects using garage band. We wanted to build our custom amplifier for the uke, but because of non availability of material and timeframe we couldn’t build one. And somewhere I wasn’t really happy with the system I was using; they were too plasticy and complex. I felt they were lacking soul. I wanted a amalgamation of handcraftsmanship and technology. I started researching about various kinds of acoustic systems. And as I started going deeper I realised that making a system wasn’t as simple as it seems. There are a number of factors involved and then within these factors there was further divergence.
• Electronic • Electrical • Material • Connectivity • Portability And I just didn’t want to make these systems for myself. I wanted them to be easily reproduced by anyone anywhere in the world. So I started writing Instructables for them. I gave the schematics of these systems for free. Initially I tried sourcing components from local market; I was able to source some and some were just not up to the quality I was looking for. Amplifiers were in particular very hard to find. I was also trying to develop a system of manufacturing these systems as I’m planning to have my own set up after NID. I was looking at redistributed manufacturing and traditional crafts. I researched on various channels for sourcing, manufacturing and distribution. I had heard Jimmy Page using the term ‘sonic architect’ in a documentary. Since that time I had decided that if I ever end up making my own acoustic systems, I would call it ‘Sonic Architect’
Sonic Architect systems provide affordance for creating a ‘Sonicscape’ for the listener.
• Configuration • Amplifier • Drivers • Enclosure
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INSPIRATION NAOTO FUKASAWA Fukasawa is a Japanese industrial designer. His has numerous awards and his work is part of a lot of permanent collections. I’ve been reading and following Fukasawas’ work since the last 2 years. Naoto Fukasawa is one of the world’s most influential designers who deals greatly with ‘affordance’. Although he designs electronic gadgets, his style is anti-tech. Like the Muji brand, he strives to design simple products that can be used by lots of people in many different situations. So what is affordance? Affordance is regarded as the potentiality of a product that can support user action without requiring users’ memory, inference, and further interpretation. Through this notion designers are able to focus on the users’ action rather than their minds, which open to new potentials in the design practice connecting to the user’s experience. Through interacting with the products, users can activate a sequence of possible actions automatically in order to achieve their tasks in the end. Therefore, designers should pay attention to the meaningful concepts regarding interactions between the products and the users rather than only concentrating on the abstract form. Naoto Fukasawa’s reinterpretation in designing for the everyday products comes
from observing how people unconsciously handle material objects. His work takes its cues from the unconscious actions of everyday behaviour, and the delight we feel when we see a familiar object with new eyes. Fukasawa’s products are used naturally and spontaneously: without thought, which is what he is out to appeal. Affordance in Fukasawa’s term is “Active memory” which refers to the experience that only the body can remember, in other words, the memory of the unconsciousness.
There is so much in the objects Fukasawa designs, there is certain calmness in all of them. It makes you feel at easy and this is what is inspirational and remarkable to me.
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Simplicity is not style, it is a state of harmony.
Fukasawa’s sketchbook
Muji wall clock
Plus Minus Zero calculator
Plus Minus Zero humidifier
Muji CD player
Plus Minus Zero wrist watch
Maruni Hiroshima chair
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INSPIRATION DIETER RAMS From the creation of his first product in 1955 for Braun, Dieter Rams, one of the most popular industrial designers, has lead and laid guidelines for the Functionalist design movement. He was also credited with the memorable phrase “Weniger, aber besser” which basically translates into “Less, but better”. Functionalist design is a design movement in which the form of the object is driven by the purpose of the object and not by its aesthetics. His design philosophy has been about achieving purity in design through reduction and restrain. Within the rapidly changing art world, Functionalist design and the works of Dieter Rams have remained immune to change. Through a career spanning five decades as an Industrial Designer, Dieter Rams, by removing fashion trends and avoiding obsolescence, has created a new form of timeless art expression. Dieter Rams’ designs have proved to be timeless and his work has greatly influenced modern design as it is today. He was influenced by and has lead the Functionalist movement through four decades of ever-changing art trends and movements. Rams used graphic design, form, proportion, and materiality to create order within his designs. His work does not try to be the center of attention; rather he allows his work to become part of the environment through precision and order. His products that have not fallen prey to technological irrelevance are still in production and those that have fallen prey
are now sought after collectibles. By closely observing his products it is easy to see how each of them affected and inspired other art movements along the years and also generations of designers to come who have adopted his ideology to continue in his footsteps. Dieter Rams is also very well known for his Ten Principles for Good Design. The straightforward principles lays down key points, clearly stating what makes a good design. This information is a timeless source of inspiration that most any designer can appreciate.
When I look at the work of Dieter Rams I can feel that things which were of paramount importance are there, there is no superfluous intention behind any of it. It sort of mimics the way nature work, only the things which are required are present.
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Dieter Rams Ten Principles of Good Design
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PROCESS
MOODBOARD
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SKETCHES
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SONIC ARCHITECT: VAI Vai is an amalgamation of digital fabrication, open source and craftsmanship. The classic and vintage character of the Vai is sure to capture your attention. Every system is lasercut and hand assembled. Take your music anywhere with it. • Efficient 6 Watt Class D amplifier • Small form factor • Sealed enclosure • 4000 mAh battery • 1.6″ Full-Range drivers • 3.5mm AUX input • Leather Handle Vai is repurposed from an old USB powered speakers I had with me. Because the speakers were so small, I could play around with the form factor. I wanted the speakers to be portable. I explored different battery options and finally I decided to use a standard
powerbank with inbuilt charging circuit and power indicator. As the wattage of the speakers is low, I made the enclosure using lasercut 2.5mm MDF sheet. I used the lasercutter because the construction is modular, panels fitting with each other and the need for precise dimensions. The speaker can be built using a lasercutter and a 2.5mm MDF/acrylic/ polycarbonate sheet. Bill of Material, CAD files, assembly instructions are available on Instructables for free.
Vai is an open source speaker which can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Lasercut-Portable-Speakers/
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CAD MODEL
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FABRICATION
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ASSEMBLY
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Vai: Amalgamation of Digital Fabrication and Handcraftsmanship
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Vai: Front
Vai: Back
Vai: Details
Vai: Grill detached
SONIC ARCHITECT: GILMOUR Gilmour is an amalgamation of digital fabrication, open source and craftsmanship. The oldschool boombox character of Gilmour is sure to bring back old memories and will capture your eyes and ears. Every system is unique, handcrafted using wood or MDF covered with raxine. Gilmour packs a punch with its Hi-Fidelity stereo electronics to fill your living space with full, powerful music. Powerful performance on the go. • Powerful 50 WPC Class D amplifier • Ported enclosure • 7000 mAh Sealed Lead Acit battery • 4″ Full-Range driver • Wireless control via Bluetooth • 3.5mm AUX input • Naturally Stained Wood or MDF covered with Raxine
between AC or battery mode, AUX or bluetooth mode. As the amlifier runs on a 12V voltage, I decided to put a SLA battery of 7000 mAh reserve. Because the wattage of the speakers is high, I made the enclosure using milled 8mm MDF, the front and back covers are made of 2.5mm lasercut MDF. The speaker can be built using the conventional woodworking tools as well. Bill of Material, CAD files, assembly instructions are available on Instructables for free.
Gilmour is an powerful open source boombox which can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world.
Gilmour with its vintage toggle switch interface gives you the option to choose http://www.instructables.com/id/20-Portable-Bluetooth-Boombox/
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CAD MODEL
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FABRICATION
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ASSEMBLY
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Gilmour: Amalgamation of Digital Fabrication,Technology and Handcraftsmanship
Gilmour: Front
Gilmour: Back
Gilmour: Control panel Details
Gilmour: Control panel Details
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SONIC ARCHITECT: CLAPTON Clapton is an amalgamation of technology and handcraftsmanship. The beautiful rustic character of the Clapton is sure to sooth your eyes and ears. Handmade using Burma Teakwood, each unit is unique with its own flaws. Not only pretty, it also packs a powerful punch with Hi-Fi stereo electronics to fill your living space with full, crisp, quality music. • Powerful 50 WPC Class D amplifier • Ported enclosure • 3-1/2″ Full-Range driver • Wireless control via Bluetooth • 3.5mm AUX input • Naturally Stained Burma Teakwood • Small form factor with big sound
The controls are as simple as they could ever be, which makes the intention of the system very clear. An On/Off toggle switch, a power jack and a 3.5mm AUX input. With crystal clear sound it does justice to the name Clapton.
