Grishma Bhanderi

The project's objective is to explore how may we enable independence for ambulatory individuals within their homes. Current design interventions tend to appear purely functional and clinical, making the users feel ignored. As a result, these objects bear the stigma and isolate the users in a setting. With the world's population ageing rapidly, we need to rethink how we design for the ageing demographics.

Upraise is an elegant seat assist that supports and fits beautifully into the homes of the user.

Upraise demonstrates how empathic and user-centred approaches towards designing for the ageing population can mould into functional and elegant assistive furniture. The process engages emotional design and co-creation methods that place the user's needs at the heart of this project. Standing up from a chair is a simple yet crucial element in maintaining independence for elderly persons and individuals with disabilities. Therefore, this project can make a difference in the lives of the ageing population by restoring their autonomy. 

Kalā [Kuh-lah: art] focuses on co-creation and the importance of craftsmanship. The world around us is constantly growing, and the work environment plays a vital role in the quality of growth. From personal experiences, working from home is complex and can affect one’s ability to work efficiently. I designed and co-fabricated this work from home furniture set alongside local artisans inspired by local products. The portable workstation allows users to move around to different settings within a confined space. The objective of this design is to eliminate the digital and physical fatigue and make work from home more enjoyable and exciting.

Empathy Playground is created to allow local users to connect with their neighbours. 

Due to the lack of proper tools for community engagement, people were not compassionate across different ethnic groups in Bow, London. The goal of the playground was to help people empathise with the cross-cultural differences through reflective activities like reading cultural fictions and engaging in a dialogue with other residents of Bromley by Bow. The installations are used as tools to broaden empathy amongst the community. 

Traffickers are increasingly recruiting and grooming victims online. In a survey of trafficking survivors, 55% of respondents who were trafficked in 2015 never met their trafficker face to face. This has only accelerated further in light of the current pandemic.

The Internet is a hospitable environment for traffickers. They can more easily scale their recruiting and grooming operations, law enforcement presence is minimal, and anonymity helps them avoid detection while abetting the deception of potential victims, e.g. catfishing. This, unfortunately, encourages traffickers as they recognise their relative safety online and lack of risk when conducting their recruiting and grooming operations online.

 J{AI}NE DOE seeks to make the online environment more hostile for traffickers and serve as deterrence by supporting cyber operations. Traditionally, running cyber operations requires a significant investment in time and effort, from generating and maintaining active fake personas, engaging and monitoring suspected traffickers, to assembling a case against identified traffickers. AI assistants and ML tools can support cyber operators every step of the way.