Publicity

Survey

Process:
We conducted a survey that required rating the various service categories with respect to the level of their importance. The categories were:
1. Household Services
2. Travel Services
3. Food services
4. Information Services
This survey was conducted mainly with residents of SFS colony, Heritage Estate and Srishti students. On the final compilation and assessment of the survey data, we found that Information Service was a problem for residents on the whole.
‘Information Service’ talks of a source that provides things like contact details for various services/businesses/establishments that the local residents may require. It can range from anything between information of restaurants and eateries in the locality to a key maker to a beauty salon. The residents of Yelahanka require a common place/hub where this information can be accessed from. We chose to provide this information with the use of Post-Its. The basic idea was to collect many varieties of information and print it on Post-It booklets seeing as how they are practical, feasible and user friendly. After the initial production process is completed, these Post-Its will be given to various establishments that house a level of information exchange. This is where they will be sold to the residents that require it.

Finale Brief!

Brief:

Basic:
To enhance the availability of information relating to services that are specific to the Yelahanka area. Focuses on services and the knowledge of their contact information such that these services will be more accessible to the people who require them. In turn this ensures increased business potential for the service providers.

Process:
1. Conduct a survey to determine the kind of service information that is most required with respect to certain areas in Yelahanka.
2. Gather the required information and details with respect to the relevant service.
3. Locate a hub of information exchange from where this collected information may be accessed.
4. Create a final product which facilitates the distribution of the information.
5. Advertise the product and the various hubs where they may be found.

Movie Week

The Auto Driver - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXui4qtCaF0

This movie is based on the persona & scenario we created earlier.

The Barber - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N160UZyiaVY

For this movie we went to a barber, and asked him general questions about his livelihood. It was very interesting to know about things like what happens to all the hair, what does he do with the blades and about different preferences among his customers for hairstyles inspired from movies. We learned a lot about him and have kept the documentary simple and straight forward like the barber himself.

Writing A Brief

ISO - International Organization for Standardization

History - Created on February 23rd 1947, with the headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland). Idea of standardizing started way back in the 1800's with Henry Maudslay, who started intracompany standardization of screw threads to reduce costs and allow for interchangeability.

Why - Created during WW1 to allow international trade of products and machinery, because incongruent standards can be barriers to trade.

(Example: You buy a table from Germany and one of the screws gets

rusted and breaks. To repair the table again you would need to get

screw all the way from Germany. ISO allows you to buy the screw

from here for a cheaper price)

Brief - To equalize and standardize sizes of machine parts so that people globally are able to purchase products and fix them using locally available parts.

(Idea of interchangeability, Globalization. Environmental regulations, greater marketability, higher quality of goods and services, increased levels of safety.)

Advantages - Leads to globalization of industries. Reduces cost. Helps environment.

Disadvantages - Globalization of industries produces market pressure in favor of phasing out minority standards. Minority standards may be indigenous, which uses locally available products.

Opportunity - This can be used to spread services and greatly improve global trade.

Threat - MNC's

Chennapatna

We went to Channapattana on a Sunday. Reached there and at first we had no idea where to go. We were told that all the factories are closed on sunday. So instead we made our way to the village, where we found a man working on making beads. It was really interesting the way he worked. We had no idea that that was how they got the shining surface through that magic colour stick. Since it was a Sunday, there was only one man there and so we interviewed him.

The rest of our class who had come to Channapattana, were staying the night over at Mr. Srinivas’s house so we decided to stay there too as it was not a problem with him. The next day after telling a brief history of the craft, he showed us his factory and took us on a proper tour of the village. Overall, it was quite an interesting experience.

Research Survey

Tool: Aerated/Mango Juice/Milk

In the heat of the afternoon we walked around with refreshments. Offering people a choice between the 3. Most of the adults chose Mango juice over Pepsi. When asked why, they said its fruit juice and is healthy. Children preferred Pepsi. None of them went for milk.

Tool: Scooter/Sports Bike/Normal Bike

We had three two-wheelers parked in a row. An Activa-scooter, a Yamaha Libero, and a sporty R-15. We asked people to pose next to whichever bike they preferred. While half liked the Activa and half wanted to pose on the cool, new R-15, nobody chose the old and in-between Libero.

