QUEST Alliance is a not-for-profit that focuses on research-led innovation in education and vocational training. QUEST has launched Livelihood Connect as a platform for multiple and varied stakeholders in the area of employability training and livelihoods, to connect and share knowledge with each other and collectively ideate and collaborate to come up with relevant and innovative solutions. The platform will manifest through a web portal, workshops, seed grants, summits and print publications.

We spent time in the field for two months observing and documenting what people  (students, facilitators, organizations, employers) had to say about their experiences in various livelihood contexts. This evolved into specific insights and a livelihood journey which provided inspiration and direction for the innovation workshop, as well as seed content on the knowledge platform in the form of video, stories, profiles and discussions. During the workshop we also ran a co-design session with stakeholder groups in order to build stakeholder-relevance into the platform.

We worked with QUEST on multiple aspects of the Livelihood Connect platform including:
-    Research, experience design and facilitation for an innovation workshop
-    Synthesis of insights from the field and workshop to create an innovation workbook for field practitioners
-    Setting up the content structure and technology architecture for the knowledge sharing web platform
-    Branding and identity

Stills from the Innovation Workshop

User Personas used to facilitate ideation

Video from the Workshop

The workbook that was developed synthesized challenges into eight vital areas of intervention for vocational training institutes.
Within each of these areas more specific challenges along with some sample actions and solutions were detailed out. The intent of the workbook is to seed discussion and provide a framework for thoughts, experiments and reflections.

The portal is currently being developed for the stage-one launch. This includes setting up the content structure as well as branding and technology back-end. We are also helping build a road-map and an interaction plan for the platform.

The various manifests of the platform are not stand-alone interventions but a combination of multiple processes that aim to enable and inspire a diverse group of practitioners, policy-makers, program implementers, innovators and donors to connect with the vital group of young people in India today who could become valuable assets for future growth and development of the country.

Interaction Storyboards for Livelihood Connect Portal

As part of the Ripple Effect project in India, IDEO identified 5 organizations working in the domain of safe water and provided them incubation support in the areas of business and design to develop solutions such as delivery services and large-scale community water storage systems.

Quicksand was approached to document the journey of these five organizations, spread over different corners of the country, as they went about prototyping and deploying their solutions. The film based documentation became an important medium for IDEO & Acumen Fund to demonstrate the value of design thinking in driving issues pertaining to social development and impact.

The film is now in public domain and can be viewed here:

Quicksand was brought in by the QUEST Alliance to do a mid-project case study to communicate the idea and vision of this unique project to other players in the education sector as well as to possible future funders. The idea was also to summarise the process of design & implementation, as well as document some of the challenges, to provide inspiration to other organisations that might want to replicate this project in other locations. We did a detailed expectations discussion with all the involved organisations and understood their separate roles and vision for the project. We then went on field visits to the various video units, observed sessions in classrooms, held discussions with producers, trainers, teachers & students; all this was then distilled into a narrative cum illustrative document (download pdf – 4.1mb, 16 spreads)

Quicksand was brought in as the design research team to evaluate the unique aspects of Indian education, including constraints on rural schools, teachers, children, parents and infrastructure. The research in turn led to design recommendations on:

• Suitable collaboration platforms between various stakeholders
• Concepts for content delivery, interaction and system interfaces at each consumer touch point for phase one of program implementation
• A future blueprint of the program with respect to new technology & human interventions
• Internal & external communication necessary for system roll out
• Tweak existing user interface making it relevant for the new context of education

Following are some design & research artifacts from the project.

The program was piloted at district Bardhman, four hours from Calcutta. A week long ethnographic research established some key personas, concerns and paradigms that would govern the design of the Education Helpline. The work consisted of observational studies, in-depth interviews, group discussions as well as photo and film documentation – all aimed at moving towards a richer understanding of the current context.

A short film on teachers sharing their concerns and opinion on the existing education paradigm

Synthesis of the research data led to preliminary identification of user concerns, which provided an indication of the level of complexity that would be demanded of the system. Some key findings are shown below:

The next stage of the study involved developing interaction concepts that were tested with users to establish:

• Program positioning
• Training & Capacity building amongst stakeholders
• Usability of existing interface
• Database management & build-up

SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT: Illustrations of possible scenarios from point of view of teachers, field workers and knowledge workers

CALL FLOW SCHEMATIC: An illustrated depiction of how a call generated travels through the system and the key stakeholders at each stage.

