IFA exhibitions in Stuttgart and Berlin: NID’s Bamboo Initiatives and Design from India on show in Germany.

It is exciting to see design work on show as models, prototypes and installations – and particularly thrilling when Indian design is being appreciated and showcased in far away Germany. Bamboo products from the NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives are now being shown at the IFA Gallery in Stuttgart and later next month at their Gallery in Berlin. See the links to their website at this place below:
IFA Gallery, Germany

The National Institute of Design was invited to show bamboo furniture that was developed as part of the ongoing projects and research activities at the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI–NID) in their effort to position bamboo as a sustainable material of the future. The examples shown are drawn from a number of projects that were handled at the Institute by me and my colleagues, students and other partners in the field, especially our craftsmen and trainees from the BCDI, Agartala and elsewhere. These individual products may be seen as the tip of the ice berg, since each of these just represent a trace of a fairly large collection of products and design strategies tailored for specific contexts in India which have been developed in each of the initiatives that they represent. While some things about the design can be seen and touched there are numerous intangible aspects that can only be appreciated when they are seen in the context for which they were created. A full description of the strategies and the individual products as well as comments about the species of bamboo used in each exploration can be found in the writings and documentations that have been published from NID and the CFBI–NID in the form of books and CD ROMs that are available from the Institute. Several of these reports as well as product descriptions and photographs can be downloaded from my website at the Bamboo Initiatives links below:

Bamboo Initiatives
Beyond Grassroots
Bamboo Boards and Beyond
Katlamara Chalo
BCDI, Agartala

I will be discussing more about these Bamboo Initiatives on this blog in the days ahead and share how we have been using design as a vehicle to concretize our intentions of bringing development initiatives to communities and situations in India particularly for rural communities that are in need of some catalyst that can help them fend for themselves in a rapidly changing world that is increasingly globalised and in a manner that is both dignified and satisfying for them in many ways. That these aspects of design are not tangible in the exhibits is both a problem and a challenge for the design initiative and it would be appropriate for us to remember here that Germany is the home of both the Bauhaus (1919 – 1936) and the Hfg Ulm (1950 – 1968), both great design schools, nay great design movements, that showed the world the power and subtlety of design – from shaping form to structure, and from the creation of meaning and beyond – at one level a play of aesthetics and technology, at another economy and style and at yet another politics and philosophy and about the shaping and manifestations of a vision or intention – the shaping of culture itself.

The bamboo products are part of a larger showing that covers the Interior Design talents from India as part of an exhibit titled

in site
Interior Design in India

ifa Gallery Stuttgart: June 15th – August 12th, 2007
opening: June 14th, 2007
Charlottenplatz 17, 70173 Stuttgart, Germany

ifa Gallery Berlin:
August 24th – October 21st, 2007
opening: August 23rd, 2007
Linienstrasse 139/140, 10115 Berlin, Germany

Talking about the theme of the exhibition and of Interior Design from India, the organizers have this to say on their website and publication which accompanies the event –

“Young Indian interior designers use steel, stone, glass, wood, plastic and silk fabrics when creating homes and offices, bars and restaurants, hotels and shops. They combine high tech with craft artistry, Indian tradition with a modern, international lifestyle; they create spaces that unfold sensual qualities that go well beyond any Bollywood clichés.”

The exhibition presents examples of this in the form of work by the following designers and teams:
Canna Patel and Parul Zaveri/ Nimish Patel from Ahmedabad
Samira Rathod, Rajiv Saini and Shilpa Gore-Shah/Pinkish Shah from Mumbai and
Lotus Design Services from New Delhi (Ambrish Arora, Sidhartha Talwar, Ankur Choksi and Arun Kullu).
The Indian Institute of Interior Designers (IIID)
Their work and descriptions can be seen at the web links shown above.

The National Institute of Design show of bamboo furniture is but one part of this larger show in the exhibition. Our products are shown below with a brief caption about the product as well as the context for which they were created. each of these projects helped create many new products as well as train numerous students and craftspersons in the field. These experiences will be reflected upon in future posts.