Persona & Senario

Doctor

As a child, Ramakrishnan Gupta always wanted to be a doctor. He was the top student in the village and his parents were very proud of him. Everyone expected lot from him. He was like the village trophy. His father was poor but was always supportive of Ramu going to college to fulfill his dream to become a doctor. His mother had died during child birth.

Before Ramu could go to college, his father died because of TB and Ramu was left alone. Everyone in the village was very sorry for his unfortunate loss and treated him with sympathy. He decided that this was not going to stop him. He went to the big city and got an admission in a medical college where he performed badly and couldn’t cope up. The village education hadn’t been enough to start with.

He was expelled after two years of college after getting warnings to improve his grades but he just couldn’t. He had nothing to do, nowhere to go. He did odd jobs in the city earning enough cash to just scrape through his meals. In one of his jobs he met a person who made fake documents: licenses, school documents, certificates. an idea came to Ramakrishnan’s head. He got a false certificate made on his name that he had become a doctor. Then he went back to the village and started hid practice.

That was a long time ago, about 20 years. Now he was well settled, and a respected person in the village. Everyone in the village came to him for their problems and to add to their trust, he didn’t overcharge. And now his life was going to change completely. Now another youngster of the village who had actually gone to college, knew about Guptaji’s truth. And now he threatened to tell the elders…

Persona & Senario

Auto Driver

As a child, Arvind Desai(AD) was as normal as any other in the slums. He would play in the garbage dumps and keep stray dogs as pets, and constantly be in trouble. He had a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies. His parents had menial jobs and could just about get by every day.
When he was 18, his uncle suggested that he should start driving an auto-rickshaw. He took a loan from a friend and started. Soon, He was making more money than expected. Just about enough to buy another auto. But he had a loan to pay off.

People were surprised when they saw a new auto parked next to the old one. They were also surprised when his friend, from whom he had borrowed money, was found dead with a slit throat but they never connected the two. He hired someone to drive the old auto.

Arvind Desai had become the leader of a large group of auto-rickshaws. He hired more and more people to work under him. He had become rich but still lived in the slums. He continued driving autos.

The memory of his dead friend still haunted him and he grew more and more irritable. Like any auto driver though, he disliked people who gave him big notes instead of small change. His irritation evolved into a psychotic loathing. He took out his frustration on a poor college going boy who gave him a hundred rupee note. He murdered the boy and took all his change.

He takes someone for a ride, they give him a Rs.100 note, he pulls out his knife, and nobody hears the body fall to the ground,
or the change he took.
It makes no noise in his pocket.

Validation

When I asked her why she was sitting in the hot sun, the cobbler agreed that she needs shelter but said that she doesn't have the money to buy the shed. There are no trees in that space. I suggested that she could move to another place.
She said she needed to remain in that location because everyone knows where she sits. If she moves and people take some time to realize her new location, she may make no money in the first few days after shifting and she can't afford that.

Data Visualization

I created a senario map of where the flower vender would go in a residential area. I used SFS 208 colony as a reference to create the map. And the tiny dots are the houses where he sells the plants. I have used the enhancements I created in this senario.

Enhancement

I decided to choose the flower vender (mentioned in previous post) because I saw scope for "improving" his business. First I looked at problems he might face.

Problems:

• He has no form of advertisement. Only the plants on his cart, which does not give a clear indication that he is selling them. He might be just transporting them from one place to another.
• There is no form of safety for the plants. Since he is using a cart which has no suspension or anything. Hitting a bump or a ditch in the road could spell disaster.
• He said that he does not have a particular area to which he goes to everyday. He goes to random places and does not visit the same place too often. He mostly sticks to main roads.
• Does not have any covering for the plants to keep them fresh. As he visits main roads and also comes from a village which is far away the plants catch dust and dont look appealing.

Change the routes to residential areas where he will have more scope for business. Add other services such as helping the clients garden the plants, and maintain the garden over time. This could be another source of long term income.

Create a board or poster which is placed on his cart to advertise himself. Otherwise he might look like a person who is transporting plants. Because he does not even scream "Plants for Sale" or something similar like how the vegetable vendors do.

