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.

Design Scenarios: Water based Design Opportunities

Image: A visit to Calico Museum as part of the DCC course in 1999 by Debashree in an assignment created to teach scenario visualisation, learning by doing.

Background: Scenario visualisations in Design
Scenario visualisations can be made at any stage of the design journey. In the early stages these are typically rather abstract and with a low content of details, although some parts may be vividly expressed if these components or parts are already clearly conceptualized due to either historical reasons or if the larger scenario is being around this part which is already. Design visualizations can cover many attributes of the system that is being modeled. Some could show the structural and formal attributes of the system while others can go on to include an expression of several intangible aspects as well as those that can be seen and felt. These can also include the relationship between the components of the system and help give us an overview of the total system which is a perspective that would need to be considered when taking major decisions at the design stage itself. Many strategic decisions need to be taken at an early stage and these scenario visualizations provide the framework for appreciating the particular solution that is on offer. Several alternate scenarios can be examined before taking a particular decision and some decisions may not be reversible without incurring a huge cost or effort and therefore these need to be subjected to much advance planning and participatory modes of decision making in a democratic framework. Our cities and its future can be determined by a design process that is both visible as well as informed by expert action if we were to adopt a way forward that could accommodate such processes that may be required to make visible major infrastructure offerings as well as details of cost and impact assessments, all done in a manner that can be appreciated by the common man in the street. This means that the language of discourse would need to move from economic models in an abstract mathematical formulation to a more visibly appreciated modeling system that can show and tell the intended structures and the affects on our lives. It is here that scenario visualization in the form of picture stories or rich picture representations can make a huge difference to our understanding of the complex phenomena that go into many such projects of public good.

In our attempt to teach the art of scenario visualization we devised an assignment that could get the involvement of an entire class of design students at a high level of motivation while undertaking these experiences. The introductory phase of the scenario visualization assignment has the student sharing with the class, in one composite rich picture, an introduction to themselves in an attempt to show who we are. This assignment is the first of many visualization tasks done by the design student jn the DCC course and here they are expected to introspect and identify aspects of their lives that have significantly contributed to shaping their attitudes and abilities as they are today. Students are them asked to express their imagination in the form of images in juxtaposition on a single sheet of paper which they could use to tell their story of themselves. This is a first experience in show and tell about something that they are very familiar with already, themselves. The next stage is the experiencing of an interesting space or event in the city which can be done as a group and after the immersive experience the students are aslked to represent the experience in all its facets, again as a single rich picture representation that can be shared with the whole class. This time the event or space that is visited is common for all the students but it becomes clear that each student brings back their own point of view that is unique and which is shaped by their past experiences as well as their belief systems and cultural roots when it comes to styles of representation chosen. Going from a familiar but usually ignored representation of the self to a common space with different points of view are quite revealing when taken together for a discussion.

Image: DCC2008 students admiring Debashree's 1999 scenario artwork in my office today.

Calico Museum Visit and the DCC Course
The students are then given topics that they could examine in depth through the processes of group brain-storming and modeling in order to make sense of the complex interplay of factors that influence the situations that are being studied. These processes too lead to visual modeling of a variety of kinds and at the end of these collective journeys the students build a model that helps categorise the forces that influence the situation as well as discover a metaphor that can give meaning and a memorable setting for the structure that is discovered by the group. These structures are not sacred truths but are tentative offerings that can be discussed and debated leading to appropriate modifications, but as they stand they represent the current understanding of the situation and this does bring a great deal of clarity to the complex situation that is being handled by the group. In the DCC class of 1999 we asked the students to visit the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad and after an immersive experience of that visit they were asked to make a rich picture scenario of their visit with all the details shown in one large format picture. The experiences that were sequential are now represented in a spatial manner with images juxtaposed and expressed on one single sheet and the variety of expressions were truly staggering. At the end of the major assignment the students are once again asked to show the design opportunities that they had imagined and this time they are to express a scenario of a pure imaginative landscape and an expression of the possible future with all the associated details that would make it both viable as well as desirable. This is a great introduction to design scenario visualization that can be used in all attempts to model the future solutions and make these visible to an interested and informed audience with a certain degree of credibility.

Image: DCC Blackboard with the assignment description as a structure model.

Water based Design Opportunities for India
This year we have assigned the mapping of Design Opportunities with Water in each of five geographic regions of India. Each student from the respective group would choose one specific design opportunity in which they have a personal conviction and through a process of imagination, dreaming and exploration build a visual scenario that can be shared with the class as an image in a show and tell mode of presentation. Each group would meet in a round table presentation for a per review and feedback session where the visual scenarios would be presented and based on the feed back from the group members each student would send in a 200 word email to describe their scenario and the specific design opportunity that they have developed for the future keeping a 15 year time horizon for having built an enterprise to roll out the design into the real world. We look forward to seeing all the presentations and to sharing it with the world through this blog in the near future.

