The project aims to visually and interactively explain the behaviour of Space and Time (as covered in the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein) to a general audience.

The product is an interactive online article licensed under the Creative Commons License.

The product is targeted mainly for people who have finished high school education, which would include:

The product aims to encourage learning and exploring ideas from a new perspective.

As seen, these visualizations are good for explaining individual phenomenon, but nothing ties them together to explain the whole picture.

The interactive web article, licensed under a Creative Commons License, walks us through different 2D and 3D visualizations that can be tinkered with to get a good understanding of the Special and General Theories of Relativity, and can be easily understood by anyone with a high school education and sufficient curiosity.

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In the web article above, you’ll encounter a concept called embedding diagrams. These were introduced by L. Epstein in 1985 as a concept for the general masses, but no scientific explanation.

Dr. Rickard Johnson, an Astrophysicist in Chalmers University, Sweden built on these embedding diagrams, and developed the Dual and Absolute schemes for visualizing concepts of relativity.

I conducted an Information Retention Test via Google Forms.

A detailed project report with references can be accessed from the link below:

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Designed a part of an internship project at TATA Digital, Omni (now called TATA Neu) is a super-app that offers products and services from different TATA subsidiaries under a single umbrella. This spans across multiple product categories and services offered by companies like 1mg, Qmin, TATA AIG, Croma and many more.

The goal of research was to understand what qualifies as a super app, how super apps work, why they are needed, and what makes a good and usable super app.

4 major competitors; WeChat, Amazon, PayTM and myJio were analyzed based on:

Some key insights gathered were:

Some key insights from Google Forms survey:

Some key insights from interviews:

Based on research, some “How might we” problem statements were derived. They were categorized into 5 themes, with personalisation being the main theme, and security and digital well-being being guiding principles.

Card sorting was done with 3 people to further improve the IA.

A detailed project report with references can be accessed from the link below:

See project report

Done as part of the Design Thinking Curriculum under the National Education Policy 2020, the project aims to design workbooks and exposure material for teaching Design based on ancient Indian Knowledge Systems for CBSE Class XII students. I explore the principles of arts and crafts of ancient India, extract content that can have modern relevance and applications in design, and present them to students in an interesting pedagogical manner.

The product is meant for class 12 students in CBSE schools, who opt for design as their subject. Design is done keeping in mind implementation within the next 5-10 years.

Since the topic is vast, it is important to categorize/classify Indian Knowledge Systems:

Some challenges up front:

Literature review was focussed around the following 2 verticals:

Areas of focus in Classical Knowledge systems:

Reasons for choosing these topics:

The lesson plan roughly follows the structure of the Classical Design Process identified by Prof. Kirti Trivedi.

Why this structure?

Contain exercises and activities for each subtopic. A look at some of the exercises:

A consolidated reference resource for teachers and students.

A digital resource to understand human body movements. Consists of an interactive human figure which helps understand:

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A website with an interactive 3D model of a temple that helps understand:

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Under Atal Innovation Mission, Atal Tinkering Labs will be set up in schools, which will give students access to 3D printers. This 3D printed model enables learning form enhancement through scaled self-similar replication (i.e. fractals).

A centralized place to access all resources related to the course.

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The following experts were contacted for feedback:

I got the following insights from the experts:

Some exercises from the lesson plan were done by students of CBSE Class XII. Some learnings from the evaluation:

To enable fair evaluation, DT Curriculum proposes grade based assessment. Grades are awarded based on rubrics. An example of an assessment rubric for a given exercise:

Segregate images and artefacts as abstract and realistic, and give a reason for segregation:

Was tested in person with class XII students of KV School, IIT Bombay.

A detailed project report with references can be accessed from the link below:

See project report

As physical distances between people increase every passing day, ways to connect people remotely satisfy the visual and auditory sensories, but fall short on a crucial front- the intimate feeling of touch.

This project proposes and presents ‘Remote Touch’, a device capable of remotely sending and receiving personalised and intimate touch patterns, and more. The project was also published in India HCI conference 2021.

India HCI Research Paper

Brainstorming sessions to find lesser explored areas in the realm of tangible interactions.

