Individial Visions for Food Security in India: DCC2008 Paldi01

…>…Design Concepts & Concerns…

Individial Visions for Food Security in India: Scenarios developed during the class DCC2008 at NID Paldi in the past two weeks.

Image: Individual offerings for the scenario visualization assignment at the end of this DCC2008 class at NID Paldi.

Scenarios visualized by NID students for the broad range of issues identified by them while working in groups over a period of two weeks in this particular session of the Design Concepts and Concerns class at NID Paldi. It is ironical that there is so much to be done and the country is facing severe food inflation but the investments in design efforts to solve these problems on a long term basis is almost zero.

Image: Another group of students from the DCC2008 class with their individual offerings of imagined scenarios to address the real needs of food and the design opportunities in our economy today.

It is not that the country does not have the money to address these issues but most of the money is spent on making standards and on testing rather than on innovation which will promise a better future for our people. This year we have as a nation spent a huge sum for trying to avert farmer crisis in the form of the loan waiver scheme that was announced by the Government of India while a small fraction of this amount spent on a regular basis on farm based innovation and the building of imaginative prototypes for the future would have given long term solutions. I hope that we will see such investments in the near future with the National Design Policy having been launched last year. However agriculture, education and health are still not on the radar of the policy makers since they seem to be only looking at luxury products for exports and not at real needs across the land that need design

…>…Design Concepts & Concerns…

DCC2008 PG at NID Gandhinagar: Theme FOOD

Image: Day one at Gandhinagar for students for five PG disciplines of LAD, ADM, Toy, SDM and New Media. Class in progress in the old auditorium.

Over the past few weeks Rashmi and I discussed the theme for the DCC2008 PG class and we decided that Food would be an appropriate one for this year across all four modules to be conducted at Gandhinagar, Paldi and Bangalore campuses. Last Saturday we met again with Harini and developed the set of assignments and a tentative schedule for all the assignments to be handled by the groups as well as individually. The first assignment this year would be the one dealing with what we already know about a given subject to be discovered through a deeply involved process of brainstorming followed by finding a suitable structure through a negotiated round of debates and discussions on the discovered concepts and the making of a meaningful structure. This agreed structure would be further visualized in the form of a expressive model in the form of a metaphor that could be used to share the groups understanding with the rest of the class and the teachers. This presentation is scheduled on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 in the presentation space at Gandhinagar.

Image: Theme structure for Food and the rich texture of street food vendors in Bangalore City as captured by Rajesh Dangi on his blog Bangalore Daily Photo.

The preparation of the individual “Me Boards” would be done by each student in the evenings when the group is not in session with each of them taking time off to take a deep look at themselves with a particular emphasis on their belief systems and their known taboos. Based on this introspection they would create avisual representation of themselves using a composite image and word map that can capture the findings in a manner that could be shared with the class. This image would be then resolved into a high resolution jpeg image file either by scanning of an original artwork or by the conversion of the digital composite file that has been created in any software of their choice. This jpeg image will be deposited and submitted in a shared folder called DCC2008 on the Gandhinagar UNSECURE server for review in the class on 17 July 2008 when we meet again for the second lecture on the role and processes of information gathering in the design process.
The outline of our intentions in choosing this particular theme for this series of courses are stated on the two blog posts on Design for India. These can be accessed from these links below:
DCC2008 Theme Food: Design with participation and discourse
Food and AnthroDesign: Approaches and Attitudes for India

Design Opportunity Mapping: Northeast India

Design Opportunity Mapping: Water in Northeast India and Coastal Maharashtra
Image: Northeast group presenting the lists of design opportunities for water

The NER group made a presentation yesterday and their list was broad but lacked visuals This meant that while the possibilities at a general level were listed they missed the representation of the particular form that they saw for each opportunity in their minds eye. In design this is a very important difference and that is why in design there are many answers and not just one way to do things since each designer and their client situation would have different specific constraints and aspirations while deciding the features and the form in which a specific item in their list would be transformed and delivered in the real world.

Even the larger posters done by the groups showed a symbolic treatment while the need when unfolding a design opportunity would be to get as specific as possible so that particular attributes in the possibilities and the limitations are addressed in each representation. There are therefore many possible interpretations possible for each expression and the designer must then make a judgment call while making the thumbnail expression that would capture the image in the minds eye. In order for the students to experience this process we evolved a format on which they could capture these thumbnail sketches along with a very brief caption and key words working as a team that would cooperate in building a large number of design opportunities and these would be categorized and presented to the class for each region that has been selected, namely, Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himalayas and the Northeast, all villages here so that the macro variables are drawn from this regional constraint by each group.

Image: Coastal Maharashtra group mappong design opportunities for water
The format is yet to be tested and we will know later in the day how the students have been able to use the constraints offered by the format and how they were able to interpret that assignment that has been set for each team. After this presentation we will explore the nature of various design disciplines through a field interaction assignment and also the Business model assignment using local street food vendor models as their source of inspiration. The teams would return to the village economy with the insights gained from these two assignments and continue to work in teams with the assignments that follow.

Brainstorming Strategies for a Creative City: Presentations and Critique

Brainstorming Strategies for a Creative City: Presentations and Critique
Image: Rashmi Korjan from Studio Korjan, Ahmedabad and visiting faculty at NID commenting on the presentation made by the Sports group

Students prepared brainstorming charts and developed a structure for each of the areas that was assigned to them namely – Art Infrastructure, Healthy Sport, Culture & Festivals and Public Education - all to be used as a vehicle for making the city into a creative resource for its people. While the efforts were made by all groups, they however failed to deliver completed metaphors that were originally intended but they did present an intermediate structure and preliminary models which were critiqued and discussed in the class presentations shown below. The student groups and their presentation offerings are shown below with the respective team members. This time the groups had difficulty in their categorisation and all the groups had great brainstorming insights but these were quickly reduced to simple structures which seemed quite pre-meditated and therefore missed the richness of insights seen in the brainstorming sheets. While commenting on this the teachers diagnosed the effect and commented on possible sources for this problem. Many people have this difficulty in expanding the design space in the early stages of trying to define a space in the search of a deeper understanding of both the subject as well as the context of the situation particularly since the task involved both macro as well as micro aspects of details. the tendency to generalise at the cost of tyhe rich details was seen as the cause for this problem. However an early failure in a design situation is a good thing since it shows the team several insights with a great deal of clariry which would otherwise have been missed altogether. We will comment on the next stage after these experiences are reflected upon by the teams and some of the insights from this reflection are processed with the groups and the teaching team in the class tomorrow.

Image: Public Education exploration group
Image: Culture and Festival exploration group
Image: Healthy Sport exploration group
Image: Arts Infrastructure exploration group

Chennapatna Toys Revisited as DCC Field Study: Some Reflections

I have posted a detailed reflection on the strategies and intentions of the Chennapatna Toy Design development wotk that was done at NID in 1978. The DCC students visit to Chennapatna as part of their field study in connection with the review of the supply chain of handmade products gave me the opportunity to reflect on the 30 year old design intervention. Design for India story on the Chennapatna Toy design Project can be seen here with links to resources as well as downloadable case study files and papers.