Envisioning Sammaan

Project Sammaan is unique in the world of sanitation innovation. From the vital impact of its initial scope to the sheer magnitude of its eventual scale, we can potentially improve millions of lives.

This is a huge undertaking for us and with it comes the excitement and anxiety inherent in any new project. The importance of this project has not been lost on any of us and has led to many late nights and weekends spent in the studio.

Despite the project’s scale, we’ve held true to the processes and approaches that have served us well in every social innovation project we’ve undertaken.

We feel it is vitally important to apply successful best-practices to ensure the same level of quality that Quicksand has become known for.

It cannot be over-stated that our focus lies in the individual user experience. Project Sammaan entailed visiting slum communities and observing how residents use (and are affected by) existing sanitation facilities, if any exist at all. In cases where communities lacked facilities, we explored what alternatives residents used.

Men, women, children, healthy, infirmed, young and old all use facilities (where available) and have their own requirements, and then there is the caretaker to consider; in short, there are many, many moving pieces.

To complement the field research compiled in the Potty Project, we endeavored to visit slum communities all across India, but particularly in the pilot cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, observe and document the daily lives of the residents and the role that sanitation played in them.

Mobile teams shadowed residents as they went about their daily lives while other teams were planted at the facilities interviewing users and recording their observations.

We would be in the slums before the sun rose and would remain until long after it had set. Thousands of pictures, countless hours of video footage, and endless pages of hand-written notes documented our observations.

Each day, we would meet to discuss each person’s observations and begin the lengthy process of synthesizing the raw data. As more visits were made and more data was collected and the more patterns of life in the slums and the role of the sanitation facilities came into focus.

We were careful not to generalize what life in these communities was like by visiting as many communities as possible. Obviously, each slum is unique and therefore has unique needs based on many factors (e.g., layout, geography, population density, etc.).

Capturing these differences will allow us to sculpt and create a facility that has modular application while still serving the varied needs of each community and its members. It’s a significant challenge, but one in which we are confident can be tackled.

We brought this information and all the media produced back to our studio in Gurgaon, then reached out to friends and partners in the field to begin the brainstorming process that would help direct the architectural brief and subsequently start the actual design of the facility.

Over the course of a long two weeks we analyzed every aspect of the sanitation process currently available to these communities, not only structurally but programmatically and socially. An additional challenge inherent in this project is to not only provide functional facilities but also those that reinforce the value of sanitation.

We’d be lying if we didn’t admit that there were hurdles along the way; arguments were inevitable but, rather than pull our team apart, served only to unite us further in our passion.

To a person, it was very clear that everyone understood the importance of what we’re doing and, despite the long days, nights and weekends; the time seemed to fly by as the picture of what the facility would look and feel like became clearer and clearer.

As with every other Quicksand social innovation project, the brainstorming sessions took place in conference rooms with gallons of chai consumed, hundreds, if not thousands, of post-it notes used, and countless dry-erase markers emptied as charts and graphs were drawn on every available surface, from the glass walls and tables to the whiteboards themselves.

We collectively captured each day’s sessions and at the end of the marathon brainstorming created a compelling and exhaustively researched brief to provide our architectural team guidance to start the design process.

In the interest of full-disclosure it must also be said that many of these long, stressful days ended with fun-filled, if late, nights decompressing over cold drinks and good food.

We’re only human, after all!