Few takeaways from the 3rd NEP Conclave

3rd National NEP Meet, Delhi: Holistic Education, Academia & Industry Connect - Few Pointers I gathered from Immersive Panel Session Chaired by Dr Anunaya Chaubey and from the talks by other panellists:

• Pedagogy vs Heutagogy 
• Continuous Up-Skilling
• New Job Roles & Profiles
• Domain knowledge
• Middle Path (Madhya Marg) approach to Generalist vs Specialist
• Industry Academia to Co-lab in areas of future value creation
• System understanding and thinking (connecting the dots, relationships, empathy and creative action)
• Education for Living or/and for Earning! Or overall well being!
• Social Science workers and their professional inclusiveness in industry
• Enabling MSMEs to attract talent 

Is the industry agile enough in mindset and action to adapt and adopt this!

Is the Academia getting tailored to this paradigm shift !

Who will be the first mover to design this product, the future worker!

The MOE and Industry have set the stage to initiate way forward.

While the profiles of Industry and Edu institutions and persona is diverse and individual intent different in terms of wealth creation and knowledge creation, 

the common conscience needs to be value creation which shall spread vertically across the pyramid. 

Ravishankar Vallabhajosyula, 30th July 2023

Few Pointers on Sustainable Packaging

The concept of modern-day packaging has boomed with the advent of the large consumer purchasing power, multiple brands with diverse competing SKUs in retail shelves and FMCG manufacturing companies besides advertising collaterals. While purpose of packaging is primarily functional that of protection, storage and for shipment, its commercial need in the context of design to attract, shelf throw and pick up to convert the product to sale is its predominant attribute practised by commerce.

The issue is Systemic in nature involving multiple stakeholders primarily business houses including the end consumer responsible to solve and resolve the design, generation and disposal of non-degradable packaging materials and its management. A wicked problem.

The approach conceptually and strategically may be to:

·       Identify the bulk of products which generate waste along with institutional of both public and private consumption and apply the 3Es principle (educate, engineer, enforce)

·       Create by design centric businesses which produce bio degradable packaging systems and solutions housed in MSMEs and which have the economies of scale to replace the existing solutions using natural materials, innovative additives and processes

·       Promote sustainability indices in packaging and incentivise the manufacturers and most importantly the marketeers.

·       Create a value proposition for sustainable packaging which becomes the next game changer amongst brands in retail both above and below the line advertising and marketing

·       Design and develop well-engineered solutions for packaging life cycle management both at enterprise and end consumer level which start-up’s can take up as business opportunities across urban and upcountry markets.

·       Innovations in brick and mortar retail formats and design models which minimise packaged products creating new buying behaviour among consumers.

 

Ravishankar Aug 2022 Notes

Institution Design

Empowering People with their expertise and make aware their limitations to overcome

Empathising with People Emotions, Aspirations, Insecurities, experiences

Negotiating through People inter-work, inter-social/cultural/political relationships

Coursing the young as design minds

Navigating for the set purpose ahead 

Scripting inter-engagements, interfaces for an outcome of said purpose and value through a collective intellect and not on singular opinionated views

Setting up an Institution is the Design of a Story of a present and future continuous living entity. A book which will have multiple beginnings and ends, today and the day next. A story which is transient like the wind, course it takes is dependent on the Designer and the engagers/ actors in the story, gratified by a sense of cherish able experience to look back and say, hey! I was part of that Story, fought my internal and external battles and participated through my work and acumen for the collective conscience of purpose, self worth and value of what it was conceived for and set the next day rolling forward.

Seagull & Frogy

 

A Seagull in one of its vagabond flights lands on the wall of a well. He wonders what is this and there is water deep inside within parched stone wall, never seen something like this before!!

Sees a Frog swimming in it and asks’ “Hey what is this place?” Frogy replies "it’s a Well, well! These bucket people call it so!"

Seagull “ Ooo! …do you like its here?”

