Design
My design journey started in industry in India in the late 1980s when I was designing vehicles and accessories in the transportation industry at Roplas India Ltd. and Bajaj Auto Pvt. Ltd. as an industrial designer. After joining academia in the US, my work as a designer has involved working closely with student teams and guiding them through projects from initial needs-finding research, through concept development, design detailing and finally prototyping. My latest design work has been leading a project at Google, which involved UX design and research, inclusive of industrial design, associated mobile app design, and service design.
New Product Development & Course Design
InnovationSpace, Arizona State University
The following are student team projects that I guided at Arizona State University sponsored by corporations. Each team had students from industrial design, graphic design, business, engineering, and sustainability. I served as a teacher and product manager on the projects, guiding students through early ethnographic research, market research, analysis and insight generation, brainstorming, concept selection, design detailing, appearance model-making, prototype building, branding, and documentation.
Sponsor: Procter & Gamble
Procter and Gamble sponsored three teams in InnovationSpace to design consumer products for people who are blind and visually impaired. This report created by the student team documents their solutions.
Sponsor: Herman Miller, Inc
Herman Miller, Inc. sponsored three teams of students from InnovationSpace for five years and these are some of the projects done.
A Fall Prevention System for Hospital Rooms (PDF)
Sponsor: Disney Consumer Products
These projects were sponsored by Disney Consumer Products. The goal was to generate ideas for new product concepts that helped children be more active, reduce obesity, minimize screen time, and be more creative.
Sponsor: Dow Corning Corporation
The Dow Corning Corporation sponsored InnovationSpace for three years, with the goal to explore applications in healthcare for the innovative silicon materials they were in the process of developing and testing.
Sponsor: LG Electronics
This project was sponsored by LG Electronics. They were interested in having students explore ideas for the Latina(o)/Chicana(o) market.
Sponsor: Intel
These projects were sponsored by Intel Corporation. The task was to generate new product ideas that would allow "aging in place". In other words, student teams designed products to help older adults living alone stay safe and healthy in their homes.
Sponsor: The Flexible Display Center
These projects were sponsored by the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University, where a group of engineers are developing new technologies to enable consumer devices with OLED screens that can bend and fold. The focus for these projects was to find applications for emergency rescue work.
A Product for Emergency Rescue (PDF)
Transportation Design
Some of my industrial design work from India was focused on transportation design. Due to the proprietary nature of the work done, I am unable to show any of it here.
Roplas, India Ltd.
Bajaj Auto PVT. Ltd.
ROPLAS, INDIA LTD.
This was my first job as an industrial designer in the R&D wing of the corporation. The primary product of this company was developing glass-fiber reinforced hard tops for Mahindra and Mahindra, an automotive manufacturer. My work involved generating ideas for new glass-reinforced fiber products.
BAJAJ AUTO PVT. LTD (FORMERLY VESPA OF INDIA)
At Bajaj Auto, my role included user-centered research as well as the design of accessories for mopeds, scooters and motorcycles.
Bajaj Auto, which started as Vespa of India was in the business of selling older Italian scooter designs in India. However, in India, they were not vehicles of leisure transportation; they were workhorses that transported entire families of up to five and six individuals through insane Indian traffic. In addition, they carried grocery bags, lunch boxes, school bags, umbrellas and other essential items of daily Indian life. I was involved in conducting research to redesign the scooter with Indian needs and market in mind. We conducted guerilla ethnographies, driving around town observing and learning about how people use scooters. The insights gained from this research were gradually incorporated through minor changes into the overall scooter design.
I was designing accessories and parts for the scooters and created several variations of such components as turn signal indicators, handlebar grips, petrol tank caps, etc.
Miscellaneous Sketches
I have always found sketching to be an incredibly powerful medium through which to visualize, ponder over, and communicate ideas. These are just a few sample sketches.
Exhibition Curation & Design
In 2010, I curated and designed an exhibition at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art called Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience that showcased the role design plays in shaping our experience of music. This exhibition focused on iconic, innovative product designs used by music creators and consumers in five key object categories. Two of these object types are actively used in music consumption: the boombox (also known as the ghetto blaster) and the personal portable stereo (from the transistor radio to the Walkman to the iPod). Two, the synthesizer and the guitar, are used in music production. And one, the turntable, is used in both realms. This spectrum of objects forms a complex matrix of use, a kind of ecosystem involving both an “ecology” of products (their relational network) and “evolution” (historical development). The exhibition included several designs of products from these five categories, a music lounge, and a DJ booth.
Visit the exhibition website here.
