Where are the design educators?

In a not-so-recent blogpost, Don Norman writes eloquently about design education. He gives a clarion call for design education to change. He very lucidly writes about why it needs to keep up with the needs of today and design educators must be more adept at cognitive sciences as much as drawing and form studies. If this were true, we need to re-educate our design educators.

That is, if we can find them.

Design education has been suffering from a dearth of faculty, leave alone, good design faculty. That is rather clear from today’s edition of the Times Ascent, the Delhi-based Times supplement that all the big institutes of design is desperately searching for faculty. On the same page of Times Ascent, all the three major institutes of design : National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, National Institute of Fashion Technology and the Maerr’s MIT Institute of Design, Pune have advertised for faculty. ( See ads below):

With all three of them searching, there are now close to two hundred positions vacant in the country for design educators.

Surely, this must be the biggest search for design educators anywhere in the world announced on the same day. Where are the design educators anyways? They need to be smoked out to resurrect design education in India.

This may lead to new circumstances.

People who practise design, may get to teaching it.

People who are in the periphery of design: fine-artists, social scientists, architects and allied professionals may pitch for teaching design in all these institutes.

People who have had a penchant for teaching can now have an opportunity to be wooed.

I sincerely hope that this throws up a whole new generation of design educators who are inspired, informed and are willing to change themselves and design education.

If not, what Don prophesied may come true: the uninformed will end up teaching the uninformed.

That does not augur well with design education. And change in design education, will take a long time to arrive.

Design on Track

Tucked away in the recently tabled Railway budget of 2012 , between paragraphs on Disaster management and Housekeeping is a significant proposal that will bring a cheer to designers and rail-users alike. The minister has proposed setting up of the “ Rail Design Centre” at NID, Ahmedabad  to leverage design for improving the facilities at railway stations and the trains.

An idea that is both timely and note-worthy. For the first time, the government recognises the need to improve passenger facilities through design intervention.

This is will hopefully, signal the end of passenger woes.

The whole user experience needs an overhaul, not just improvisations. It begins with the form that is difficult to fill, queues that extend out  of the shelters during rush hours, signages that do not guide the passengers properly  at the station and announcement boards that are more stylish than substantive.

Ever traveled with an elderly, a child or a differently-abled person on a train? You don’t need to be convinced that the trains need to be redesigned to be made more inclusive. High steps, sliding doors, unergonomical heights of taps and dustbins, all signify that things have been designed for the non-existent average person.

Berths that are a tad short for the above-average, windows that get stuck in monsoons, bathrooms that flood the whole compartment, lunch packets that are difficult to open, tables that are too far from the seat, plastic covers that don’t work during the sweaty Indian summers, this list can go on.

Anyone who has traveled in the trains would agree that Design has a large role to play to improve the overall user experience and NID is more than suited to do the job. For, far too long, the Indian railways have relied on engineers to design the bogies, advertisers to design the communication and bureaucrats to decide on passenger facilities. This is now a tacit recognition by the Indian Railways of the professional designer, who has a definite role to play.

This is a dream opportunity for the design community. Every student who went through NID’s education programme would probably have in his portfolio, a hypothetical project of a better design of the railway’s facilties. During my time at NID, I have seen students developed better trolleys for luggage’s, berths that fold easily, eating plates that contain well and don’t spill, better designed reservation forms and a folding mug for the toilets. All these and more can now be dusted and brought to life, as and when the proposed centre becomes operational. It will also be an opportunity for all the vendors who supply to the Indian railways and the good word on design will spread.

There is another significance.

The government departments are suddenly sitting up and taking notice of design. The Handloom and handicrafts ministries are already investing in design. The MSME ministry has set aside Rs 77 Crores to promote design as a driver to manufacture better products made by the small and medium-scale enterprises with their ‘ Design Clinic scheme’.

There are so many other sectors of the government that can now think in terms of investing in design. The agriculture ministry can set up design centres to make better implements and products. The health ministry can easily use ‘design thinking’ to make better healthcare services. The rural development ministry can easily use design to really develop the rural areas of our country. The education ministry can put their money to good use by leveraging design in education. This is just the beginning, but design has this power to transcend barriers and solve problems across all the sectors of the economy.

In a recently concluded design conference, the international product designer Karim Rashid said that ‎”If India does not establish some brands soon, it will be too late since all the imports will just take over the country. It was a shame that the hotel I stayed at in New Delhi had Italian lighting, Italian furniture, German sinks, German faucets, French products,” (as quoted in The Economist.) If Karim Rashid had not stayed in a star hotel and spent a night in an Indian train, he would have realized that designers in India need to spend more time in addressing the problems of the people and would have had a different take on Indian design.

And as for the Indian Railways, it is doing well by putting design on track.

Design Social

There is a buzz in the design community these days ever since Sam PItroda, Adviser to the Prime minister of India, announced thee impetus to set up design and innovation centres all across the country, to address the problems of the people in the bottom of the pyramid.

