Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 1

Scenarios for sustainability from NID Paldi batch 1
Students of the Furniture Design and Textile Design programmes at NID Paldi campus formed the first batch of the DCC course at Paldi this semester. They were assigned three areas to investigate and develop concepts after building shared perspectives through a process of brainstorming, categorisation, modeling and metaphor building. All the groups looked at the issues dealing with the Future of the Retail sector in India that are being transformed rapidly by the entry of big players and corporate entities and soon to be made open to multinationals as well. They had to make sense of what they saw was happening and build a shared understanding of these developments through a process of making sense of the data that was available.

The first group looked at Fresh food and organic food was the area addressed by them through the process described above.






The second group looked at issues of sustainability in Home Electronic products and opportunities for the retail sector.





The third group looked at the area of Provisions for the home through local shops and examined the sustainability issues that could be explored and envisaged as viable scenarios that could be taken forward.



In many cities and metros the small scale retailers are getting agitated by these rapid changes and are asking for a review of government policies in these sectors. Some very contentious issues and political opportunism has resulted in a lot of protest but few ideas have emerged as to what alternatives we have at hand and if we had these alternatives shown as visible scenarios these could inform some of the policy changes and gat political acceptance from the affected people as well. Can design thinking and action help show some of these alternatives which can then be debated and used to inform the decision making process and this too after we examine the issues of sustainability and social equity which are at stake in this area.

Shown above are some of the scenarios prepared by the individual students who worked in teams in the early stages (as described earlier see link here) and in the final stage of this two week course they explored five design opportunities which they personally felt had value and merit. One of these design opportunities was then taken forward as a scenario visualisation exercise in the process of learning design thinking and action as part of this course in Design Concepts and Concerns at NID. Some selected scenarios from each of these groups are shown here. In all this batch was composed on 30 students, all at the post Graduate level and coming from very different backgrounds.

Sustainability and Social Equity as a Design Challange in India

Undersdtanding the Known Universe: Assignment on Sustainability and Social Equity as a Design Challange in India

Images: Students sharing the work presentation at the end of assignment one in the DCC course at Bangalore.

The students of NID R & D Centre at Bangalore from the Retail Experience and Digital Experience disciplines were assigned the task of exploring the areas of three key sectors of employment to discover how the supply chain could be strengthened by design approaches to ensure both sustainability as well as social equity across the following sectors:

1. Handmade Products and Handlooms team with their models

2. Farm Fresh Produce team with their models

3. Dairy and Poultry Products team with their models

The groups were asked to brainstorm and then categorise the various dimensions of these sectors so as to capture the known factors and attributes so as to understand the sector as a system which could then be inmproved from the stated goal of achieving both sustainability as well as social equity in the age of rapid globalisation and urbanisation that is sweeping the country today. This understanding was then to be used to develop design opportunities at a leter stage in the Design Concepts and Concerns course at the Bangalore Centre of NID. The two new disciplines at Bangalore are doing this course for the first time and the attempt is also being made to integrate the areas of focus of both groups at the Centre as well as the interersts of the students in each group. Groups were formed by choosing volunterr coordinators and they in turn selected the teams to make these multi-doisciplinary as well as with a gender balance in each group to get the required variety on the teams.

Image: Detail of one of the models by the Fresh Farm Produce Group

Each group made their brainstorming sessions with a lot of passion and committment and then spent a good deal of time in categorising their findings over a period of two days of intense activity. The teams then prepared a structure that made sense to them and based on the agreed structure they developed a rich metaphor to capture all the dimensions of their assigned sectors.

Rashmi, who is in Ahmedabad, shared a wonderful set of links from the Open University in the UK on Systems Modelling and Diagramming and the students have been requested to explore these links to study the theory of modelling and diagramming types through the rich multi-media presentations available at these links below:

What are Spray Diagrams?
What are Rich Pictures
What are Systems Maps?
What are Influence Diagrams
What are Multi-Cause Diagrams
What are Sign Graphs

These are not to be treated as frozen methods to be followed but as a guide to understanding and each experience will show the student their own way forward and give then an ability to make their own models and diagrams which are best suited to their task as well as one that can be achieved within the constraints of the skill sets available to the group with whom they are working.

Image: Teachers explaining the next assignment dealing with meetings with experts as well as strategies for gathering insights from the field.

DCC in Bangalore: Retail Design and Digital Experience students begin the journey

DCC in Bangalore: Retail Design and Digital Experience students begin the journey

Image: DCC Black Board. Many insights about the nature of design and a discussion about its boundaries.

Image: A revised model of the Design Journey along with a discussion of the systems metaphor for design – the fire model and the responsibility of the designer.

Tomas Maldonado in his critique of Buckminster Fuller’s belief that “Revolution by Design” would be exclusively an act of technological imagination states that for its success design would need what C. Wright Mills called “sociological imagination”, that is both technical courage as well as social and political courage, to achieve real lasting results.

Design is expanding in scope and meaning and design education needs to stay in touch to be effective. In this opening post from Bangalore in great weather and from the brand new R & D Campus of the National Institute of Design I am sharing a few pictures taken with faculty and students of the Bangalore Centre.

Image: With faculty and staff at the NID R & D Campus in Bangalore.

Image: DCC class session in progress in the Board Room on day 1.

Image: Students discussing the first assignment of “Exploring the self”.
Download the EAD06 paper about this course and its assignments and the visial presentation from my website here. PDF paper (50 kb) and PDF presentation (4.1 mb)