Roshni

Client

Ambedkar University

Role

Social Designer (4th Semester)

Area of Work

Right to Housing;

Urban Governance

Duration of Project

January to May 2021

About the Project

Transit Camps – a temporary residential arrangement for residents who have to be moved from their place of living because of proposed in-situ development projects. As India sees several projects of in-situ development being proposed, the questions around the fate of the people part of these processes need pondering. There is little information available on how the process of transition will take place, and the impact it will have on the residents’ way of life and their livelihood. A lack of information means a lack of accountability.

In a democracy, wherein those in power are expected to act for the people who have voted for them, information on how they are using their position is a right of every citizen. Therefore, the right to information is the right to decision-making, and the ability to hold those in ‘power’ accountable. Thus, the knowledge about the systems that we are a part of can allow us to question, fight and struggle for our basic rights. Hence, the idea of transparency takes precedence, making it imperative to look at ways to understand how to make this happen. In the space of transit camps, there is little to no information, one, about the transit camps themselves, and two, people who are part of these processes also face more hurdles due to a lack of information about what is going to happen, and that has an impact of their way of life.

As part of the 4th Semester Studio, a design idea in the form of a mobile application was imagined as one of the interventions, with the aim to bridge communication and information gaps between community leaders and the municipality.

In the context of urban slum redevelopment projects or demolition drives, transit camps co

Process

The initial hypothesis of this project -“Residents living in transit camps do not have access to information that can help them lead a life of dignity. A lack of visibility of their transition creates a sense of non-accountability from those in power.”

The design idea was to create a blueprint for a digital portal in the form of a mobile application that can make the issues of the people visible, giving academicians, researchers, activists, and social workers an opportunity to figure out ways of advocacy. The portal would –

Document information through a form-like structure from KEY stakeholders
Create a way to reflect data collected via stakeholders in the form of timelines, maps, and case studies

The focus of the Design Process was to follow a PARTICIPATORY and CO-DESIGN approach wherein the KEY Stakeholders would inform the development process of the mobile application. The project is located in the city of Ahmedabad and would feature inputs that are specific to the context of the city.

This project proved to be an iterative process, with the hypothesis shifting and new insights unfolding to provide a better idea of who this project is for.

Unfortunately, around this time the second wave of Covid-19 hit the country, leaving no scope for further testing and iterations. I had to go back to the initial idea of the mobile application with a few changes based on field research. The application, then, focused more on grievance mechanisms for community leaders and the municipality.

A detailed write-up of the entire process can be found below.

DESIGN RESEARCH - JOURNEY AND ANALYSIS

INITIAL RESEARCH TO BUILD CONTEXT

This project is a continuation of the 3rd semester project on creating a policy framework for Transit Residential Spaces, the secondary research for this semester focused on being able to create a definite picture of the site. The questions that needed answering were -

What is the scenario of Transit Camps in the city of Ahmedabad?
What are the housing schemes and policies that define the transition processes in case of in-situ development programs?
Are there possibilities of collaboration with local organizations that work on similar issues to help understand the ground realities of the situation in Ahmedabad?

PHASE 1: THE FIRST ITERATION

Through a mixture of secondary research and interactions with researchers as well as social activist, Navdeep Mathur (IIM-A) and Beena Jadhav (Rethan Awas Manch) respectively, I learnt that:

There is very little data available on the housing sector, specifically about transit camps. The Ahmedabad Municipality website does not have a lot of data available, besides numbers of how many houses have been allotted and so on.
There is no such thing as a transit camp in Ahmedabad. However, there have been many evictions that have taken place due to various development projects. Out of those, the Sabarmati Riverfront project saw the highest number of evictions.
Many people were unable to find any housing, many were relocated to the periphery of the city and there were a lot of processes that were not followed during the eviction process.

A system map showcasing the ideal scenario of relocation versus actual situation

This information helped me map the ideal versus the actual scenario of relocation of residents living in a basti. The learnings were as follows:

People living in these slum squatters are not provided any prior notice before the eviction
They do not know where they would be relocated
They are unaware of the eligibility criteria of various affordable housing schemes, thus many do not even make the cut and are left without a home
Very limited and almost no information available to understand the scenario of the eviction processes followed

This resulted in choosing a location that consists of residents who were relocated from the riverfront.
Through Beena ben, I decided to work with one community leader named Johraben, who is currently living in a BSUP housing society in an area called Santoshnagar in Ahmedabad. The plan then was to create the wireframes, show them first to beena ben, rework on them, then show them to Johraben, rework, and then prototype with some of the residents of Santoshnagar.

The design idea was then was to create a blueprint for a digital portal in the form of a mobile application that can make the issues of the people visible, giving academicians, researchers, activists, and social workers an opportunity to figure out ways of advocacy. A stakeholder map was created before the research process began. The primary stakeholders identified were the residents of the transit camps, and the municipality, which looks at most of the governance issues of the city. The secondary stakeholders are the NGOs, Activists and the Councillor of the ward, who work closely with the residents in different capacities. And finally, at the tertiary level are the researchers and academicians who could use this data for further research, helping highlighting the problems at a larger scale.

BUILDING THE INITAL WIREFRAMES OF THE DIGITAL MOBILE APPLICATION

The initial iteration(s) focused on the charting out the main features of the mobile application -

A way for the users to set up a profile that would capture basic demographic data
Research questions that would be separated based on the subject of the research; also for ease of user visually and for the researcher in terms of collation

Initial Imagination of the features of the application

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First iteration of the wireframes

FEEDBACK

The feedback to this iteration was provided by Beena ben. It is as follows:

There are too many features on the home page
Rethink on what needs to be prioritized in the homepage
There aren't enough questions as part of the research quadrants
Information about the app needs to be added for the users' knowledge
What are the data protection guarantees that this platform will offer to its users?

