Water Harvesting and Village Study Visualisation

Village Study Visualisation Water Harvesting: As a Case Study Presentations in the DCC Class
Image: Sumiran presenting his Village Study Maps and Models to the DCC class today.

The DCC2008 class was given a treat today with two very inspiring presentations from two NID graduates, Sumiran, a graduate from the SUID programme in Gandhinagar and Dinesh Sharma, a graduate in Product Design from the NID, Paldi campus. Sumiran shared the work of his team on the manner in which they carried out a village study in a selected location with the intention of visualizing the data in an expressive model such that it could be the foundation for a new web based system that could help understand the resources and aspirations of any village in India. The Data Visualisation team had chosen Sahpur village in Gandhinagar using Google Earth as a reference resource and due to many attributes that this particular village had for carrying out their survey. He shared the strategies that the team had adopted as well as the lessons that had been gleaned as insights from their experience. This reflective presentation was also intended to give the Foundation students a platform for their own reflection on their Environmental Perception experience at Dholka town as they went further with the various assignments during this DCC course. The whole area of design opportunity mapping and then modeling these in the form of an associated set of icons and symbols that were used to capture the insights on a map that had some basis for suggesting a new software proposal that could be applied to many other situations was explained as a case study.

Image: Dinesh Sharma explaining the concepts and business processes developed for the Furaat Rain Water Harvesting system that he designed for an Ahmedabad based company.
Dinesh Sharma on the other hand took the students through a very inspiring case study of the Furaat Water Harvesting system design and the business models that the company had explored to realise their design vision as well as their plans going forward. Dinesh told the group that the promoters of the company had come into this particular activity after the 2002 riots of Ahmedabad had completely destroyed their former business of tube well drilling and the two brothers had to literally build a new business from scratch. It is here that they started looking at water harvesting as a business opportunity as well as an avenue to make sense in society. They had approached Dinesh and his design-consulting firm, Isiliye Design, to help in cost reduction and product detailing to start with. However after he got involved the entire system was built from ground up as a new and innovative offering that addressed all the systems level complexities in a manner that the construction became simple, the costs were reduced at many stages of production, transport and maintenance and the product was made modular and easy to use and manage. Dinesh also spoke about the philosophy and ideology that has driven this project from the very beginning and the practical business aspects that were kept in mind while the projects were being designed and executed in the field. Today over 500 installations later a whole new set of insights have been developed and a lot of conviction about the direction have come about as well.

This presentation also came as a useful peg on which the concept of Design Opportunity could be understood by the students and the DCC model for perception and imagination was shared with the class. The rich Q & A session that followed set the stage for the follow up work that would be done by the groups of students and we look forward to their group presentations in class tomorrow.