Supplies needed to make our very own paper toilet!

This month, we started working on detailing the bathing stall, toilet booth and disabled access booth designs after completing our community feedback sessions in Bhubaneshwar.

We crafted a long list of activities and design aspects requiring user feedback at the end of Sketch Design 1. These user-centric insights are absolutely vital in ensuring that the designs are a response to what end-users need and not just “more of the same”.

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Engaging communities is, in my opinion, by far the most fun and challenging part of the projects we do at Quicksand. Due to this, we were both nervous and excited about returning to the field after creating a guide and toolkit to elicit and record community responses during feedback sessions.

Ensuring Diversity & Representation

The first step was screening participants. Our on-field partners, CFAR, accomplished this by screening potential participants that fell into one of several profiles we defined. These profiles ranged from recently married couples with newborn infants to elderly or disabled individuals who might use a crutch, staff, or wheelchair.

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It has been a longtime coming since we first announced it, but we are pleased to finally unveil the teaser trailer of our upcoming film entitled “3 Pounds of Rice”. The short documentary features Kevin and Ryan’s 24 hour slumstay experience in Bhubaneswar. What started out as a personal challenge quickly evolved into a filmed experience that will provide some insight into the people, the culture, and daily lives of one of the communities we work with.

My role at Quicksand is to gather and disseminate pertinent information to internal partners, clients and the general public. As such, I’ll be spending a good deal of time in the slums for Project Sammaan to generate rich media and write about the experiences.

I’ve always taken pride in my ability to easily connect with people and adapt to any environment. This job, and this project specifically, presented a golden opportunity to test this perceived strength as the slums here are considered as having some of the harshest living conditions on Earth. I’m from rural America, so this is a daunting challenge indeed.

I traveled to Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in February with fellow team members for my first-ever slum visit.

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There’s been much internal debate regarding nomenclature when discussing Project Sammaan. Of particular concern is the use of the term “slum”.

This problem surfaced due to the imminent launch of our social media sites. The most polarizing question was whether or not to use the term “slum”. Is it insensitive or even outright offensive? In its stead, should we use the more sanitized (pardon the pun) and safe terms “community” or “low-income settlements”? It was decided that, while the other parlances are safer, this project provides a unique opportunity (and thus, the responsibility) to help realign people’s understanding of what a slum is.

To quote UN-Habitat, “…in developing countries, the word lacks the pejorative and divisive original connotation, and simply refers to lower quality or informal housing…A simple definition of a slum would be ‘a heavily populated urban area characterised by substandard housing and squalor’.”

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Notes and sketches after the initial brainstorm for our very own “Potty Lab”

We are setting up a toilet prototyping environment, playfully called the ‘Potty Lab’ in our Gurgaon studio.

This will enable us to test out ergonomics and other user-experience drivers for toilet & bathroom stalls within the sanitation facilities being designed by Project Sammaan. The results from the Potty Lab user-experience (UX) tests will inform architectural, product and component design, and detailing within different spaces in the new sanitation facility.

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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.

Community members at a Cuttack slum

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.

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Sammaan is the Hindi, Bengali and Odiya term for honor, respect, and dignity. We at Quicksand felt it the perfect name for the sanitation project we are undertaking that seeks to rethink the current model of sanitation facilities in urban slums and design a new structure that instills a sense of pride, dignity and respect.

The project will begin in slum communities in two cities in Eastern India – Bhubaneswar and Cuttack – and hopefully expand across the rest of the country.

Project Sammaan was born out of the research Quicksand undertook as part of the Potty Project, an in-depth design research study focused on understanding three things:

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