Visual representations such as photographs, diagrams, illustrations, and even textual formatting are essential for supporting student comprehension, retention, and application in education.

Visual representations are not only used to fill up space and to look pretty; they also help in better learning because they stimulate the student’s spatial intelligence, increase the motivation to learn, and improve the scope for dialogue and teacher-student and student-student discussions.

The purpose of images varies slightly with what subject is being taught. In science, especially, one of the primary purposes is to help clarify and build an accurate conceptual model of the concepts being taught.

I interned with Saral Designs Pvt. Ltd. on facilitating the segregation and disposal of menstrual sanitary waste. They manufacture machines that manufacture sanitary pads. More about them later. In the female body, ovulation, i.e., the release of the egg, happens once every 28 days. To prepare for a possible pregnancy, the uterus is lined with tissues and blood vessels. If a fertilised egg does not successfully embed onto the uterus’s lining, this lining is shed. This monthly menstrual bleeding is what we call periods.

Traffic accidents involving pedestrians have become a major problem across regions with high population density and rapid urbanisation. To deal with the increasing number of pedestrian–vehicle conflict points, many foot-over-bridges (FoBs) have been constructed. However, instead of using the available FoBs, people jaywalking (crossing busy roads, ignoring running vehicles), is now a common phenomenon.

To make everyone use the bridge, a change in pedestrian behaviour is needed.

In this project, we influence behaviour by studying and understanding current behaviour patterns and then using social influence as a behaviour nudge. Using the junction opposite IIT Bombay’s main gate as the site for intervention and by means of a community spotfix event, an attempt is made to persuade pedestrians to not jaywalk without being paternalistic or introducing rules and policies.

Several million rural first-generation learners are now a part of India’s massive education system. They get negligible help at home and often have less-than-motivated teachers at school. Moreover, the curriculum is largely designed by urban natives to enable people to live in an urban society. This disconnects the rural student’s classroom learning from their real-life experiences and raises questions about the relevance and utility of learning.

In this project, I work on developing a learning tool to supplement school education by enabling self-learning. The tool is an aggregator of concept-wise interactives that take an application-first approach. Each interactive would incorporate local context to improve relevance and add interactivity for increased engagement with content, which provides conceptual clarity.

Using the context derived from primary field studies, I developed a sample application for teaching ‘lenses in the human eye'. It uses a guided discovery approach that combines both direct instruction using animated audio-visuals and experiential learning via manipulatable interactive screens that simulate a locally relevant real-world application.

The prototype was evaluated for usability and engagement using think-aloud tests with students from villages in Rajasthan. After that, they were asked applicative questions in the form of a real-life scenario. This preliminary testing indicated a positive impact of interactivity on improving engagement with content. The self-paced learning style also allowed them to refer back to and replay the content till the student perceived conceptual clarity. The testing also uncovered some issues with the content, presentation, and interactivity. Design ideas to overcome them were identified and implemented.