Frogy, sitting its side walk the of the wall, “ Well!! I don’t know… there are predators here sometimes and a bucket which falls in unexpectedly to draw my water, dangerous for my kids and family and my friends!!”

Seagull “Friends! In here? Who are they….?”

Frogy “ My friends, Wormy, Snaky, Goldy Fish (my love interest, btw!, don’t tell my wife 😉) and many others…..”

Frogy “Btw where are you from!!”

Seagull “ Oo me!”

Frogy “Yep”.

Seagull “ I come from the blue sky and blue seas and wild breeze and winds and sunshine”

Frogy, Wow!! And tell me what you do there!!

Seagull, “I fly in blue sky, do acrobats with the wind, romance with myself and with your Goldy fish look alike Birdy of mine 😉”

Frogy “ Oooo!!”

Seagull “Ok buddy, time to go…”

Frogy “Hey wait, take me with you for a ride, I can see your places too…”

Seagull “Sure, Leap out of here to my wings”.

Frogy “ Yaaa!! Hmm!! Now you mean.  Let me think, …I don’t know!! What about tomorrow, 2 PM?”

Seagull “Nai…who has seen tomorrow! I am off buddy.....(flying off the wall, says) “btw watch out for the bucket dropping, and say Hi to your Goldy fish 😊”

Ravishankar - Feb 2023

Silent Unknowns

So many things happening at the same time….startup India, NEP, hackethons, online programmes, WFHs, Home deliveries, E-com Apps, Bit currency, Instagram reels, Research funds, incubators by the corner, AI, MI, DL and all, ….govt schemes, twitter habituals, SDGs, Metaverse, Yoga, Drone tech, ….you may add more.

Meanwhile, Krishna, 28, 8th std pass, a very bright, intelligent and diligent man, who is my help at home, during the day is a freelance dailywage. Rainy day is a bad day for him, misses his 400 rupees, sunny day is good if he is lucky to find work!! There are many many Krishnas and Kamalas in the urban diaspora, support rungs of the rotor, silent unknowns in the flux and fluff.

Can we please PAUSE and set priorities in order and say, Ok what are those things best for us all and that we are good at doing and do that for us all. Not be wannabe in Everything and work on settling Kamalas and Krishnas for a comfortable living !!

Ravishankar - Nov 2022

DESIGN MIND

 

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 let it manifest to be in the end, is a design mind.

Ravishankar Dec 2020

MY NEW SILVER CARDS

My Hypothesis on new age design professions…

Artist Designers – Scenography designers, Character & Avatar artists & designers, Graphics, Furniture, Artifacts

Product Designers – Interactions & experience designers, Gesture & Movement designers, artifacts with personalised character and behaviour designers, CMFs and details designers, Form & Expression givers, Design strategists, Universal Designers

Clothing designers – Textiles, Fibres, Material Designers, Ensemblers, Indigenous Crafts, Lifestylers, Accessorisers, Stylists

Communication Designers - Conversation & Language designers, Inclusive Designers, Message & Content designers, Navigation designers, Information designers, Creative controllers, Brand designers, Media Strategists

Tech Designers – Experimenters, Makers, Prototypers, Detail & expression givers, AI Designers, IOT, Extended Reality creators

Concept Designers – Setters of new design & Innovation directions, Trend setters, Design Futurists, Story Tellers, Dreamers

Social Designers – Contextual Thinkers, Human, Environment, Sustainability centred, Digital Humanities

Service Designers – Service Blueprint designers, Inclusive designers, Self enterprise model designers, Experience designers

System Designers – Complex Problem Solvers, Strategists, Design Management, Policy makers, Design Lifecycle planners

Ravishankar April 2022

To Critic is easy !

Design as a profession is Persuasive, not authoritarian

It’s all pervasive all during the day while you walk up or switch to work, and if you imagine or claim to be a Designer, Appreciate the well done or resolve, participatorily if it needs correction. (Participative Design is an act/skill of being detached yet an empathetic approach if you have the mind for it and navigate it to its end elegance of what triggered you to engage in). Correction is about whether holistically the design is working in terms of functionality, meaningful usefulness at large, is elegantly done and is inclusive.