SECOND ITERATION

The second iteration took into consideration the feedback, making it a longer version of the first iteration. This iteration focused on:

Making the homepage cleaner, and less cluttered
Expanding the profile section, to capture demographic data of the user(s)
Adding more questions to the research quadrant sections

This iteration was shown to community leader Johraben, who lives in Santoshnagar. She shared an honest feedback about the application. The feedback is shared below -

Form is text heavy; low literacy levels of the people will deter them from completing the form
Low penetration of smart phones in the community; less forms would be filled
Time taken to fill the form is high; people cannot afford the time to spend on the form
Many more questions need to be added; clash with the time spent on the application
Visuals are not relatable and difficult to understand
Design does not reflect on why the "user" would be motivated to fill this up willingly
Objective of the activity is unclear; fear on how the data would be used

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Second iteration of the wireframes

PAUSE AND REFLECT

The feedback that I received from Johraben forced me to take a step back, pause the momentum for a bit and reflect on what was going on.

The initial goal was to understand how “transparency” can work within the existing systems of governance, in the context of relocation housing spaces; Designing through participatory methods was essential to this idea. While data is key, the questions that were being formed as part of the application were not really able to highlight the nature of the problem. So, the question then arose, what is the point of this questionnaire if it cannot highlight the problems.
There had been a lot of focus on the final outcome of this project, which is the creation of the mobile application. The focus on the design of the wireframes made me ignore the larger goal of this project – which was participation of the community. As Johraben’s feedback reflects, there is little of the community that is visible in the application, and more of the designer. Little attempts to understand the nuances of the situation from the perspective of Johraben, who is the key stakeholder hear, representing the community.
In the need to create an application, there is an existing system of governance which is a common meeting point for residents and the municipality – which the grievance redressal system. So there is a need to look into that system which is able to highlight the various problems that affect the lives of people. Johraben, hence, became the centre of this ecosystem – she is the one who is constantly communicating with the residents and the AMC
There is a need to shift the focus drastically, and re-imagine the project again.

PHASE 2: THE SECOND ITERATION

REVISED HYPOTHESIS

With the focus on grievance redressal mechanisms, and through conversations with Johraben and Beena ben, the initial hypothesis was revised.

"Residents living in rehabilitated housing spaces face numerous issues that range from infrastructural issues to access to basic amenities and services, which have a direct impact on their way of life. While there is an existing grievance redressal system, created by the municipality, that addresses these various issues, there is a lack of information on the working of the system and its benefits. The problem of access and lack of information on the impact of this system needs to be addressed."

RESEARCH AND SYSTEMS MAPS

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has a Comprehensive Complaint Redressal System dashboard on their website. The dashboard is an attempt to make the system visible, however, many elements on the dashboard don’t work, the numbers provided on the dashboard have not been updated and it is difficult to find online.

The dashboard provided information on how a 'user' can register a complaint. This helped in creating a system map for the same.

Around the same time, Johranben and I created a system map to understand her role in the existing system of registering grievances. It was visible that she was at the centre of the ecosystem, often donning many roles - assisting in registering complaints, accompanying fellow residents to the AMC office, conducting follow-ups and maintaining documentation of the complaints.

In order to understand how the formal (AMC) and the informal (Johraben) systems work, I combined both the systems maps.

ANALYSIS AND OBSERVATIONS

Despite the availability of different avenues to register grievance, there is no data available to understand how the grievance is processed by the AMC

With more push towards online registration of grievances, there is a sense of lack of accessibility to be able to "voice" a complaint
The community leader (Johraben) is burdened with guiding, registering and documenting the entire process that begins with registering a complaint to its resolution
The community leader also has to keep a track of various issues that different slum clusters face, making the task of documentation tedious

The analysis lead to the following articulation of a solution -
"To create a digital portal that can allow the community leader to keep a track of the complaints filed, those resolved, and those pending. It will enable to leader to be more equipped to take decisions about the next course of action - in the form of negotiation, advocacy, mobilization, and so on."

The initial methodology was to conduct "Lean Experiments" ( to mimic the functionality of the "portal" to understand how to design the end product) using existing online data collection/tracking tools. The objectives of the experiment were to see if the community leader is:

able to keep a track of the complaints
able to use that data to understand the overall scenario of the grievances registered
able to advocate for better service delivery from the AMC

RE-LOOKING AT STAKEHOLDER MAPS

The earlier iteration of the Stakeholder Map had to be revised. Based on the learning of the systems maps, the primary stakeholders are community leaders and the municipality. The secondary stakeholders are the residents of the slum clusters, NGOs, Activists and the designer themself. And finally, at the tertiary level are the councillors of the ward and people from the media. An interest-influence map was created to understand the interest and influence levels of the stakeholders to understand their impact on the project. This helped in defining the potential users of the mobile application.

User Personas were created of those who are most likely to use the application, as well as of those who are least likely to use the application.

RE-IMAGINING WIREFRAMES OF THE MOBILE APPLICATION

Due to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the planned lean experiments could not be conducted. Hence, the wireframes were re-imagined keeping in mind the learnings of the research and system maps.

The objectives of this iteration were as follows:

To create a way for the community leader to fill in data about the complaint received; the data would range from the date the complaint was filled to the nature of the complaint, area of the complainant and upload relevant pictures for the same.
To ensure community leader is able to access the data already filled, keeping a track of the progress of the grievance

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