Week that Was – May 7th
Project Management
The field operations are moving at a brisk shape. In Bhubaneswar, the team visited many tenable slums to identify sites for public and community toilets. Through this exercise we have identified all the new sites for public toilets and some for community toilets; in the coming weeks the team will work to identify the remainder of the sites. Additionally, the discussions about tendering and approvals for Cuttack sites are going at a rapid pace.
Communications
Ryan, being the never ending self-critic that he is, tooled around with the blog design (again). Notice any changes? Take a look at the top of the page. That’s right, we have a fancy schmancy navbar complete with “About”, “Phases”, and “Contributors”. Hopefully this provides a bit of clarity to who we are and provides some direction on getting around the blog. One day, the upcoming main site will be completed and another overhaul will begin!
In addition to the fancy shmancy tweaks to the blog design, we also developed a blog writing guideline document, established editorial guidelines, created a concise writing and posting schedule for contributing authors, and defined the different types of posts to publish. Whew! It sounds overwhelming when read, but the intention is to streamline the process to ensure the highest quality product for our readers.
Research & Design
The Potty Lab saw a lot of preparation this week. Rikta, Aparna and Maitreyee (our partners from Studio Miscellanea) have been working on detailing booth designs for the toilets, bathing spaces and the universal access stall. While playing with spatial layouts on CAD software is fun, the ladies set themselves with the task of creating lo-fi mockups with the intent of testing and tweaking basic ergonomics and weeding out any redundancies in design. This exercise has helped the team validate and re-iterate aspects of design and placement of fixtures within the amenities and will also help them come up with a list of specific factors they want user inputs on.
In the lull that is definitely the quiet before the storm, the team is waiting with bated breath for the entries to start streaming in and if the ‘analytics’ are anything to go by (1000+ unique visitors in a week), we are going to have our hands full. Facebook ads we have been running are at least partially responsible for the overwhelmingly quick rise of the post to the ‘no. 1’ spot on our blog, but the international exposure we’ve been getting must also be attributed to our friends studying in the US and the Netherlands and to Mr. Dick Urban Vesbro who kindly sidestepped protocol and sent the link out to 70 country heads of the organization ‘Architects Sans Frontiers International’.
Outside of constantly hitting refresh on the ‘analytics’ page, we’ve been fielding queries that go from the simple ‘Could you extend the deadline’ to troubleshooting tech questions around files that don’t open to the more interesting ones around regions that the toilets will need to be applied in, which gains importance because of Odisha’s weather which is wet and humid and thus would dictate not only decisions around materials but also construction techniques and design details.