Incubating Design Opportunities: DCC2008 Gandhinagar

Image: Team Punjab with their presentation of design opportunity thumbnails and scenarios on the theme of Food.

The week long incubation period for the exploration of design opportunities that the four groups of students had discovered came to an end today with the final review and presentation of the groups work at the NID Gandhinagar campus. Each group had explored various design opportunities using the format for thumbnail sketches and a brief outline and these were discussed at length within each group to look for value and limitations in each of these explored options. This process of articulation and review continued through the week although the class had got over by last Friday when the groups had captured many such illustrations that gave us a glimpse of what was in the minds of the individuals who had drawn them after a process of collective exploration, brainstorming and engagement with experts in the field using anthro-research approaches to clarify directions and define specific insights that could produce value.

Image: Team Kerala with design oppportunity scenarios.

The enthusiasm and committment of the groups resulted in as many as 500 individual design opportunity maps and these were arranged into categories by the teams and some new explorations were initiated on the basis of the insights that were drawn from the initial explorations and the results thereof. THis group was particularly enthused by the design opportunities discovered and the final presentations were a trace of this enthusiasm, and the teams were all present for the final review. Each group has been requested to make a scanned image file of each thumbnail sheet and share these with all the other groups and during the interaction session this evening at Gandhinagar we photographed all the students with their Design Opportunity Scenario sheet with a final request that they send in an email with a brief but effective textual description of their design opportunity scenario to the teachers. These textual notes would also be made available to all students through the NID server at gandhinagar just as the pictures would be shared with all students as part of the contemporaneous documentation of this course.

Image: Team Gujarat with their radial model of design opportunity thumbnails in a categorised map.

Image: Team Northeast with their offering after the incubation period of one week.

Each of these explorations will be shared in some detail in the days ahead as the emailed texts come in to supplement the scenario visualisations made by the students of all four teams.

Gandhinagar in the Rain: DCC2008 Presentation

Image: Final presentation of Design Opportunity explorations by all four groups in the NID Gandhinagar Atrium.

The vehicle fiasco did come to our aid today in making a change of venue and an impromptu rescheduliong of our presentation to Gandhinagar campus and all the students were stranded at Gandhinagar and both the busses were parked at Paldi and the driver had a day off being a Saturday!! The student coordinators forgot to inform the Admin about our presentation and then we had phone calls at my office in Paldi at 10.00 am the time when the presentation was planned when we last met at Gandhinagar one week ago.

Since the final presentation is an important part of the process of learning design thinking the teachers who had assembled at my office decided that we would go over to Gandhinagar for which we requested a car after many phone calls to Gandhinagar and the Paldi administrators. Harini, Ayan, Anindya and I left Rashmi behind since she could not accompany us to Gandhinagar, a big loss for the styudents since her feedback would have been very insightful and sensitive. We are now at Gandhinagar and the presentation will start at 2.00 pm and we have requested all the students to be ready with their groups as well as with their individual design opportunities so that the show and tell session can be organised in a way that the learning can be complete. Each student is also required to send us a brief note by email about the story in their Design Scenario Visualisation so that some of these could be posted on the blog for all to see and discuss further possibilities.

We are eager to see what the students have done so far and I was hoping that the Paldi students could also see what the Gandhinagar colleagues had achieved in their exploration of the DCC Theme, FOOD, Inflation and the Economy, each dealing with a selected area of the country, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Gujarat. With one week given for imcubation and group discussion we are sure that we will get to see a rich exploration of various dimensions of the chosen theme and I do personally look forward to the afternoon session, planned after the lunch break in a few minutes from now.

We drove in the rain from Paldi to Gandhinagar and on Ashram Road the traffic was pretty heavy and with the light drizzle the humidity was high and the temperature very uncomfortable particularly since the aircon system seemed to malfunction, but later towards Gandhinagar the weather turned and more rain came down and with the driving speed we had a good airflow through the windows but with some degree of wettness due to the spray. On the whole a good ride and since we were eager to meet the students some discomfort is acceptable. The rain is all around and the presentation is planned in the main building in the central Atrium that will start in another twenty minutes from now.

Reflections on DCC2008: Priyadarshinee Mohapatra

Image: Model of the Design Process proposed by Priyadarshinee Mohapatra and sent to me by email along with a description of the model that is quoted below.

Design is complex and challenging, as it involves both analytic and creative solution to a problem. Designing a product, not only requires a designer, but also needs the understanding of human experience on it. It's a task involving not only the designer but also the target users for whom it's designed. For any design solution it's important to follow the design process which is an iterative process. Design concepts and concerns-2008 by MP Ranjan has taught the "design process" in a very effective and planned manner. It's a wonderful experience to be part of this programme. It has a clear path/process from "recollecting the known" to "discover the unknown" and finally "creating design opportunity" while solving the problems in a given context.

What you already know:

In the first level, it's basically "recollecting the data already exist in your mind". It's self exploration phase. So the information is collected from every individual based on "self knowledge" and "on what he/she believes in". It's followed by group brain storming to make it more precise and determine the information architecture, structuring and reflecting the same on a visual metaphor. A visual metaphor gives a complete overview of the context. A strong visual metaphor is self explanatory.

Initially, though the group had less information, eventually the information was created by self exploration and group brain storming. Truly said by Ranjan "You never know what you know and you can challenge any modern age computer".

