The project explores the understanding of the behaviour of light and shadow using a tea-light candle as a light source and paper as a subject through the lamp design process.

Namma Metro started its work in 2007 and was open to public on 20th Oct 2011.

When I was travelling for the first time in Mumbai, I noticed something unexpected. The orientation of platforms to get off trains is different at different stations. For one station, the crowd faced left, and for the next, it faced right. Being a novice, this annoyed me as there were no means by which I could know my station and the direction of the platform other than asking.

This experience led to the inception of the thought behind this project: "How would real-time information be designed for futuristic Mumbai local trains, served inside the high-tech compartments for the future passengers". The real-time information is usually conveyed by the Passenger Information Display System (PIDS). The project doesn’t aim to solve any current problems but will take inspiration from the same problems and visualise the future of info design for PIDS, specially catered to Indian situations (multilingual; language barrier; chaos and crowd inside trains; lack of information system). The first part of the project introduces the Passenger Information Display System (PIDS), its role in public transport, and my area of focus in this design project.

The second part looks at the main conditions that shape this project, such as the current scenario of Mumbai's local compartments, the needs of the user from a novice perspective, and the necessary information. The final part discusses the design and decisions (both visual and motion design) made to accomplish the project.

This project explores the possibilities of interaction between a light source and a subject, which projects the impression of a subject on a screen called The Shadow. Considering light source and subject as major variable factors, their behaviour of interaction is altered by changing properties, and hence the resulting phenomena are observed. Domestic lights are used as the medium for the light source, and paper is used as the material for the subject. Lamp is chosen as a medium to explore these variables, as it is a perfect model that leads this exploration towards a tangible product.