1. Cube Stool: Designed to be made through mechanized splitting at Common Facility Centres (CFC’s) and later hand fabricated in several small scale production units located in the surrounding villages of Northeast India.
Designer: M P Ranjan.
Sponsor: DC (Handicrafts), Govt of India


2. Laminated Chair: Designed as part of the Bamboo Boards and Beyond project as well as the Systems design class at NID it is part of a collection of products that were used to demonstrate the future potential of laminated bamboo as a timber substitute for India.
Student designer: Mann Singh. Faculty Guide: M P Ranjan.
Sponsor: APCTT and UNDP, New Delhi


3. Rocking Horse: Designed specifically for production with local bamboo (Dendrocalamus strictus or Bambusa affinis) and local skills using very limited set of traditional tools and very low investments and the product also has to be easy to sell locally and use no metal hardware so that local craftsmen can easily become entrepreneurs rather than remain as wage labour. We could call this a “poverty buster” type of product due to its self-help character. (My father started his tiny toy factory in Madras in 1942 with almost no capital by making wooden rocking horses and grew it into a big business before his passing away in 1988 – this was a source of inspiration for this product – however that is another story)
Designers: G Upadhayay and M P Ranjan.
Sponsors: State Govt of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal and the BCDI, Agartala


4. Katlamara String Chair and Arm Chair: Designed to be made using the simple joint that can be made using a drill machine and a saw as well as in a knock-down construction for easy transport to local and upcountry markets it is part of a strategy to build local entrepreneurship in a village that grows bamboo.
Designer: M P Ranjan.
Sponsors: DC (Handicrafts) Govt of India, Northeastern Council, Shillong and the CBTC, Guwahati.

KaosPilot: A business school that teaches design? Are there lessons in this for India?

The most exciting business school that teaches management using design principles – KaosPilot – has established itself over the past 14 years and it is now expanding to other locations in Scandinavia and the rest of the World. The first school was located in Aarhus Denmark, founded by the visionary and tireless Uffe Elbaek, and it has now been expanded to new programmes in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands and plans are afoot to set up ‘outposts” in San Francisco and Durban, South Africa. What are the principles of their success and what are the lessons for India?

Traditional business schools teach using the “Case Method”
KaosPilot teaches using the “Immersive Method”.
see the KaosPilot Homepage KaosPilot Website

The products from the school, its students – the KaosPilots – are Creative, Self aware and Disciplined and are ready to address the needs and challenges of the “Social Entrepreneurship Sector” in the words of the founder, which is the fourth sector that is achieving prominence when compared to the other three sectors namely the government supported public sector, the corporate and private sector and the not-for profit voluntary sectors, all of which aim to do good for their respective stake-holders, but have come in for intense criticism from a number of sources in recent times. The KaosPilot story is now well documented in the book available in English titled “KaosPilot A – Z” which can be obtained from their website as well as from Amazon. Further the KaosPilot website itself is full of information and insights from the project work done by the students over the years, all documented in the “Flight Navigator” a Journal produced regularly by the school available from this link below.

Uffe Elbaek and the KaosPilots have discovered that design works best when used to address the needs of the ‘fourth sector’ – a new space where the boundaries between the Public sector (district, state and national), the Private sector (companies and corporations) and the Voluntary sector (the not-for-profit organizations) have blurred and become less distinct – and can now be dubbed the “new social arena” and the “for-benefit” sector, all in the public interest but managed in a professional and accountable manner by individuals, organizations, institutions and companies using the “triple bottom-line approach” to judge their performance. Organisations that are characterized by being self-financing as well as being social, ethical and environmental in their sense of responsibility and actions.

