cLIENT - Industree
rOLE: Led the product design end-to-end independently; conducted research as part of a 5-member team.
JULY 2020
dhatri
a solution that is native to the kui tribe and has no learning curve.
Challenge
Women in the Baliguda forest range, Odisha, collect Sal and Siali leaves to produce plates. They trek through dangerous terrain carrying makeshift cloth bags that slip, strain their shoulders, and limit hand mobility. With space also taken up by tools, water, and other items, their capacity for leaf collection, and therefore income - is directly reduced.
Insight
The solution needed to feel intuitive, familiar, and culturally native, so that women could adopt it without training or hesitation. Since leaf collection efficiency directly impacts their revenue, the bag design had to maximize capacity, ergonomics, and ease of use while remaining low-cost and locally producible.
Impact
The result was Dhatri, a functional, durable, and voluminous bag designed with a focus on safety and efficiency. Built using the existing local infrastructure, it incurs no cost while offering maximum utility. By reducing physical strain and freeing the women’s hands during forest treks, Dhatri not only makes leaf collection safer but also enables them to carry more, directly improving productivity and income.
Status - In Use
In rural Odisha, India, there's a small indigenous community called the Kui Tribe.
They primarily generate income by crafting organic plates from readily available forest materials.
However, with each passing year, increasing labor costs have led to a decline in the plates' value, contributing to a significant rise in poverty within the community.
How can we leverage the practices of the Kui Tribe's women to foster their economic empowerment and overall well-being?
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4 months of research including field research on community life and livelihoods.
Researching market and consumer behavior to identify preferences, dislikes, and demand patterns.
Analyzing production processes to identify key components slowing down the workflow.
Provide actionable insights and deliver proposal
The project uncovered actionable insights into the lives of women, highlighting that their economic well-being was influenced by multiple interrelated factors to support their income-generating efforts.
Design Intervention
One key opportunity was optimizing the space in the leaf carry bags used to transport materials for plate-making.
By doing so, the women were able to carry more raw material in each trip.
This led to an increase in the number of plates produced per batch, directly boosting their productivity and contributing to their overall economic advancement.
The decline in revenue is attributed to poor bag conditions and the lack of organization during the collection of leaves.
Collection
Stitching
Pressing
Markets
so?
How might we re-design a bag that has no learning curve and utilizes existing resources available to hold higher number of items?
Evaluation of multiple design concepts and fabric options. This involved scrutiny of each design’s functionality, aesthetics, and practicality and examination of various fabrics for their suitability.
The problem