SYSTEM SCOPING: Feature specification of the system in its short, medium and long term manifest

Finally, the Quicksand design team did an audit of the existing web based user interface, navigation and database structure and made simple visual design changes that would enhance its usability. This was important from the point of view of pilot implementation and was used to brief the technology development team.

The project involved -

• identifying issues with the current mechanical composter model
• establishing the constituent factors that needed to be tested
• identifying vendors
• conceptualizing, developing and testing various components and multiple prototypes
• documenting the testing phase and working towards a complete working prototype

Further efforts will attempt to build the context of the composter within urban homes and production / retail opportunities.

(further details are withheld as this falls under an NDA)

Spandana has continued to successfully manage growth. Its gross loan portfolio stands at close to Rs. 300 crores, and has a client base that represents more than 800,000 households. This is estimated at constituting almost 1.5% of the BPL population of India.

The strength of Spandana has been in managing growth and profitability in a sector that has largely been under-serviced. As a result, the domains of intervention for Spandana are not limited to financial services. With ambitions of being the foremost service provider for its clients, Spandana was faced with a challenge to

• leverage its core strengths from the micro finance experience and become an enabler of services that were so far unavailable to this segment
• within the financial services sector, transform from an NBFC (non banking financial corporation) to a mainstream Bank with more robust & diverse service capabilities
• invite equity participation from foreign investors to give momentum to the above two goals

Quicksand was approached with the challenge of re-visioning the Spandana brand and articulating the new identity of the organisation to all interested stakeholders.

It involved, foremost, for the design team to understand the brand and all interfaces that it had with its customers. The attempt was also to uncover stories that would be inspirational and become the guiding beacon for designing the new face of the organisation.

Quicksand embarked on a design research exercise that involved:

• visioning workshops with the top management & CEO of Spandana, Mrs.Padmaja Reddy
• contextual research with Spandana’s customers, experiencing the micro-lending process first hand
• extensive film & photographic documentation of the people, processes and places touched by Spandana

The ensuing design exercise resulted in a new identity, a film and a manifesto for the brand that was unveiled at the largest MFI summit held annually in Canada. Spandana was subsequently also co-invested in by Lok Capital (a micro finance focussed equity fund) & JM Financial.

Click on images below to preview the film & manifesto designed. You may also download the manifesto by clicking here.

The manifesto was printed on recycled paper symbolic of an inspirational story of the founder of Spandana selling discarded newspapers to raise the first corpus of fund for lending. The film was shot at different centers of Spandana while living with the customers & documenting their lives as narrated by them.

Quicksand managed the entire design process – from research to final prototype development. Download the complete process document here (14.2 mb, 112 pages) which is also the graduating thesis of one of our lead designers, Neha.

User study (a short film we made on product usage & perceptions)

Pepsico approached Quicksand with the mandate of designing the overall program structure, content, brand identity & framework and the communication plan needed to kick-start the program. What followed was a collaborative process between the following project partners:

• corporate patron (Pepsico)
• domain experts (nutritionists, educationists & health experts as part of Swashrit)
• design team (Quicksand)

Get Active program is now in its third year since its launch and has expanded to 200 plus schools and impacted 70000 plus children. The program is a global benchmark for Pepsico internally on how successful CSR initiatives need to be designed and managed.

The following films were produced to support some of the communication collaterals above.

While many of the Jhoolas can be seen in local fairs where they can be appreciated for their fantastic vernacular & folk style, art and design, their true uniqueness comes from the fact that they reverse the traditional relationship between a child and the play facility. These are indeed ‘play-grounds’ that are wheeled out right to the doorsteps of childrens’ homes so that grand acts of play can then be enacted with the Jhoola as the facilitating artefact.

However, like most other fascinations of Indian material culture (past), the Jhoola is steadily being consumed by the City and its aggressive forces. This documentary examines what designers and design thinking can bring to a situation like this one. Drawing on ideas of participatory design, the design process for this project involved working with children, jhoolewalas, parents and teachers.

As part of a fellowship that was granted to Quicksand by Sarai-CSDS, this film has also been used as a part of course material at the Srishti School of Art and Design, Bangalore and National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi.

Click here to download the proposal as a pdf here.
Watch the actual documentary below.
Write to Quicksand if you want a hi-resolution copy of the film sent to you.