 So students, good afternoon. This is one of my most favorite topics, user-centered design. We hear a lot about user-centered design when it comes to online platforms, websites, online buying platforms when you have these online shopping portals because it immediately translates into business. When somebody comes to your site and if it's very easy to use and he's bought something on your site, if it's too tedious, they won't buy. So coming from that angle, when I go and see my products which are around me, a lot of products are extremely tedious to use because of various reasons. Some reasons could be that they are because of legislation. Some reasons could be because of material properties. And the people are not looking at how to make these products very comfortable to the user. So I'm talking about a physical product where helmets, which are used on two-wheelers. So let me tell you a small story. I had this student, Mandar Kale, in 2007, I think. And he came late for a product design course. That is, we have a P2 project where he was late for a week. Then I asked him, you know, Mandar, why are you so late? And what's happened? He said that his friend died in a motorcycle accident. And the motorcycle helmet was trapped to the back of the motorcycle. This was in Pune. And he was very disturbed because he was just saying that, if only, you know, my friend would have put on that helmet, he wouldn't be dead because he had a head injury. Head-on collision with the truck in the front because the truck did a sudden break and he was going at, you know. So then, you know, it stuck me that Mandar, if you're so concerned, can't we design a product where you're encouraged to use it? That is, you go like a way you take a key, you put on your helmet and you go. Can't we do such a thing? Why are helmets so uncomfortable? And then we studied, we found out so many new problems with helmets and so many deaths, 140,000 deaths, you know, in the year 2015. But if you go now, the increasing, you know, day by day, now that the, you know, fines are much more severe, people will wear helmets. But I'm just saying, why should the policemen ask for fines when you're saving your life? So this is the whole challenge we started with in this journey of designing a helmet which will be extremely comfortable. But if you have an extremely comfortable helmet, will it be unsafe? Need not be very good. Will it not pass Indian standards? No, it has to pass Indian standards. Who is talking about today? We're talking about technology, materials and processes and then we have to make technology, we have to make materials and we have to make our engineering process suit the user, right? Not, you know, give a manufacturer a specification that you have to make these helmets, you know, like in this particular way and, you know, there should be no ventilation and, you know, there's ventilation, the helmet will crack, which are not even, you know, which are not even justified for them to make. So we started with that premise and we said, we have to look at the situation around us. Then this is one of my, you know, project associates in our design studio, Mr. Chari. He worked with us, he was also an MDS designer and he said, sir, it's so complex. Our culture, our ecosystem, the way we use helmets, the way we use the two-wheelers, the way we use our two-wheelers and he made this, you know, wonderful, you know, sketch, you know, saying that our headgear, if you have, you know, if you're having a headgear, what will you do? If you're having a, you know, like mill, if you're a guy who's taking milk around, how will you handle? So we found it very, very challenging. So from there on, we started and we said, let us understand our culture, let us understand the local situations and habits and let us also look at the socioeconomic condition. If the helmets are too expensive, nobody will buy, right? The helmets have to be, you know, also looking at who is using the helmet for what purpose. So here we come down to a very important, you know, topic in design, which is product planning. You need to have that variety of products which are suitable for different, different type of people and it's a myth when we say that I have designed one product and it'll be good for everybody. I take a good example of your spectacles. Everybody uses a different spectacle. Let it be style, let it be convenient, let it be, let it be a type of choice you have. Similarly, you need to have helmets which are, which are that type of variety. So that you can choose the right helmet for your requirement. And we looked at, you know, condition in India, become the largest tubular manufacturer, we're still growing. 69% of the total number of motor vehicles are motorized. Injuries to the head are the main cause of death. And here, for example, you'll be surprised that when it's called a blunt injury, when the injury to the head happens, the brain goes and hits the skull inside because the brain is in the fluid and when it hits the skull, the person is brain dead. You won't see any injury outside, but the person is dead. So these are the challenging things we were facing. And we're saying that anyway, helmet is the most effective way of reducing these injuries and the majority of tubulars, anybody we interviewed we found out that they just don't want to wear a helmet. Then we went and started studying their market and our situations and people. People is a very, very important study for us. And then we were watching the type of risks on the road, risks are too many. What's happening when you're stuck at a traffic junction, the helmet gets very hot. Let us look at the construction of the helmet. What do you think saves the person's life in all these three parts of the helmet? The shell, the thermocol, which is the expanded polystyrene foam and the PU padding inside. Out of these three, which is the one which saves the life? The thermocol. Thermocol. And that doesn't cost anything, right? Thermocol is the packaging. This thermocol has a special property of actually reducing the acceleration of the head, the brain inside when it's going to hit the head. And that type of compression loading and we're not able to get in any of the material till now. We tried a lot of