1) The document summarizes the author's 1.5 month internship at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) of IIT Bombay, where they contributed to various projects including iterations of a traditional Indian palanquin called a "palkhi". 2) The author learned about reading technical drawings, materials like stainless steel, and ergonomic considerations for seating. 3) In retrospect, the author wishes they had created prototypes more and considered alternative materials like wood that are better suited to the product.

1. My One and a half months at IDC
Adithya Ravi
Srishti Institute of Art, Design and
Technology

2. Overview
• Introduction
• Projects
– What I contributed?
– What I learnt
– Things I might have done differently
• Takeaways from IDC
• Conclusion

3. Introduction
I have spent the last 44 days at the illustrious IITB,
more specifically at the Industrial Design Centre
(IDC). It has been a fast flying six weeks that has
been dominated for the most part by work. But no
work is ever fruitful unless one learns something
from it, in the words of Nietzsche. Hence this
document compiles the work that I have done along
with what I learnt from each piece of work.
I leave it to the judgement of the reader to figure if I
have done a satisfactory amount of work. All that
matters to me is that I feel tremendously fulfilled.

4. Projects
• Observation for a week
• Palkhi 3rd iteration for 2 weeks
• Police stick from around the world one week
• Palkhi 4th iteration for 2 weeks

5. Observation
• I started by looking at the various Projects that
people were doing
• One of the Mdes students was working on an
arsenic filter
• The Palkhi 3rd iteration was going start
– Since I was not yet allotted a project I began to
observe the various welding processes

6. Palkhi 2nd iteration
• The primary contribution that I made was
towards using the dimensional drawings to
map out the palkhi and guide the Gulab and
Kailash with the help of Aniket
• I also tried to make the 1:1 drawing for the
curves of the chair

7. Learning
• I understood the process of reading a drafted
drawing and translate that to a hard core product
• Understood the importance of a cad drawing in
helping someone understand the fabrication of
the product with compounded components
• I learnt a lot about Stainless Steel as a material
from Rajan Sir
• I also learnt a lot about the two welding
technologies that were being used
– Shielded metal arc welding (Stick)
– Gas metal arc welding (Argon)

8. Police Stick
• I was asked to make a presentation of the
different kind of police sticks that were
existent around the world
• I then started to conceptualize on various
things I would do with the police stick to
improve it with the constraint that it would be
a telescopic stick

9. Learning
• The police stick is an interesting object
• The biggest learning from this was the kind of
ethnographic application that has been
brought into a seemingly mundane product
• One thing I might have done differently was to
not lose sight of the ultimate use of a police
stick (which is to hit a person)

10. Palkhi 3rd Iteration
• With more considerations of seating
ergonomics another iteration of the palkhi
was made with the following changes
– Using a front to back attachment of pipes in order
to create adequate and comfortable lumbar
support
– Adding a half inch thick epdm fabric laminated
foam sheet on the seats for cushioning
– Changing dimensions of the structure in terms of
height and length

11. Learning
• I learnt a little more about seating ergonomics
than I knew before
– A specific instance was while making the headrest
of the palkhi. We had to design the headrest for
the tallest 90th percentile of people while the main
seat would have to be suitable for the people in
between the 10th and 90th percentile
• I also learnt about the entire process of using
stainless steel for fabrication

12. Few things I would have done
differently
• Choice of material
– I might have used wood or bamboo as the material instead
of stainless steel for the palkhi because these materials
have a certain amount of moisture in them that gives them
a natural shock absorption especially when they are
suspended
– I would have created an MVP (minimum viable product)
before creating a complete iteration from stainless steel.
During the process of making the palkhi we did make a lot
of mistakes, the root cause of which was the fact that we
had not figured things out on a smaller scale. This resulted
in material wastage etc. that unnecessarily increases cost.
So building a mock up is usually a very beneficial step of
the design process

13. Conclusion
I had a great time of learning at IDC over the
past one and a half months. I would like to
extend my gratitude to Chakku Sir, Rajan Sir,
Aniket, Kailash and Gulab for unabashedly giving
me a chance to get a great look at the creative
and technical processes that IDC is made of. I
would also like to thank the other workshop
staff for their friendship and help.