N U D G E by (re) D E S I G N

Hacking the culture of violence against women in India

This thesis was about addressing the systemic and structural forces of popular culture that foster violence against women in public spaces in India. I looked specifically at representations in Bollywood movies that inculcate behaviors which in turn lead to street harassment and stalking of women in pursuit of love. The various prototypes that were designed to challenge the preset criteria, were developed around the film ecosystem as a whole. This included redesigning elements in film marketing such as posters and websites, social media campaigns and digital storytelling. I tested out the prototypes in Mumbai, India to receive feedback from three different scales of audiences. 

The project worked at deconstructing the elements in the film ecosystem to transfer the agency back to the people (both women and men) to be able to generate dialogues and create alternative gender-empowering narratives. 

The outcome of the project was a set of strategies for implementing the designed elements to raise the visibility of the issues and to generate dialogues in the forms of advocacy/activism, official street infrastructure systems, disclaimers during movie screenings, ratings on websites and through digital storytelling.These strategies behave as nudges to provoke and challenge the status quo of the existing condition where media tropes transform into unconscious behavior

patterns.These strategies would be implemented by the different organizations who are working in the proposed areas of approach.

The ultimate goal of this thesis is to shift the mindsets around the culture of violence to create safe and unrestrained access to public space for the women India.