Asana
Asana, created in 2018, is an ongoing, contextual project: a multi-purpose mattress, designed to serve migrant populations in India.
The Asana mattress is:
Multifunctional : it can be repurposed as a bed, a living space, and a seating area
Culturally-sensitive : its design is informed by conversations and direct feedback from migrant families in Delhi NCR
Ergonomic : the design supports comfortable seating posture and prevents injuries
With a typical migrant family from Ghitorni, an low-income community in Delhi, as my collaborators, an initial user study was conducted to understand their needs and feedback about the product. Under the guidance of Ritu Raina (General Manager at Hindustan Times Media) and Pooja Sehgal (Digital Communications Head at BMGF), a repository of local materials that are also durable and skin-friendly was created, and the straps were redesigned to be more conducive.
The final stage of Asana is making it portable: the mattress also folds into a bag, and can be carried. This is integral to the community’s needs. In partnership with StudioRap, Asana will be manufactured and distributed to our beneficiaries.
Asana Backpack
Taking the innovative Asana Mattress one step further, the Asana Backpack improves upon the mattress by making it portable, and thus, more relevant and useful for its intended user - the migrant worker. In this iteration, the 12-foot sleeping mat can be rolled and packed into an attached bag, which also has space for the storage of clothes and personal items. The sleeping mat is made longer than most other similar products in the market, so that it can be folded upon itself and used as a sleeping bag as well. In order to create a multi-purpose, multi-functional mattress that would be uniquely suited to cater to the needs of migrant workers, the key challenge was to develop a way to make the mattress portable and easy to carry, thus leading to the final evolution of the Asana Mattress - the Asana Backpack.