Design Problem

‘Design’ in the Digital/Information/Technology Age has been my preoccupation these days, in the context of education and practice. Question that comes to me: what is it that I can offer today as an individual design professional or a team player where everybody knows little or more of everything!!
Is it user centric thinking!...everybody talks of it; research!!...there are enough in number; strategy!...marketing professional forte; product idea conception!...techys’ default forte; visual appeal!...free for all domain, software freely available to all and so on.
Lets for the time being keep aside verbose on ‘the designers’ role’ etc and think simplistically for clarity.
Take technology driven products and services as the case. The navigator on mobile publicized today has an interface conceived I am sure by a team
which has not questioned its understandability /comprehend ability with people.
Has anybody dwelt into what is the mental model of a Ramu on the street, of the route from A nagar to B nagar? Or even a Rahul!! He/she would never have seen a map (in 3D as if from a plane) in his life except maybe in school, of a world map or of Columbus’s sea route journey. These interfaces are very common to western users maybe because of the direct analogy of maps they are used to in their frequent long distance drives. This taken for granted kind of direct adaptation of interfaces to global users sets the Need Statement to answer the above predicament of design expertise.

Door Signs!

On the 2nd day of their orientation program at the National Institute of Design (NID), Bangalore, the 40 foundation students of the 2008 batch were given an impromptu assignment to come up with solutions of a door sign to depict entry side. These glass doors on campus were newly fitted and didn't have handles and one didn't know which side to push to open.
The students were asked to come up with out of the box symbolic solutions without being literal. The following ideas were applied to the doors.

Anshu George depicted through foot prints of a split personality!!


Sohini pasted a signage as if written by the local carpenter in his own pronunciation.


Kartik showed lot of hand prints creating a play.


Ayush played around with the word exit by placing it inside and deliberatly exagerating the x.