DCC2008 PG at NID Gandhinagar: Theme FOOD

Image: Day one at Gandhinagar for students for five PG disciplines of LAD, ADM, Toy, SDM and New Media. Class in progress in the old auditorium.

Over the past few weeks Rashmi and I discussed the theme for the DCC2008 PG class and we decided that Food would be an appropriate one for this year across all four modules to be conducted at Gandhinagar, Paldi and Bangalore campuses. Last Saturday we met again with Harini and developed the set of assignments and a tentative schedule for all the assignments to be handled by the groups as well as individually. The first assignment this year would be the one dealing with what we already know about a given subject to be discovered through a deeply involved process of brainstorming followed by finding a suitable structure through a negotiated round of debates and discussions on the discovered concepts and the making of a meaningful structure. This agreed structure would be further visualized in the form of a expressive model in the form of a metaphor that could be used to share the groups understanding with the rest of the class and the teachers. This presentation is scheduled on Wednesday, 16 July 2008 in the presentation space at Gandhinagar.

Image: Theme structure for Food and the rich texture of street food vendors in Bangalore City as captured by Rajesh Dangi on his blog Bangalore Daily Photo.

The preparation of the individual “Me Boards” would be done by each student in the evenings when the group is not in session with each of them taking time off to take a deep look at themselves with a particular emphasis on their belief systems and their known taboos. Based on this introspection they would create avisual representation of themselves using a composite image and word map that can capture the findings in a manner that could be shared with the class. This image would be then resolved into a high resolution jpeg image file either by scanning of an original artwork or by the conversion of the digital composite file that has been created in any software of their choice. This jpeg image will be deposited and submitted in a shared folder called DCC2008 on the Gandhinagar UNSECURE server for review in the class on 17 July 2008 when we meet again for the second lecture on the role and processes of information gathering in the design process.
The outline of our intentions in choosing this particular theme for this series of courses are stated on the two blog posts on Design for India. These can be accessed from these links below:
DCC2008 Theme Food: Design with participation and discourse
Food and AnthroDesign: Approaches and Attitudes for India

Business Models for Designers: Learning from the Field

"Business Models for Designers: Learning from the Field" from the DCC class was featured in Core77.com web portal for Industrial Design and we shared it with our students with much excitement in class.

Last week the undergraduate students of my Foundation class at NID, called “Design Concepts and Concerns”, studied business models as part of their programme of study in order to understand design theory and practice that is included as a core subject at the end of their first year at the school. Organised into five working groups, they fanned out from the Institute in search of small street food vendors located in many parts of Ahmedabad city and each group observed and studied one particular type of food vendor, each using their designer sensibilities and the designer tools and skills of drawing, observation, interaction and interviewing, all done in the field at the place of work, creating a platform for learning from the field. This kind of learning would stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives since design knowledge and insights are usually hard earned from the field through sensitive observation as insights about the future are rarely found in books and other resources that are usually considered sound sources of knowledge in the fields of science and technology.

They had to first break the ice and introduce themselves as well as their project intentions and try to muster the cooperation of the busy street vendors to get them to share their experiences as well as their insights about the business that they managed, all done in a fairly hostile space of the unrelenting street environment, which in many cases is not entirely supported by the local laws and the local and national law enforcement agencies. Last year the Supreme Court of India had instructed the Government of Delhi to take immediate action to ban all street food vendors under the current laws of the land and this had raised an uproar from a number of concerned citizens and activist groups across the country. Karmayug, a local NGO in Mumbai has done very detailed work on the management and facilitation of street vendors in Mumbai since they do serve a real need in the crowded Metro which cannot and will not be met by the organized retail sector in India. However, from these studies it is clear that these street food vendors negotiate an existence in this difficult space and manage to build up a steady source of income and from a start-up mode with very little investment they work hard to establish a credible business and in many cases a lot of good-will and business partners such as their suppliers and their regular clients in the field. Many of these individuals are eventually successful in managing their lives and earning a good living, good enough to tend for their family and give their children a platform from which they could launch themselves to positions of advantage that the parents did not enjoy in their lifetime. This is a great way to beat poverty by using ones own efforts and determination and this is an informal channel that can be used by the under-privileged, the poor and the desperate people living in the edge of the city to fend for themselves when neither industry nor governments can do very much to help them survive or thrive. StreetFood.org is a great resource that discusses the various issues that pertain to street food in the developing world or as they say the Global South. The Seminar Magazine had discussed this topic in great depth in one of their issues and the debate is far from over in India and across the world, it seems.

Indian cities are full of such hard working and imaginative settlers who having migrated in search of work from our villages to our cities and they have managed to eke out a livelihood in an imaginative manner with no capital and with a determination that is truly amazing. They build up local contacts, live in slums or shanty towns to start with their city lives and then some of the more successful ones move on to build major businesses across many sectors depending on the opportunity that they find or what they learn through their many experiences in the city. Our Foundation students were assigned to study five such street food vendors by working in teams and the pictures that follow show the presentation that the groups have made after a three day sojourn in the field, deep learning and a great many insights about business in design and the business of design.

Our students looked at the following street food vendors and the pictures below show a glimpse of the presentations made by each group. I am requesting each group to fill in their insights as comments attached to each section and I hope that they will contribute to make the experience a rich and rewarding one for all of us in the days ahead.

