Thursday, August 7, 2008

Goa Group: Fish, Boats and Beach as Metaphor

Image: Goa group with their massive model and metaphor representation with the Fisherman in the foreground and the Goa Tourist map and persona in the background.


While the Goa group had very rich palette of images to support their presentation it was their structure that was truly memorable. Using a radial structure they built their structure about Food, Inflation and the Economy with the Meta factors around the circle and the process questions along the radial axis. This gave them the possibility of using the rings to represent the various parts of their structure in a very interesting manner.

Image: Radial model of the rich structure by the Goa group with the Fish, Boats and Beach Metaphor with the Fisherman in the foreground.


The structure model was further strengthened by the use of small iconic images strewn all over the diagram that helped us locate the major ideas visually while getting an overview of the structure. The Move in understanding was huge. While the first presentation that was based on what the group already knew was skewed towards a sort of outsider view of tourist Goa the second round saw the group connecting with all the right kinds of people who can be called experts and this led to a huge shift in understanding.

Image: The Goa team making their impassioned presentation with all members taking the stand and making a pitch with a very high level of motivation.


The presentation which had all the team members participating was truly memorable and of a very high quality. In the teachers experience this is by far the best effort in many years in the PG programme at NID. I would request the students involved to make a textual note of their experience and to share this with all of us so that this experience can produce durable learning that Prof Bruce Archer had told us about when he visited NID in the early 80's to give the Sir Misha Black Award for excellence in Design Education to the then Executive Director of NID, Ashoke Chatterjee. He told us that experience by itself does not produce knowledge, but it is the reflection on experience that does create deep and durable knowledge.

This assignment is therefore a way for groups of individuals to first map out what they already think they know about any chosen subject through brainstorming and categorisation followed by rounds of modelling to find structure and finding a suitable metaphor to map the discovered structure for all to see and understand. The next assignment has the students sharing their understanding with real experts and through research and the process of modelling, finding structure and making a metaphor so that the findings can be shared in a coherent manner. This process also has the effect of clarifying the concepts in ones own mind as well as in locating insights that would drive the process of opportunity mapping and decision making as the design process goes forward.

The other two groups too have completed their second round which will be reported here later in the day. We need to meet today to review all the MeBoards, perhaps in the SDM studio and the final opportunity maps as well as the individual secnarios will be exhibited in the NID Foyer on Tuesday the 12th August 2008 at 5.30 pm IST. We have booked the Foyer space through the NID Academin Administration and we look forward to a live participation from faculty, students and invited guests.

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