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Braille Phone

*presented at TED 2011, California
*presented at Space-X, Vienna, 2010, (link)
*presented at India HCI 2010, IIT Bombay, (link)
*2nd prize, USID 2009 Design Challenge (link)
*Media: Huffington Post, (link)
*Media: Inc.com, (link)
*Media: Console Digest, (link)
*Media: DesignWala.org, (link)
*Media: GigaOm, (link)

Braille Phone is a concept phone intended as a product for visually blind users.

The phone works on a simple framework: It varies the height of a pixel instead of color to communicate information on “screen”. A high resolution screen of such kind is capable of conveying simple Braille text as well as shapes and figures of all kinds.

Apart from this, the screen is touch responsive, and hence displays information as well acts as an input modality. The tactile input and feedback system enables a blind user to use the phone to comfortably fulfill the expected tasks.

The information architecture and interaction model is designed to provide a consistent and simple perceptual model.


 

Digital Heritage Project Microsoft Research India ,(link)The Digital Heritage projects provides a framework for interactive storytelling. The framework enables a more immersive experience of exploration of spaces as compared to traditional media like movies and images. Digital heritage makes use of these traditional media sources along with more recent innovations like Photosynth and HD View technologies. The result is a compelling narrative which a user can choose to watch without interacting or he can take control in his own hands and explore the space in discussion.I was involved with Microsoft Research Labs as a designer. I have explored various interactive technologies before starting to work using Photosynth and HD View. Working on such narratives, helps in giving a whole new dimesion to storytelling.Some digital narratives (worth a watch) are available at: [link]

Digital Heritage Project

Microsoft Research India ,(link)

The Digital Heritage projects provides a framework for interactive storytelling. The framework enables a more immersive experience of exploration of spaces as compared to traditional media like movies and images. Digital heritage makes use of these traditional media sources along with more recent innovations like Photosynth and HD View technologies. The result is a compelling narrative which a user can choose to watch without interacting or he can take control in his own hands and explore the space in discussion.

I was involved with Microsoft Research Labs as a designer. I have explored various interactive technologies before starting to work using Photosynth and HD View. Working on such narratives, helps in giving a whole new dimesion to storytelling.

Some digital narratives (worth a watch) are available at: [link]

  View high resolution

One Degree of Separation - Short Film

*Finalist, Imagine Cup, Short Film Competition 2009
*Media,The Bangalore Mirror, link  
*Media,The Ahmedabad Mirror, link  

‘Dee’, the humanoid robot is the protagonist of the film. Dee is short for DX-168 (Scientific Name). It is also short for ‘didi’ which means elder sister in India. Though many people in the village now rely on Dee to solve a lot of their problems, there are also people who are suspicious of her. They cannot relate to an android even though Dee physically looks like them. Thus, this natural human tendency of not being able to accept change immediately is portrayed in this manner.

The idea of humanizing technology is the theme of this movie through Dee’s character. The researchers of today are aiming to humanize technology, they want as intuitive a interface as possible between man and the machine. The ultimate aim of converting human-computer interaction to human-human interaction has been envisioned here. The title ‘one degree of Separation’ denotes how technology can shrink the world and enhance our knowledge base. The idea is to show “how technology can help solve the problems of education and child health” under a situation which is envisioned by the researchers.

  1 note

Thou Shalt not Kill - Short Film

*Screened at Eigth - International Short Films Festival, 2010, link  


A journey of life, with its colors and uncertainties, goes through various phases before reaching its destination. I went through the same.

When I was born, the care and love from everyone filled my life. I was the centre of everyone’s attention. While I adapted to a new world, my family was busy giving form to my future.

As I grew up, I was an integral part of the family. I spent time with everyone, learned from them and helped them the best way I could. It was fun!

With more and more lessons of life accumulating in my mind, I learned the perfect ways of handling the moments. It was the time when something wrong was never bound to happen. But these phases are short lived…

As the age started showing on me, I was of lesser and lesser value to others. Newer members started filling my shoes. They gathered the limelight that was once associated with my entry into the world.