Ravishankar, Jan 2023

My notes on North East ...

Existential vs Sustainable/lity is the quintessential of the region NE…., so it needs to be taken ahead in the context of quote-unquote development in a way such that…Position it the way satisfying aspirations of the ethnic urban bred and inclusive of the local demography of ( sustenance and existential) through meta-laws and whatever to empower and Sustain its ‘existential commerce’. NE and so do many parts of this land on the globe people live on. On and on. 

Industry of the non environment polluting kind, that which is about: Self sustenance of products and services which are intrinsic to the region culturally, a Destination of Ayur for example, of Liberal Art, IT Resource industry, Tourism reimagined as a get away! with pace of life with nature…few directions…

Excerpt from my writing in progress...

- Ravishankar | Notepad | August 2022.

System Theory Paradox

We begin with abilities and then develop in capabilities and mediocrity to deal with the systems and procedures we have created around ourselves. 

Any system stabilises to mediocrity of status quo.

Disrupters come in once in a while, and nonconformists, many struggle in the system and die, the few left do whatever….. for a new familiar system which stabilises again to mediocrity… 

Present continuous Chaos is the order of the universe. 

A mindless continuity.

- August 2022 from my Notepad

Design Process in the Field

• Pick/work-given on area of Intervention 
• Data-Information-Knowledge 
• Go on into the field - validate, discover - Analyze | Synthesize | Intent
• Design 
• Give the design to the concerned and move to next.

Plain and Simplified for the designer to interpret. 

 Pics: NID Assam, ID 3rd year students, WIP, Bamboo Design Mini Project Guided by Dipanka & Akshay & Khan

In a D school, an explanation to each of these may be good by the mentor and the design head in a company.  Its about the fluid nature of the PROCESS which the designer is aware and comfortable with and in dealing with the stories and aspirations of many subjects she/he meets during the process. The assimilation of it leading to the INTENT conceived and the rational while scripting the draft of intent and way forward during the process go parallel in the  stages of the project. 

14 Nov 2022 from my Notepad

Kamala

Airports are like railway stations today, some are like bus terminals/stands. Airports you find, dressed up people, surrounded by brands of eateries, L/S products, etc and the smell of the eatery. They are all the same people, who once travelled by train or buses while their young ones I felt, some who never travelled on land! 

While I enjoy the comfort of air travel, I reminisce the time drawn train journeys and hopping in buses moving from district to districts with windows blowing wind on your face, the paradigm is similar maybe for the young today :) of my age then, of air travel today to them. 

Meanwhile we have the first time travelers from airports like Kamala, the whole sequence of entry to airport then to the platform of checks and to the plane and the aspect of flying 37k feet above and the instructions and the strange food and the stoic next seater and the feeling of not being part of fellow travelers who look like you btw and the amount spent for this new mode, I can just go on more about this new flying guest ! 

In this flow of writing I recalled another montage of memory. In Chennai once, I went to a big 5 floor super mall in T Nagar. I wanted to buy a white shirt, of a popular brand which was on the 5th floor. I walked in to the entry floor to the elevators. Waiting for the elevator, I noticed this young lady in her early 20s, in a synthetic printed saree, looking lost and in anxiety by the intimidating scale of the mall, she seemed a daily wage earner of her family. She didn’t know where to go, as in which floor. The lift attendant noticed her and in their conversation in Tamil, I heard her saying what she wanted to buy and the attendant said, go to the 1st floor. The mall had merchandise price vice on each floor.

I cannot forget her and her face even today. My heart sank forever, when she said, school uniforms for her two kids, and she I knew, is the daily earner at home and the whole world she is imagining ahead of her …., I went back to the hotel and cried that day. 

I still do when I think of her. 