For further reading look at this paper on Design Visualisation from my website. (pdf file 691 kb)

Design Journey: Styles and modes of thoughts and actions in design

Image: Design Journey: Thoughts and actions in design
The design journey starts in the mind and in the senses with the first perception of an interesting relationship and pattern that is triggered like the “stone in the pond” metaphor suggests. The ripples that are generated by the impact of the first sensations start a flow of excitement and this results in a dual process of exploration and inploration, an outward looking and pattern seeking behavior as well as an inward looking insight seeking behavior, both working in tandem. Exploration is much like that of an explorer wandering in an unknown territory and the search and research is done with a high degree of motivation seeking insights and nuggets of knowledge with all the curiosity and motivation that drives such a search for new knowledge. The inward journey which I call inploration is not just made up of a string of images being manipulated in the mind but these include numerous sensory inputs and information that is drawn from all the sensory sources of touch, smell, taste and feel as well as being informed by memory and prior knowledge that is made available in a non-verbal mode, with deep feeling and sensitivity.

Each surge of exploration is accompanied by a corresponding set of inplorations and these together produce a number of insights that are gathered and held in what I call the designers antennae, a a collective phrase for the reservoir of sensory and imaginary information that collectively leads to produce a degree of conviction in the direction and content of the design journey. The nature of design thinking goes through a variety of phases and these thinking styles and modes would change according to the stage in the particular design journey that is being undertaken. These modes of thought can be iterative and the designer is usually quite comfortable with a great deal of ambiguity that would need to be faced all through this kind of exploration and articulation. Starting with clarifying intentions through some pretty focused and also fuzzy explorations using intentional thinking the design journey would progress to the establishment of categories and a degree of order in the understanding of the design space. This would be done by repeated bouts of brainstorming and categorization till a suitable framework for the structure of the design space is developed and modeled. This process is not straight forward but could be like a meandering stream that flows through the terrain of the design landscape exploring the context and the trends are gleaned to inform further action in the form of tentative and later more definite insights that would feed into the designers convictions about the nature of the design opportunity. A variety of approaches are explored and these would be tested periodically at both the macro as well as the micro level of detail. The macro would inform the designer of the viability of the approach while the micro details would provide approaches to the numerous possibilities that would be available in the choice of materials, structure, form and performance attributes that could be taken up for further refinement at the stage of taking firm decisions.

A number of analytical tools could be adopted by the designer and these would be typically drawn for a host of disciplines and fields of human knowledge and depending on the nature of the task the knowledge could be from any domain that is found relevant and usually there us no hard and fast boundary for what would be considered a valid field to be included in such a journey. Access is important and the constraints of cost, access, ability of the designer and his team would usually determine what is included and what is excluded in the scope of the design journey. These explorations and inplorations would continue till the designer feels comfortable with the quality of the concepts or when the deadline for decision draws near when in a creative leap of motivated imagination a number of concepts are offered for examination and subsequent testing and evaluation. This is done through a unique set of thought patterns that move from explorative and generative in which many alternatives are thrown up and this is followed by rapid and deliberate combinatorial explorations which tend to produce a situation for the incubation of new and interesting patters in a creative leap of imagination and expression. All through these explorations numerous external representations are produced and set aside, rarely documented, but all of these produce traces in the mind that are rich with insights and these move quite explicitly form being abstract to being increasingly tangible in their form and treatment. For instance early expressions may take the form of deedless and later ones in the form of more explicit diagrams and even three dimensional expressions which too would move from soft models to a more hard models with defined contours and attributes. Cascading decisions are taken all along this journey and the early decisions are usually strategic in nature while the later decisions are of a more tactical nature and would deal with numerous details that would need to be resolved to make the concept fit the context which will be in constant review. However once the design action is taken in a reflexive space the act is done and it is usually out of the hands of the designer and only the consequences would be attributable to the designer and the final outcome could be either success or even disaster if the context were to change dramatically with the designer having little control on these outcomes.

While all these explorations are in progress the designers emotions too would go through a roller-coaster ride with all its associated ups and downs, and at some stage even an extreme low in confidence and conviction which could lead to the project itself being dropped or delayed by being set aside till the circumstance or opportunity were to change for the better. This can be a very lonely journey even when one works in a team unless there is a good deal of external representation the various team members would have no access to the designers imagination and therefore would not be able to share in the associated convictions that the design thinker would have generated at any particular stage of the design journey. The impact of the design outcome is compared to the effect of a well managed fire, being beneficial, however if the factors are out of control the results could be a disaster, but the designer would still be responsible for the consequences and this can be quite painful indeed. In the review of the numerous decisions the design journey would involve evaluative thoughts that are reflective in nature and decision making is by judgment and not just by the accumulation of facts and evidence that would be used to justify a particular decision. The compositions that are offered in design are one in many options and there are no correct answers and it is the judgment call of the designer that is valued in most cases although many clients would insist on the use of many systematic decision tools even if they have a limited relevance.