I knew the end was here!

But…

 

Haptic Remote

A split AC remote redesign.

The haptic remote provides a new and simpler interaction model for split AC interaction. The project first looks at pain points of present model and than elaborates on solutions that can help make the user a bit more happier.

The new model enables a gaze-free and high affordance interaction workflow for the user.

High-resolution posters provide a detailed summary of the Haptic Remote.

 

HCI Vis

Information Visualization Project

HCIvis is a visualization of scientific papers relating to the field of Human Computer Interaction. The structure of visualization makes it imperative to be interactive. The visualization is a 3D interactive visualization and was (partly) implemented in processong 1.0.

The variables in the visualization are a research paper, with its attributes being authors, year of publication, abstract, category of paper, keywords for the paper, references and cited by for the paper. The research paper is represented by a sphere.

The 3D form has a layered structure, each one representing a year. The spheres are color coded with respect to their category and their sizes according to importance of the paper. Each sphere is connected to other spheres with lines, which represent refences and cited by.

I experimented with various 3D visualization tools for the project: 3ds max, OpenGl, Microsoft Expression Blend, Processing 1.0, Zam3d, Blender and Google Sketchup.

 

Sensor Bat Physical Computing WorkshopThe use of physical computing environments to bring the computer out of the box that it is currently trapped in and use it as an extension or a medium for creative ideas. The sensor bat was an implementation of a simple keyboard chip to sense the area of contact between bat and ball. The display on monitor gave instant results about the location of contact, and further analysed the history of such inputs. I used processing 1.0 and a keyboard chip to implement this project.

Sensor Bat

Physical Computing Workshop

The use of physical computing environments to bring the computer out of the box that it is currently trapped in and use it as an extension or a medium for creative ideas. The sensor bat was an implementation of a simple keyboard chip to sense the area of contact between bat and ball. The display on monitor gave instant results about the location of contact, and further analysed the history of such inputs.

I used processing 1.0 and a keyboard chip to implement this project.

  View high resolution

Universal Media Hub

Live Project, HP Labs, India

The design brief:
To conceptualize solutions relating to media intensive devices in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.

Process followed:
1. India wide intensive ethnographic study in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
2. Research analysis and synthesis.
3. Conceptualization of product.
4. Interface and product design.

The product:
Universal Media hub aims to be a comfortable and user friendly media maintainance and archiving hub. The interaction and interface has been designed such that computer illiterate and semi-literate population will be able to use the device.

Demo:

The above video gives a demo of the product.

Screenshots:Screenshots


 

Terra-Mercuia

Computer Graphics Course, Information Visualization


Music and visualization go a long way back. While we were studying computer graphics, the idea of taking the ubiquitous “jumping bar” visualization a step further occurred.

We transformed the 2D bar visualization into a continuously flowing 3D terrain. The visualization provided a new way to interpret sound, it presented music in form of a terrain. By the end of a song, a corresponding terrain captured the feel of a song. A soothing tempo resulted in a desert while a dance number transformed into a high rise metropolitan.

We used OpenGl to implement visualization.

  1 note

Rail Map Information Visualization Course, A3 print poster This infovis is a chart that compares various trains plying on Delhi-Bangalore route. The variables covered in the chart are: trains, timings, stoppages, velocity, total journey time, days/nights in journey and train availability.

Rail Map

Information Visualization Course, A3 print poster

This infovis is a chart that compares various trains plying on Delhi-Bangalore route.

The variables covered in the chart are: trains, timings, stoppages, velocity, total journey time, days/nights in journey and train availability.

  View high resolution

Scale Map Space/Scale course, Map of Lal Bagh LakeAn exciting project, this poster was an exercise to represent physical space using our body as unit of measure. The Lal Bagh lake in Bangalore was first measured by counting the number of steps in its circumference and then visualy reperesented along with the step size.

Scale Map

Space/Scale course, Map of Lal Bagh Lake

An exciting project, this poster was an exercise to represent physical space using our body as unit of measure. The Lal Bagh lake in Bangalore was first measured by counting the number of steps in its circumference and then visualy reperesented along with the step size.

