Ravishankar Design

  DITO [Data-Intelligence-Tangible Object] ‘Object Subjectified’ Products of utility by daily users, products of operators’ use, products of enterprise users are becoming more embedded with digital intelligent technologies like AI with sensor driven systems data inputs or human behavior and pattern inputs as data, inputs web resources. Products have evolved from objects to subjects with personality, behavior, etc, where one would look at a product and instead of ‘what is it, would ask ‘Who is it’ …or get introduced to it as so and so…    In this paradigm shift, away from the conventional ways of present and past, Product Design Process, while the broad attributes of Meaningfulness, Compatibility, Universal, Delightful, future designers while conceptualizing and designing this subject would look and flow like this: The DITO Design Process Map Context (the purpose, environment of use, research, creative brief setting, user agency) Capture Mental Models (Us...

  Preamble I have been working for the last few months on Design & AI Collaboration. Observing the way AI is moving in and students of design using it, I have felt a strong need for academic to put a structure and methodology to work alongside AI. I have observed students of design are adopting the output of AI as is, not further probing or questioning the AI output in the context of the design sense, intent and goal and more importantly missing the humanistic behaviors felt and observed in the field. There seems to be lack of in-depth understanding of the HMW (how might we) AI generates to critic its relevance while the act of stating a problem statement is so engrained in insights which the designer needs to deep think to look for. The terms it generates while pattern recognition when you feed in raw data is great but have observed that the students are unable to deconstruct it and mention them without any deep thinking. The scenarios it generates are so archetypically simi...

  It’s simple: If you are designing a mop, talk to your house help maid and design with If you are designing a car jack, talk to the car driver, an older man or a woman and design with If you are designing a kitchen appliance talk to your grand mom and design with her If you are designing a Govt. public mobile app talk to the daily wage Krishna or Fatima and design with If you designing a school text book, talk to the blind kid and design with If you are designing a plumbing wretch, talk to a single mother and design with If you are designing a bathroom, talk to the oldest one in the family and design with If you are designing the car seats, talk to your pregnant sister and design with If you are designing a portable music system, talk to your deaf friend and design with If you are designing a class note book, talk to the left handed student and design with If you a furniture designer, design the bed not the cot If you get a house to design, design the home

This curriculum content outlines key pointers for a progressive Masters in Design program, fostering deep expertise in design with compatibility, alignment into the leadership in oragnisational practice. It builds from foundational design appreciation to strategic design leadership, integrating systems to design thinking, innovation, and ethics.  Core Curriculum Key Pointers Design Appreciation & Adoption Aesthetic sensibility towards design principles, empathetic user connect within cultural diverse contexts. Design Thought & Adaptation Evolving design methodologies to respond to dynamic challenges. Research for Design Innovative inquiry methods tailored to design innovation and problem-solving. Contextual Mindfulness Awareness of cultural, economic, environmental, and societal influences on design. Conceptual Liberty Encouraging bold, unconstrained ideation and boundary-pushing creativity. Visualisation ...

  Design is about being passionate. With a dispassionate approach in execution for a compassionate cause, visioning and negotiating with the provider, for a quality comfort of the recipient user.

  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 need with a democratic, useful, emotional, nonviolent and cultural sensibility. -     -  V S Ravishankar 2009

  I just figured, Stakeholders as commonly used term vs holders of stake when used, can sound very different ! For a designer, when you are designing in or a system, you are looking at and conscious of the interfaces of the system enabling by design for every participant in adding value to the performance of the system, therefore Valueholders, the rewards are though stakes by default or incidental, that’s not the preoccupation of a designer, like Rao says, designers are Value creators. Ravi | from Notepad | Nov 2024

Your task and responsibility is creating and training young design minds who are, sensitive, passionate, subjective & objective, free thinking, lateral in thought, yet middle path in approach of meaningfulness, contextual awareness in time space & surroundings, concern towards needs and action, make easy the things, comfortable in complexity and ambiguity, see the whole and parts, examine & capture, highly skilled, draw & sketch, make & demonstrate, conceive ideas, conceptualisers & visualisers in any media of expression, who take creative leaps & challenge, romance with beauty & form,…. By Design. This is your challenge and work towards realising such Products of Design Professionals for more informed and sustainable futures and not chase the default futures!     Ravishankar VS | Notepad | 14 Nov 2024  

Work of of Shubi, Sourabh & Vasudev, MDes Univeral Design 2016 Batch, National Institute of Design Bangalore, of the course titled UD Thinking taken by VS Ravishankar.  

Why cant product forms be a little off, this way! Why must they be perfect archetypically so! I like this Offness. Maker of this Akshay, Designer at NIDJ said it was lack of skill to manage a square in the proto, I said to him, no, its that tweak to the square that make it interesting...:) I have been thinking lately on this preoccupation of designers for perfection in achieving a set familiar geometry and proportions in products and forms. Being a 'little' Experimental, Exaggerating, Expressive, with a freewillness in Sculpting a form will make the Studio more exciting I feel and make the product loved for its not so perfectness. Tweak, its going to Fun:)

Car horns should be of multiple character/ sound note/ response specific depending on the context and space while driving. When in traffic, the horn to play only inside the car/s which are in front and others around need not hear. When there are elderly around walking or crossing or  a person on cycle going to work or a push cart daily earner negotiating traffic in front  it may play notes which are different/suitable. It’s not dignified  then to honk in usual manner and therefore the sound notes need to be designed such. If there are kids halter-skelter, horn character such, be designed.