Some directions were explored in the initial phases, mainly focussing on touch and taste.

Remote Touch: A device that simulates your partner’s finger moving across your palm.

Researching the explorations already done in the field over time.

The product combines freedom of movement offered by 2 axis CNC technology with the ability to capture, transfer and express touches; providing an experience that is:

...while being open to multiple other use cases.

Introducing touch-ting: texting, but with touch.

Remote touch can also be used for some other use cases, like drawing, sand art, or simple installations.

The design process consisted of figuring out the hardware, electronics and the software involved in touch-ting.

The hardware consists of 2 stepper motors moving a central ‘head’ using a system of pulleys. The head is mounded with a neodymium magnet.

The pulley system is based on the Core XY principle similar to a standard drafting table, where rotating both motors in the same direction produces horizontal motion, while rotating both motors in opposite directions produces vertical motion.

The device can be covered by either a soft surface suitable for feeling touches, or a hard acrylic sheet that can be used for other use cases mentioned above. For getting the feeling of touch, we chose tattoo practice skin, since it feels the closest to actual human skin.

A detailed project report with references can be accessed from the link below:

See project report

This project explores different types of data art, and goes on to propose a type of data art that creatively visualizes various emotions contained in lyrics of different songs.

Data art, like art itself, is difficult to clearly define. One of the ways could be to identify the intent of the creator; if they intended their product to actually be art.

Data art can also have some major overlaps with data visualization. Some ways in which both can be compared:

Data art can be classified based on form, temporality and generators.

I propose a method to generate digital 3D models using lyrical emotions of different songs, and present data art created using this method.

Music as a dataset is readily available, and is consumed by the public in massive volumes. It is relatable and appealing. The data art I present, instead of focussing on music’s quantitative factors like pitch and amplitude, focusses on the actual emotion behind what its lyrics say, which more often than not, is completely different from the song’s beats and tempo.

Most visualizations are static, considering the entire song at once. Some of them are dynamic shapes that changes in real time.

The aim of this project is to not focus on accuracy as much as the emotions in the songs; its mood and meaning. The result should visually capture the artist’s interpretation of the essence of the song based on the data provided to the algorithm, resulting in a different form for each musical piece.

I present data art as a ‘growing’ 3D model that develops based on the underlying emotions of a song. The process of generating this piece is as follows:

For more engaging pieces, it’s good to choose songs that are ‘emotional rollercosters’. Also, heavily lyrical songs are preferred, with minimal repetitions. Following 3 songs are considered:

Song lyrics, once laid out line by line, have 2 inputs: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative input is time; how long it took for the singer to say that line. Qualitative input is the emotional variable assigned to that line. This project uses an arousal-valence dimensional model called the Russel’s Circumplex Model of Affect, which places different emotions on a scatter plot matrix based on their positivity and arousal values.

Based on emotions assigned to different lyrics, the total time each emotion appears is noted. Based on the emotions’ location in the matrix, zones are assigned as seen below. Both arousal and valence are divided into 8 zones each, giving a total of 16 combinations. This gives three numerical values; the positivity zone (from-4 to +4), the arousal zone (from -4 to +4) and the running time (in seconds).

Using three.js, different emotions are visualised as randomly growing lines emanating from a common origin, in 3D space. For each emotion, the drawing algorithm takes as in put the positivity zone, arousal zone and the running time.

Data from lyrics of three songs; Space Bound, How Far I’ll Go and Eastside is taken to create three different art pieces.

A detailed project report with references can be accessed from the link below:

See project report

Create ‘n’ Share is a platform where students can share their creative understanding of a subtopic within a subject, with their whole class. They are assessed on the basis of their work within the app.

The platform serves as a socio-educational space that provides a protected interaction space for students, with the content being their own creative output.

Creative assessment is an important part of Formative Assessment, something which makes up 40% of the final grade weightage in CBSE schools. Although simple in physical classrooms, it’s becomes complicated in the remote schooling model. The goal of this project is to introduce a system where it is easier to assess students’ creativity and conceptual understanding when classes are held remotely.

Various ideas emerged during the divergence stage, falling under these basic categories:

Wireframes were made keeping the basic idea of dividing subjects into different subtopics. Focus was kept on Class 6-12 students.