  1 note View high resolution

Pillow Speaker

Physical Computing workshop, Concept Video

The amalgamation of technology, design and interaction. The expressive electronics workshop presented us with oppurtunity to get a hands on with physical computing. Funny in the beginning, yet childishly loveable as a product. The idea of intelligence, and possibly emotions, in objects was like having a fresh range of species to interact with.

The workshop resulted in a few interesting and creative concepts, pillow speaker and sensor bat being two of these.

 

Etisal - Short Film

*4th place, Imagine Cup, Short Film finals 2009
*Media, Imagine cup, Student Profile, link

Theme:
Egypt, the Ancient meets the Modern

Narration:
Egypt, a country of paradoxes…You will experience this the moment
the summer sun shines on you. In this ancient land, even Time is
supposed to fear the pyramids. As for me, I spanned a time of 3000
years and back in a single day.

Story begins with the Nile. The gift of the Nile is truly the treasure
chest of the earth. No one knows it better than the Egyptians who live
in parallel worlds, at home at both.

For me, this journey was a roller coaster, one I coudnt get enough of…

At every bend and turn, I found hidden treasures. Some showed the way
to the future of Egypt while some catapulted me to the past,
triggering a strange sort of deja-vu. Everything seemed vaguely
familiar, maybe it was the warm egyptian hosptality that seemed so
comforting.

Heart racing, I sat amongst the footprints of the sand of time.
Multi-hued memories lurked in every sip of tea, smoke that curled out
of my seesha, in the inviting window displays of a modern malls, the
Technology that fastened the pace of the country.

I knew I was home…


 

eNavigate B.Tech Project The technology has progressed immensely, helping us in every field of work. The transporation system has however progressed at snail’s pace. This work was to design an intelligent transport system to achieve an efficient usage of road networks in a city. The design was a Wi-Fi based system, where all the vehicles used the display cum interaction devices (fitted inside their vehicles). The system used A-star algorithm to calculate the shortest path/ shortest time/ most preferred path and passed on the knowledge to communters via display devices inside vehicles.

eNavigate

B.Tech Project

The technology has progressed immensely, helping us in every field of work. The transporation system has however progressed at snail’s pace. This work was to design an intelligent transport system to achieve an efficient usage of road networks in a city.

The design was a Wi-Fi based system, where all the vehicles used the display cum interaction devices (fitted inside their vehicles). The system used A-star algorithm to calculate the shortest path/ shortest time/ most preferred path and passed on the knowledge to communters via display devices inside vehicles.

  View high resolution

Me Board: An A3 poster that represents me, and it does that quite accurately. World Usability Day 2008, Yahoo, India Theme: Transportation Wordle, Info-Design Camp, Tactical Tech. (link) This poster was made for Tactical Tech. The poster gave a visual measure of distribution of participants in Info-Design Camp 2009. The categories used were field of work and countries. The poster was used by Tactical Tech in Information Brochure and Poster Campaign. A week with clay We spent a week with clay, exploring it with respect to material characteristics, forms, emotional attributes. At the end of the week, the exercise was to represent the learnings in the week on a poster. Here each box represents a day, along with learnings and forms made on that day.

Me Board: An A3 poster that represents me, and it does that quite accurately.



World Usability Day 2008, Yahoo, India

Theme: Transportation



Wordle, Info-Design Camp, Tactical Tech. (link)

This poster was made for Tactical Tech. The poster gave a visual measure of distribution of participants in Info-Design Camp 2009. The categories used were field of work and countries. The poster was used by Tactical Tech in Information Brochure and Poster Campaign.



A week with clay

We spent a week with clay, exploring it with respect to material characteristics, forms, emotional attributes. At the end of the week, the exercise was to represent the learnings in the week on a poster.

Here each box represents a day, along with learnings and forms made on that day.

