Designing Indian Internet Of Things

When IOT products are being designed for Indian Homes, Its very crucial that they understand our context, our religious & cultural beliefs, family values, tech savviness, relationship with people & things around us.

By Indian homes, I’m not referring to the modern residential apartments or villas, I’m talking of those upper middle class homes, where these products would enter.

Indian homes are like an ancient tree, we can’t just plant a seed and expect it to grow enormous enough to see birds start nesting in it. Let it be an IOT product or any piece of technology, It has to grow gradually on the tree like a vine, to merge into the lives of it’s residents.

We do look up to west for technology, but we can’t just ape their process and force it on our users. Our divergent culture, lifestyle, emotions, reasoning makes us different from the west.

For example, a baby monitoring device has proved itself to be a very useful in the west, whereas in most of the Indian homes, it is not of any use. Because a baby is never left alone in a room to sleep.

We must make sure that by designing-building-marketing-selling a baby monitor, we are not altering the upbringing of the child itself, changing the user’s or consumer’s behaviour over the time, instead of designing a relevant user centered solution.

As Designers from India, we play a pivotal role in designing next generation’s lifestyle. Instead of framing technology smart and it’s users dumb. We should try to design these technologies to understand the user’s context and make their lives simpler & better.

It’s easy to say we, Indians and our homes are not ready for Smart Devices.

We’ll never be, and we don’t have to !

Because we shouldn’t change ourselves to use a product, it’s the other way around.

Every tiny piece of technology plays a role in our lives, transforming us to grow into a new generation. Because everything we design, will design us back.