Clapton is a beautiful and powerful acoustic system to enhance the character of your surroundings. Less, but better.
Top grade materials house the internal components, with wireless connectivity provided via Bluetooth. Constructed using conventional woodworking techniques, the result is a compact, natural feeling sound system for the home.
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CAD MODEL
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FABRICATION
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ASSEMBLY
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Clapton: Amalgamation of Technology and Handcraftsmanship
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Clapton: Front
Clapton: Back
Clapton: Driver Details
Clapton: Amplifier Details
Sonic Architect
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Sonic Architect and the Maker
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THE MAKERSPACE
MAKERSPACES! WHAT ARE THEY? To define them simply, Makerspaces (hackerspaces, hacklabs or hackspaces) come in all shapes and sizes, but they all serve as a gathering point for tools, projects, mentors and expertise. Makerspaces combine manufacturing equipment, community, and education for the purposes of enabling community members to design, prototype and create manufactured works that wouldn’t be possible to create with the resources available to individuals working alone. These spaces can take the form of loosely-organized individuals sharing space and tools, forprofit companies, non-profit corporations, organizations affiliated with or hosted within schools, universities or libraries, and more. All are united in the purpose of providing access to equipment, community, and education, and all are unique in exactly how they are arranged to fit the purposes of the community they serve.
core capabilities to make (almost) anything, allowing people and projects to be shared. - What does the fab lab network provide? Operational, educational, technical, financial, and logistical assistance beyond what’s available within one lab. - Who can use a fab lab? Fab labs are available as a students, staff and community, offering open access for individuals as well as scheduled access for programs. - What are your responsibilities? Safety: not hurting people or machines Operations: assisting with cleaning, maintaining, and improving the lab Knowledge: contributing to documentation and instruction - Who owns fab lab inventions? Designs and processes developed in fab labs can be protected and sold however an inventor chooses, but should remain available for individuals to use and learn from.
A collection of tools and machines does not define a Makerspace. Rather we define it by what it represents: Democratization of - How can businesses use a fab lab? design, engineering, fabrication Commercial activities can be prototyped and education. and incubated in a fab lab, but they must FABLAB - What is a fab lab? Fab labs are a global network of local labs (They began as an outreach project from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms), enabling invention by providing access to tools for digital fabrication. - What’s in a fab lab? Fab labs share an evolving inventory of
not conflict with other uses, they should grow beyond rather than within the lab, and they are expected to benefit the inventors, labs, and networks that contribute to their success.
I’ve worked extensively in Fab Lab CEPT. The freedom, expertise, help and sharing one comes across in this space is unparalleled. Fab Lab CEPT has enabled a lot of designers, architects, engineers, students, makers and tinkerers bring their ideas to life.
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Makerspace Poster (edited Maker: A documentary on the Maker Movement poster) Source: http://www.moxiecinema.com/
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WHY DO WE NEED MAKERSPACES IN SCHOOLS? The Maker Movement, a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe, has exciting and vast implications for the world of education. New tools and technology, such as 3D printing, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computing, e-textiles, “smart” materials, and programming languages are being invented at an unprecedented pace. The Maker Movement creates affordable or even free versions of these inventions, while sharing tools and ideas online to create a vibrant, collaborative community of global problemsolvers. Fortunately for teachers, the Maker Movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. By embracing the lessons of the Maker Movement, educators can revamp the best student-centered (in-fact human-centered) teaching practices to engage learners of all ages. We must re-imagine school curriculum not as a way to prepare students for the next academic challenge, or a future career, but as a place where students are inventors, scientists, and mathematicians today. The big game-changers of the Movement should be on every school’s radar: • Computer Controlled Fabrication Devices Over the past few years, devices that fabricate three-dimensional objects have become an affordable reality. These 3D printers can take a design file and output a physical object. Plastic filament is melted and deposited in intricate patterns that
build layer by layer, much like a 2D printer prints lines of dots that line by line create a printed page. With 3D design and printing, students can design and create their own objects. • Physical Computing New open-source micro-controllers, sensors, and interfaces connect the physical and digital worlds in ways never before possible. Wearable computing - in which circuits are made with conductive threadmakes textiles smart, flexible, and mobile. Plug-and-play devices that connect small microprocessors to the Internet, to each other, or to any number of sensors mean that low-cost, easy-to-make computational devices can test, monitor, and control your world. • Programming Programming is the key to controlling a new world of computational devices and the range of programming languages has never been greater. Today’s modern languages are designed for every purpose and learners of all ages. Hard Fun and the Process of Design and the breadth of options and the “can-do” attitude espoused by the movement is exactly what students need. Tinkering is a powerful form of “learning by doing,” an ethos shared by the rapidly expanding Maker Movement community and many educators, that inspires students to dig deeper and construct big ideas. Making learning hands-on honours the learning drive and spirit that is all too often crushed by endless worksheets and vocabulary drills.
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Real science and engineering is done through tinkering. We owe it to our children to give them the tools and experiences that actual scientists and engineers use, and we are at that point in time when we can bring these tools and learning opportunities into classrooms. There are multiple pathways to learning what we have always taught, and things to do that were unimaginable just a few years ago. There are extraordinary young people in every city, every school, and every classroom who deserve the opportunities to express themselves by inventing, creating, and making. All students need experiences that call upon their heads, hearts, and hands.
Kids tinkering with waste to make balloon powered car
Tinkering School kids with their roller-coaster and car
Learning airflow while having fun
Samarth’s Raspberry Pi inside a 3D printed case
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Tinkering School kids working on roller-coaster track
WHAT EDUCATION SYSTEMS CAN TAKE FROM THE MAKER MOVEMENT • “Doing” Is What Matters Makers learn to make stuff by making stuff. Schools often forget this as they continuously prepare students for something that is going to happen next week, next year, or in some future career. The affordable and accessible technology of the Maker Movement makes learning by doing a realistic approach for schools today.
and seek the beauty in life. In schools, there is a movement to add the Arts to STEM subjects (STEAM). That’s a good instinct, but if school hadn’t artificially removed all traces of creativity and art from STEM subjects, we wouldn’t need to talk about STEAM. Find ways to allow students to make projects with pride and unencumbered by categorization.
• Openness Makers share designs, code, and ideas globally but making occurs locally. Makers share their expertise with a worldwide audience. “We” are smarter than “me” is the lesson for educators. Collaboration on projects of intense personal interest drive the need to share ideas and lessons learned more than external incentives like grades.
• Mentoring Defies Ageism As Sir Ken Robinson says, school is the only place in the world where we sort people by their manufacturing date. The Maker Movement honours learners of all ages and embraces the sharing of expertise. Young people are valued alongside decades-older master tinkerers and inventors. Schools may create opportunities for mentoring and apprenticeship by connecting with the greater community. Access to expertise must not be limited to the classroom teacher.
• Give It A Go Modern maker/tinkerer are driven to invent the solution to any problem by making things, and then making those things better. Perhaps “grit” or determination can be taught, but there is no substitute for experience. The best way for students to become deeply invested in their work is for their projects to be personally meaningful, afforded sufficient development time, given access to constructive materials, and the students themselves encouraged to overcome challenges. • Iterative Design Computers make designing new inventions risk-free and inexpensive. You can now tinker with designs and programs and make prototypes easily and quickly. This is a departure from the linear design methodology that assumed that mistakes were expensive and need to be avoided. • Aesthetics Matter Many Maker projects are indistinguishable from art. It’s human to embellish, decorate,
• Learning Is Intensely Personal The current buzz about “personalized learning” is more often than not a scheme to deliver content by computerized algorithm. Not only is it magical thinking to believe that computers can teach, it confuses learning with delivering content. Learning happens inside the individual. It can’t be designed or delivered. Learning is personal—always. No one can do it for you. Giving kids the opportunity to master what they love means they will love what they learn. • It Is About the Technology too The Maker Movement sees tools and technology as essential elements for solving unsolvable problems and not just a tool. To makers, a 3D printer is not for learning to make 3D objects. Instead it is the raw material for solving problems, such as how to create inexpensive but custom-fit
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prosthetics for people anywhere in the world. The Maker philosophy prepares kids to solve problems their teachers never anticipated, with technology we can’t yet imagine. • Ownership One motto of the Maker Movement is “if you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Educators often talk about how learners should own their own learning, but if the learner doesn’t have control, they can’t own it. Pre-packaged experiences for students, even in the name of efficiency, are depriving students of owning their own learning. Learning depends on learners with maximum agency over their intellectual processes.
