sneha
hci @ usyd, she/her
About
design engineer figuring out new ways to solve un-met problems through cyclical research, intuitive systems & clean design.
Work Experience
Volunteering
Education
majors: interaction design & psychological science
distinction wam
Projects
I've experimented with many to-do applications, all promising to be 'life organising' but struggled to stick with any beyond a couple of weeks. Initially, I thought the problem was with myself- I lacked discipline, organisation and grit to keep up. But then I read the design of everyday things by norman, and it really resonated with me. What if I am a left-handed person in a world of right-handed tools? There is no “human error,” only bad design:
-
Willpower needed to make decisions are a limited resource and most to-do apps fail to account for this. The amount of things one can customise is really large, but making all these decisions have a cost.
-
Sense of accomplishment is important but rare in the digital world- when a task is marked as completed, it simply disappears. There is no reward and no sense of accomplishment. I think this explains why some people still prefer pen-and-paper lists: the act of crossing out a completed task provides a tangible artifact that proves that there was a task here, and now it’s done; now you are one step closer to your goal.
I now see all to-do apps as a shallow copy of the same rigid, inhuman, anxiety-inducing template and wanted to make one with very little utensils to reduce the time+friction between planning & doing. This was the first real app (if you can even call that) that I designed & developed myself to learn spa & react; any and all feedback would be appreciated <3
The inspiration behind the piece ties back to my hometown, a small rural village in southern India and the summers I spent there as a child. I vividly remember waking up at the crack of dawn to watch my aunt draw beautiful, intricate patterns on red oxide tiles using rice flour in a coconut shell.
The process of creating one almost always involves a specific set of rules/algorithms; as the size and intricacy of kolams increase, so does its computational complexity. Interestingly, the women who draw these are not thinking in terms of mathematical theories when making them- they start out small & then expand by enlarging the same sub-pattern.
Much like the kolams themselves, the code consists of basic concepts when zoomed out, results in an overall ‘complex’ & recursive pattern. To add a level of dimension & abstraction, the kolam resembles a spinning top; the slow rotation acting as symbolism of village life.
Tomorrow, while madras sleeps tired from a fast-paced life, radha athai will rise before dawn, clean a patch of her front porch and begin. Gotta love a culture that wakes up and draws first thing, right outside its door :)