The KaosPilot curriculum is therefore derived from the need to be entrepreneurial in orientation; located in an arena that lies between the disciplines of arts, culture and business; using the approaches of being playful, real-worldly and street-wise with risk-taking that is balanced and compassionate; all of which sets the aims and goals that are larger that the self – in a three year programme that is divided into basics, specialization and innovation years. Real situations and challenges are addressed by students working in teams and in live contact with stake-holders to develop empathy and reality contact that are rooted in the personal mastery of the unique competency model that is the hallmark of the KaosPilot programme. The five fold competency model includes Professional, Social, Change, Action and Sense-making competencies all integrated into their creative project and business design assignments. Yes, business design. They are in the field of designing new businesses and not just in managing business as the MBA’s do in their traditional programmes around the world. This is where design principles get integrated into the process of creating great managers, young entrepreneurs capable of building great new businesses that are located squarely in the ‘fourth sector ideology’ for a rapidly changing and increasingly transparent world order.


Model of the Emerging Designer

Does India need this kind of shift – from managing to designing – looking at design opportunities rather than at problems and problem-solving, kindling a new mind-set and a new capability to bring imagination into our actions across the various sectors and regions? I am convinced that it does. Somehow for me the efforts of the KaosPilots in distant Denmark echoes the ethos and values that NID has been advocating and applying inside our own curriculum and project based education programmes over the past forty years. The value systems that have been cherished and the work culture that had been instilled in our NID undergraduate programmes during the past four decades too need to be examined and discussed in detail in the manner in which the KaosPilot story has been articulated in the Kaospilot A-Z book. We may need to move as a nation from – specification following tendering process – with the why-reinvent-the-wheel-attitude of our administration, to an innovation-driven and opportunity-seeking government action in the enormous area of social and public design action that could be supported by the huge investments taking place in the 230 sectors of our economy today that are in desperately in need of design. All this can be facilitated by our new National Design Policy and be made into a reality for our people. This is perhaps what we can take away from the KaosPilot story, how it can perhaps be done by trained “design managers” and not just by designers alone. What do you think? Are our management schools listening?

Links and References for download:
KaosPilot Homepage
KaosPilot Homepage
The fourth sector pdf file 222kb
The fourth sector
KaosPilot Publications link
Internal and external links for downloads about KaosPilot

The authors home page can be viewed at this link Prof Ranjan's website

KaosPilot: A business school that teaches design? Are there lessons in this for India?

The most exciting business school that teaches management using design principles – KaosPilot – has established itself over the past 14 years and it is now expanding to other locations in Scandinavia and the rest of the World. The first school was located in Aarhus Denmark, founded by the visionary Uffe Elbaek, and it has now been expanded to new programmes in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands and plans are afoot to set up ‘outposts” in San Francisco and Durban, South Africa. What are the principles of their success and what are the lessons for India?

Traditional business schools teach using the “Case Method”
KaosPilot teaches using the “Immersive Method”.

The products from the school, its students – the KaosPilots – are Creative, Self aware and Disciplined and are ready to address the needs and challenges of the “Social Entrepreneurship Sector” in the words of the founder, which is the fourth sector that is achieving prominence when compared to the other three sectors namely the government supported public sector, the corporate and private sector and the not-for profit voluntary sectors, all of which aim to do good for their respective stake-holders, but have come in for intense criticism from a number of sources in recent times. The KaosPilot story is now well documented in the book available in English titled “KaosPilot A – Z” which can be obtained from their website as well as from Amazon. Further the KaosPilot website itself is full of information and insights from the project work done by the students over the years, all documented in the “Flight Navigator” a Journal produced regularly by the school available from this link below.

Uffe Elbaek and the KaosPilots have discovered that design works best when used to address the needs of the ‘fourth sector’ – a new space where the boundaries between the Public sector (district, state and national), the Private sector (companies and corporations) and the Voluntary sector (the not-for-profit organizations) have blurred and become less distinct – and can now be dubbed the “new social arena” and the “for-benefit” sector, all in the public interest but managed in a professional and accountable manner by individuals, organizations, institutions and companies using the “triple bottom-line approach” to judge their performance. Organisations that are characterized by being self-financing as well as being social, ethical and environmental in their sense of responsibility and actions.

