PV-Pix: Slum Community Co-design of Self-Powered Deformable Smart Messaging Materials
Dani Kalarikalayil Raju, Krishna Seunarine, Thomas Reitmaier, Gethin Thomas, Yogesh Kumar Meena, Chi Zhang, Adam Pockett, Jennifer S. Pearson, Simon Robinson, Matthew J. Carnie, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo, Matt Jones · 2021
Working with emergent users in two of Mumbai’s slums, we explored the value and uses of photovoltaic (PV) self-powering digital materials. Through a series of co-design workshops, a diary study and responses by artists and craftspeople, we developed the PV-Pix concept for inter-home connections. Each PV-Pix element consists of a deformable energy harvesting material that, when actuated by a person in one home, changes its physical state both there and in a connected home. To explore the concept we considered two forms of PV-Pix: one uses rigid materials and the other flexible ones. We deployed two low-fidelity prototypes, each constructed of a grid of one PV-Pix type, in four slum homes over a four week period to further understand the usability and uses of the materials, eliciting interesting inter-family communication practices. Encouraged by these results we report on a first-step towards working prototypes and demonstrate the technical viability of the approach.