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 has been working with IDEO since early 2006, managing and facilitating design research for them in India. Services rendered include:

• research planning & design
• ethnographic research
• cultural guiding
• rich media documentation
• data synthesis

Research formats range from shadowing sessions to fly-on-the-wall observations, diads, contextual inquiries, group sessions and usually involve a combined IDEO-Quicksand team in-field. The domains of intervention have cut across products and services in sectors such as internet, mobile and telecommunications.

(project details with-held as falling under an NDA)