The KaosPilot curriculum is therefore derived from the need to be entrepreneurial in orientation; located in an arena that lies between the disciplines of arts, culture and business; using the approaches of being playful, real-worldly and street-wise with risk taking that is balanced and compassionate; al of which sets the aims and goals that are larger that the self – in a three year programme that is divided into basics, specialization and innovation years. Real situations and challenges are addressed by students working in teams to develop empathy and reality contact that are rooted in the personal mastery of the unique competency model that is the hallmark of the KaosPilot programme. The five fold competency model includes Professional, Social, Change, Action and Sense-making competencies all integrated into their creative project and business design assignments. Yes, business design. They are in the field of designing new businesses and not just in managing business as the MBA’s do in their traditional programmes around the world. This is where design principles get integrated into the process of creating great managers, young entrepreneurs capable of building great new businesses that are located squarely in the ‘fourth sector ideology’ for a rapidly changing and increasingly transparent world order.


Model of the Emerging Designer.

Does India need this kind of shift – from managing to designing – looking at design opportunities rather than at problems, kindling a new mind-set and a new capability to bring imagination into our actions across the various sectors and regions? I am convinced that it does. Somehow for me the efforts of the KaosPilots in distant Denmark echoes the ethos and values that NID has been advocating and applying inside our own curriculum and project based education programmes over the past forty years. The value systems that have been cherished and the work culture that had been instilled in our NID undergraduate programmes during the past four decades too need to be examined and discussed in detail in the manner in which the KaosPilot story has been articulated in the Kaospilot A-Z book. We may need to move as a nation from – specification following tendering process – with the why-reinvent-the-wheel-attitude of our administration, to an innovation-driven and opportunity-seeking government action in the enormous area of social and public design action that could be supported by the huge investments taking place in the 230 sectors of our economy today that are in desperately in need of design. All this can be facilitated by our new National Design Policy and be made into a reality for our people. This is perhaps what we can take away from the KaosPilot story, how it can perhaps be done by trained “design managers” and not just by designers alone. What do you think? Are our management schools listening?

Links and References for download:

KaosPilot Homepage
KaosPilot Website Contents

The fourth sector pdf file 222kb
The fourth sector

Other Publications from KaosPilot
Other Publications from KaosPilot

The moderator's home page can be viewed at this link Prof Ranjan's website

Design inside education: A strategy for India

Yesterday I was invited to speak to a group of school teachers at the Riverside School in Ahmedabad about the need for placing design inside education if we are to bring change and effectiveness to the way our children are groomed to face personal and professional challenges as they pass through the education processes in the days ahead. Riverside School
The pdf file of my presentation to the teachers can be downloaded from my website link here.

Riverside School is setting new standards for primary and secondary education in the city and it is being noticed for the change that their efforts and style of functioning is bringing to the behavior and confidence of their very young students. They seem to be doing something right. Founded in Ahmedabad by Kiran Bir Sethi – an NID design graduate – a graphic designer turned educationist, it is now showing clear demonstration of the results that can come from using design principles and sensibilities at all levels of the school’s functioning. The infrastructure, the curriculum, the style of teaching and the content and delivery are all child friendly and not parent or government dictated as most other schools in our region tend to be. Being a designer herself and an educator by experience and choice, she has been able to create a unique framework of relationships and models of action that are a test-bed for a innovative new school experience for both child and parent as well as for the teachers who choose to work with Riverside, and now more schools from far and near want to learn the methods and have signed up for teacher training and curriculum sharing arrangements and the influence is growing rapidly. Kiran has now launched a campaign to make Ahmedabad a child friendly city by a design strategy called “Aproch” which can be seen at this site below. The Riverside School with design inside now promises to make the city child friendly – and next the country? APROCH

So what is this “Design” that Kiran and her team are managing to put inside education at Riverside and is this something that can be extended to more levels of education across India. Last year I asked this question along with my teaching colleagues at NID when we set the theme of the “Design Concepts and Concerns” (DCC) course for the Foundation programme students at NID. The course that is now called DCC was previously labeled Design Process (DP), Design Methods or Design Methodology (DM) in the past having been borrowed from international traditions of Bauhaus and Hfg Ulm as well as the RCA driven movement in the UK in the 60’s but I changed the name after teaching it for many years when we realised at NID that design was not just about concepts and skills and techniques but it was also about feeling and values which were at the heart of all the thought and action, irrespective of the discipline and the field of enquiry. In this DCC2007 we chose the theme of “Design inside Education” and assigned five batches of students areas of focus that included “Pre-school education in India”, “Primary education in India in the Rural and Urban sectors” respectively and the other two groups looked at issues and perspectives that would influence the “Education of youth in India”, all based on their own fairly recent immersion in the Indian school system from their personal journey through it.