Whether you are getting started in your classroom or building a Makerspace, the most important thing to remember is that making is about making sense of the world, not about the “stuff.” Making connections and making meaning are the true results of classroom making, not the plastic or cardboard artefact.
Tinkering, Learning & The Adjacent Possible Source: http://gforsythe.ca/
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RIVERSIDE SCHOOL Over the last 15 years, Riverside has designed, implemented and shared a unique user centered curriculum that is providing schools with an alternative model which focuses on quality of learning and student well being. The practices have been recognized worldwide and the school has regularly been honoured for its academic achievement as well as its unique philosophy of ‘Doing Good and Doing Well’.
• To Promote and practice empathy in education, with particular emphasis to cultivate children’s creative confidence through promoting creative agency • To Advance the professionalism and culture of teachers, promoting a greater awareness of the value of collegial work and of meaningful relationships with the children and their families
Riverside School’s achievement stands as a • To Highlight the value of research, testimonial of a true 21st century model with observation, interpretation, and its students consistently outperforming the documentation of children’s knowledgetop 10 schools in India. building and thinking processes Riverside has worked with schools to adapt • To Share best practices through this model to different economic and cultural educational dialogues, conferences, contexts making it possible for children all professional development courses on the around the world to experience this user issues of education and the culture of centered method. childhood The Riverside approach is: • To Communicate a compelling idea of children and childhood, their potentials and competencies
Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t good enough. You can do anything. - Kiran Bir Sethi
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RIVERSIDE makerspace The Riverside Makerspace is part of the school’s natural progression & evolution. At its heart, it is a direct extension of one of our core pedagogical practices - experiential learning. The Makerspace will allow students to experience the entire cycle of problemsolving & creation. Having identified a challenge, they will collaborate to ideate, learn new skills & use new tools, design and build prototypes, test for effectiveness and refine their solutions. As we develop the program, we expect that students who wish to enter design and engineering streams will be able to
get a first-hand experience of what it means to be an engineer or a designer. We aim, over the next few years, to have all our budding designers & engineers build a portfolio of ideas and solutions developed at the Makerspace as part of their college applications : perhaps a better demonstration of their skills, interest & motivation than mere exam performance. Our makerspace currently has the following equipment which will allow students to learn programming, build robots, learn how electronics & sensors work.
The 3D-laser printer uses a plastic (polylactic acid; PLA) which is heated and then precisely printed (with a precision of 0.4 cm) to create complex 3-D shapes. One of the most exciting production technologies in the world, 3D printing technology has already started revolutionizing global manufacturing.
The laser cutter uses lasers to precisely cut or emboss material such as paper, leather, felt, etc. The accuracy that the laser cutter offers allows us to etch /cut intricate designs & shapes.
The CNC router at the school can work with metal, plywood, wood, among other hard materials. Controlled by a computer where students create & upload their designs, the CNC mill can then precisely cut the material.
Wood-working tools: Using a collection of tools including power drills, saws, sanders, etc., students will work with plywood, wood, light metal, etc. to design and build furniture, objects, etc. Electronics, including : Micro-controller boards (Arduino), Micro-processor boards (Raspberry Pi), Servos, motors, sensors, etc. Icon credits: 3D printer- Gonzalo Zaragoza, Lasercutter- Amy Schwartz, CNC Router- Amy Schwartz
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EXPERIMENTS IN THE makerspace We were doing a project with 29 Eighth graders while we were setting up the space. The concept behind the project was to come up with a socially relevant superpower and build a narrative and artifacts as a mean of achieving the same. In the beginning we told the students to come up with the following information • Superhero Name • Why the superpower • How would the superpower benefit • What to focus on • When will the superpower used • What would be the artefacts All of them came with wonderful ideas and narratives. The next step was to help them get clarity and decide on what exactly was that they were good at. In the meantime we asked them to come up with a logo and costume. We mentored each and every kid to form their identity. Once that was done, we asked them to create their identity digitally by using Inkscape software. Most of them were not familiar with the software, so we had to take a few sessions for them. The way things were flowing and happening was very organic. A lot of things were happening simultaneously. After the identity part was done, we worked along with them to come up with the artefacts which were going to be the part of their persona. They also picked up a grade which would finally turn into a city which they were trying to help or save. We had several open discussion with everyone over the prototypes and their methods. After going back and forth a few times and a jury we shortlisted 10 students whose superpower we would take forward to the prototyping phase. During the prototyping phase the students used a variety of materials and machines to make their prototypes. A lot of work happened in the school makerspace and
some was done in the Fab Lab CEPT. While prototyping the students were also learning 3D modelling, 3D printing and milling. We were constantly trying out the prototypes and making iterations. And we could see a significant change in the way of thinking and doing in the students. They started talking in terms of how they could make their prototype better, which machine or tool would they like to use and how to make it. On the last day of school, students showcased their work in an open house. The confidence and the authority they had in their presentation was breathtaking. They were telling their parents and friends the ideas, techniques, machines and software they used to make it happen. There was a spark in their eyes and it was wonderful to see these proud students with their creations. Meanwhile when all this was happening, we were also taking sessions with Fifth graders on lasercutting, origami and paper prototyping. Some students were helping us put the furniture and lamps for the makerspace. We were training a few teachers and students about the various machines, software and hardware. We worked on an Arduino installation with the Eleventh graders as well. In the last week we kept a demonstration for the entire staff of Riverside. We showcased all the things we made, the CNC milled furniture, 3D printed objects, the machines etc. We did a Q&A session to clarify about the types of materials, techniques and capabilities of the machines. We kept the floor open for the teachers to design something for themselves using the software the students were using. A lot of them came up with keychains and other tiny objects. We printed a few of them.
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Teacher Session
3D Printed Nautilus gears
Milling machine being used to create alphabets for the makerspace
Lamp making
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Storytelling using 3D printer
SAMARTH: THE TINKERER • Superhero Name The Tinkerer • Why the superpower You use computers everyday. You need to tinker with them, to understand what actually happens • How would the superpower benefit A tinkerer and a deep thinker • What to focus on Going beyond the screen - takes people from using computers to enjoy creating new functionalities for them • When will the superpower used When people don’t understand how to code - helping them understand and what is the fundamental understanding • What would be the artefacts A Raspberry Pi connected to a wrist mounted smartphone screen which he can taken anywhere
Samarth wanted to share his passion for coding with his friends, but needed to come up with a way to challenge and engage them. With his tinkering power he was able to use a Raspberry Pi to figure out a way to create a platform which allowed people to get started on the journey of tinkering. He connected his Pi to a phone which in turn could be used to access the functionality of the system. He created a casing for his raspberry Pi and used the 3D printer to create and he housed hi phone in a lasercut enclosure which he mounts on his wrist.
Samarth with his Raspberry Pi
Samarth giving a demo of his system
3D printing the case for Raspberry Pi
SANDESH: AGENT 100% • Superhero Name Agent 100% • Why the superpower Sandesh gives his 100% in everything and makes others give their 100% • How would the superpower benefit Gives 100% in everything and will make sure that others do too • What to focus on Helping 2nd and 3rd graders with basketball and taking ownership • When will the superpower used When one needs help in Basket ball. When one is giving up or being lazy. • What would be the artefacts Hoola hoop that can be at different levels and spin to take him from place to place. ‘Help needed detector’ to know where and when to go. Spring shoes
Sandesh felt children in 2nd and 3rd grade were intimidated to learn basketball because of the height of a standard basketball hoop. He Imagined ways to adjust the height of the hoop to help make learning basket ball easier for younger kids. He made a portable basketball stand with a adjustable hoop for various heights. Initially, he used a hoola hoop which he could carry around and hold at different heights. He then improvised the design using PVC pipes and a CNC routed hoop. Moreover, he added a feature through which kids could use the same portable basketball stand to learn passing as well.
