Business Models: Learning from the Field

DCC2009 Business Models assignment: Learning from the Field in a design setting

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Omlette-walla group with their visual presentation of the Ahmedabad street vendors who serve egg based food offerings.

Business Models are all around us and these are manifested in the form and structure of all the business that are active and working in the environment in which we all live and work. It is therefore possible for a sensitive designer to use their senses and the knowledge gleaned from the field to discover and articulate these into visible and invisible relationships through a process of observation, interaction, analysis, discourse and visualization based on which they could arrive at a new level of realisation about these. The particular business models that are embedded into each specific business that they wish to study in order to improve or compete with are laid bare in front of their eyes as the work progresses and they would then be able to explore alternatives to make these better or more effective as desired.

The assignments offered to the students deal with the intensive study of street food vendors in the field in Ahmedabad city using observation and interaction to gather insights about the particular vendor and his strategies as well as to look for more general situational characteristics and entrepreneurial behavior that helps the incumbent to succeed in a fairly hostile but opportunity rich environment of the city in need of certain types of services which are being addressed by the vendor in question. The students were assigned five types of street food vendors in Ahmedabad – The Omlette-wallah (Egg Omlette maker), The Bhajiya-walla (Fried Indian Snack), The Chai-walla (Tea vendor), The Pav Bhaji-wallah (Bread and Curry maker) and The Pani-Puri-walla (Fried Puri with liquid chutney) – and each group was required to study several live examples in the field in order to make a composite visualization of their insights that could be shared with the class at the end of this process.

Image 02: Bhajiya-walla group made a number of models to describe their understanding of the business models but their final offering was a paper model of the proposed hand cart which offered many new features and promised to solve many of the aspirations of the vendors as well as the imagined features that the group liked to provide to these vendors.

Here, when a design student is in learning mode, it is far easier to start with small and micro enterprises such as street food vendors who are easily accessible and can therefore be a very useful source of business learning and about a number of finer aspects of entrepreneurial behavior. Each of these micro businesses is indeed homologous to a huge multi-national business conglomerate in a similar line of business such as the ones involved in the preparation and delivery of food to their customers across several continents. The large and the small businesses all have to carry out much the same activities in much the same space in a city with the same collective audience but at a very different scale and reach but the components are all very similar.

Image 03: Chai-walla group showed the processes and relationships at the macro and the micro level of discourse and at the micro-level they used a literal flow of the liquid Chai – from cooking vessel to tea pot to tea cup and then to the mouth which is followed by the customers hand giving money to the maker who in turn uses the money to make more tea and make a profit in the process – a business process, all in one single flow…

Learning from the field is the way forward for designers who wish to work at the cutting edge of change and be able to shape the future with their insights and contributions. In real life too this would be the way they will have to work by gathering insights from the events and activities that are live and happening in their business space and with these insights they would be able to propose the new offerings that would go to the creation of the future landscapes around them. Design has moved forward from being focused on objects and spaces alone to include the business processes through which these objects, services and spaces are created and offered to the customers and managers too are now taking this area of design creation as an important part of their area of expertise.

Image 04: Pav Bhaji-walla group made a model of the street vendors cart using a table and a couple of bicycle wheels along with a few props as a backdrop for their skit which showed their understanding of the business models used by the vendor groups they had studied. The flow-charts in the background showed their understanding of these processes.

Another aspect of design learning that the assignment design has taken into consideration is that designers need to learn to work in teams and to collaborate with a large number of professionals from other fields of expertise. These group assignments that require the students to go outside the classroom and engage with public at large is an important element of design education that prepares them for the future where we would expect them to work in co-creation modes with stakeholders of their particular business and in doing so build the attitudes, abilities and knowledge that would help them perform at a high level of creativity in the rich matrix of our reality in urban and rural settings. This does imply that design education with these methods needs peace and security to be taken care of when the students move into the field, however we have had situations where student teams have had to confront with hostile reception due to various factors, some within their control and others which are not. However they need to be sensitized to these issues so that they can recognize any threat and take precautionary measures as may be needed while they are in the field.

Image 05: Pani Puri group made a meticulous model with a very well classified structure that showed their complex understanding of the business models and strategies followed by their street vendors, all supported by highly expressive renderings of each aspect of the structure and a flow of arrows that linked all these elements into a complete whole.

The kind of learning that happens in such a group interaction mode and in contact with the field is very rich with first hand experience and deep insights are formed in all the stages of the assignment, particularly at the stage of visualization and presentation since these are carried out in a reflective mode based on the real experiences in the field and not just on bookish information or on the internet download type of knowledge that is delivered by remote experts in a loaded form of professional jargon which may or may not be truly accessible to the student. After three days and nights in the field with their respective street vendors and a good deal of time back in the studio as a group to process all the field data into images and texts that made sense the students spent a full day in making presentations to each other and the teachers, all resulting in a great deal of learning for all concerned.
Prof M P Ranjan

Parsi, Jain and Marwadi Food: An Anthro-look in DCC2008

Parsi, Jain and Marwadi Food: A closer look in Design Concepts and Concerns course in 2008. The batches involved included Graphic Design, Film and Video Communication, Furniture Design and Ceramic Design, all from the Post Graduate programmes at NID.

M P Ranjan

Image 1: Parsi food as a table setting of various categories of food from the Parsi fold and a backdrop of storyboards that was sued to tell a story of the Parsi way of life as the team understood it after their anthro-design investigations.

