A world in which manufacturing on-demand is a reality might not be that far away, as the price of 3D printers is dramatically falling. With costs for lower-end plastic-printing machines having plummeted in the last few years, the technology is now on the cusp of becoming mainstream. At this rate, any designer could have a tabletop 3D printer and use rapid prototyping without wasting time making handmade prototypes, time that can be spent more productively.

Product design, automobile design, or any design in general, along with the machine parts industry, healthcare, retail, and food are some of the examples and predictions of how 3D printing will intersect with modern manufacturing. This will be an influential technology in the coming years. While a number of industries will see positive change, few will undergo as many drastic shifts and evolutions as manufacturing.

We wanted to be a part of this revolution. We wanted to learn about the technology, processes, and future of product design. With that said, Imaginarium is India's largest rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing centre. There’s no better place to start this journey than Imaginarium. With Imaginarium at the doorsteps of our college, there was no second thought.

These were the questions that came to mind when I visited government schools, regardless of the place, city, or village in which they were situated. But, these were not the only questions that bothered my mind, and I’m sure that I’m also not the only one to have noticed this.

Being a part of a family where teaching is a major profession, I have had quite a bit of exposure to schools and educational facilities. Evidently, the quality of the furniture (if present) depends upon the kind of school it is and the kind of funds available for it. But it's not just about the funds available; it's also about the nature and design of the furniture, which is a major part of the problem and will be discussed later in the report. As a student of design, it was a natural instinct to look for a design intervention for this scenario. It might, however, be a system-level intervention, but one can look at it as an approach to a level where apparent flaws in design could be removed. Hence, I started looking for clues.

It was even more surprising to learn that there had been a fair amount of research done on this topic throughout the country to understand the issue behind the ill-designed furniture in schools, especially in rural and remote areas. After going through a few of these reports, the validity of the issue was more clear, and I took it as a challenge to turn this potential topic into a successful design intervention.

Public transportation is the basic amenity that any city is supposed to have for travelling within and outside the city. That being the case, this amenity must be available to the residents irrespective of their social status, gender, physical condition, etc. It is also a basic right for every citizen to be able to navigate comfortably to places of work and so forth in the city of their residence.

Buses and trains are used by a large number of people on a daily basis. "Bus and rail networks are the lifeblood of Indian society and prime movers of the local economies," says Jamie Osborne, a transit planner and accessibility specialist with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, after a trip through India (Osborne, 2007). A lot of work keeps happening in the domain of transportation to give this comfortable commute to the citizens of a country like India with such a large population. Year after year, more people move to cities for opportunities, and the cities have to battle with infrastructural maintenance nonetheless, but we still need to buckle up to make public transportation accessible.

India has the largest blind population in the world at nearly 20 million. Around 1.5% of the population is blind. But the impairment does not restrict them from studying, having ambitions, or raising a family. Sadly, many portions of the world have still not been completely made accessible. Their basic requirement is affected when the navigation is curbed. Many people prefer staying indoors than to get out there and battle everyday with transportation and infrastructure.

This entire project is an attempt to help the visually impaired access public transportation with less difficulty and navigate to places that meet their needs more efficiently. As part of this project, I spent the initial part of the project’s tenure in Darmstadt, Germany. This was an attempt to understand the cultural differences, the infrastructural advancements, the attempts to provide solutions, and the design of a guiding system that would act as an assistant to the person using it, whether they were visually impaired. For the project, the chosen mode of transportation is the public bus since, after looking at some other transportation means, it seems the bus system is pretty much the same in both Germany and India. Both countries have visions to make their countries barrier-free by 2020 (Johari, 2017). Though one is a developed country and one is developing pretty fast, the visually impaired citizens did have their concerns about not being able to travel like their counterparts.