Students were taken through a series of assignments that I have outlined in my paper titled “The Avalanche Effect”, which can be downloaded from my website and these assignments took them through the DCC course from articulating and visualizing their personal experiences, their collective experiences by brainstorming, followed by model building to understand the structure and content of the educational system as it applied to each of the focus areas that were assigned to each of the five groups. The first assignment had them sharing with us their school experiences which revealed both the pleasures and the traumas of school systems in India as scenario visualizations, some elevating and others shocking by the expressions that were shared in the class. During the class we all made a trip to Riverside last year and our design foundation students were both surprised and excited by the fluency with which the little kids from Riverside took them through the school and explained its working methods and teaching content and style, all with a great deal of confidence and pride.


Model showing: Issues of Pre-Primary Education

The DCC class of 2007 that set about exploring, researching and imagining alternate scenarios that could help them build models and identify design opportunities across each of the school educations sectors that had been assigned. The models suggested deep understanding and empathy and these led to each group exploring numerous design scenarios that could transform the education sectors in India by addressing imaginative and innovative alternatives for infrastructure, products, procedures, services and communications opportunities in each of their groups assigned projects.


Model using a tree metaphor: Issues of Rural Primary Education

This five week assignment was for the student a journey through the design landscape from the macro and the micro perspectives which is in keeping with our design philosophy of macro-micro design action from policy to the very minute details, all of which have to be in perfect fit and balance if the design is to be truly successful as a whole and not to be seen as fragmented parts.


Model using "Nataraja" and Creeper metaphor: Issues of Youth Education and Renewal of existing systems

Education is just one of the 230 sectors in which design can be used at the macro-micro levels of action and I do hope that we see it being used more in India in then days ahead. Other themes in the past for this DCC course have been macro issues such as “Impact of Globalisation” (2004), “Khadi as an Ideology for Design” (2003), Retail as an Emegring Experience (2001), pictures of which can be seen at my website from this link below. Others which are not yet on the site include “Creative Industries of the Future” (2004), “Six Design Institutes for Six Regions of India” (2005), “Response to the National Design Policy for India” (2006), “Design inside Education for India” (2007) – each year we took a new theme and this went back many years, but are still to be documented, hopefully soon on this blog. For instance “Home Office and New Services” was the topic for the 1996 batch of foundation students which was particularly memorable, but others will also be reflected upon and discussed in the days ahead.

The author's home page can be viewed at this link Prof Ranjan's website

Global Warming and Design Concerns in India

While reflecting on a question, by Shimolee Nahar a young graduate product designer from NID and a member on the designIndia list, I made these suggestions for research and action in India. One question that came to my mind was – What are Indian designers doing today which is interesting and useful for the long term happiness of our planet? It would be good to have these documented and brought into sharp focus in all our design schools and also to see it percolating into the consciousness of all our professionals as a viable and exciting entrepreneurial option to a lucrative desk job within industry.

Global warming is now a popular fad. I had seen the Time magazine cover story on Global Warming as well as "What can we do about it" story that was included in that issue. You can see the story now online at the following links.
Time Magazine cover story
An interactive slide show and a link to the Time Magazine
“What you can do" story at their website.

Also recommended is Al Gore's documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth", on Global Warming and the YouTube commentaries that follow it in a lighter vein.

India Today magazine, which is delivered to my home every week, too followed up with a me-too story in the weeks that followed, but unfortunately their website is a subscriber only site, they still seem to be living in a Web 1.0 mindset with a closed access regime, I wonder when they will change.!! and adopt a Web 2.0 mindset.....of open access, interactive and user driven content....I hope soon.
India Today
You can access the full story if you have a subscriber number from the cover of their mailing envelope.