Designers in major Indian cities are putting their heads together to come up with concepts for innovation centres that will help meet the social and development targets, use design thinking to address the needs of the people who matter and kick-start a movement that will see the intersection of academia, industry and social organisations like never before.

Designers in India are most eligible to address the needs of the needy. Every designer who have gone through formal design education has either designed products for health, living and public use, or worked with artisans and craftsmen to create better products as well as generate livelihoods or worked on communication to put across basic concepts of social importance to a simple rural audience or the illiterate.

Not very long ago, NID alumnus and Industree Co-founder, Neelam Chhiber was awarded as India’s Social Entrepreneur of the year by Schwab Foundation of the World Economic Forum. It rewards and finally recognises Neelam’s untiring efforts in bringing livelihood opportunities to thousands of rural artisans of India. It also is an award that puts Design in the spotlight. Design thinking has a huge role to play in making life better and social entrepreneurship is only one of the many ways designers can contribute.

Neelam Chibber. Pic courtesy Indiatimes

Neelam has quickly acknowledged the fact that this is also an award for design. How true! Design is potent enough to change lives as much as churning out pretty products. And happily for Neelam, she does both with style.

While focussing on making products that appeal to an international audience, she made sure that the artisans are organised, paid well, looked after and most importantly, remained in their rural environs. Industree managed to make rural employment schemes fashionable.

Coming soon after Kiran BIr Sethi’s  INDEX Award, this too illustrates the capabilities of designers in harnessing design thinking to make lives better. Kiran has successfully leveraged design thinking in not only educating her own school children at Riverside, Ahmedabad but also managed to create a generation of sensitised children all over the world through her ” Design for Change’ programme.

NID Ahmedabad, rated as one of the best schools in the world, has had a large role to play in moulding the thinking of the students.  There are many more examples.

Poonam BIr Kasturi another NID alumnus has set up Daily dump that addresses the problems of waste and comes up with a beautiful solution that is both sustainable and appealing.

(Pic Courtesy : Daily Dump.org)

Lakshmi Murthy, a designer based in Udaipur, works in the area of rural communication and has successfully implemented health and hygiene projects that affect the majority in rural India.

Sandeep Sangaru, a furniture design graduate of NID, brings never-before elegance to cane and bamboo furniture by partnering with artisans of the North East.

My own team at January Design is working with grass-root level innovators recognised by the President of India and helping their innovations better by introducing design concepts into their processes. We are doing this with National Innovation Foundation, the country’s premier organisation dealing with innovation.

Designers all across India are realising the potential for harnessing their design capabilities to make our country a better place.  This has been possible, largely because of the education at NID Ahmedabad.

While the powers that be is putting together a concept for setting up new Innovation centres or new NIDs, it is hoped that they would remember to build this soul into the proposed new programmes.  And this way, it will ensure that design travels to where it impacts most, from the top of the social milieu to the bottom of the pyramid.

Leading from the front and how!

The INDEX Awards (http://www.indexaward.dk/)  is no ordinary design award. It is a recognition for using design for improving lives. While it re-iterates the huge potential of design for improving lives of people, the awards do put the spotlight on thought leaders who could leverage this potential and make them actionable. In a world full of form-giving designers these award winners stand apart in using design for its primary purpose of ‘improving lives’.

In that context, India’s KIran BIr Sethi and Pranay Desai win this year for their ‘ Design for Change’ is truly a proud moment for Indian design.  My last post was about designers from India leading from the front. This award is proof of this potential. KIran Bir Sethi has taken the lead and ‘infecting the bug’ into every child, the potential to feel for a problem and taking charge to find solutions for it. The contest runs for a few days but it empowers every child to solve their own problems and prepares them for facing the challenges of the world.

Kiran Bir Sethi, a designer by qualification, has been recognised for what she calls as ‘common sense’ in leveraging the creativity and potential of school students into a game-changing movement all over the globe. She easily manages to make each child a protagonist, who take charge of situations and solve problems. Kiran has managed to leverage ‘desisgn thinking’ to hep solve everyday problems. And has managed to inspire the future generations of the world.

Her TED talk on the subject continues to be inspiring. It shows her journey ffrom 2007 when she took a small idea and ran with it. She proves that design thinkers from India can lead from the front using the ‘common sense’ approach.

Lead on Kiran BIr Sethi!  And hearty congratulations!

Can Indian Design lead from the front?

By A Balasubramaniam

When NID’s senior design faculty Vikram Panchal won the international Core77 Design Award for the Best Design for professional equipment this month, it was for a humble load carrier. The product competed with all professional equipments to win the gold in the category. This must be a first for Indian Product design. The award is an important recognition of the fact that Indian design looks into areas that other countries have never considered!
The design was developed a good 20 years ago. Which just goes to prove that we have always had the talent. It is only being recognised now by the world community.

