Ravishankar Design

‘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...

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.

The language we use in the nomenclature of prompts/labels in human-product interfaces is a vital consideration in design. More so in today's and future context with diverse users and IT consumer durables becoming more affordable and common place. The interfaces of products such as ATMs, mobiles, home computers, cameras, TVs, etc. Whats prompted me to write is the semantic ambiguities that exist. Lets analyse/question a few commonly phrased prompts which we have been seeing since digital technology became domestic. Take the search prompt. When someone tells me to search for something it means either something is lost, misplaced or hidden somewhere! It could also mean that the system has got all of it jumbled up somewhere (like in a haystack) and you look for it, if you find it good luck to you pal!! This nomenclature has probably evolved from a developers stand point and remained unquestioned and users eventually got used to its function. I believe that the metaphor 'search...

Every nation or ethnic demography has its own pre-occupations that direct thought and action which 'determines' design. It is a contextual adaptation directed by a brief with a democratic, non violent, comforting, rationale and aesthetic sensibility. There are various prefixes being attached to design nowadays such as experience design, service design, and the plethora of writings on the web that it is becoming difficult I feel for ‘pure design’ academics to bring clarity into each. I think these prefixes are specializations or sub categorizations at the brief level and gain importance at the professional implementation level of a design into the required result of a product or a service. How does Indian industry look at these specializations/ categorizations (like accessory design, toy design, Information design, exhibition design, furniture/retail design, digital design, transportation design, etc.) Though there are industry verticals in each of these categorizations, are ...