Ravishankar, 11 Nov 2022 - Notepad

Attendance in Class!

 Is it a tick of an attendance in the stipulated time for the student to come in and be in the classroom or about ‘Being Present’ in the discourse.

…'How engaging is the discourse for me to be attentive/absorbed in it !’…'It’s so engaging that I drift away physically  from that stipulated space pursuing the thought provoked by the engager, working on it in spaces of my choice. I am Present in the class :)’ the tutor is so engaging … 

Now in the stipulated frameworks of academics and its standardised prescriptive structure where teaching, learning  are bound, the variant is the learner who is in transition of schooling oneself, while learnette, the teacher is constrained by the stipulation.

Institution of higher education (NEP) must address this paradigm of the quality of Engagement and Presence of the pupil in the engagement. And not worry about attendance, a term which may not play a role in the pupil’s performance.

This writing above fails maybe, when you have 100 like students and one teacher in the class.

So shouldn’t we then reinterpret by design, the learning means, the environment, the content structure and the channels of tutoring orchestrated by the tutor, with the sole intent of Engagement, Presence and Learning. The 3 entities for performance. 

⁃ this is inspired from Osho talk I heard once who has said to his teacher ‘I am always present…..'

5 FOCI OF DESIGN

Preoccupations & State of mind

Interfaces & Comprehension

Dignity & Independence

Self-worth & Pride

Experience & its Closure

 

Look at Potential, not the Product

Traditional Creative Industry | An Abstract which was written for a proposed paper.

The paper and the supporting case studies of work done in the ‘Indian handicraft sector’ (the term which will be re interpreted later by the author) envisions a way forward for the sector’s future sustenance.

To begin with it rewinds briefly to the pre and post Gandhian thought of an industrial containment of Indian maker of things (professional skill/wrutti) who supported the needs of customers indigenously, locally and traditionally. In the introduction it describes the present scenario of Govt. and corporate sector intervention to scale up the handicraft business through schemes, etc and its affects at a micro and macro level.

Hand-Craft in India in the past has been an industry which was indigenous and catered to localized needs. Today by calling it craft it is being placed in a glorified situation, thereby isolating it and non inclusive in the mainstream of manufacturing business.

The change with industrial and globalization, has been inevitable and will be in the future, therefore reinterpreting and repositioning of craft in India in the truly modern sense will set the course for its sustainability. When one says craft, it binds culture, livelihood, design and local people sustaining on it today. Craft in India has been wrutti  (trade) based: an acumen of the traditional, practiced typically by Vishwakarma families making essentials for rituals and utilitarian practiced by other trade communities for day to day use. Their artifacts and products had and still have a strong sense of aesthetics, manufacturing process and functionality.

It is essentially about, ‘craft’ reinterpreted as ‘Traditional Creative Industry’. The tacit and inherited knowledge and acumen of the young talented human resource belonging to this community, their future engagement with the new market can be shown by design, the possibilities of lateral connect between new markets, technologies and the inherited acumen.  To illustrate an example, the traditional painted dolls and furniture makers of Kinhal and Gokak in Karnataka and Nirmal in Telangana in India, a community called Chitragars  (artists) from the pre Vijayanagara  empire period have been practising artisans even today. Their inborn artistic sensibilities channeled to present creative technology industry like the animation industry media would be meaningful. In similar trail, sandal wood products and fashion industry, bamboo products which were traditionally livelihood utilities as your home based organizers with material alternatives.  Thus, the emphasis on the ‘potential’ of the practicing communities rather than the ‘product’ to cast its future sustenance through other market and technology centric feasible directions and connects. This would bring in quality and value to the products conceived in the future with the approach of ‘letting people who are good at it, make it’. And the attributes of their acumen for the making would be, passed on tacit and learnt knowledge, the craftness of interpreting material manipulation, and making and the inherent sensibilities of aesthetic. Its about taking the sector into its next paradigm through the Young Artisan of the present and future.

First draft written in Dec 2011.