Futures+

Futures+,a foresight driven community innovation program to address sustainability challenges using deep technologies. Teams from Bhutan, Indonesia, India and Singapore participated in the 6-month long program and it resulted in deployment of 3 finalist solutions in north-east India and parts of Indonesia. Futures+ was co-organized by National Institute of Warangal and Sustainable Living Lab

Context: I facilitated and led Futures+ took place in 2020 before starting my graduate studies. During the program execution, our understanding of COVID-19 and it's implication was still unfolding. Alongwith 16 program partners, we redesigned every step of the program to a online-remote experience from a fully offline and inperson one. Our interactions with community partners and teams helped us understand the bottlenecks to deep tech adoption in South Asian context.

Decades of temporary external interventions without the involvement of affected community in planning has left them wary of new technology. When asked what kind of technology they (farmers) would use, the response was - modular (easy to replace parts), repairable (by themselves ideally), non-specialized components. The learnings from the program has helped in my graduate studies when choosing research questions and as design constraints.