Karsten Miranda
karsten@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: While India Inc celebrated an engineering feat — ‘Smart Vault’, a fully automated locker that uses state-of-the-art technology, including robotics – little did the country know that it was designed in Raia, Goa. The locker was launched by ICICI Bank last week.
Brothers Deepak Pathania and Amit Pathania own the company Design Intervention, which designed India’s first automated locker. The lockers will be accessible 24×7, like an ATM.
Located in New Delhi, the Smart Vault uses robotic technology to access lockers in the safe vault. The locker automatically comes up to the customer in a secure lounge.
They designers were formally felicitated with a memento at the launch function in New Delhi, where Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO of ICICI Bank said, “This innovation exemplifies the potential of ‘Make in India’ as it has been both designed and manufactured by two Indian partners” referring to Design Intervention and PARI Robotics.
“The client being appreciative of the result is always great, but then making a point to announce with credit is a rare occurrence in the Indian industry,” said Deepak, founder and principal designer of Designer Intervention. His younger brother Amit is the director of operations.
The company is a multidisciplinary firm, and over the last two decades, it has designed and prototyped over 25 different designs of interactive kiosks and even ATMs for various banks.
Deepak designed the ‘Smart Vault’ at their office in Bacbhat, Raia and prototyped it at their office in Mumbai under Amit. It was eventually set up in Delhi. PARI Robotics, Pune, is the company that created the engineering and robotics of the ‘Smart Vault’.
Design Intervention was responsible for the design and execution of the lounge, kiosk/console, the physical user experience and the outside lobby wall leading to the lounge. PARI Robotics engineered the entire working and robotic retrieval systems.
“Design ideally should be introduced in any such development at the beginning stage as it provides a holistic viewpoint to the entire project from user experience, ergonomics, structural and intelligent synergy with technology. The intervention in this project’s case was smaller but crucial and fits my analogy. The engineering/robotics with its main role made the food to be served; we simply added the salt,” explained Deepak.
Incidentally, Deepak is the host and creative head of the site called dartofscience.com. Recalling how the journey began, he went back to June 2014 when he got a call from ICICI to design the kiosk and the lounge experience and added that it was beyond exciting.
Since the physical volume of the kiosk was large, they started by creating a volumetric mock-up and video taped it being mock-used by various people. They added that this gave a real sense of the ergonomics possible around the constraints that the engineering laid out from a functionality point of view.
“Since we are a multidisciplinary design office, we have a mix of designers from transportation, product, film and video, exhibition, furniture, etc. At the concept development stage, everyone is encouraged to ideate only through sketching. My role as the creative director is to use my experience to sift for good ideas and details, and more importantly, hear the wild ideas to make them feasible,” added Deepak.
Incidentally, after a lot of research and draft designs, Deepak finally used concept cars as an inspiration after he saw some amazing automobile sketches by Hemal, a transportation designer. He said, “It occurred to me that as far as styling goes, the automobile industry looks the farthest in the future because of the time it takes from the first ideas to eventually reach the market, it could be 5-7 years, even with present technology.”
Eventually, they arrived at many designs, out of which this one went into further development and was presented to the client.
“We did show at least 100 other sketches and many other developments, but we presented this as the star. The jury, from across three cities, was video conferencing from ICICI head office in Mumbai, and unanimously, they simply loved it,” added Amit.
Amit further explained that their main question was: will it look as good once it’s made? He elaborated that generally the problem of products not looking like the final concepts by designers arises when people don’t know the materials plus processes that the product and all its elements will be made of.
“I’m old school that way from National Institute of Design (NID). Every line that I draw on paper plays out in my mind with all the specification of materials, thicknesses, constraints, etc. We take pride in our concept presentation and delivering the final products to match them, if not improve on them,” said Deepak.
He laid great emphasis on making the brief perfect and said ICICI have given them constructive and qualitative feedback, which was vital as it helped them build progressively.
They also pointed out that the budgeting was optimal, and that includes time to create and money for research and development and prototyping.
“Make in India, designed in Goa, and they say Goa is only a party place,” quipped a triumphant Deepak.