 

Braille Phone

*presented at TED 2011, California
*presented at Space-X, Vienna, 2010, (link)
*presented at India HCI 2010, IIT Bombay, (link)
*2nd prize, USID 2009 Design Challenge (link)
*Media: Huffington Post, (link)
*Media: Inc.com, (link)
*Media: Console Digest, (link)
*Media: DesignWala.org, (link)
*Media: GigaOm, (link)

Braille Phone is a concept phone intended as a product for visually blind users.

The phone works on a simple framework: It varies the height of a pixel instead of color to communicate information on “screen”. A high resolution screen of such kind is capable of conveying simple Braille text as well as shapes and figures of all kinds.

Apart from this, the screen is touch responsive, and hence displays information as well acts as an input modality. The tactile input and feedback system enables a blind user to use the phone to comfortably fulfill the expected tasks.

The information architecture and interaction model is designed to provide a consistent and simple perceptual model.


Digital Heritage Project Microsoft Research India ,(link)The Digital Heritage projects provides a framework for interactive storytelling. The framework enables a more immersive experience of exploration of spaces as compared to traditional media like movies and images. Digital heritage makes use of these traditional media sources along with more recent innovations like Photosynth and HD View technologies. The result is a compelling narrative which a user can choose to watch without interacting or he can take control in his own hands and explore the space in discussion.I was involved with Microsoft Research Labs as a designer. I have explored various interactive technologies before starting to work using Photosynth and HD View. Working on such narratives, helps in giving a whole new dimesion to storytelling.Some digital narratives (worth a watch) are available at: [link]

Digital Heritage Project

Microsoft Research India ,(link)

The Digital Heritage projects provides a framework for interactive storytelling. The framework enables a more immersive experience of exploration of spaces as compared to traditional media like movies and images. Digital heritage makes use of these traditional media sources along with more recent innovations like Photosynth and HD View technologies. The result is a compelling narrative which a user can choose to watch without interacting or he can take control in his own hands and explore the space in discussion.

I was involved with Microsoft Research Labs as a designer. I have explored various interactive technologies before starting to work using Photosynth and HD View. Working on such narratives, helps in giving a whole new dimesion to storytelling.

Some digital narratives (worth a watch) are available at: [link]

One Degree of Separation - Short Film

*Finalist, Imagine Cup, Short Film Competition 2009
*Media,The Bangalore Mirror, link  
*Media,The Ahmedabad Mirror, link  

‘Dee’, the humanoid robot is the protagonist of the film. Dee is short for DX-168 (Scientific Name). It is also short for ‘didi’ which means elder sister in India. Though many people in the village now rely on Dee to solve a lot of their problems, there are also people who are suspicious of her. They cannot relate to an android even though Dee physically looks like them. Thus, this natural human tendency of not being able to accept change immediately is portrayed in this manner.

The idea of humanizing technology is the theme of this movie through Dee’s character. The researchers of today are aiming to humanize technology, they want as intuitive a interface as possible between man and the machine. The ultimate aim of converting human-computer interaction to human-human interaction has been envisioned here. The title ‘one degree of Separation’ denotes how technology can shrink the world and enhance our knowledge base. The idea is to show “how technology can help solve the problems of education and child health” under a situation which is envisioned by the researchers.

Thou Shalt not Kill - Short Film

*Screened at Eigth - International Short Films Festival, 2010, link  


A journey of life, with its colors and uncertainties, goes through various phases before reaching its destination. I went through the same.

When I was born, the care and love from everyone filled my life. I was the centre of everyone’s attention. While I adapted to a new world, my family was busy giving form to my future.

As I grew up, I was an integral part of the family. I spent time with everyone, learned from them and helped them the best way I could. It was fun!

With more and more lessons of life accumulating in my mind, I learned the perfect ways of handling the moments. It was the time when something wrong was never bound to happen. But these phases are short lived…

As the age started showing on me, I was of lesser and lesser value to others. Newer members started filling my shoes. They gathered the limelight that was once associated with my entry into the world.

I knew the end was here!

But…

Haptic Remote

A split AC remote redesign.

The haptic remote provides a new and simpler interaction model for split AC interaction. The project first looks at pain points of present model and than elaborates on solutions that can help make the user a bit more happier.