To get an idea of what the actual content on the platform could look like, school students were asked to make some creative cards on the topic from their English class, “The Ailing Planet”.

The student home page puts a ‘content first’ approach, where a student can look at their classmates’ work. This is the home of the socio-educational space.

Enabling students to create all kinds of content has been the primary goal. Students can upload multiple cards in a single post, having the option to draw, type, colour and upload photos or videos.

The platform also enables a supervised interaction between students, leading to discussions between them and the teacher.

The profile page shows cards uploaded by that student, sorted by subtopics. The profile provides a personalised approach, showing the student’s top traits and the ability to change avatars.

The teachers can add classes, students and subtopics, along with various rubrics they wish to assess the students on. Student cards are assessed using interactive rubric sliders, and feedback can be left for the students to see.

English Teacher, Classes 11-12

1 min 57 sec in first attempt, 45 sec thereafter

The project proposes Bonfire, a platform that lets you relax, play and interact at a virtual bonfire. Bonfire is an independent website integrated with the video conferencing software. It is the result of an exploration that started out in search of a ‘cool’, ‘unexpected’ and ‘interactive’ thing the attendees could do during the online HCI Conference 2020.

Users would be the HCI 2020 conference attendees including presenters, volunteers, participants, students and professors.

A typical scenario of an online conference attendee during a break looks like this:

Brainstorming sessions helped zero down on what the ‘coo’ thing might be.

The project proposes Bonfire, a platform that let’s you relax, play and interact at a virtual bonfire. Bonfire is an independent website integrated with the video conferencing software.

The project introduces Coach, a website that acts under the service of YouTube, oriented towards providing users with procedural instructional videos. Coach is a search engine + video compiler that, based on a search query for a particular instructional ‘how-to’, provides a compilation with steps from different YouTube videos based on relevance and quality.

YouTube has billions of unstructured instructional videos in the wild. Many a times a certain video might have a better step, but a subsequent step might be better in some other video.

The goal here is to introduce a system that can extract the most relevant steps from instructional videos on YouTube categorized based on a certain topic, and compile these steps to get a final instructional sequence.

Procedural knowledge is knowing how to perform a specific task to reach a specific goal by performing specific steps.

Some ways of teaching it effectively are:

YouTube Coach targets procedural videos on YouTube that provide tutorials to the viewer to accomplish a certain task or reach a certain goal by following a set of clearly defined steps.

The tutorials can be for relatively simple and small tasks like:

Or they can be for something complex like:

Arun wants to make a milkshake, but can’t find the perfect tutorial.

Vimala wants to assemble a water cooled PC. She finds a tutorial, and wants to suggest some edits.

Taking the best steps from relevant YouTube videos and stitching them together to make a compilation is done by the Parent Algorithm. The Parent Algorithm uses 4 children algorithms for various specialized tasks. The output is a collection of steps from all YouTube videos, ranked according to confidence scores based on their quality of instruction.

A detailed look at the algorithms:

Comments made by the users are continuously analysed by the algorithm. Comments with constructive feedback are used to improve the compiled tutorial.

Selecting the next video from the suggestions for a certain step (Gives the algorithm an idea about the generalised behavioral patterns of users to determine better videos)

As the algorithm recommendations get better and coaches give more and more submissions and feedback, YouTube Coach would see a huge increase in its potential of being a good tutorial website. Some future implementations could be:

The project starts with a question, what if you could use character creation screens as seen in video games, for your own actual babies?

The project explores CRISPR, an emerging technology allowing making edits to human and animal genomes. However CRISPR has its limits; it can sometimes make large and unwanted changes to the genome, where improving one ability comes with a trade-off for other abilities.

Very similar to a video game character creation screen...

As CRISPR starts becoming popular, by 2055 it has reached peak popularity with relatively less public awareness. However, by 2100 there is enough awareness about the subject to massively decrease its popularity.

The diegetic prototype is positioned in 2035, when CRISPR is gaining popularity with relatively lesser awareness.

The scenario is presented through the eyes of GenoCorp, a global leader in fetus gene editing.

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