Mapping Digital Design Opportunity across the selected domains in the Indian context: Offerings by brainstorming and categorization

Image: Nature, Society, Life, Work and Play Teams with their models using a chosen metaphor and each depicting a structure of the design space that they have been assigned to investigate and model through the process of brainstorming, categorization and model building, all done as a team.

The students of the DCC class at Gandhinagar have today made the first layer of organization and articulation of the design opportunities that they have discovered or should I say gleaned from their group engagement over the weekend. They explored the task of the five domains that were assigned namely – Nature, Society, Life, Work and Play – and from these structured and introspective explorations they have identified a mutually acceptable framework of concepts as well as categories under which they can frame the specific digital design opportunities that they have perceived during these explorations.

The brainstorming was carried out in a number of sessions with the group discussing and capturing the concepts in a random manner on sheets of paper and after a number of iterations they have attempted the building of an acceptable structure that would adequately describe and help understand the space that they were assigned in the course. While there may be overlaps the focus would be on describing the design opportunities as abstract concepts in the beginning and later moving progressively to setting priorities and providing depth and detail through a further process of articulation, discussion and scenario building, all in an iterative mode. The models that emerged from the categorization of the found concepts helped each group to build a shared understanding of the design opportunity space as well as the macro-flows of information and to take stock of the various influences that could impact the particular opportunity as it is unfolded in the design process going forward.

These conceptual structures and modeling experience would help the student to share their current understanding with others with a degree of conviction help to obtain feedback as well as advise and critiques from stake-holders and experts in the next stage of the design process. Such feedback and repeated presentations of the models shapes the contours of their own vision about the possible design approaches that could be taken in their chosen space and about the details that would still needed to be addressed to fill the gaps in their own knowledge.

The design opportunity mapping that has been done by each of the five teams if shown below and these will be explained in a statement that would be submitted by the teams after they have made group presentations and conducted expert reviews in the days ahead.

Image: Nature – structure and metaphor (brief description by student teams will be posted here)

Image: Society – structure and metaphor (brief description by student teams will be posted here)

Image: Life – structure and metaphor (brief description by student teams will be posted here)

Image: Work – structure and metaphor (brief description by student teams will be posted here)

Image: Play – structure and metaphor (brief description by student teams will be posted here)