Team formation for Digital Design Opportunity assignment

Image: Volunteer team coordinators with Prof M P Ranjan

The five groups dealing with the following areas – Nature, Society, Life, Work and Play – were formed by asking for five volunteers to be coordinators of each area and from the volunteers the areas were assigneed by casting lots.

Nature team: Shalini Dey
Society team: Arunima Saboo
Life team: Harish Dubey
Work team: Zinal Patel
Play team: Charanya Sivakumar

Image: The Natrue team
Left to Right: SHUCHITA BRANWAL (SUID), RAMPRAKASH R (SUID), VAIDIHI VISHWASRAO, SHALINI DEY (IDD) (coordinator), KANIKA ARNEJA (NMD), HARSHVARDAN YADAV (IDD)

Nature : All encompassing. Nurturing everyone

"Human beings are always going to be dependant on some other being for every thing we need or might need. More often than not the urge to sustain, makes us look towards nature. Nature, as long we can remember, is looked upon as an entity with character, traits, emotions. Like us, it too has soul. It feels, nurtures, soothes and helps. Helps us be. But we, like it's careless children tend to take it for granted. We exploit, destroy and fuel our greed some more. And we keep fulfilling the chasm of our needs till resources get exhausted and we still keep looking towards it for some more. Nature like the responsible and affectionate mother, tries and tries, till it can not breathe anymore to give us whatever we want. It is time that WE become the responsible ones. Try and look within ourselves to find that compassion which we kill everything, when greed overpowers us. To give back, bit by bit, all that we have taken away. Give back love to get what we need. In the end we DO need to Sustain; We too are a part of what we are killing."

Image: The Society team
Left to Right: NEHA YADAV (NMD), PRATAP RAJ SHEKHAR (SUID), SAGAR SASHEENDRAN (NMD), SANKET BINDAL (IDD), ARUNIMA SABOO (SUID)(coordinator), PARITA KATKE (NMD)

Society : A foundation of civilization, survival by mutual co -operation could be called a society.

A society survives on understanding, structuring and most importantly a design. It’s a form of structuring which differentiates the ‘intelligent being‘. Each individual part of a society has a social responsibility and individual concerns are looked at collectively and with compassion and understanding. Realizing and recognizing responsibility, abiding by the laws of society and learning to live in harmony is the edifice of living in a society.

Image: The Life team
Left to Right: HARISH DUBEY (IDD) (coordinator), PRITHU SAH (SUID), MADHAVI KULKARNI ((NMD), SAURABH SRIVASTAV (IDD), SIDDHARTH SAWANT (SUID), ANOMA SHAH (NMD)

LIFE, as said ‘Jaan hai to Jahan hai’.

Life is the most precious thing God has gifted us. It is a fusion of struggle, commitment, recollection of dreams and sentiments. Life is to achieve goals and to make them valuable. Life is a continuous process of exploring and learning from experiences. Life is about nurturing, bonding socially and emotionally. It is colorful for those who live it and tragedy for the rest. Life exists after death in the form of a smile, memorable moments and tears.

Image: The Work team
Left to Right: ARNAB KHOUND (IDD), UDAY SHANKAR (IDD), AKHILESH S V (NMD), ZINAL PATEL (SUID) (coordinator), ADITI GUPTA (NMD), GAUTAM NAIDU (IDD)

Work: Work is worship

We all have heard the old saying that, "Where there is a will there is a way.” So, if we need to achieve something we need to work. Generally in a broader sense WORK is defined as Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something but it doesn't mean only to complete a given task but its the passion, commitment and zeal that is involved in it. Work is the attitude towards the job that is rewarded and recognized at the end. There are few other inseparable attributes of work that are time and quality. So work in its totality is the satisfaction that is felt and the appreciation that one is rewarded with. Various works of people has been the great boon to the world only because of the enthusiasm and attitude involved in it.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Image: The Play team
Left to Right: TAUHIN PAUL (NMD), ANIL M N (SUID), GAURAV BHUSHAN (IDD), CHARANYA SIVKUMAR (SUID) (coordinator), MANSI SALVI (NMD), VIVEK CHAWDA (SUID)

Play: After two days and nights of brainstorming sessions we have categorized our ideas, and should soon come up with a structure that represents more than 5000 (five thousand) digital design opportunities.

