Observing the Invisible

Qatar is a rapidly developing country; where day by day we notice a change in our surroundings. By the year 2011, 1,271,000 foreigners have been recruited in Qatar and 75%of these foreigners are unskilled labor workers. Due to this high percentage of workers, as a global society, we tend to neglect these workers and walk by them as if they are invisible. It has became a usual scene, to drive by a group of workers standing in line for the bus under the sun’s heat, to drink from a cold bottle of water when they drink out of an overused 7up bottle and no longer safe to drink from, to look out of our bedroom window while laying down and watching them sleep behind the wall. Because of the social conflict, we never stopped to think about their feelings, their families, or their problems.


During my junior year at VCUQ, one of our projects for print class relates to creating a “survival kit” for workers, we were put in teams to develop a product that would facilitate the workers. To accomplish this project, we went to tailors, gardeners, and waiters, we asked them a few questions to learn about their concerns and problems and to find a solution that would help them feel more comfortable in Qatar. The results from our interview led us to find out about the average salary and the places they spend their time on their weekends, which is for most of them, the corniche and the souq.

As a group of three, we cannot change the society’s perspective but we can open up opportunities for the workers to explore Qatar, we can teach them how to deal with the society. We looked at the workers as individuals who are willing to blend in with the society but the perception they have of locals pushes them backwards. Therefore, as a design solution, we used the visual language of the Indian culture which include the colors and illustrations. This would help them accept and trust the context because they would relate to it.

Our final package “fun weekend” is a wallet which consists of a Karwa map (which we further developed) to help them explore new areas in Qatar. The map also includes different packages as a guide on how to spend a small amount of money during a day out, as well as having fun at the same time.







This project was completed in a short period of time; therefore our research was not deep enough. This semester, we decided to complete and develop our research as an independent study group, which we are currently working on.

Our recent research has opened our eyes to how serious the worker’s problems are relating to their social status. We learned that because of the division of labor, the workers are assigned tasks which they do not know how to preform, this is a result of their language barrier and the lack of experience.



The video link at the bottom shows the living conditions of migrant workers in the Gulf where we see a pattern of problems, mostly because the workers lack education, they do not know their rights. The video also includes a story of an individual who faced financial problems and was in debt and eventually led to a horrifying ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMxbpsw_UTE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOF97JrUej4&feature=relmfu