The new model enables a gaze-free and high affordance interaction workflow for the user.

High-resolution posters provide a detailed summary of the Haptic Remote.

HCI Vis

Information Visualization Project

HCIvis is a visualization of scientific papers relating to the field of Human Computer Interaction. The structure of visualization makes it imperative to be interactive. The visualization is a 3D interactive visualization and was (partly) implemented in processong 1.0.

The variables in the visualization are a research paper, with its attributes being authors, year of publication, abstract, category of paper, keywords for the paper, references and cited by for the paper. The research paper is represented by a sphere.

The 3D form has a layered structure, each one representing a year. The spheres are color coded with respect to their category and their sizes according to importance of the paper. Each sphere is connected to other spheres with lines, which represent refences and cited by.

I experimented with various 3D visualization tools for the project: 3ds max, OpenGl, Microsoft Expression Blend, Processing 1.0, Zam3d, Blender and Google Sketchup.

Sensor Bat Physical Computing WorkshopThe use of physical computing environments to bring the computer out of the box that it is currently trapped in and use it as an extension or a medium for creative ideas. The sensor bat was an implementation of a simple keyboard chip to sense the area of contact between bat and ball. The display on monitor gave instant results about the location of contact, and further analysed the history of such inputs. I used processing 1.0 and a keyboard chip to implement this project.

Sensor Bat

Physical Computing Workshop

The use of physical computing environments to bring the computer out of the box that it is currently trapped in and use it as an extension or a medium for creative ideas. The sensor bat was an implementation of a simple keyboard chip to sense the area of contact between bat and ball. The display on monitor gave instant results about the location of contact, and further analysed the history of such inputs.

I used processing 1.0 and a keyboard chip to implement this project.

Universal Media Hub

Live Project, HP Labs, India

The design brief:
To conceptualize solutions relating to media intensive devices in tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India.

Process followed:
1. India wide intensive ethnographic study in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
2. Research analysis and synthesis.
3. Conceptualization of product.
4. Interface and product design.

The product:
Universal Media hub aims to be a comfortable and user friendly media maintainance and archiving hub. The interaction and interface has been designed such that computer illiterate and semi-literate population will be able to use the device.

Demo:

The above video gives a demo of the product.

Screenshots:Screenshots


Terra-Mercuia

Computer Graphics Course, Information Visualization


Music and visualization go a long way back. While we were studying computer graphics, the idea of taking the ubiquitous “jumping bar” visualization a step further occurred.

We transformed the 2D bar visualization into a continuously flowing 3D terrain. The visualization provided a new way to interpret sound, it presented music in form of a terrain. By the end of a song, a corresponding terrain captured the feel of a song. A soothing tempo resulted in a desert while a dance number transformed into a high rise metropolitan.

We used OpenGl to implement visualization.

Rail Map Information Visualization Course, A3 print poster This infovis is a chart that compares various trains plying on Delhi-Bangalore route. The variables covered in the chart are: trains, timings, stoppages, velocity, total journey time, days/nights in journey and train availability.

Rail Map

Information Visualization Course, A3 print poster

This infovis is a chart that compares various trains plying on Delhi-Bangalore route.

The variables covered in the chart are: trains, timings, stoppages, velocity, total journey time, days/nights in journey and train availability.

Scale Map Space/Scale course, Map of Lal Bagh LakeAn exciting project, this poster was an exercise to represent physical space using our body as unit of measure. The Lal Bagh lake in Bangalore was first measured by counting the number of steps in its circumference and then visualy reperesented along with the step size.

Scale Map

Space/Scale course, Map of Lal Bagh Lake

An exciting project, this poster was an exercise to represent physical space using our body as unit of measure. The Lal Bagh lake in Bangalore was first measured by counting the number of steps in its circumference and then visualy reperesented along with the step size.

Pillow Speaker

Physical Computing workshop, Concept Video

The amalgamation of technology, design and interaction. The expressive electronics workshop presented us with oppurtunity to get a hands on with physical computing. Funny in the beginning, yet childishly loveable as a product. The idea of intelligence, and possibly emotions, in objects was like having a fresh range of species to interact with.