Discover the unknown through research:

The next level, we had to "discover the unknown" through research and field study. During this phase we were exposed to real world to know and find out information. Finally, we incorporated all the information on structure and metaphor. The collected insights give a complete idea about the real world problem. It helped us to create personas and to understand the common man's mental model about the context. From insights, one could make out "What is already there?"and "what could be done?"

Creating design opportunity:

Finally design opportunities created by analysing the observations and insights from field research in the given context while solving the problems. The issues were pointed out in a group brain storming. From various ideas, every individual has to take one idea or design opportunity and give a detailed solution to the real world problem. The solution has to be presented visually to make it self-explanatory.
I worked in Gujarat group. My learning through the whole process was a lot .It was not limited to my own group only, I also learnt a lot from other groups as well.

Thanks & Regards

Priyadarshinee Mohapatra
Strategic Design Management (SDM)

Late Night Edition: DCC2008 Paldi01

Image: All four groups ready with their respective models, stucture and metaphor for the theme of Food across four regions of India. Uttarakhand (top right), West Bengal (bottom right), rajasthan (bottom left) and Goa (top right).

Working with very few breaks the teams were all ready for presentation by 2.00 pm in the post lunch session, a little behind schedule, but this is acceptable since it is the first time that these groups have worked together and much learning is still to come. The results are quite encouraging and in the evening we had completed the discussions and presentations of two of these groups, Uttarakhand and Goa. We will report in some detail about these presentations in another post. However for now, the two presentations were actively participatory with a number of students coming forward to make critical and constructive statements, a good sign towards a healthy peer review culture in the days to come.

Design journey-DCC-2008-PG campus

Image: Sonal Chauhan with Prof M P Ranjan in the DCC class at Gandhinagar.

It has been a great experience being part of DCC team.
This was my very first encounter with DCC as well as Professor Ranjan , since I have joined this institute very recently.
In My college days we had no opportunity to learn this course and it was added later for the fortunate ones. Being from the so called “Design Community” I believe that design is what you think you can do to enhance life, product, feelings, experiences, dreams or aspirations .But what leads you to design outcome is your approach towards it.

I must admit DCC-2008 has added a new dimension to my design approach. Though seating on the other side of the students, I was very much a student . But it was a dual learning for me i.e. student as well as faculty trainee( a new breed of Student).It was great to learn ways to achieve design solutions.

KNOWING THE UN-KNOWN – was the first assignment where focus was on the first hand data that one would have stored in mind consciously& unconsciously. Gathering that data (Brainstorming) and using it to make model structure followed by metaphoric representation - would have been quite a task for beginners. It was a process which would lead you more and more towards identifying unique design opportunities as you clear each step (read: assignment here). I have witnessed it that students had to work extremely hard and they were enjoying to dig more and more to gather data/information. Learning was so much from the student presentations that I felt like getting in to one of the group and actually going through the experience of making of that learning.( which, I couldn’t allow myself - with some block)

ME BORD – was more to identify ,analyze and assess our own self. Again knowing the unknown in a way. It was to know one’s love, pride, fear, mental block, inhibitions, strengths, weakness, commitments, dreams, policies, nature and other interests.
What was equally important here was coming with information/ideas and making it in to visual communication .We all know the power of words but this targeting power of images.( Image power) And it is so much true, that some times you cant have enough words to explain or express and same can be done very crisply with just one image.

Having open forum to debate , discuss and express views , at the end of every presentation involves further crisscross of data, brainstorm, a new emerging approach, people’s eye view and a lot more that (may be my dictionary would limit me with).
I relished that part of it more since, I was not part of group presentations and so the rich experience they have had.

Working hard and making people work hard – is something every student must have learned from DCC and so have I( all in good spirit).As working in groups have certain advantages as well as disadvantages. And DCC module surely adds those group dynamics and leader ship qualities to the students.

I wish i was there in each of the class gathering. Myself was quite a silent observer through out the class and would vouch for the constructive feedback that came in with each presentation, from the Professor Ranjan, Harini, Ayan, or student group themselves. I am thankful to all for sharing such rich experiences . My best wishes to Gujarat, Kerala, North East, Punjab groups for their final presentation and ahead.

Late Morning Edition: DCC2008 Paldi01

Image: Work in progress with all teams rushing to meet the new deadline which has been posted at 2.00 pm.

Groups have reassembled after the break and working almost non-stop with a few hours of sleep over night. The metaphors are taking shape and the structure is being frozen by each of the groups exploring Food, Inflation and the Economy as the major theme for the brainstorming assignment.

We will assemble again at the studios after lunch and take group photographs of all team members in front of their presentation models and then move on to the review of each presentation by turn. The first group to finish and report will have the first go with the presentation. We look forward to it.

Early Morning Edition: DCC2008 Paldi01

Image: Tired but not floored, work in progress early in the morning in the NID studios where four groups have spent the late night grappling with the categorization of all the data that was generated last night and in the evening rounds of brainstorming.

The studios were still quite empty with a few students coming in in small teams to get back to work and meet the 11.00 am deadline for the group presentations scheduled today. The signs of a new form of organization is seem in the materials strewn across the rooms and in the semi-finished work sheets that will be made ready after the breakfast sessions and all the students come back to the studios. Harini went across the studios at 9.30 am to bring us some insights of the work in progress and we do look forward to the major presentations later in the day.