(Pic Courtesy : Core 77 Awards)

The award is also a recognition of areas where design inputs are required and India is clearly showing the way in this for the rest of the world. In a new development, Stanford has said that the future in medical design may be in India. Stanford India Biodesign is a new iniatiative, a three-way collaboration of Stanford-IIT-AIIMS is working towards medical equipment design. The article goes on to recognise the fact the future of US’s medical design may be in India.

In the article, the emergency ‘bone-drill’ was developed and the Indian team was told that…”the device needed to be disposable, have a low part count, be inexpensive, easily assembled, capable of being used by a poorly trained person, and able to be manufactured cheaply in India.”  This sounds like a design brief for any product in India! We are almost always working with such seemingly impossible conditions and such talent is now being put to good use for international design.

( PIc Courtesy : Fast Company)

GE , a pioneer in the medical design field has successfully managed to leverage this
talent by what is called ” reverse innovation” to design low-cost electro-cardiogram machines that costs less than $1000. Another example of Indian design expertise in colloboration with international engineering expertise.

This is just the beginning. Indian design needs to take the lead in projects that have never been considered for design intervention. We need to teach the world the Indian expertise of working with chaos. We need to show that cane and bamboo can be as important a material to be considered as carbon fibre! That cost cutting will benefit GE and the American economy as much as the TATAs and the Indian economy. We need to bring our ability to collaborate with different cultures for the common good of solving the world’s problems. We need to bring forward, our ‘jugaad’ or ability to innovate amongst trying conditions! Indian designers have a lot to contribute, but now is the time to lead.

Indian designers, go forth and lead!

Will India produce an Apple?

Apple yesterday has become the most valuable company in the world, over-taking even the oil-rich Exxon. This is a first for Apple. Apple came into news last week when it reported having more cash than even the US government! While there is all-round admiration for the company and Steve Jobs, design has to get its due as well.

Apple is the most, design-savvy company in the world. Whether is the iPod or the the iPhone; or the more recent iPad2, their products have managed to become game-changers, simply because of their design. That Jonathan Ive has as much role in the success of these products and therefore the company valuation, makes every designer’s heart swell with pride.

India, on its 64th independence day is on an introspective mood. Lots of questions are being raised about living conditions, about getting global and about improving life in the country and the state of the economy.

I am adding one more here : ‘ Can India produce an Apple?”

It will take a lot before businesses in India realised the value of design. They need to get convinced that design, not only improves products and systems but also the bottom line of the company. They need to understand that products of any business need to be designed for the discerning customer, before its released. That good design makes good business sense. That design is not a peripheral activity but one that is intrinsically related to exciting the market and increasing the company’s valuation.

If APPLE can do it, so can TATA. It is all about conviction and drive.

Designers need to move from R&D labs to the board rooms. We need to get into newer roles of driving the thought process in a business. Design itself has to emerge from being form-giving to value-building. We need designer stars like Ive who will be taken seriously by the engineer as well as the managing director of a business.

Till that happens, the only apples we produce will be coming from Himachal Pradesh or Kashmir!

Communication Design against Corruption

By A Balasubramaniam

Nobody can underestimate the power of design in communicating compelling concepts. And nobody knows it better than the ruling elite. Whether it is the Uncle Sam’s “The country needs you ” poster or the Nazi flags in HItler’s Germany, the power of design has been invoked time and again to appeal to larger sections of the population.

This morning’s newspapers featured the CAG report on the CWG corruption which was hard-hitting and compelling. But hidden amongst all the crores and uproars was a paragraph that talked about the CAG’s presentation to the media. The report was, er, reportedy, a ‘glossy’, with compelling pictures and charts to drive home the extent of the corruption. The office of CAG had called for a press conference and made a ‘presentation’ that showed the extent of the damage.

Even the commonest man on Delhi’s roads know the extent of the corruption. AS TOI says in its article :“The contents of the report have mostly been already published. They could have shocked few, given that the national capital is littered with evidence of wastage and pilferage of money in the form of shoddy and unnecessary construction.”

So what made for screaming headlines? The presentation.

It spoke of “ a 743-page glossy publication peppered with numerous photographs, graphs and posters”

As the article goes on to say: “If the contents underline the boldness, the presentation points to a willingness to play to the gallery at a time when the government and its various arms have repeatedly let down the public, especially in the fight against graft. None has been spared, none treated with kid gloves.”

So it is possible to move people from their stupor by a compelling presentation, that drives home a point. One that is designed to shock and awe. One that makes the target audience sit up and take notice.

So, government departments do know the value of design. They know how to invoke design to impress upon an audience.  This is a shot-in-the-arm for communication design.

Hopefully, this could lead to the end of boring presentations which assume the audience to be a moron. This will end the irritation of stuff on screen, read out to you. I hope there will be less play with animations in presentations and people will apply their mind before applying the first available font.

If that happens, we can be really grateful to the office of the CAG, for starting an unintended revolution. One, that designers will be grateful for.