1. Street Tea vendors (The Chaiwallah),
2. Omlette makers using chicken eggs (Omlettewallah),
3. Fried Bhajiya makers using potato in pea-flour batter (Bhajiyawallah),
4. Paav Bhaji wallah (Fried Bread and mashed vegetables),
5. Pani Puri wallah (Puffed Puris from wheat flour with a sweet-sour dip)

All of these are favorite Indian street foods, all served from “Laris” or informal carts, by small and micro business enterprises, each run by a poor but determined individuals who is trying to build a livelihood in a harsh socio-economic environment. We asked the student to avoid established stalls run from built spaces and to focus on small street based enterprises which can be seen and understood as a whole business enterprise.

Business Models from the Field: Chaiwalla.com and DCC

Learning about Business Models from the Field: The Chaiwalla.com assignment and DCC
Image: Prof. M P Ranjan explaining the Systems Design Model to the DCC class. This four stage process includes User studies, Scenario Visualisation, Concept Detailing and Business Model development.
Several years ago, as part of the DCC course, we realized that strategy and planning were as important as concept and product detailing if a particular set of design offerings were to be successful in the marketplace. Unlike technological innovations and science innovations which can be proven in the laboratory or be subjected to peer reviews for validation, design innovations and design offerings are of a class that can be measured and the success of which can only be tested in the marketplace and this makes it truly complex to prove. The producers who have almost the same quality of product on offer can only differentiate their offering by the thoughtful development of their business models. So we see objects being converted into a service offering through a lease finance model or a service being dematerialised through the use of technology and the shift could be in either direction and the winner is the one who can capture the imagination of the consumer and offer a special convenience that the other is not able to offer.

Learning business processes is seen as the exclusive domain of the management graduate and not that of the designer, however as teachers at NID we realized that without this knowledge being integrated into the product creation and development process, the impact of the new product or service offering would be essentially incomplete. This led to the creation of the four stage systems design model that I presented at the CII-NID Design Summit in 2001. This model was several years in the making and was an implicit part of the DCC assignments over many years before it got formalized in the Design Summit paper and presentation which is called “Cactus Flowers Bloom in the Dessert”.( download pdf: Part 1 of 3.6 MB and Part 2 of 4.6 MB and paper of 123 KB) Much earlier, in 1998 we had asked a group of students in the DCC class to go out onto the streets of Ahmedabad and study several street food vendors in working groups and come back to the class with an understanding of their business processes and strategies. We called it the Chaiwalla.com assignment and it was an instant success since we realized that the students were indeed able to observe, interact and understand the structural, functional and performance attributes of the business particularly since these were small and micro enterprises that were managed and effectively carried out by one entrepreneur with a small team of supporters, many from within the family itself. We have offered this assignment to all batches since then and the learning from the explorations and presentation that go across three or four days is very rich indeed. The contacts in the field, we found, were also open to share much information and insights with the students, but there were others who were either suspicious or indifferent to the needs of the students. On their part the students learned how to be diplomatic and deal with the very public interactions with care and empathy. Besides learning about fieldwork and about gathering information first hand from the live subjects the students also developed insights about start-up entrepreneurship and how some of these individuals learned to cope with poverty and to deal with it rather effectively. The revelation that the students usually came back with was that some of these individuals earned more each day than their teachers, their own parents in some cases or even officers in very respectable and well known large business enterprises.

The assignment that evolved over the years included the forming of five or six groups, each being assigned to research one kind of street food vendor through direct contact and observation in the street. Students were briefed about various issues to be kept in mind while making these field observations and in the interviews that followed The criteria for the selection of the vendors would be based on a quick survey of a number of such vendor locations and to seek out the ones that were basically cooperative as well as those who provided some significant attribute such as proximity to public facilities, apparent success by the customer draw that was exhibited in the preliminary observations, and the presence of other differentiators which the group feels would be worthy of deeper examination. Over the years we have had our students look at Street Tea vendors (The Chaiwallah), Omlette makers (Omlettewallah), Fried Bhajiya makers (Bhajiyawallah), Paav Bhaji wallah (Fried Bread and mashed vegetables), Golla wallah (Crushed ice on a stick), Pani Puri wallah (Puffed Puris with a sour dip) and so on, all favorite Indian street foods, all served from Laris or informal carts, by small and micro business enterprises, each run by a poor but determined individuals who is trying to build a livelihood in a harsh socio-economic environment.

Each group of students are required to make repeated visits to the chosen locations for observation and use the insights to model the flow of resources, finances and build an understanding of the visible as well as intangible assets and processes that have been incorporated to make the particular business a success. Through the interviews that are also required to get an understanding of how the story pans out across the year or a longer period and in some cases get an understanding of the history of the establishment and its various successes and periods of crisis, of which there are many being so exposed to the vagaries of the street environment that is at once full of opportunity as well as challenges. This collective understanding is to be mapped out using the group processes of discussion, dialogue and modeling from which would emerge a coherent model that can be worked into a suitable metaphor that can be used to share their understanding with the rest of the class. The students would be required to make a rich visual representation of their model in the form of a wall size poster for presentation and this would be used as a prop to explain the concepts that they have gathered about the particular business that they have studied. Teachers use this opportunity to connect the students to possibilities for further study and they are in turn quite ready to follow up on these leads since the learning from the field is quite deep and highly motivating as well. We look forward to seeing how this particular batch respond to the field study challenge particularly since it happens across the Holi festival weekend with all its associated distractions, but we are sure that they would stay focused and get the job done in time. Only time will tell.