Play · Rhea Gupta
Hi, I'm Rhea

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Side projects, experiments and things I made just for fun.

Oh by the way, your cursor is a paddle! Hit the yellow ball any time and score points!

New experiments are on their way. Check back soon.

  • The fold-out manual opened up on a table: cobalt and yellow panels reading Complicated, Shared Wisdom and Grandma Says
  • Close-up of the cover panel: Grandma Says, lessons for a healthier relationship with your phone
  • The manual fully unfolded, showing the numbered lessons on the inside panels
  • The manual laid out beside a new iPhone in its box
  • The folded manual tucked under an iPhone box lid, where the usual leaflet would be
  • The iPhone box with the folded manual slipped underneath

2022 · Print · Speculative design

The Anti-User iPhone Manual

What if the manual told you to use your phone less?

A fold-out guide that hides in a new iPhone box, written by Grandma. She is a digital immigrant, and she has notes: lessons for a healthier relationship with your phone.

A reflection piece stemming from my Capstone in Digital Equity for Older Adults. See the project

The full manual

Download PDF
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2021 · Installation · with Laurain Park

Cymatics

Sound you can see.

An experimental study of the permeable boundaries of our senses. Sand on a plate, an old amplifier, and frequencies that turn what looks like chaos into order.

More at unrvl.net
  • The finished piece: a wooden box of patterned sand beside the amplifier that drives it
  • Another view of the box and amplifier
  • Close-up of sand drifting around the bolt at the centre of the plate

Process shots

Work in progress: testing the sand on the bare plate, mounting the speaker and the first patterns in the unfinished box.

The bare metal plate in the workshop, with faint rings left by the first sand tests
The speaker underneath the plate, held on threaded rods
The unfinished box: sand gathering into a ring around the centre bolt
An early pattern forming in the box on the workbench

2019 · UX research & design · 36 hours

Saheli

A women’s health chatbot for rural India.

Saheli means friend. It is an AI assistant that helps women in rural and non-metro India find information and remedies about their health, in their own language, by talking, tapping or pointing.

1 / 6 · Welcome
The brief
Create an AI assistant that helps women in rural and non-metro cities find information and remedial solutions about women’s health.
Role
Sole Researcher and Designer
Time
36 hours
The solution
A chatbot that is easy for women in rural India to use, sharing information and remedies they can use to understand their symptoms, and helping break myths and superstitions around treatment.

Research

India has roughly 20 health workers for every 10,000 people, and many rural families travel more than 100 km to reach care, mostly paying out of pocket. Most women use basic feature phones with little or no internet, often shared within the household, and mainly for calls and WhatsApp.

Sticky notes mapping the problem: healthcare, connectivity and awareness, the user segment, and why and what women struggle with
Mapping the problem
Hand-written pains and gains: care is far and expensive, problems go unrecognised, limited phone access, stigma; gains include a health assistant and a record of medical history
Pains and gains

Research Participants

Portraits of the three women interviewed: Meenu from Koch Bihar, Ruksana from Sangam Nagar and Sondha from Bihar
Meenu, Ruksana and Sondha

Interviews with three women, each 24, from Koch Bihar, Sangam Nagar and Bihar, shaped what Saheli had to be.

  1. Ideas about health are largely shaped by superstition passed down by elders, with little basic knowledge of sanitation, maternal care or sanitary pads.
  2. Women talk openly about health with close friends, not with strangers.
  3. Many pregnant women neglect their own health and carry on as usual.
  4. Hospitals are far away, so visits only happen in emergencies.
  5. Most problems come during and after pregnancy; one woman also raised tobacco.
  6. Phones are mostly used to stay in touch with husbands, and the internet mostly for WhatsApp.

User flow

Hand-drawn user flow: welcome screen, select your area of concern on a body map, then either a visual breakdown or voice dictation, leading to questions and tips from the bot
The flow, sketched

Women are welcomed by a character designed to feel like one of them, someone they can get to know through comic strips and by talking to her, so they feel at ease.

The first question is the area of concern, picked on a body map. From there the conversation unfolds in one of two ways:

  1. By voice, or by choosing from suggested or typed replies.
  2. Through pictures of common problems in that area.

Saheli then asks a few questions and shares tips, with DIY videos (like making your own cotton pad), home remedies, booking a doctor’s appointment and reminders.

Wireframes

Designed in Hindi first, then translated.

Hindi wireframes: welcome screen, body map, problem area identified, voice dictation, further questions and a video answer
Hindi
The same wireframes translated into English
English translation