Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology

A new approach to the traditional alphabet book.

This project was the finalist at INDEX Design Challenge 2011 at Copenhagen in 2011.

Media - communication design

The design brief talks about meeting the shortages in supplies, equipment and inadequate facilities in low income communities.

Description:
We have tried to find a fresh perspective on the traditional alphabet book in the form of a toy, like a jigsaw puzzle. We have visually disintegrated the letters of the vernacular Kannada alphabets into basic forms. These can be formed and reformed into English alphabets as well as Kannada ones and different shapes like tree, man, woman, fish, insects etc. The entire point of this is to make the concept of an alphabet book more effective through a do it yourself process because studies in child psychology show that children assimilate more by doing rather than learning by rote.

Meghma and Sayantani presenting their project at Copenhagen

Motivation :
Financial conditions of the different parts of society in India dictate the standard of education meted out. There is a stark difference in the learning levels of children of the same age coming from private and government institutions. The bridge that is missing here is uniform infrastructure. Here we are talking about things ranging from proficiency of teachers, funds allotted to the school for basic necessities like mid day meals, quality of text books and stationeries, to teaching aids. Our project has tried to tackle the necessity of improving the learning aides provided by the government to the public schools by designing a more effective learning aid based on results of study in child psychology.

Impact:
This project is at its most basic form assimilating two languages but it has scope for more. This toy can be further developed into a series of educational toys addressing a minimum of seven to ten Indian languages. The toy addresses only alphabets as the initial level of
learning a language but it can be further developed into the secondary level for example constructing words and sentences.

Sayantani presenting their project at Copenhagen

Brief Report

Participatory Tools for Research by design students of Srishti

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