options. We're not able to get that type of compression where you get that type of cushioning so that the brain doesn't go and hit the head. I must tell you a nice story over here. In Delhi, we were given a big task by the transport department and they told us, you know, please check out whether these roadside helmets are good or not. They're selling at 400 bucks, 600 bucks, 200 bucks and they may be very dangerous for the people who are buying them. Then we took all the roadside helmets into our, we have a very good biomedical facility in IIT, Delhi when I was teaching there and you know, Professor Dinesh Mohan was in charge. We got these studs helmets, which are the best in the grade. Then we got the other brands, four other brands and we bought four local roadside helmets and we put them on the testing machine with sensors and everything. And to a shock, the roadside helmets were performing much, much better, 20% to 40% better than the studs helmet. What could be the reason? More thermocol and another interesting issue was that shell, which we thought was the most important would crack in the other helmets and break, but save the life of a person. The roadside helmets didn't use that much resin as studs were using. So if you use a lot of resin, the shell is very hard. It takes all, when it goes and hits the floor, what happens? It absorbs less energy, whereas the roadside helmet shell would go and crack. What happens when something cracks? It uses all the energy and it was much, much better. That was a shock for studs. Their thermocol, the studs, when the thermocol in the studs helmet was actually 18 to 19 millimeters and sometimes it was curvilinear because of the style and all, he had to make it in some grooves inside. Whereas the outside helmet, no fancy design. It was straight forward round shell of 22, 23 millimeter thick. That was a minimum, you need minimum 20 millimeter thick for saving the life of a person. It was 20 to 24 because it was just because of lack of things and you want to make a simple helmet. Their EPS form, which is the expanded polystyrene, was thicker and a uniform cross section. So it did very well in them in the field. So that gave us the impetus that we need to do something very drastic in making people aware of this as well as see to it that people wear helmets. So then we said, let us study all the materials available. We will use Kevlar bulletproof, very, very high end. And then we also checked out other materials like lexan, lexan is a polycarbonate material. Polycarbonate is very strong again. Why should I study these high end materials when I'm designing a helmet for a two wheeler rider? I'm not going to use them. But by studying the materials, we study the property. We're studying the properties. I can come up with ideas for better use of material in my context also. So we always do that. Whenever we have some study, we'll study parallel products, whatever materials they're using. So they can come back and do multiple work. So here then we also looked at ABSPC. This is a styrene material which is used in all plastic scooter parts. And ABS is a very good, ABS is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene which is very easy to paint. It's injection molded. So just to give you a little illustration of what happens, if you're traveling at say 45 kilometers an hour and you have a head-on collision, it is like falling from the second floor balcony head-down. That is the type of impact. And it's pretty severe. We don't realize it. And 45 kilometers an hour is nothing. Most of us go at 60 to 80 kilometers an hour. And if that is the speed, it's like falling from the terrace of a five-story building. There's no chance of survival. But after the collision, it drops. Here it is adding on. But if I come with a, you know, a standstill truck, then my 45 kilometers become around 35 to 40 kilometers. By the time I go on to hit the, because some amount of deceleration happens when I hit, hit. Because sometime a shock gets absorbed by the vehicle and then the movement of the body, all that. So it reduces a little bit. So, but then you just, you can imagine that if the speeds are much higher, it could be very, very fatal. And that's what we see outside. So many deaths because of that. And that perception is not there. That is a challenge for us. And then we went and studied the standards. And a very interesting cartel happens with the standards. In the standards, we have professors, we have material experts, and we have also industry representatives. And unfortunately, they are completely biased towards manufacturing. They are biased towards technology. And they're not having any context of user convenience. And then all the helmet standards are coming from cold countries. They, they take in the British standards and they brought that down. And all Europe, where do they use motorcycles? Racing, mountains, going. So for them and whatever weather. Very cold. So what happens if we borrow the standards from them? You'll get, your head will get cooked in India. Literally. And that's what happens in Delhi. When the temperature outside of 47 degrees and you're wearing a helmet on your head, you just can't survive. It is so hot inside. So we went and told, we then met the Indian standards and we told them, this is not right. You have to have a person who is responsible for comfort of a person in your committee so that they look at the comfort and then introduce all the new norms. And then we did a lot of observations of people's problems of how they store their helmet, how difficult it is to buckle and why people don't buckle their helmet. You know that they don't buckle the helmet. Then what happens, tell me? The helmet flies somewhere else and you hit the head, hit. So it, and we found out that at least 20% of the accidents are happening. People are wearing helmets and not buckling. It's happening because of that. That's also very, very serious concern of buckling up. So here we're looking at, it gets very hot and muggy. There was, you know, people use their cloth inside, calves and, you know, a lot of people, you know, drive with the visor up, though it hurts their eyes. So the air is blown inside the, inside the face or interaction between two people, extremely