Design Thought Paper 1

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 there enough placement opportunities in them?

In the India context: my observation is that there are two pre-occupations today. One the inherent need in improving the quality of life across urban & interior India (which we constantly complain about and do nothing about!) and second the world looking at India for service support and as a new market. The first would essentially cover civil sector that is the govt., public services & infrastructure sector, health & social livelihood sector, where design as a problem solving activity takes a role to play substantially. The second broadly would cover IT & manufacturing sector, product consumption sector, where design as an opportunity reaping activity takes a role. The primary distinction one might see in these two headings is that the former enables economic growth and the latter fulfills economic lead.

Now coming to the design academic context these two fundamental needs or pre-occupations if addressed and deliberated upon could give us streams of design adaptations as offering which I believe would satisfy the national, market and individual interest. But how does one teach design when one is talking about a primary need of problem solving and other about a pure business interest?

The answer lies in reinterpreting the existing NID method as: facilitate design thinking, teaching fundamentals of design from ‘pure design’ perspectives to present contextual buzz and expose students to projects under various specializations / domains for them to choose from.

This method would make a generalist of the student in the subject of design & environment essential to address the first pre-occupation of primary need and a specialist suited to fit the team of stakeholders of product development in the second pre-occupation of business need. This might not be as demarcated but the attempt would be to provide a seamless flow in the leaning process.