Sandesh CNC milling the hoop
2nd graders learning to shoot the basketball
Work in progress
WHAT WE PLAN TO DO IN RIVERSIDE makerspace? To be able to drive change, the culture of innovation and the belief that one can transform this world needs to be inculcated from a young age. Throughout the course, children are provoked to think for themselves, apply design thinking to identify problems, come up with solutions to them, and during the process, teach themselves all the skills they need. As they work in teams, they develop an open mind towards accepting multiple perspectives and, very importantly, gets them to respect each other as equals by appreciating each one’s unique
strengths. They develop the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out. The curriculum is split into 6 terms, with each term spanning over a period of 3 months. Just like any other class at school, the skills you acquire in one term will be used in the consecutive one. Kiran Bir Sethi, the founder of DFC, and head of Riverside school is constantly guiding the designing of the curriculum.
YEAR 1 Introduction to Design Thinking & Fabrication TERM 1
Our process is inspired by Stanford D-school’s design thinking workshops and Design For Change. This process allows you to see where the real problem is. That way we do not solve the wrong problem. Design thinking is broken down into four steps: feel, imagine, do, and share. In this term, students are introduced to design thinking as a structured way of thought proven to improve creative problem solving skills, using a series of fun and increasingly challenging activities. Once they master the basics, they are introduced to using the laser cutter, CNC router and 2D software as powerful fabrication tools that can help them bring their ideas to life.
Learning through experimentation TERM 2
This curriculum introduces students to mechanics and electronics in an intuitive and non-pedantic manner. Students are encouraged to create all manner of moving and interactive models and robots. In the process, they learn about motion, constraints, circuits, robots etc. They are challenged to experiment with a variety of components in order to realise their ideas with a stress on learning through experimentation rather than reading.
Problem-solving through design challenges TERM 3
Having acquired facility in a range of design tools, students are given more complex and open-ended assignments. Their problem-solving abilities, initiative and creativity are thoroughly challenged. The activities also begin to mimic real-life more and more closely as students are made to realise that even the most difficult seeming problems are solvable with the right approach and tools. 89 ekprayog | Graduation Project
YEAR 2 Visualisation and Creation TERM 4
Students learn to visualise and create designs in three dimensions, ranging from the simple to the complex. They learn 3D modelling software and 3D printing, by making and printing their own designs. The challenges start simply, but become more open-ended very quickly, forcing students to draw upon all their design thinking experience from before.
Power of Programming TERM 5
Through hand-on projects using intuitive and fun games, students learn the basics of programming and how it can be an extension of design thinking. By the end of the module, they will be designing their own apps, websites and games. Students create blogs and portfolios to share their work.
Purposeful innovation for real world problems TERM 6
Now emerges an interface between hardware and software. Using ever more complex programs, electronics, mechanics, and also empathy and critical thought, students create robots and machines to solve problems of increasing difficulty. The stress is on purposeful innovation to tackle real life issues.
BETTER BY DESIGN At its foundation, our goal is to imbibe skills such as creative confidence, logical thinking and human centric thinking in children that will empower them to be disruptive leaders and innovators rather than passive followers. The design-thinking approach has been pioneered by Stanford’s D-School. We combine it with training in fabrication as practiced in MIT’s FabLabs to create a two-for-one course on design thinking and fabrication. 90 Sahil Thappa | Product Design | M.Des | NID | 2016
makerspace FURNITURE: CNC DIGITAL FABRICATION Laser vs. Milling Laser cutters can cut finer details because they have very small “kerf.” On the other hand, they’re more expensive and can’t do partial-depth cutting or “pocketing” like a CNC router can. They also use heat, which can burn the substrate and/ or generate nasty off-gassing. On the other hand, the burning effect can be used decoratively. A CNC router can change bits and cut complex relieved surfaces, or make cuts with mitered or otherwise profiled edges. I don’t think
Laser cut
Milled
either tool can be described as simply “better,” and, with one minor caveat, all of the techniques presented here can be used equally well with either a laser cutter or a router. Because of its very small cutting channel, a laser cutter can produce an inside corner with a sharp angle, whereas a rotary cutter using a physical tool is limited to inside corners rounded at the cutting tool’s radius.
Laser cut
Milled
The laser-cut version, with its sharp 90 corners, is suitable for use in simple edge-lap joint. The router-cut version, however, doesn’t work. The radiused corners bump into each other and the part edges don’t line up. You can cut each slot a bit deeper, of course, and in some applications this may be OK, but doing so leaves a void in the center of the joint and concentrates stress on the radiused corners.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 1. Inside faces of the edge laps mate cleanly. On the other hand, the round divots are visible in the assembled joint. Figure 2. If visible divots bothers you and your cutter is narrow enough, one can use this method. This method offers the best compromise, the flat areas between the divots seat against each other firmly and the divots themselves are concealed inside the joint. 91 ekprayog | Graduation Project
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PROCESS
MOODBOARD
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SKETCHES
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LT01 TABLE LT01 Table is an amalgamation of digital fabrication and functional design. LT01 is a rubberwood low table. When using high tables it becomes difficult to keep things around. The idea behind making the low tables was to provide kids with extra space around them while they sit on the floor and do their activities. These tables are easy to assemble and can be put together in matter of minutes. We milled three tables.
• 12mm Rubberwood Top • 18mm MDF Legs • CNC Routed • Easy to Assemble • Lightweight
LT01 is an open source knockdown low table which can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world.
http://www.instructables.com/id/CNC-Milled-Low-Table/
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CAD MODEL
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SU01 STORAGE SU01 Storage is an amalgamation of digital fabrication and functional design. SU01 has one main lockable compartment and one open top compartment. The top compartment provides boxes which can be used to accommodate the frequently used consumables or tools. The main compartment can house power tools or delicate work in progress. The locking extension is supported on one of the side panels.
• 18 mm MDF • CNC Routed • Easy to Assemble • Uses 12 screws only • Castor wheels for mobility
SU01 is an open source furniture which can be replicated by anyone anywhere in the world.
http://www.instructables.com/id/CNC-Milled-Storage-Unit-SU01/
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CAD MODEL
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SU02 STORAGE SU02 Storage is an amalgamation of digital fabrication and functional design. SU02 has two compartments which can be locked using the two doors. The partition shelf houses the door locking extensions. The door open about two milled hinge slots in the top and bottom panel. The unit can accommodate expensive electronic components, power tools, work in progress and other consumables.
• 18 mm MDF • CNC Routed • Easy to Assemble • Uses 12 screws only • Castor wheels for mobility
SU02 is an open source lockable furniture.
http://www.instructables.com/id/CNC-Milled-Storage-Unit-SU02/
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CAD MODEL
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SU03 STORAGE SU01 Storage is an amalgamation of digital fabrication and functional design. SU03 has one open top compartment. The compartment can house raw material like MDF, acrylic, cardboard and paper sheets. Also sometimes when there is a need to take material to another classroom the unit can be used.
