Week that Was – April 9th

The Project Sammaan team spent the week of 9/4/12 in the pilot cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

The team had various objectives while on-site, some overlapping and others independent. Overall, it was a productive, if busy, week and will direct our efforts in the coming months.

Project Management

The team had a series of presentations to the government stakeholders about the the design layout. The feedback was positive; overall they like the layout plans. However, the challenge of material selection remains to ensure that the overall cost is within the stated budget.

Concurrently, the land identification process has entered its final phase. Several sites have been identified, and ownership of them is being validated, but we still have a ways to go in completing the process.

Communications

The primary purpose of the Communications team’s travel was to conduct an intensive, 24-hour embedment in one of the slum communities impacted by the project.

We spent the day and night with a single family during the homestay, and didn’t have a moment’s rest: we participated in every chore available to us, ate all our meals with our gracious host family, and were even fortunate enough to play a game of cricket with the local children. We filmed the experience and are hoping to post the resulting video soon.

We also participated in the community feedback sessions, filming interviews and conducting community walk-throughs. In addition to this, Ryan fine-tuned the blog to ensure its timely launch. While not in the hospital recovering from the tainted water consumed during the homestay, I worked on writing blog posts and updating our social media accounts.

Research & Design

We used the time in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack working with our field partners at CFAR to meet respondents and get clarity on a number of things. The sessions planned with the respondents were mainly to validate and record deviations from the user experience blueprint and the layout of facilities. Further we used the opportunity to spend time with the users to try to capture details around postures, ergonomics, aesthetic values and brand consciousness.

Read more about how the research was designed.