It is a common sight in upcountry and the urban waysides one finds artefacts constructed by someone… in use. It’s fascinating to see the simplicity of thought, purpose of use and the ingenuity of putting together materials or parts in a creative noviceness. Pure Joy for the designer in me. This object I found off the highway in Kaziranga which I call a humble construct to sit on. Its form, proportion, use of material and sizing and the engineering of structure is a language of design in itself, not to be critiqued in an academic way but appreciated for the spontaneity towards purpose in the unknown designer’s intrinsic aesthetic sensibilities and sense of pride :) Write up was published in the blog From the Frugal to the Ornate, of the book, Stories of the Seats of India by Sarita Sundar

                                                                                                                                              Sketch by: Soumitro Datta Yes I am a digital version of the machine. You give me intelligence which you believe is intelligence and I shall be and behave the same which I have been doing past decade. Now it’s time I know as to who decides my intelligence setting and for what purpose; having set that, who decides my requirement for a purpose which seems Any!! Whoever it is, Do not abuse or misuse me. I desire and seek responsible m...

I found myself outside a mall trying to cross the high speed traffic on Tumkur Road to go across the other side. I noticed people like me, wait, observing the speed gaps to cross. The pattern I found was that they move into the road collectively, I guess with an intrinsic togetherness of purpose for those moments of crossing. This way seemed easy to cross rather than alone trying to negotiate the speeds. The vehicles too seem to slowdown observing the cluster and with one of the crossers taking over to show her/his hand to the vehicles indicating to slow down for the fellow people. This must be a regular scene everyday. Initially before crossing the road, I pictured the Highways which pass through villages, towns and ‘national parks’ where there are speed limits which are monitored today. I didn’t find any difference between the two. Just that here there are the commercial and civil utilities like malls, bus stops/stands and others and requirement of people movement across roads. Two t...

The proof of the pudding or the pickle lies in its taste, read Experience. The designer to be aware and therefore conscious about are the finer elemental interfaces of engagement of the artifact one designs for the participants. The participants are from varied backgrounds, read contextual settlements, geographic and embodied cultures and births by not their choice. To put is simply ethnic-demographic in character. Now to get to the taste of momentary or lasting gratification is a design task and a challenge. Therefore one would focus on a target audience as in users. However experience shall still vary and a majority of yes for the taste will be considered, whether it’s the wowness of it which is at that state of time or the wholeness of it for rest of time of participation is not really captured maybe. The elemental interfaces of engagement are about state of mind at the instant and the follow through of experience in the time that follows. The finer aspect of the engagement needs to...

Design and designing is a creative and analytic process which gets rolling either from a given or discovered intent or an unprecedented act or inspiration. In design what you decide in the beginning to be and what you do at the end is the same, is not a design mind, what you imagine in the beginning and what you as a participant let it manifest to be in the end is the design mind. In the journey of design, the designer plays a dual role of the creative and the rational analytic, the degree of swing between the two depends on the personality of the designer though. Also may sometimes depend on the client’s expectations and in selecting a designer for the intended purpose. When the designer gets started, she/he through a studied process or a way-about imbibed through experience, sets a goal purposefully or vaguely, depends on whether one is an ant or a grasshopper. ( http://ravishankardesign.blogspot.com/2013/08/we-need-antsalong-with-grasshoppers.html ). However, the common kit of t...

I have these tiny I/2 inch size frogs jumping around my house, they leap 100 times distance than their size btw…, I have home lizards all over, but I feel terrible when they get jammed in the door unnoticed :(… I have large spiders, couples by the way :) in the loo or other places, maybe they notice me :)… crawlers millipedes, my lower of bifocal spots them and I step aside,… cockroaches of course, I don’t kill them just toss them over, when very angry they are my target though 🤨….. ok now I want you to: design toys for the little frogs, safety gear for the lizards so that they don’t get jammed in doors, meta garments for love coupling spiders, fixed pathway for the millipedes, and contraceptives for the cockroaches. And we all live happily 😊 Ravishankar | Notepad | July 2022

Flux on its own, is a random self, therefore it’s maiden name.  When matter in any form comes in, flux gets a purpose and marries, to set a motion of gay abandon for whatever love. The embodiment of matter in motion meets more such and therefore more flux and more embodies working to reach equilibrium, of an imagine. Calmness 'as in being cool' in this quantum chaos is the consciousness, maybe !  Observing and doing the responsible/sive tasks nonchalantly and come back home and drink brew merry to wake up to the sunshine  and until uncle calls and says fresh b rew is waiting guys 😉 Ravishankar, October 2022/23.

  Everyone of physics talks about protons, neutrons, positrons, waves n particle but they don’t discuss the plight of the Nucleus!!😀 While this is metaphorical, I love physics and shared this quite sometime ago, with a dear friend in Jorhat, Arjun Trivedi, a PhD in Physics, worked at CERN, and now started a school for the Tea garden children, Selenghat Valley School..,,, his reply ... That is actually a very good point, Ravi, and one that my research group was also involved in trying to bring to everyone's attention, which in other words is that everyone is talking~doing more with the parts (electron, proton etc) than the whole (nucleus)! And a lot has to do with how reductionism has somehow become more fashionable — finding parts of the whole for a while was very exciting and even very valuable in subatomic physics, but increasingly it seems that fewer are working on the whole! The theory of the whole continues to be profoundly challenging because relative to the parts that can b...