• 18 mm MDF • CNC Routed • Easy to Assemble • Uses 12 screws only • Castor wheels for mobility
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CAD MODEL
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SU Storage in Riverside Makerspace
SU 01 STORAGE
SU01 Storage: Left
SU01 Storage: Locking extension
SU01 Storage: Open
SU01 Storage: Back
SU01 Storage: Front
SU01 Storage: Right
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SU 02 STORAGE
SU02 Storage: Left
SU02 Storage: Hinge and T-bone detailing
SU02 Storage: Open
SU02 Storage: Back
SU02 Storage: Front
SU02 Storage: Right
SU 03 STORAGE
SU03 Storage: Left
SU03 Storage:T-bone detailing
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SU03 Storage
SU03 Storage: Back
SU03 Storage: Front
SU03 Storage: Right
THE PRISON PROJECT
DESIGN THINKING FOR CREATIVE PRISON INDUSTRIES In future cities, design can make a contribution by developing tools and techniques that will help address recidivism by re-framing prison industries as holistic “Creative Hubs” that could better equip inmates to find employment opportunities when they are released from prison also contribute positively to the society. Across the world inmates often work for prison industries to keep busy, earn some income and learn new skills that may lead to future employment opportunities, but prison industries rarely focus on creative thinking processes that help educate prisoners to become more resilient in the highly competitive and changing work places of the city where expectations of employment are often not met amongst marginalised groups, who in huge numbers fail to find legitimate employment and thus resort to crime. This project aims to help break that cycle. In most prisons ‘educational’ and ‘work’ experiences are disconnected, and delivered separately; this project aims to innovate a new approach. It will explore if and how design engagement with prison industries may offer new opportunities to connect with hard to reach prisoners. Also to draw on design to address the gap that currently exists between ‘vocational’ and ‘educational’ approaches to increasing employability amongst prisoners.
“Innovate Inside : Towards Creative Prison Industries” is a pilot project under Design Thinking for Prison Industries. A six days co-creation workshop named “Design Thinking for Creative Prison Industries” which was conducted at Sabarmati Central Prison, Ahmedabad, with a group of 20-30 inmates and Design Team from National Institute of Design(NID). This is a part of collaborative research between NID in collaboration with Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC), Central Saint Martins,University of Arts, London, supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council(AHRC). “At present, inmates who work for ‘prison industries’ across the globe do not learn new skills, just odd jobs. They aren’t taught skills that could make them resilient in the workplace once they leave. This is because education and work are disconnected.” - Prof. Lorraine Gamman1
Lorraine Gamman is Professor of Design at the University of the Arts London; She founded the award-winning Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins in 1999. She is currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded 2015-16 ‘Design Thinking for Prison Industries’ project that will explore how best to co-design products against crime with prison inmates in the UK and India to help visualize the idea of anti crime design as a form of restorative justice in action. 1
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WHY
• To teach inmates how to create and design rather than just make someone else’s designs via machine work • To teach transferable skills – better communication, teamwork, conceptual design skills, pragmatic making skills, enterprise skills
WHAT
• Transfer knowledge about design thinking and design process to inmates • Inmates use empathic methods to design for other people (restorative process) • Development of products and make prototypes • Gain employability/entrepreneurial skills • Forming a reference library for the future and overall project from the material used
Crime prevention through Rehabilitative Education
Participatory Design Approach
Socially Responsive Design Approach
HOW
• Conducting Co-creation workshops with the inmates by the Design Experts • Following the Design Process and be a Design Facilitator, not a Designer and codesign together
ANTI-THEFT BAGS FOR EVERYDAY USE Help inmates understand their own design potential and ‘design thinking’ by creating anti theft bags for everyday use. Tools, methods and processes for codesign workshop at Sabarmati Central Prison, Ahmedabad were based on material developed and tested by DACRC in UK Prison (HMP Thameside,London) under the label “Makeright”. These experiences and insights were further examined and improvised based on local conditions.
6
Designer
20-30 Inmates
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DAY 1
First day started with some ice-breaking activities like drawing your partner. Activity like drawing simple objects like chair, window etc helped in building their creative confidence. Small activity like designing for your partner helped in building empathy. Towards the end, the topic “Bags� was introduced and everyone did small brainstorming session on it. Every group presented their work in the end. Insights
Ice-breaking are important as they help making everyone comfortable and to open up. They had strong imagination skills, as they related the objects with each other , while the activity was to draw them separately.
DAY 2
After quickly recapping the previous days work, everyone were divided into 5 groups. Day 2 was mainly about understanding personas and creating scenarios. Before creating scenarios, further detail analysis. Pictures of different types of bags and styles helped them in making mood boards and getting aware of current trend. Physical bags were also taken and analysed in terms of safety, function and style by every group to understand the details. Cards of different places and people helped them in creating and imagining stories with a persona. Insights
The scenario-building cards helped them to initiate the story. Also many of the participants started drawing by copying the given pictures. After building some confidence, they started drawing their own imaginations also. Most of the stories/scenarios imagined by them , ended with a positive note, like the person found the lost bag again.
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DAY 3
Day 3 was about generating design briefs around Antitheft Bags and building quick, dirty prototypes. 4-5 design briefs were taken to initiate the activity. After generating design briefs, the group members voted and one design brief was selected which was quickly prototyped from paper. Insights
Presentation of the work/ prototypes to everyone in the end of the day, helped in building ownership of the ideas and work. Inmates discussed and planned how to go about making quick prototypes with each other. Competition between the groups could be seen. Some of the groups got motivated on seeing other people making and discussing the prototypes.
DAY 4
After quickly revising the work done before, each group started detailing the selected concept further. Sketching and quick prototyping skills were used at this stage of process. Once the concepts were finalised, groups shifted to tailoring workshop and started stitching the bag prototypes from waste/extra clothe and material. By the end of this day, first level of prototypes were ready for every concept.
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DAY 5
The first level prototypes were first discussed with everyone in the beginning of day 5. Elements which can be improved in every concept were identified to make next level of prototypes. Next task was to make the improvised prototypes. Insights
Peer learning was something very interesting to see. Everyone learnt from each other while building their prototypes. Everyone came to know each others skills and expertise.
DAY 6
The developed prototypes were presented on day 6 by everyone to the other groups and to the DACRC team which had come. The discussions gave further insights on every concept. Participants also shared their experiences and learnings from the 6 days workshop with everyone.
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Back side of Anti-Theft Bag
Rucksack type string opening to prevent access to main compartment
Buckle to prolong the opening time
Spring loaded hook at the shoulder straps to tie the bag around a structure
Hook to keep keys safe inside the bag
Spring loaded hook to protect content in case buckle is open
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Anti-Theft Bag
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INNOVATE INSIDE:TOWARDS CREATIVE PRISON INDUSTRY At the end of the 6 days workshop, a seminar titled Innovate inside : Towards Creative Prison Industries, was organised at Sabarmati Central Prison to discuss how to take the idea of using design thinking as a teaching tool to turn prison industry into a holistic “creative hub� Case studies from some of the education and prison industry projects that are taking place in Gujarat Prisons, NID Ahmedabad and UK prison projects linked to UAL
were also shared and discussed. Developed concepts and prototypes of Anti-theft Bags along with the current prison industry products were also exhibited in this seminar. Officials from Gujarat Sabarmati Central Jail, Sabarmati prison inmates, representatives from related NGOs, design faculties and students from NID, design researchers and faculties from DACRC, UK were some of the attendees of the seminar.
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HILLHACKS
HILLHACKS In May I arrived in the mountain surrounded village of Rakkar in Himachal Pradesh. Ghoomakad is the base for the hackbase Infinity. Infinity is an environment for (un) learning, (self)exploration and creative community living. I’ve went to Infinity to attend the annual HillHacks. HillHacks is a conglomeration of crazy people from different backgrounds, places and age. The youngest participant was a 10 year old enthusiastic kid. HillHacks is network of alive people in an alive environment, with an open source sharing platform, giving birth to new ideas and concepts. Everyone who comes here takes something from here. It is all due to the involvement of everyone towards each other. There were so many amazing people around. You would find some people sitting and talking about android app development and then in some places you’d find some talking about human mind and feelings. Some people were learning how to ride a electric unicycle and some were helping the host family in cooking food. Then there were some who were taking workshop for kids in the surrounding schools and some who were taking workshop on film making, soldering, origami, sailing, making a clay oven etc.
things. The sort of conversations which were happening in the space was something which I didn’t come across earlier. There were no fixed rooms for staying. You could sleep anywhere. People slept in tents, hammocks, mud houses or under the open sky. There was an amazing stream which ran along Ghoomakad. The peaceful sound of water, high mountains, flora and fauna made me feel one with nature. Taking bath once or twice in the stream was sort off a ritual. HillHacks was like a big global family of tinkerers, makers and thinkers. I visited a few monasteries and Norbulingka Institute, which is dedicated to handing down tradition and restoring standards by providing training, education and employment for Tibetans. I learnt a few things about the various art forms which were practiced there. I met a few local craftsmen working in a handmade paper making organization.