"Play is a very natural activity that everyone from a little child to elderly people can engage in, as it helps break free from routine and intrigues us. Thus, in the context of one's interest, play could be any physical, mental, social or spiritual activity. Recreation, creativity and imagination have always been important aspects of play. Our purview of play also includes anything from an individual activity like 'reading a book one finds interesting' to an economic activity like 'investing in the stock market' which involves many people. Thus, play in general can influence our well being, relationships, learning abilities and generate interest in otherwise monotonous jobs."

We now look forward to see what they will show us next Monday morning in class when they are expected to present their digital design opportunity maps for their respective areas.

DCC PG2007 (Gandhinagar): Assignment one – Theme: Design inside 230 sectors of the Indian economy

Image: Design Opportunities categorized by five broad fields – Nature, Society, Life, Work & Play

DCC PG Batch 1: Gandhinagar Campus: PG Students of the following disciplines
New Media Design, Information & Digital Design, Software & User Interface Design

Design Opportunity Maps:
Using the five –field categorization proposed by Prof. M P Ranjan in his Hyderabad lecture – Nature, Society, Life, Work & Play – we will have five groups of students in the DCC PG 2007 class look within each of these five broad areas for design opportunities and sub-fields that can be outlined in an expressive model and try and discover as many applications that could challenge future design students all over India.

Each group will explore one area and identify by the process of brainstorming and categorization as many design opportunities that they can find and then arrange them into a structure that is contextually relevant. The fields and sub-fields may be categorized in a manner that makes most sense to the group. On discovering a structure that works for them they will try and represent these in one visually interesting model that will make the structure memorable as well as be a source of reference in design schools that are being built as part of the new National Design Policy. We would hope that this exploration will help set the agenda for several years of design exploration and be the fountain of ideas from which numerous assignments and projects would emerge while they cover the needs of the various areas adequately. We will try to be as comprehensive as possible since the National Knowledge Commission we hope would be taking this work seriously since it is something that they would wish to do themselves.

Brainstorming: First Session
Capture all the associated ideas and concepts that come to mind when addressing the chosen topic and jot these down in a random manner on a large sheet of paper with all members of the group contributing to the sheet. Target would be about 500 word ideas, each with some explanation which the group can supplement later if required.

Categorisation: Session Two
Using Post-it stickers or card sorting and listing methods the team would arrange the discovered words (and Images) into a structure that makes sense to them. This would show how each concept is related to the whole as well as to the nearby concepts in the form of a semantic map or network diagram. On arriving at a satisfactory flow-chart or diagram the team would embark on the next stage of the assignment. Such diagrams are also called Affinity Diagrams.

Representation in an Evocative and Memorable Model: Session Three
The key words and associated networks will be represented by the team in conjunction with an evocative metaphor that can help support the chosen field as well as the parts in a sensible and memorable manner making the concepts both accessible in the future as well as well as be suitable as a poster that could find a place in a future design school somewhere in India and become a source of inspiration for the faculty and students there.

Presentation and Discussions: Session Four
Each group will make an adequately large model on paper or digital form for presentation as a single large image that can be shown to a group in the class and these models will be explained and critiqued by peers and faculty as part of the class presentation. A summary of this work will be posted to the blog after the discussions.

Note: The Hyderabad event can be seen at this site – USID2007: Living in Digital World

Download presentation by Prof M P Ranjan titled Living in Digital World: Opportunities for Engineers and Designers File size 2007 800 kb pdf

The other presentations shown in class today can be downloaded from the links below:
IDSA2006_Ranjan_v02: Giving Design back to Society: Towards a Post-Mining Economy File size 695 kb pdf
The Design Journey: Model File size 670 kb pdf
The Design Journey: Voice File size 1 Mb duration 15 minutes Quicktime .mov
Watch or download from here Hans Rosling at TED: Making the Impossible Possible Quicktime movie 20 minutes duration