Five Lives

In this assignment we were again working as a group. There were four of us: Nikhil, Krupakar, Arav and me. We went around yelahanka to find businesses. We went to a cobbler, tender coconut vendor, a rolls place, a flower vendor and a mattress place.

Flower Vender:

We met him as we were walking towards the mattress shop. All he had was a cart with potted plants. He comes from a village which is far away he did not say where. He has a brother back in the village who takes care of the nursery, where they grow the plants. They take turns to try and sell the plants.

He did not have a set area or location to which he goes to everyday. He said that he goes to random places to sell the plants. The prices of the plants vary according to what flower they hold. It starts at 30rs for an unpotted plant. And for 60rs you get a potted plant. He also said that he has his good days and bad ones.

Tender coconut vendor:

We went up to the coconut vendor and ordered one for each of us. By the time he finished the third coconut, we smiled and started sweet talking him telling him how swift he is at chopping the coconut. He smiles and said that it al came with practice.

Since our strategy of starting to ask questions was successful, slowly we started asking questions about his strategy to run his business. His name was Mahesh. Every day he got his coconuts on the way to the airport. he had two ‘thelas’, one where he kept the uneaten coconuts and the other where he kept the broken and eaten coconuts. most of the day he stayed in the same spot even though he had wheels. This was because he got a lot of orders from the families living in SFS. Sometimes, he said, he even went to other places in the evening to catch the tired workers who were heading back home.

Cobbler:

Our approach to gaining information about this example was to sit a little distance from her and observe the happenings and figure out her strategies without even talking to her.

The cobbler sits at a junction near a bus stop on a busy main road. She works quickly and can fix your shoe problems on the spot. Though it isn’t too apparent, cobblers are territorial. They cover an area among a bunch of them and cannot go to another place where another cobbler already has a stall. Some will collaborate and if one of them gets more work, they pass it to another in their group. Often these groups are family.

But for sitting in the hot sun for so many hours, the meager income of 200-300 a day doesn’t seem worth it.

Mattresses:

The mattress shop is already established. They have a small shop next to a drugstore in a market with a sewing machine and cotton separating machine.

They buy their cotton from Kamakshi Playa and Vijay Playa where they get wholesale cotton. These places get the cotton from Tamilnadu. They clean and separate the cotton in a machine and start stuffing it in the thick covering materials. After sewing it, the mattress is dusted by hitting it with a stick.

They get orders and they make mattresses and pillows. The customer has to come back and pick up the order so they don’t have to worry about transporting the mattresses. They started off by taking a loan to buy the machines. Now they are working at a profit of Rs.10,000 a month and the loan has been taken care of.

Rolls Corner:

Gajodhar has been there for about 2 years. Before that he lived in Bhopal and had to move to Bangalore because of some personal reasons. His family is in Bhopal. He keeps sending them money. The shop is in a residential area with a row of shops. There is one guy who makes the dough, the other guy makes the roti’s and there are 2 guys who roll them and also take orders from the customers.

Their skill is to break the eggs in one hand and make the rolls fast enough so that the customers don’t have to wait for a long time. Their strategy is to half cook the roti’s in their free time since there are many customers in the evening.

The selling of.....

The making of.....

The D day.y

We decided to go ahead with the matchboxes idea. We used popular culture inpired designs like,

iconic rockstars and anime characters also aesthetically pleasing psychedelic designs.

We went to brigade road to find our consumers as it is usually filled with youngsters who would have more liking to this kind of art.

We started off by selling the psychedelic designs for 10 to 20 bucks each.We would first assess the consumer before approaching him to see what design he might be interested in and also how much he will be willing to pay for it. for eg: the designs we were selling for only twenty was bought for 50 bucks by a matchbox collector.

We finally sold all our matchboxes for a total of 920 bucks. Minus the cost of the matchbox it was a profit of 870 bucks for us.

Ideas

1. Buy matchboxes for 50 paise each, handpaint them and sell them for a profit.
2. Go door to door in neighborhoods and offer to do photoshoping work for their portraits.
3. Get slapped for twenty bucks each.
4. Organise a gaming tournament.

and on and on and on....hopefully...one of them will work.