Quicksand

The 2015 Core77 Design Awards

April 15th, 2015 in Publishing & Appearances

Babitha was a Jury Team member in the Design for Social Impact category of the 2015 Core77 Design Awards, which honors the most innovative, creative and forward thinking design projects every year. The jury captain for Design for Social Impact was design thinking and sustainability expert John Thackara (Director, Doors of Perception), and he had Babitha on his team along with Gill Wildman (Co-founder and Principal at Plot London) and Dr. Mathilda Tham (Design Professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden).

The Core77 Design Awards (in its 5th year) is a celebration of excellence in all areas of design. The program enlists an international jury of design experts to honor those who present creative, innovative and forward-thinking designs across 14 traditional and progressive categories. Students and professionals alike are invited to enter their work so that established, as well as up-and-coming designers can gain visibility and recognition from the global design community. Winners of the Core77 Design Awards receive yearlong publicity across the Core77 network, a trophy, and free entrance to the 2015 Core77 Conference. Winners will be announced by June 2015.

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Mar 2018 Goa Heritage Project Workshop

During the course of a five-day workshop and crash course held at NID with students from the NID Exhibition Design program, Salil and Hugo, two Quicksand design researchers explored new possibilities in storytelling through the creation of unique virtual spaces in Unity using a mix of digital content and items 3D scanned using photogrammetry.

Project Blog

Nov 2017 WDHB’s Learning Expedition

Quicksand hosted an executive team from Schneider Electric as part of a Learning Expedition program organized by WDHB. The team had the chance to meet local energy and micro-grid experts through a facilitated discussion format on novel best practices in emerging markets:

- Deploying microgrids in rural communities through regional Energy Service Companies (ESCO) with Sidhartha Vermani.

- Providing roof top solar energy services to commercial & industrial entities throughlong term power purchase agreements with Nalin Agarwal.

- Providing lighting solutions to the real estate sector with Sidharth Kumar.

- Providing custom built switchboards and turnkey energy solutions to real estate sector with Meera Kumar Chauhan.

Nov 2017 UX India

Quicksand Co-Founder and Partner Ayush Chauhan and Principal & Communications Lead Kevin Shane led a daylong workshop at UX India, India’s largest international user experience conference. The theme of the workshop was Design for Social Impact, and Ayush and Kevin led the participants through several design activities and games using case studies from Quicksand’s decade-long experience in the sector.

UX India 2017 Website

Jan 2017 Under 25 Summit Panel Discussion

Principal & Communications Lead Kevin Shane was part of a panel discussion on “Design for Social Impact” at the Under 25 Summit, India’s largest youth festival. Leaning on his experiences working in the development and humanitarian sectors, Kevin highlighted the key role of the design thinking process in driving both innovation and impact in the work Quicksand does.

Under 25 Summit

Jan 2017 Channel News Asia’s “Field Guide to Innovation”

Senior Design Researcher Rikta Krishnaswamy was featured in Channel News Asia’s premiere episode of the series “Field Guide to Innovation”. Along with our partners on the project, Rikta discussed our recent work in Cambodia to reduce the use of plastic bags in the country, whilst also advocating for a human-centered approach to designing new, innovative solutions to longstanding problems and challenges.

Episode

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Feb 2015 The Goa Project

Quicksand's Shiraz Iqbal was invited to speak at The Goa Project, an "unconference" that included performance artists, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, businesspeople, hackers, activists, market researchers, and more. At one of the design sessions, Shiraz spoke about user-centered design, questioning the rationale behind having rigid inflexible processes in place for research and the popular persona fetish within the practice. The talk eventually evolved into a discussion about how humans are social creatures, and the way in which we use language to share experiences/ideas affects how we see and interpret the same; it became about how we close ourselves off to possibilities when we use language without considering the things that have not been said out loud.

Feb 2015 News X Budget Special Panel Discussion

Quicksand's co-founder, Ayush Chauhan, was invited by NewsX, a national television broadcast channel, to speak on a panel on what the youth of the country can expect from Government of India's financial budget for 2015. Representing social entrepreneurs, Ayush spoke about how social change and development was still the biggest area of impact for India in the future and the largest mandate for steering it was still with the government. Reflecting on the current government's call to action to provide "maximum governance, minimum government", Ayush emphasized the need to create an enabling environment for the youth to engage with issues of governance and help drive innovation in this sector.

Feb 2015 Seekh Workshop at MIT Institute of Design

Rikta Krishnaswamy, Design Researcher at Quicksand, was asked to participate at Seekh, a platform seeking to impart knowledge and experiences within and beyond the student's academic education at MIT Institute of Design, Pune. She led a day-long workshop on 'A Designer's Guide to People Watching' - a quick dive into practical and actionable tools that employ stories from everyday lives of people, to create design that is valuable and meaningful.

Seekh Workshop

Feb 2015 St. Bonaventure University Alumnus Lecture on Global Citizenship

Quicksand's Communications Lead and Business Head (U.S. Operations) Kevin Shane led a videoconference with students at his alma mater St. Bonaventure University on global citizenship, specifically the importance of understanding the impact a global economy has on all participants. Through the use of specific case studies and his experiences living and working in different international contexts, the focus was to explore the notion of ethical production (and consumption) in real-world settings.

Jan 2015 WISE Learner’s Voice Workshop on Leadership and Communication (Doha, Qatar)

The Yale World Fellows program was invited by Qatar Foundation to conduct a week long workshop on global leadership and communication for young change makers selected as part of its fellowship program - WISE Learner's Voice. As a Yale World Fellow from 2012, Ayush joined a team of five other colleagues from Yale to facilitate an intense, hands-on workshop for around 30 aspiring social entrepreneurs in Doha, Qatar. The workshop focused on issues around leadership, team-work, inter cultural communications, ideation, brainstorming and collaboration. Part experiential, part theory, the Yale World Fellows became a sounding board for the young fellows to bounce of their ideas, anxieties and aspirations.