difficult when you wear a helmet. So that's a serious issue. How will you improve that? Then, you know, it restricts vision is a very, very clear thing. Your helmet sizes are so big, sometimes it restricts the vision from the side. So this is the most important thing of our design process, the product brief. Here we're saying that the helmet should be easy and convenient to carry and store. Should encourage and stimulate you. Provide ample ventilation, should be lightweight. Helmets are very heavy. That was a very important component which people did talk about. Should fit, you know, aptly on the head without wobbling. A lot of helmets would be loose. And then provide clear vision and facilitate hearing and occupy less volume when not in use. So these are the briefs. So when you have a brief points, you want to now sort of work on these briefs and make multiple ideas. Each problem should have an idea, right? Multiple ideas together will make a concept, right? Multiple concepts will compete with each other to get selected as the best concept. And the criteria of our selection will be the product brief, got it? So let us see how this whole journey went. What is this doing? Buckling. Because buckling by the side. You just move these levers and the helmet is not coming out anymore. And when you're doing ideas, remember? No questions asked, right? You did the creative brainstorming. So when the idea is there, respect the idea. Yeah, good solution. Wow, I love this idea. This is a scarf idea and a lot of pillion riders, women riders, would say that we are much more comfortable scarfing rather than buckling. Because buckling, a lot of people have fear that the buckle will not come out. Sometimes it rusts and the buckles are very difficult to pull out. So scarfing is a very common way of time. And then tell me, if I put a scarf, what will Indian standards say? It's not secure enough, very good. And what will they do? They will test the knot in the testing machine. They'll pull and check, right? All that can be done by getting the type of fabric. But if you want to have an idea to go to the next level, you can always do whatever you want. This is an interesting sweat ring on the top. Because too much of sweat is coming. So there's a ring on the top for sweat. Another idea, again, Mandar only made all these ideas where you are receding sideways to make the helmet very slim and small. Again, two-part receding helmet. You pull them out and put them inside so it becomes very narrow, like a small file. This is, again, a collapsing, you know, self-collapsing helmet. It is like all around on the top, it's got a net. Most of the protection happens on this side. This is, again, an interesting idea of swivel. You have two shells, you swivel and you lock. It becomes very slim. All storage ideas, right? Side folding, right? This has been inspired by the shakes who wear this, you know, routering cap with the cloth. So it's been inspired by that and it's like, you know, ease of wear idea of it. Just should be as easy as wearing a cap or a, you know, with a ring on the top. So there's windows on the helmet for letting air inside. So when you're in the signal, you can actually open the ventilation ports or they can wing out the helmet so that you get the breeze needed. Then, you know, inspired by various insects, different, different ways of sort of air ventilation so that your air, you know, is very, very ventilated inside. Again, different type of dimples so that your air channels are formed. So your head is cool because of the venturi effect. Slits from the sides if possible. This is the helmet with padding on the outside. Remember those people sitting next to each other on a talk, the helmet actually hurts quite a bit. A lot of people complain that they would dash against the helmet when the billion rider wants to talk to the front because of the very seat. So the padding on the helmet. So each problem, you know, to come with an idea. Biggest challenge is pollution. So much pollution that if it's an integrated helmet with pollution mask, it can be fabulous. Again, if it's easy to store or very good so we can think of a collapsible helmet and then these are only very few ideas issued. We had some 150 ideas. I'll show you some of the clusters. So what happens when you have a lot of ideas like this? You very clearly we're coming down to the first three points which talked about comfort of use, encouragement of use and ventilation. So automatically when you cluster ideas these type of situations will come forward to you. So we had a ventilation cluster that is I put all the ideas which talked about ventilation as a ventilation cluster. I put all the ideas on the board. We actually do a lotting, which was a storage cluster, easy to store cluster and all the ones where it's easy to wear to talk about motivation and less resistance to use a helmet that we put in the ease of wearing cluster. Look at this ventilation cluster. This was put in this cluster because it has chance of ventilation also. This was going into the folding cluster. So you can actually bring a couple of ideas together. Look at the window idea, look at the gaps, look at the ventilation. A lot of ideas are put together and then what you do is you actually use all those ideas. For example, these slit ideas were also used. The louver ideas also were used inside for the thermocool. The ideas where you are opening, remember that side openings were also used. So when you build an idea, you use the other ideas as your inspiration because you cluster them together. Then we chose that as the champion idea. So how will that happen? That's called amalgamation and building up of an idea into a concept. So you're building this idea into a concept now. So this idea, then you start working on this. It's too open, so I need to close it in. I need to close further in and we check up the areas which is not covering, bring those areas in and then you make a helmet which has all the features. And look at the strap, there's no buckle there. That is the most innovative point. The strap is done using an elastic. So here we have concept A and the concept A is personifying ventilation. But it's a full concept. It's got all the features which are built in.