The Parsi food team had a matrix type storyboard on the wall and they used it from left to right and top to bottom to tell the story of the Parsi way of life and the role of food was woven well into their story. While the image and installation was not that visually rich they told a good tale and many insights about Parsi food came through in the presentation. An amazing number of facts had also been gathered by the team having contacted many Parsis in Ahmedabad and discovered the sources of supply of ingredients and Parsi delights.

Image 2: Jain food was represented as a road to salvation and a roundabout for the mortals. The route to Sainthood is flagged with street signs and terminates in a lamp.

The Jain food group spent more time explaining the philosophy of the Jains and their taboos for particular food types and as a consequence missed out on the appreciation of the value of Jain food and their potentials that is the purpose of the design investigation, to find sources of value and an understanding of the context at many levels. Their model was once again more symbolic than expressive and each section needed an explanation from the team for the finer aspects to be appreciated. The overall understanding that the team brought to the class was eventually quite deep.

Image 3: Marwadi food was shown as a very rich shop for provisions and the cultural attributes were captured in the icons, turbans and images of real food as well as the trappings of a real store in action, the balance, the price list and examples of food types all classified and visually articulated.

The Marwadi group had a collage of images of Marwadi food and an installation of the fields from a desert location besides the store metaphor that was the main attraction. The group also gave us a historical overview of the migratory passages of the community and the assimilation of various local cultures by way of food habits that the community had imbibed through this migratory passage over the years. In all a very rich presentation.

M P Ranjan

Understanding Food: Anthro-Design Research in DCC

Understanding Food: Anthro-Design Research in the DCC class at Bangalore
Prof M P Ranjan

Image 1: Presentation by the Tamilnadu group in session at the NID Bangalore Centre. The group chose to build a flow chart of their understanding and the presentation uses a “story-board” that was represented like a film strip from the Tamil cinema story as shown in the illustration below. The storyboard was personified by the image of “Annaswamy” their man from Tamilnadu, from childhood to old age, and the food for all seasons brought into sharp focus by the overlapping threads of their story.

The first assignment at NID Bangalore dealt with mapping ones own knowledge about food and each group had a particular bias from which their knowledge was to be mapped and shared with the rest of the class. As describer earlier this thematic bias plays a strong role on how the subject is addressed and it even shapes the perception of the situation and this was quite evident in the various interpretations that were exhibited by the groups, each working with Climate, Region and Culture, as their given bias for investigation and articulation. While I did not specifically tell the students that they were not expected to do elaborate research on their subject of food with the bias assigned to each group, they did not have the time to do such research and all the teams had to fall back on their well of knowledge that resided in their collective memories and from which they drew quite liberally through a process of brainstorming, categorization and articulation to show their models and constructs on the given subject FOOD – with the bias of Climate, Region and Culture.

Image 2: The ‘story board” shown by the Tamilnadu group who used the persona of a young Tamil software engineer to represent their understanding of the chosen theme of “Food from Tamilnadu” shown here as a life time story, a journey from the cradle to a ripe old age, very interesting indeed.

The Second assignment saw the groups fanning out to various places in Bangalore to carry out direct contact research in the mode of “anthro-design” with each group being assigned to a particular region State of South India. The assigned States were that of Tamilnadu, Andhra and Karnataka, each assigned through a draw of lots, which was done on behalf of the group by their student coordinator. The group members then went into a huddle and made a plan for gathering information and this information strategy played out over the next three days with the groups meeting and exploring Food and eating places in Bangalore, each looking at their respective State issues and trying to make sense of the vast field that could be covered by the omnibus assignment with very low definition and broad interpretation. As designers they were to investigate the subject directly from the field in live contact with ‘experts” and ‘stakeholders’ from whom they could get valuable insights about their assigned subject – FOOD from one of the three chosen States of South India.

Image 3: The Karnataka group looked at the business of Food and explored the various dimensions of Karnataka cuisine as well as the typical resources of the State as they had discovered through their engagement with their contacts and eating-places across Bangalore city.

The Udipi café, MTR – “Mavali Tiffin room” and Café Coffee Day success story played strongly on the minds of this group and shaped the story that they had to share with the class through their wall size model and their mega success stories of food and the potential for a revolution from the State of Karnataka to the world at large. Their presentation was located in the basement workshop space of the NID Bangalore Centre and they impressed with their scale and sense of structure that was achieved in their model.

Image 4: The Andhra group was shocked by the stories of poverty and distress that came from many of their contacts across the migrant labour now in Bangalore. Their installation, which is the appropriate term that can best describe the assembly of objects, sarees and posters that the group assembled to tell their story, was colourful and then filled with coloured light and everything turned red….

Making contact with live sources of informants in the field is so important for design students since it is important for them to learn that what they need is not knowledge of the kind found in books as much as getting a feel of the situation and in picking up specific insights that would give them a sense of direction and a glimpse of the way the trends shaped up in their area of investigation. It is here that anthro design as a subject area gets appreciated and some degree of competence is built up in handling such research where book based knowledge would certainly not fill the need. This kind of experience would be useful for design students and through these experiences they would also learn about research strategies to be used in the field and the whole range of processes of making contact, making observations, meetings and interviews as well as processing the rich data from the field in order to glean insights about latent needs and future possibilities are all critical for design education.

Prof M P Ranjan