Yes, each of us needs to ask the question, "What can we do?" and as a group of designers the topic is of great relevance. The world is changing and the – DesignIndia forum – and platforms like this one can be used to share what we are doing in our individual and professional capacities and it may be good to have this all documented and shared with the policy makers in India as well as with each other. This will bring a mind-set change which we do need if we are to succeed in our efforts in the days ahead.

For instance Dinesh Sharma, an industrial design graduate from NID, is working as design consultant to an enterprise called “Furaat Rainwater Conservation” and he has created his patented design and technology for offering both new as well as retrofitted rainwater harvesting systems for homes and organisations in Ahmedabad which not many people that I met are aware of just now. Calls are already coming in for this application from Tamilnadu and Karnataka which are currently battling over the Cauvery water sharing dispute and I am sure that more will follow as the value that it provides seeps into our collective consciousness. You can see the work of Furaat at their website link on the left hand panel here.
Furaat Rainwater Conservation

There is the wonderfully insightful and significant initiative from Poonam Bir Kasturi in Bangalore and it is now expanding to Chennai through her "Daily Dump" domestic organic waste management system which can be seen at this link here.

You too can act now and get the – Daily Dump – installed in your own home as a demonstration and test proving site.

Nominated for the Index Award in 2007 it is already a wonderful achievement but we will await the results and progress of its adoption with great interest in the days ahead. The – Index website story – says, I Quote:
“Daily Dump – compost at home (India) Designed by Poonam Bir Kasturi.
Challenge: 70% of waste generated in urban homes in India is wet organic waste, which before was collected and composted. However, after having discovered that public-sector waste disposal service does not sort the waste, citizens have lost confidence in using it.
Solution: With the home composting product Daily Dump, organic waste can be managed at source. In addition, the design drawings, methods and processes will be available on the Internet, enabling local micro-enterprises to flourish and families to recycle their organic waste.”
Unquote

We do look forward to this design contribution from India getting global recognition that it deserves, great going Poonam.
Daily Dump on Index Awards
See also this World Changing link here.

I too have been working on these issues spread over the years along with a large team of design students and faculty colleagues at NID on bamboo as a sustainable material for the future as well as using bamboo as an avenue for equitable employment opportunities in rural India through our work at the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID. You can see some of the work documented at my website under the following links:
• Beyond Grassroots: BCDI links
• Katlamara Chalo links
• Bamboo Initiatives links
• Bamboo Boards & Beyond links
all accessible from my website link on the panel on the left: Prof Ranjan’s Homepage

The initiative that Mala and Pradeep Sinha have taken to experiment, design and build a sustainable water and energy conservation system at their high quality textile hand print and dye facility and design studio in Baroda comes to my mind, unfortunately, they do not have a full website link that I can share with you just now. However their studio, Bodhi can be seen at this link below:
Bodhi, Baroda

There are many many more that we do not know about since the design media is unfortunately only interested in glamour and glitz, it seems. We need to change that.

On these forums (DesignIndia list, Design with India, and Design for India, and others) we can help document all such initiatives and these could be showcased at the forthcoming CII-NID Design Summit 2007 so that some awareness and follow-up action can be catalysed in India using the design thinking that has gone into each of these cases. What do you think? Anyone who knows of any interesting and significant action in India or even small local initiatives of the use of design for such development and conservation intentions do send them in and I offer to collate all these into a collected research and share it with the interested people in the weeks ahead. If these are papers and web links that need to be explored these too can sent to me directly.

It is indeed time that we collaborate as a design community on this task and make a joint submission to government and industry so that the funds required for sustained research and exploration in such social and ecological sectors can be initiated and sustained. Others interested can join us in this effort. What do you think? This is just one of the 230 sectors in which much work needs to be done, and the time is now, particularly at a time when the Government has come forward and set up a National Design Policy and we must help in giving shape to the actions and value that can unfold from this progressive move.

