DCC2009 in Bangalore: Water again: Lakes, Rivers & Wells

Prof M P Ranjan

Bangalore Group starts DCC with Water as their theme with focus on three subjects of 1. Lakes & Ponds 2. Rivers & Streams and 3. Aquifers & Wells.

Image01: DCC blackboard and white board after the discussion on what is design and a few design experts known to the student group. Most of the words were contributed to by students as part of the discussion on the question of “What is Design?” and who are the designer experts that you have heard about.

This helps break the ice and a good deal of discussion about design, its attributes and activities as well as the disciplines that it draws from are discussed as part of this session. It also helps set the stage for the set of assignments to follow.

Image02: View of the Class in the NID Bangalore conference room during the first session

Three groups were formed by assigning one student to each group from the photo list that is available in such a way that each group has and even distribution of members from each discipline. At Bangalore we have three disciplines at the PG level, namely, Design for Retail Experience, Design for Digital Experience and Information and Interface Design.
The session at NID Bangalore was conducted in the Conference room with black boards, white boards and digital projectors used for the lecture presentations. The modules of Understanding Design (download pdf file) was followed by sharing the IDSA lecture titled “Giving Design back to Society: Towards a post-mining economy”. The models used were explained and after the lunch break, after much delay we reassembled and formed the groups. I intended to show the students my EAD06 lecture titled “Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education”, however fate intervened and the power supply failed us and we switched back to the white board and continued the description of the assignments and the team formation process. Lots were drawn to make the assignment of the groups to the chosen subject truly random. These presentation pdf files can be downloaded from the links above and below here:
EAD 06 presentation pdf file and eight linked quicktime movies all as one single zip file 53 MB in size

Prof M P Ranjan

Jignesh Khakhar: On DCC in Bangalore

Image: Jignesh Khakhar at the DCC class presentations on various days in Bangalore.

The Design Concepts and Concerns (DCC) course was conducted for a two week period from September 25 to October 01, 2008 at NID's Bangalore campus. DCC is perhaps one of the longest running courses taught at NID. It is taught by Professor M.P. Ranjan, who conducted the course for 41 students from three disciplines at NID-Bangalore - Information and Interface Design (IID), Design for Retail Experience (DRE) and Design for Digital Experience (DDE).

The theme for this year's course was 'food'. Three groups investigated the theme in the context of three southern states - Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

The course introduces students to design, design thinking, design process, design opportunities, to mention a few. Most importantly, in my opinion, it forces students to ask the question: what is design, and what is their role as a designer? These are complex questions and require a lifetime of deliberation. Students are pushed into the 'deep-end of the pool' and forced to swim or stay afloat. Thus begins their journey, or 'design journey', as Professor Ranjan calls it.

There are two significant challenging aspects to this course: One is to represent their ideas. Various metaphors are employed to represent data, and it is often a challenge to map the data to a particular metaphor. This time, a number of metaphors - kite, word, tree, metro map, etc - were employed. Some were more successful, others were not. It is quite a long and challenging journey before a representation becomes a visualization, an act of insight. The other challenge is to work in a large group. This involves 'managing' relationships, time and space. The nature of the course has changed over the years to enable and encourage students to work in collaboration with each other, something they will inevitably have to do in practice.

The final exercise termed 'me board' was an act of introspection. This was perhaps the most challenging exercise, as it required students to 'peer' into themselves. To my mind, this requires a high degree of honesty, akin to 'searching for the truth', and then representing it in some 'form' - an indelible proposition indeed. However, some of the presentations in the form of collages were remarkably interesting and provoked me to question the nature of such representations and their relationship to painting. Perhaps I may find some answers in the future.

Finally, the Design Concepts and Concerns course remains a very intriguing, interesting and enjoyable journey, both as an observer and a participant. Its significance and impact is one students are bound to realise much later in their design education and professional practice.

Posted by: Jignesh Khakhar, NID Bangalore Centre

DCC2008 Bangalore: Invitation to FOOD themes

Prof. M P Ranjan
DCC2008 Bangalore: Invitation to FOOD themes

Image: Invitation sent out by NID Bangalore students for their first presentation scheduled on 22 September 2008.