Infinity and Hill Hacks is a way of life; A sustainable, collaborative and frugal way.
Every night we had a Tribe Vibe, in which people would gather and share their experiences and knowledge. We had discussions on time, intuition, abstraction, love, desire, making and a whole lot of other
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Vinay a fellow hillhacker along with our guide friend
Infinity, Ghoomakad, Rakkar
Lamas playing at the Gyuto Monastery, Sidhbari
Walking towards St. John’s in Wilderness, Mcleodganj
Rishab a fellow hillhacker having fun on unicycle
Pristine stream near Ghoomakad
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Norbulingka Institute, Sidhbari
SCHOOL PROGRAM: BALLOON POWERED CAR One of the reason behind going to hillhacks was to visit schools nearby and do workshop on origami. So, I visited the Government Primary School, Naddi along with a fellow hillhacker Henna. Kids from other nearby government schools also came for the workshop. We conducted two workshops, the first one was on balloon powered car and the second one was on basic origami.
Then the next challenge was propulsion. We started asking them questions like how does a car moves, how does an airplane flies, how a rocket launches itself. It was the rocket question that made some of the kids realize that they can use the balloon to power the car. The next challenge was to figure out how to make this happen using the parts available.
We took 25 kids of 3rd and 4th standard for the workshops. In the balloon powered car, we divided the kids into a group of four and then we distributed them a pack which had a cardboard sheet, two pairs of plastic toy car wheels, two steel rods, two straws, one rubber band, a pair of scissors and electrical tape.
One group stuck a balloon to the straw using tape and tried putting it on the car. But the problem was that the balloon kept on coming off the straw, Then one group used the rubber band to tie the balloon to the straw. They had to try and test how many times they had to ply the band. Too tight the band lead to slow release of air and too loose lead to the balloon coming off.
We asked them to make the car. They started tinkering with the material given. Some of them passed the steel rod through the corrugations, some stuck the rod directly to the cardboard using the tape. But all this was making the car stop in a very short distance. We asked the kids to figure out a way to attach the wheels in a free rotating manner. Initially they had difficulty but after 10-15 minutes some of them figured out that they can pass the steel rod through the straw and then attach it to the cardboard body.
After every group was done making the cars we had a couple of races. Kids were so excited in the entire process. We suggested that they can build more toys using the same concept and some of them said they would like to make a boat or a rocket.
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Fun and Play
Happiness
Inventor mode ON
Young Makers
Henna explaining the rules of the race
Gentlemen start your engines!
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SCHOOL PROGRAM: ORIGAMI WORKSHOP We got done with the 25 kids of the balloon powered car workshop by noon. As it was a government school, the kids took off for having their mid day meal and we were also invited by the staff to have lunch with them. We had the mid day meal food along with the one brought by the teachers and it was really nice. We talked about the general education scene in and around Dharamshala.
work and folding everyone was almost done and each one of them had a smile on their face.
We still had some time left, so I thought why not make the simplest toy I ever played with when I was a kid. The next model we made was a fan using three strips of paper. We cut the strips quickly and gave to the kids. And again the step by step process begun. This After having lunch we started the origami was an easier one so, the kids were able to workshop with a new set of 25 kids. I had pick the instructions fast. After finishing the made a few origami objects before we started fan they had no clue how it worked. I took the workshop. I kept them on the table and a pencil from one of the kid and placed the hung one of them from the ceiling of the fan on the tip of the pencil and blew at it; It room. started spinning. And the next moment there was a sense of amazement in them and all of Kids started checking the objects and twisted them got super excited. them around and some were trying to touch the object hanging from the ceiling. These After some 10 minutes the school ground objects really got them excited. Then I asked was full of kids running with their paper them whether they are interested in making fans. It was really a blissful feeling. one for themselves. All off them nodded A bunch of 25 kids with these paper their heads. toys having a blast. I don’t think any expensive toy would give so much joy as As these kids were from 3rd standard and the simple paper fan did. had no prior exposure to origami, I thought we’ll make a really simple helix model. So, Even one of the teacher got really excited we distributed papers to everyone and then about the concept of making things with we begun our step by step instructions. paper and she also learnt to make the fan. Some of the kids really picked up whatever She wants to teach this to the kids in the was being told to them, some of them were future. stuck. We asked the kids who figured out the folds to help the one who couldn’t. Then a The tiny 25 Makers had fun that day. lot of them came to me and Henna to help them out. After around 25 minutes of hard
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Giving wings to imagination
Surprise and curiosity
Delight
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In your face
Smile
Kids with various origami models
Helical model being tested
THE LITTLE OBJECTS
A - Z OF OPEN There are a few who believe in appropriation and free sharing of knowledge, information and resources. These few people are the Open Source folks. Since the advent of Internet, communication and collaboration across international and cultural boundaries has grown exponentially. Collaborative and open work like Wikipedia, Instuctables, Arduino, Fab Lab are some of the examples which are empowering people to pursue their hobbies and a few services like Etsy, Kickstarter are enabling these hobbyist into becoming full time entrepreneur. Open source hardware, open source software and open design are altering the way we look at things.
A lot of us are familiar with what is happening in the gamut of Open Source. And then there are a lot of us who have no clue or who are just getting started. This booklet gives a glimpse on open source platforms, organizations and corporations working to make an OPEN WORLD. It’s merely a source of information.
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LET THERE BE LIGHT I have been practicing origami for some years now and I particularly like geometric folding. An array of mountains and valleys creating beautiful 3 dimensional objects. I particularly like making geometric folded lamps using cartridge sheet. Cartridge sheet
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is stiff enough to hold its shape over a period of time and it diffuses light in a very beautiful way. I use laser cutter to score the patterns and a lot of time just a scale & cutter.
LEATHER & FELT iTOUCH COVER I’ve been working with leather for some time. There is something more to leather than just being a material. There is a story to it and I find it to be very beautiful, rich and resilient. I have an iTouch and I have been thinking of making a cover for it for quiet some time. The basic idea was to make a functional yet an aesthetically minimal looking cover. And also to follow the design aesthetics of the iTouch as well.
I used tan leather and felt for the cover. Conventional leather working process and tools were used for the build. The leather and felt pieces were cut, glued together, polished and then they were saddle stitched to form the cover. An opening was given at the bottom of the cover to facilitate the plugging and unplugging of headphones.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Leather-Felt-ITouch-Cover/
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WATCH STRAPS I like collecting wrist watches. And one of them which I have since the last four years is a Casio F-91W. It is popular for its simplicity, reliability and unpretentious, clean design. Considered to be one of the icons. It’s cost and reliability led to it being used by Al-Qaida for setting off IED. The strap of my watch broke down after three years of extensive use.
Because of iconic status I didn’t want to do something to the strap which would have made people swear at me.
And what do you do when the strap of the most enduring watch breaks down.
A lot of people are asking me to make straps for their watches. And I made a few of them.
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So, I ended up making a new strap made out of beautiful tan leather. The strap was meant not to interfere with the functional aspect and at the same stick to the clean design. I included some of the older part of the strap.
WOOD WONDERS There is something different about flying a real toy airplane and one on the screen. Kids have shifted from tangible toys to virtual one. Is this physical disconnect going to lead to a behavioural shift in the ways we perceive things and their meaning?
been instrumental in delivering the basics of maths and science (in a cost-effective way) to a lot of underprivileged kids. And his ways of teaching is so much fun and kids actually enjoy the entire process of coming up or making new things.
We should involve kids in the making of things. Some “Hard Fun” is required. They should be encouraged to come up with their own games and toys which could materialize in front of them. Making sense of the world around. Maybe we can start with reintroducing the simple wooden toys and the ways of making them to the kids. From my experience with the kids in Riverside and Dharamshala, I figured out most of the kids want to make things, specially toys and games but sadly we are not facilitating them in the way they should be.
