Young Designers 2011

		Young Designers 2011
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Harikrishnan B | harikrishnan23@gmail.com

Redesigning the Electronic Veena

Product Design | GDPD
Guide: Bhaskar MR Bhatt
Sponsor: Radel Electronics, Bengaluru

Keywords
Electronic Veena
Portability
Re-design
Classical Instrument

The brief for my diploma project was to design an electronic Veena. The Veena, in ancient times, was generically used to denote any string instrument — monochord, polychord, bowed, plucked, fretted, non-fretted, zither, lute or lyre. Because of its well-balanced features, the Vee¬na has been traditionally valued as sarva vadya, an instrument which requires no accompaniment.

The project involved studying various aspects of a traditional Veena through secondary sources as well as interviews with Veena artistes to understand what expectations they had from the electronic version of a traditional Indian instrument. Some of their requirements were portability, aesthetic semblance to a traditional Veena and playability.

Based on my study, I imagined different scenarios of how the instrument would be played and transported. I suggested two possible approaches to the client. One was a conventional-looking Veena that would accommodate the technology. The other meant coming up with a design which presented clearly to the user the principles behind the working of the electronic instrument, and thus did away with any misunderstandings they had regarding the same. Since the market did not seem ready for a radical change in the outer form of the instrument, I took the first concept forward.

The final design looks similar to that of the traditional Veena but can be dismantled and folded into a more compact form while travelling. To enhance playability, changes such as easily accessible controls, reduced weight on the left thigh of the player and non-protruding fret ends.

Through this project I realized that although a radical overhaul of an existing design may seem like a good direction to follow, even minor changes in the manufacturing process can increase the artistes’ efficiency, making it a superior design.