Mobilized comfort zone

A mesh cover with a baby sound asleep inside – spotted in a farming village in Tamil Nadu. Would you call this a baby net or flying insect net?

Reminder of where you are

HIV prevention awareness

A signage for warning the danger of HIV and promoting the use of condoms, found across in Uttar Pradesh. Getting condoms however may not be an openly accepted behavior. In rural health centers, they try to distribute condoms for free, but people may not visit the center while others can see. One solution to the ...

Standby affordance

A change in the plan of the fieldwork trip – we decided to take the train from Delhi to Bareilly. My suitcase was obviously a wrong form of luggage in the jam-packed Delhi train station on Sunday. We could not even dare to find the platform through the wall of people. A ‘coolie’ was found ...

you are not alone

Drivers in India – at least for commercial vehicles – are rarely alone in the car. There is always a companion or more in some form near the driving seat. An airport bus driving seat at Delhi airport with Saibaba’s face on the window.

pleasure principle

This rural neighborhood, Horsu, in Tamil Nadu near Bangalore has seen a growing number of green houses for flowers. As the city provides relatively constant consumption of flowers, they make a relatively low-risk yet high-margin business. The wise farmer we talked to said: “It will be the mobile entertainment service that farmers will adopt first. ...

mobility of your existence

I was asked for my home address today – I could only say “I don’t have one at the moment, except my temporary address.” Have you realized the limited access to services you will experience when one of these is taken away, lost, or invalid: Home address, mobile phone number, governmental identification, credit/bank card? The ...

new home in bangalore, india

I took on a new job to lead a research team since the beginning of this year. Along with it I moved to a new homebase, a city often referred to as ‘silicon valley of India’, or formerly as ‘garden city of India’. Compared to any other places I had taken on as my home ...

design for behavioral changes

Posters and drawings on the walls of primary health centers in India. If you want to get an idea of the seriousness of the matter to educate and treat the local population, you can have a look at the comparison of top 10 causes of death between the developed and developing countries. Can you design ...

born blessed

A good maternity care is the foundation of a healthy society. While traditional wisdom still prevails in communities with little influence of modern technology and services, it does not always offer the best possible solutions available. One of the challenges that primary health centers (PHC) in rural India are facing is to make people be ...