The workshop resulted in a few interesting and creative concepts, pillow speaker and sensor bat being two of these.

Etisal - Short Film

*4th place, Imagine Cup, Short Film finals 2009
*Media, Imagine cup, Student Profile, link

Theme:
Egypt, the Ancient meets the Modern

Narration:
Egypt, a country of paradoxes…You will experience this the moment
the summer sun shines on you. In this ancient land, even Time is
supposed to fear the pyramids. As for me, I spanned a time of 3000
years and back in a single day.

Story begins with the Nile. The gift of the Nile is truly the treasure
chest of the earth. No one knows it better than the Egyptians who live
in parallel worlds, at home at both.

For me, this journey was a roller coaster, one I coudnt get enough of…

At every bend and turn, I found hidden treasures. Some showed the way
to the future of Egypt while some catapulted me to the past,
triggering a strange sort of deja-vu. Everything seemed vaguely
familiar, maybe it was the warm egyptian hosptality that seemed so
comforting.

Heart racing, I sat amongst the footprints of the sand of time.
Multi-hued memories lurked in every sip of tea, smoke that curled out
of my seesha, in the inviting window displays of a modern malls, the
Technology that fastened the pace of the country.

I knew I was home…


eNavigate B.Tech Project The technology has progressed immensely, helping us in every field of work. The transporation system has however progressed at snail’s pace. This work was to design an intelligent transport system to achieve an efficient usage of road networks in a city. The design was a Wi-Fi based system, where all the vehicles used the display cum interaction devices (fitted inside their vehicles). The system used A-star algorithm to calculate the shortest path/ shortest time/ most preferred path and passed on the knowledge to communters via display devices inside vehicles.

eNavigate

B.Tech Project

The technology has progressed immensely, helping us in every field of work. The transporation system has however progressed at snail’s pace. This work was to design an intelligent transport system to achieve an efficient usage of road networks in a city.

The design was a Wi-Fi based system, where all the vehicles used the display cum interaction devices (fitted inside their vehicles). The system used A-star algorithm to calculate the shortest path/ shortest time/ most preferred path and passed on the knowledge to communters via display devices inside vehicles.

Me Board: An A3 poster that represents me, and it does that quite accurately. World Usability Day 2008, Yahoo, India Theme: Transportation Wordle, Info-Design Camp, Tactical Tech. (link) This poster was made for Tactical Tech. The poster gave a visual measure of distribution of participants in Info-Design Camp 2009. The categories used were field of work and countries. The poster was used by Tactical Tech in Information Brochure and Poster Campaign. A week with clay We spent a week with clay, exploring it with respect to material characteristics, forms, emotional attributes. At the end of the week, the exercise was to represent the learnings in the week on a poster. Here each box represents a day, along with learnings and forms made on that day.

Me Board: An A3 poster that represents me, and it does that quite accurately.



World Usability Day 2008, Yahoo, India

Theme: Transportation



Wordle, Info-Design Camp, Tactical Tech. (link)

This poster was made for Tactical Tech. The poster gave a visual measure of distribution of participants in Info-Design Camp 2009. The categories used were field of work and countries. The poster was used by Tactical Tech in Information Brochure and Poster Campaign.



A week with clay

We spent a week with clay, exploring it with respect to material characteristics, forms, emotional attributes. At the end of the week, the exercise was to represent the learnings in the week on a poster.

Here each box represents a day, along with learnings and forms made on that day.

About:

I am an interaction designer, playing around in the fields of ubiquitous computing and interactive media.

Apart from a lot of things in life, storytelling and conceptualization stimulates my thought process. I am a keen observer of things happening around, and would usually spend my time pondering about a lot of "whys" and "hows".

If you want to get in touch about something than my email id is dagarsd[at]gmail[dot]com.

:)

------------------------------------------
News:
Recently, I have been selected as a TED 2011 fellow.
Some related links are:
1. TED 2011 Fellows list
2. Rising Interaction Designer named TED 2011 Fellow
3. 5 most interesting new TED fellows