A Designer’s Perspective on Sammaan

I am part of the design team and coordinate a lot of Quicksand’s input with the architecture team at Anagram Architects (AA). This includes feedback on designs, coordination of various submissions to the BMC and CMC, and managing updates to the same. I also assist in overall project management, while coordinating inputs to J-PAL on several aspects of software.

A typical day for me consists of several phone calls with Siva and AA and other partners to facilitate various aspects of the project. It also involves writing a few emails about design perspectives to share with partners, as well as writing for, and reviewing, various communication deliverables on the project.

Project Sammaan is unique amongst other projects I’ve worked on. It provides the opportunity to work on a deliverable-based project that allows us to actually bring to fruition several of our research findings. It also gives us a chance to work on solutions that could make a direct, positive impact on several lives, when implemented well.

The opportunity to reach out through our work to various governments and other stakeholders in the sanitation space who are in a position to impact the communities that they work with is also unique.

Most other projects that I have worked on as part of Quicksand, limit our involvement and impact to the research and prototyping phase. Sammaan provides an opportunity to “turn the lens on ourselves” and test the sort of ideas that in most other cases, we have to trust the “client” to consider and work on.