Their two week course started late on the 18th of September since I had to attend the Governing Council meeting at NID having been summoned by the Chairman for a meeting with the GC on 16th September when they met in Ahmedabad to discuss the action plans that would be an outcome of Dr D O Koshy's premature relief from the position of Director NID. I reached NID Bangalore on 17th Afternoon and the DCC class started on 18th morning with the first assignment being assigned to the students on the 20th September. The first presentation was scheduled on 22 September with three teams looking at the theme of Food with a bias towards – Region, Climate and Culture.

Image: Views from the Swiss design exploration workshop conducted by the Swiss design team of industrial designer Frederic Dedelley and design journalist Ariana Pradal at NID Bangalore

This delay was also due to the unexpected event of a one day workshop conducted by the Swiss design team involving all the students of the NID Bangalore campus. This was a hands-on workshop and it brought value to the students who were all busy in making working models of a "Letter Opener" concept directly by shaping materials, like "kalakars" and not in the more usual tradition of first making elaborate drawings before some crafts modelmaker creates a finished prototype. The direct shaping of materials is close to the hands and in my slogan for design, Hand-on Minds-on", this is a very critical part of being a designer, through working with ones hands, while exercising the mind. In conversation with Jignesh Khakhar who was working with me this time as an associate teacher on the DCC2008 course at NID Bangalore I outlined my insights about the kinds of people that were being attracted to design education and how the NID admissions systems seems to be skewed towards the selection of "chitrakars" at the exclusion of "kalakars", which is in my opinion a real loss for all of us. The spectrum of abilities and multiple capabilities that are desirable for design education could be classified as follows as an as yet incomplete list:
1. Kalakars: craftsmen who can work materials with ones hands
2. Chitrakars: artists and illustrators who can create images through drawing and painting techniques
3. Shilpakars: sculptors who can shape materials into image models in clay or other materials but with no joinery (usually)
4. Vastukar: planner and architect who proposes built spaces
5. Natyakar: dancer who uses the body and choreography to express form and message
6. Sutradar: storyteller and theatre performer who tells a compelling story
....... to name only the dominent categories from our experience at NID.

....... and now we have some more categories such as the "Digital Illustrator", "Software Programmer" and the just plain "Manager" wishing to become "Design Managers" with a booming market emerging for this last category and I still need to find an equivalent hindi name for these categories of design aspirants. All of them can be designers and design thinkers if the design education establishment acknowledges their skill sets and abilities and steers their foundation training to bring about a transformation in their abilities and attitudes towards change making in the real world which is one of the major roles of design action that wishes to shape the future in small and big ways. Therefore the levels of design action can go from dealing with the Tactical Level using skills and sensibilities of the designer, through the Elaborative Level by using market and trade values in many particular sectoral categories, through the Creative Level through the creation of breakthrough innovations and patent driven investments and lastly through the Strategic Level through the creation of new visions and the translation of systems level change that can help change a whole sector and shape the future in the process. My paper on Levels of Design Intervention explains this model and was written in 1998 for a conference in Barzil. The paper can be downloaded from this link below: Download:"Level of Design Intervention: as a pdf file 200 kb size.

Prof. M P Ranjan

DCC2008 at Bangalore: Three disciplines participate

Prof M P Ranjan

Image: The three groups that explored and mapped out the contours of Climate, Region and Culture.

Design Concepts and Concerns at Bangalore concluded yesterday morning with several students sharing their "Me Boards" or self maps with the class in the NID Bangalore Conference Room where all the lectures and group discussions are held. Earlier their assessment grades were finalised by Jignesh Khakhar and myself and these were submitted to the academic wing at Bangalore as well as to all students and coordinators as a three page pdf file. The report on the first assignment has already been posted in the Design for India blog as part of my report on the Bangalore visit and I will be posting the other assignments from Ahmedabad since the internet access speed in NID Bangalore was very poor during the first week at Bangalore and I did not have access to the internet in the evenings since the NID Bangalore Guest House is not connected to the web.

Image: Students of the NID Bangalore making group presentations of the first assignment. (click image to enlarge)

The theme was once again food and this time the macro survey included Climate, Region and Culture as the meta themes for brainstorming and Sensemaking" using the tools of modelling and discourse so that the team could plumb their own minds and life experiences to map out their current understanding of the assigned theme and the bias given to each group.

The post on the Bangalore visit can be seen at this link "Design for India" -Bangalore visit.

Prof M P Ranjan

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.