I think that there is really a need for us to make sure that the kids growing up now have a sense of the real world and that they are not lost in the infinitely vast virtual world. There is a need for synthesis of these two worlds cause the kids who are in school now would end up living in a future which none of us adults can imagine.
Arvind Gupta1 has been doing phenomenal work for the past few decades and he has
One of the basic principle behind making these toys was to use only scraps of wood from workshop or food crates. The wood has been sealed using natural oil and beeswax.
Arvind Gupta is an Indian toy inventor and popularizer of science. Arvind Gupta’s website (http://www.arvindguptatoys.com) holds instructions, including short video clips on YouTube, in a number of languages, for making hundreds of improvised toys, which he makes available freely without copyright restrictions. His popular TED Talk:Turning Trash into Toys for learning was among the 10 best TED talks. 1
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ADDITIVE CONSTRUCTION I’ve used a couple of 3D printers during the course of the project. Some of them were DIY and some were from manufactures like Makerbot and Flashforge. I’ve been majorly interested in the building potential of the printer rather that the objects. I’ve been trying to print parametrically designed objects and geometries which can morph. I’ve also been looking at ways to print objects without support structures by changing the parameters like layer thickness, print speed, travel speed, infill etc. Customized solution for medicine, electronics, education, space related issues
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could be created. People are already working in the domain of customizable prosthetics and medical implants. Advances in technologies like 3D scanning, parametric design, 3D printing could also lead to the lowering of the cost of these implants, hence making them affordable. Till now I’ve used materials like PLA (Polylactic Acid) which is a biodegradable thermoplastic, ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) which is an amorphos thermoplastic. I’m planning of working with HIPS filament as it is flexible in nature. I would like to explore SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) printing as well.
INTO THE WILD
ekprayog ekprayog was started as a repository of the experiments which I was going to do during the degree project. But somehow it morphed into something else, something bigger. Initially I thought that the things I do will be put on the blog, but then there was so much data and information which I was passing by and a lot of it was worth sharing with others. So, I decided the split the blog into 4 sections. • Home: This page contains the montage of the journey along the project. • Blog: This page contains the information regarding the things I was doing and coming across. I was reading a lot and there were interesting things which I was coming across. So, I decided to put these things in the form of ‘Find of the Day’; it contained links to things from making to architecture, from medicine to artificial intelligence, psychology to future cities. • Work: This page contains link to the various projects I did and for which the Instructables were published.
• Food for Thought: There is so much information available that sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish between the one we need and the one we don’t. So, I made this page as a repository of all the things I found relevant. It contains: Instructables on various topics like woodworking, leather working, milling, laser cutting etc. Videos has YouTube links to various channels for electronics, making, food, science etc. Downloads has downloadable links to various design thinking toolkits, books, manuals etc. Interesting Read has links to topics and websites which have repositories of their own. ekprayog is part of my ideology and work. It is constantly morphing and evolving and I intend to keep it that way. A place for information and stories. The response towards the blog has been great and it has reached to people from almost 75 countries with 5,500 views till this day.
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INSTRUCTABLES Instructables is a place that lets you explore, document, and share your creations with the world. Instructables is a community based website specializing in user-created and uploaded do-it-yourself projects, which other users can comment on and rate for quality. Instructables is dedicated to step-by-step collaboration among members to build a variety of projects. Users post instructions to their projects, usually accompanied by visual aids, and then interact through comment. Instructables are written in such a way that they are easily replicable by other members. For the type of work I was doing in the degree project, Instructables was the platform which I deemed fit for sharing. It’s the Git for making. The interface of the website is very well designed which makes publishing an easy task. So far I’ve published 6 Instructables and 5 of them have been featured. A lot of Instructables are written every day. A featured Instructable is a project which has been written and presented in a way that the moderators seem them worthy to
be published on the main page. And once you are featured you get free Premium membership for a few months. I’ve a total of 18 months of Premium membership. This membership can be used to attend the newly launched classes, download ebooks & Instructables for free. There are a lot of sponsored contests on the platform. These contests are judged by Instructables appointed community judges and so far I’ve judged 6 contests with fellow community members. Instructables has been instrumental in providing rich and diverse information on various domains of making. It has been my Go-To place for doing research. The response towards the Instructables has been great and the 6 Instructables have reached a collective total of 28,000 views
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MAKER FEST & DELHI MINI MAKER FAIRE Maker Fest is the Indian continuation of Maker Faire hosted across America, Europe, Africa and Japan, among others. Creators, artists and hobbyist across the country are invited to present their contemporary applications of ideas using the vast ocean of art, science and technology. Also, it is noncommercial and free for the public to attend. Makerfest took place from 22nd January to 24th January 2016 in CEPT Ahmedabad. I along with Burhan showcased some of our speaker systems and did a workshop on paper mache. Maker Faire is the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth—a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker Movement. It’s a place where people show what they are making, and share what they are learning. Delhi’s first Official Maker Faire took place at IIIT-Delhi on August 6th, 2016. There were a lot of makers and a few were really young. The youngest of them being a 11 year old boy Aryan Tanwar who had come up with ‘The Smart School Bag’. The bag
provides students with a tool that tells them which books to pack. I showcased the entire range of Sonic Architect in the faire. Take away from the fest and faire. • Networking: A good platform to connect with people • Feedback on work: A good platform to get positive as well as negative feedback on your work and also getting to know the likes and dislikes of various people • Learning: Makers and tinkerers across the country come and share their work, experiences. • Collaboration: A lot of makers and people with complementary or supplementary skills and knowledge show interest in collaborating. • Investors: A lot of investor interested in investing come to these faires. Could lead to funding of projects and ideas. • Customers: Some people come with the point of buying, so its a good platform for selling as well.
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HIGH HOPES I’ve been working in and around the theme of this project for more than one and half year. I’ve tried my best to form an understanding of the overlapping as well as the discrete entities which I’ve talked about in this project. And these entities have been very dynamic and morphing. Evolving into something new as the time is progressing.
I’m planning of going for a residency at Pier9, Autodesk, which I personally feel is the pinnacle of what an amalgamation of design, technology and making could be.
Various stakeholders have been a part of this evolution and I hope that youngsters and specially designers from NID take a special interest and take the domain of Making and Openness forward.
ekprayog has just begun.
Maybe I’ll end up setting up a small studio or a makerspace in Ahmedabad making things; facilitating, teaching and learning from kids.
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THE BIGGER PICTURE Since the beginning of my academic time I always felt there was something missing, and that for some odd reason I was being conditioned to live a prisoned life, in an ideological and psychological prison. The way the entire education and socio economic system was built, it made people believe that our lives are about achieving certain goals, one needs to have a job, a car, a house and so on. This project was a way to move out of all this. We have seen what industrial revolution has done. We have seen what consumerism has done to this planet as well. Looking at the current advancement in science and technology we don’t seem to be leaving our planets for some other system in the distant future. So, we’ll have to design our products, process, systems and lives in such a way that there is place for every living being to thrive and be happy. Design is not personal effects of a designer. Design is a way of life, every single person who’s trying to solve a problem or creating creative solutions is a designer. Design cannot be done in isolation; it has to be done keeping people in mind, combining form, function and meaning with a focus on usercenteredness. People need to be involved in the entire process of designing otherwise it takes the very humaneness from the entire system. When people come together to look at the problem as a collective and listen to the issues and concerns of each member, they end up forming a very holistic perspective of the problem at hand. And when the solutions are built with the participation of everyone and by building on the ideas of others the system thus formed is an open
and a democratically designed one. It’s a transparent system with every single entity visible to each member. There is power in participation, co-creation and openness. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. Design is of the people, by the people and for the people. There have been numerous examples of people, groups, organizations and corporations from various backgrounds working on issues and problem in an open, participatory and human centered way. I tried to probe the questions we had arrived during systems project. Throughout this project I’ve worked with various stakeholders in a participatory and open way. And a lot of time I was just facilitating others in reaching their goals or helping them get deeper into making and open source movement. Most of the outcomes are the direct impactions of co-creation. And a few questions have surfaced during the scope of this project. I’ll continue probing them on my own and I hope anyone reading this document would too. ekprayog has been more than a project for me. It has been an extension of my consciousness and beliefs. The ‘Open Process’ which I’ve followed has shown me the potential of ‘Collective Existence’. Once a maker, always a maker.
