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KĀRYA Lab

Four tracks, one foundation

Three tracks build evidence about the worker; a fourth turns it into design. One shared foundation serves them all.

TRACK A 

The Working Body

Musculoskeletal health and Occupational Biomechanics

  • Work-related musculoskeletal disorders across the working life

  • Forceful and repetitive hand-intensive work

  • Non-neutral postures: floor-seated, squatting and kneeling work

  • Load carriage, including head-loading

  • Physical fatigue, recovery and cumulative exposure

When does repetitive, forceful manual work become harmful—and can we measure the pathway from exposure to injury?

WHAT WE STUDY

How we work

Field observation and task analysis; surface EMG and motion measurement; electrogoniometry; grip, pinch and pressure measurement; musculoskeletal modelling; symptom and exposure assessment; field-to-lab validation.

  1. How do physical demands of real-world work accumulate into fatigue, dysfunction, and musculoskeletal harm?

  2. How can we measure these demands more accurately and translate the evidence into safer, better-designed work?

Questions that drive the work

TRACK B

The Working Environment

Environmental Stressors

How do heat, dust, fumes, noise and vibration interact with physical work—and how can workers be better protected where formal occupational controls are limited?

WHAT WE STUDY

  • Occupational noise exposure

  • Hand-arm and whole-body vibration

  • Occupational heat stress and thermal exposure

  • Dust, silica and metal fumes

  • Lighting and visual demands in fine work

  • Combined and interacting environmental exposures

Field exposure assessment; personal and area noise monitoring; vibration measurement; thermal stress assessment; airborne dust and particulate sampling; illumination and luminance assessment; task and workload observation; and analysis of combined exposures.

How we work

Questions that drive the work

  1. How do environmental exposures interact with physical workload to shape fatigue, health and performance?

  2. How can practical, low-cost interventions reduce exposure in workplaces where formal occupational controls are limited?

TRACK C 

The Working Mind

Cognition, skill, fatigue and human performance

How do workers perceive, decide, stay alert and master a skill — and how can technology strengthen that skill rather than erode it?

WHAT WE STUDY

  • Fatigue, alertness and vigilance in long-shift and safety-critical work

  • Visual inspection, vigilance and human error

  • Craft skill, expertise and knowledge transfer

  • Cognitive demands of complex field tasks

  • Wearable and immersive technologies for training and work

Cognitive task analysis; psychomotor vigilance testing; workload and fatigue assessment; physiological measures including heart-rate variability; expert–novice comparisons; VR/AR-based experiments; eye-tracking; and performance-based assessment.

How we work

Questions that drive the work

  1. How do fatigue, attention, expertise and cognitive workload shape performance in demanding work?

  2. How can technology support human expertise, learning and decision-making without increasing cognitive burden?

TRACK D

Design for Work

Tools, equipment and frugal intervention

What makes an ergonomic intervention affordable, repairable, locally appropriate—and worth adopting and using over time?

What we study AND design

  • Hand tools, craft implements, carried, wearable and assistive equipment, including passive exoskeletons

  • Protective equipment that remains usable under heat and demanding work conditions

  • Workstations for floor-level, home-based and informal work

  • Adoption and sustainability of interventions: cost, repairability, local manufacture and cultural fit

Participatory co-design with workers; CAD and rapid prototyping; iterative ergonomic evaluation; within-subject usability and performance trials; longitudinal field trials; adoption, repairability and cost studies; and evidence-based design guidelines.

How we work

Questions that drive the work

  1. How can ergonomic interventions be designed not only to reduce risk, but to be adopted, used- and sustained in real work?

  2. What makes a solution affordable, repairable, locally manufacturable and appropriate to the people and context for which it is designed?

FOUNDATION – UNDERPINS ALL FOUR TRACKS

The Working Human in India

What do the bodies, capabilities, work demands and exposures of workers in India actually look like, and which design assumptions need to change?

Where we work

Our questions come from real settings — and every answer is tested back in them. Settings will change over the years; the questions endure.

Research Architecture

From real work to better work

Understand the work

01

OBSERVE

Understand people at work.

Field visits, unobtrusive observation, task analysis and conversations with workers, in the places where the work happens.

02

MEASURE

What they experience

Quantify the physical, environmental and cognitive load of the work — in the field and in the lab.

03

UNDERSTAND

Why it matters

Link exposure to fatigue, discomfort and injury, and find the root causes worth designing for.

Every result sends new questions back to the field

Stages 1-3

Change the work

01

Observe

Understand people at work.

Field visits, unobtrusive observation, task analysis and conversations with workers, in the places where the work happens.

05

VALIDATE

Test whether the solution works in reality

Lab trials, then field trials with the workers it was made for — and a check that it is still in use months later.

Implement the changes

06

LEARN AND SCALE

Scale and sustain

Turn results into guidelines, open data and designs that local makers, clusters and public schemes can adopt.

Stages 4-5

Every KĀRYA project moves through six stages. Each stage hands its evidence to the next, and every result sends new questions back to the field.

04

DESIGN

Better ways of working

Co-design tools, equipment and workstations with users — affordable, repairable and locally made.

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