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How will design, technology and designers evolve?
How much time will it take to revive Handcraftmanship?
What will be the future of frugal making in India?
How would Artificial Intelligence change Making and Open Source?
How would Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing change problem solving?
How long will it take to introduce making and experimental education in schools across India?
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your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you. - Charles Bukowski
REFERENCES BOOKS • Naoto Fukasawa, Naoto Fukasawa with essays by Antony Gormley, Jasper Morrison and others, Phaidon Press 2007 • Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible, Sophie Lovell, Phaidon Press 2011 • Muji, Naoto Fukasawa, Kenya Hara, Masaaki Kanai, Kazuko Koike and Takashi Sugimoto, Rizzoli 2010 • Designing Design, Kenya Hara, Lars Muller Publishers 2007 • Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge, MIT Press 2006 • Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough, Michael Braungart , North Point Press 2002 • Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Harper Perennial 1990 • Design Is the Problem, Nathan Shedroff, Rosenfeld Media 2009 • Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely, HarperCollins Canada 2007 • The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Ken Robinson, Lou Aronica, Penguin Books 2009 • The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster 2014 • Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind, V.S. Ramachandran, Fourth Estate 2006 • An Eames Primer, Eames Demetrios, Universe 2002 • Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change, Hartmut Esslinger, Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt GmbH 2012 • The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman, Basic Books 1988 • Product and Furniture Design, Rob Thompson, Thames & Hudson 2011 • Prototyping and Low-Volume Production, Rob Thompson, Thames & Hudson 2011 • Product and Furniture Design, Rob Thompson, Thames & Hudson 2011 • DIY Furniture: A Step-by-Step Guide, Christopher Stuart, Laurence King Publishing 2011 • Folding Techniques for Designers: From Sheet to Form, Paul Jackson, Laurence King Publishing 2011 • Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton, Princeton Architectural Press 2004 • Make:, Maker Media, Inc 2005• Joy of Making Indian Toys, Sudarshan Khanna, National Book Trust 2002 • Makerspace Playbook, Maker Media, Inc 2013 • Lens × Block: World as Construction Kit, Jay Saul Silver, MIT 2014 • Pool, Designindia 2010 • Repositioning Traditional, Burhan Ud Din, NID 2015 • Identifying Shuddha, Ishita Jain, NID 2015
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ONLINE ARTICLES & LINKS • http://www.nid.edu/ • http://www.instructables.com/ • https://www.youtube.com/ • https://www.opendesk.cc/ • http://fabfoundation.org/ • http://fabacademy.org/ • https://www.ideo.com/ • http://www.frogdesign.com/ • http://www.tinkeringschool.com/ • https://in.pinterest.com/ • http://www.core77.com/ • http://www.designboom.com/ • http://www.wired.com/ • http://www.popsci.com/ • https://flipboard.com/ • https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ • https://en.wikipedia.org/ • https://www.google.co.in/ • https://issuu.com/ • http://makezine.com/ • http://makered.org/ • http://www.aliexpress.com/ • http://www.vimeo.com/ • http://opensourceecology.org/ • http://en.plusminuszero.jp/ • https://www.hardgraft.com/ • http://www.psfk.com/report/makers-manual • http://filson-rohrbacher.com/projects/ • https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/ • https://hashtagdesignindia.wordpress.com/ • https://wiki.bath.ac.uk/display/charlescornelius/Tony+Wagner’s+Seven+Survival+Skills • http://www.edutopia.org/blog/designing-a-school-makerspace-jennifer-cooper • http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/04/03/how-the-maker-movement-istransforming-education • https://medium.com/@amarchadgar/dieter-rams-and-the-relevance-of-functionalism65bf7c1af064#.5u5u2xifi • http://www.techshop.ws/images/0071821139%20Maker%20Movement%20Manifesto%20 Sample%20Chapter.pdf
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VIDEOS • Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=KnCqR2yUXoU • Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson |, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY • RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigm, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U • Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age - Mitchel Resnick, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=A_0XzM34_Ew • Kid’s Creative Thinking - Mitchel Resnick, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=r_6XwhdpRJA • Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hvHViFc0ekw • Jay Silver: Hack a banana, make a keyboard!, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kiUnJ1d8vvw • Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=5n-APFrlXDs • Programming a new reality | Neil Gershenfeld | TEDxCERN, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=EA-wcFtUBE4 • Design at the Intersection of Technology and Biology | Neri Oxman | TED Talks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVa_IZVzUoc • Dale Dougherty: We are makers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlrB6npbwVQ • The Hackerspace Movement: Mitch Altman at TEDxBrussels, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=WkiX7R1-kaY • Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions?, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9X68dm92HVI • Arduino The Documentary, https://vimeo.com/18539129 • Dieter Rams, designer - Cold War Modern, https://vimeo.com/1874188 • Dieter Rams: Less and More Interview, https://vimeo.com/7917568 • Maruni story, https://vimeo.com/89888164 • Hacking Households, https://vimeo.com/106824084 • An Exploration in Craft - Featuring: Tanner Goods, https://vimeo.com/40693266 • Connecting: Makers, https://vimeo.com/96699192 • I Like To Make Stuff, https://www.youtube.com/user/iliketomakestuffcom/videos • Kirby Meets Audio,https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOuow_HIYmeaIqi42zVs3qg • jimmydiresta, https://www.youtube.com/user/jimmydiresta/videos • Sound United Case Study, https://vimeo.com/71269640
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QR CODE
ekprayog blog
https://ekprayogblog.wordpress.com/
Instructables
http://www.instructables.com/member/thappasahil/
Maker System blog
http://themakersystem.weebly.com/
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ANNEXURE SU01 STORAGE
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SU02 STORAGE
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SU03 STORAGE
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LT01 STORAGE
156 Sahil Thappa | Product Design | M.Des | NID | 2016
THE PROCESS: WHY THE CUBOIDAL FORMS The Sonic Architect systems and the CNC milled furniture had a certain form and aesthetic. They were built on the philosophy of functionalism, minimalism, affordance and openness. Because of functionalism only the parts and components which were required were kept, there was nothing in the systems which was only serving an aesthetical function. The systems were supposed to support user action without requiring users’ memory, inference, and further interpretation. They were meant to provide the affordance of use without any cognitive overload. Very simple controls and opening mechanisms were employed. All of them were supposed to look aesthetically minimal, so that they could merge into the surroundings without creating any visual noise. And these systems were supposed to be open for others to replicate and tweak. These systems were built keeping in mind replicability as one of the fundamental design criteria. As most of these were built using digital fabrication methods and on machines like a lasercutter and a CNC mill, they required a form which could be easily made by anyone anywhere in the world.
A lot of form exploration was done; organic free flowing form, cuboidal, cylindrical, trapezoidal, hexagonal, chamfered edges, rounded edges etc. But in the end cuboidal forms were finalized as they didn’t require any special machining or secondary process after milling or laser-cutting. Any organic form would have become difficult to replicate and would have added an additional cognitive and skill step in the making of the systems. At most what these systems required was sanding. Finger joints, double rabbet joints were used in most of the systems which just require the maker to keep the intersecting panels at an angle of ninety degrees to each other, rest was taken care by the geometry of the system. Because of the joints it was really easy to assemble them and also gave structure to the systems. I tried my best to keep the systems as easy to replicate, fabricate and assemble as possible. Though they still might have some issues and in case the person reading this document finds any, do get in touch with me or tweak it yourself and upload the new efficient design.
157 ekprayog | Graduation Project
158 Sahil Thappa | Product Design | M.Des | NID | 2016
COLOPHON This document has been set in Gill Sans MT by Eric Gill, Garamond by Claude Garamond and Traveling Typewriter by Carl Krull This document was printed at Siddhi Printech, Ahmedabad on 100 gsm matt paper on 6th September 2016. It is bound using wiro-binding.
ekprayog by Sahil Thappa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.