230 Sectors of Economy for Design Action in India

We have been giving an assignment to our students in the "Design Concepts and Concerns" course since 1999 at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad that requires them to brainstorm and build a model of the Indian economy from the point of view of design opportunities that are embedded therein. The very fact that they address these broad perspectives in their foundation programme we feel that it would influence their career choices as the go forward in their education at NID and in their professional lives. These sectors are a mixed bag of industry types and service sectors where design is being used in India and these fall under several ministries of the Government of India.

Our list is actually longer than 230 in number but the figure is not an absolute one, give or take a few. However when we had built models of the sectors in the classroom, one of the groups had a logic for the number “230” by virtue of their categorisation effort and this figure has stuck in all my references ever since. These are shown in the diagrams shown here in low resolution in order to appreciate how we did this exercise and arrived at the list of categories for Design action in the Indian economy. I had included this description in an invited paper that was prepared for the Design Issues Journal (the special issue on India that has been released last year) but unfortunately my paper was turned down for lack of space. My paper was titled "Avalanche Effect.." (October 2002) and it was based on my course at NID and I had immediately released it on the PhD-Design list and one can search for "Avalanche Effect" there.
or download the paper from my website here.


The illustrations shown above include the Sectors of the Economy models by our students and I think the logic was as follows: two kinds of outputs - Products and Services: multiplied by five types - hardware, software, infrastructure, organisation and policy, procedures and business models – all applied across 23 broad sectors or ministries gives us 230 classes of sectors that could use design for development. (matrix of 5 broad fields x 2 types x 23 sectors = 230)

(5 fields: Nature, Society, Work, Life & Play)
(2 types: Products & Services)
(23 sectors or ministries – agriculture, health, industry, mining, ……)
see post below


This image is a map of the sectors using a city as a metaphor and the streets represent the ministries and sectors while the title is a call for a Ministry of Design, how insightful.

I do intent to take this further and make a full paper (when time permits) with a projection of the kinds of institutions that we will need to build in order to service this enormous task in India (and elsewhere) in the years ahead. I have already been involved in the design and establishment of three “schools of design" that address different sectors of the economy and this way we can find funding from different ministries and industry groups to make this happen as we go forward. The IICD, Jaipur is a school for the crafts sector in India, the BCDI, Agartala is a school for the bamboo sector in India and the Accessory Design Department at NIFT, New Delhi – for which I was an advisor – is a school for the jewelry, lifestyle & clothing accessory sector in India, we need many more such design initiatives. We still need to find the core of design capabilities that need to be at the centre of all these plans. We have reports on these initiatives that were prepared over the past ten years or more and these can directly download from my personal website link here.

We would explore this further as we go forward and in my view design still needs to be understood in the context of all this complexity in that days ahead. As you will see, this is not a fully developed theory as yet but it is something that we can work with towards a better understanding of design and to see its impact at the macro-economic level. I have placed a new model using my Hyderabad keynote to the HCI-USID 2007 conference last month on my post below and one can download this model of design opportunities and the brief list of design disciplines, design sensibilities and design knowledge which need to be part of any new school of design in the years ahead. I believe that besides designers we will need to open the field to managers and other specialists to use the discipline of design and this will be the general challenge in the days ahead. Bruce Nussbaum talks about the need to get CEO’s to adopt design thinking as a way of life in his recent blog post on BusinessWeek Online which is very heartening to hear from a management perspective. He is echoing the views of people like Roger Martin of Rotmans in Toronto and Uffe Ulbaek of the Kaos Pilot, Denmark as well as other thinkers such as G K Van Patter of NextD, New York who is advocating the shift to Design 2.0, a new collaborative space that addresses complex problems rather than specialization bound frames of thought and work.

I am currently interacting with a team of international experts on developing this list further and Dr. Ken Friedman, Denmark, Dr. Terence Love, Lancaster, UK, and Filippo A. Salustri, Toronto, Canada are cooperating online through the PhD-Design list as a team who are trying to take this forward as a well developed framework over the next few months of online collaboration. We will share the outcomes in public as soon as we are ready with our conceptual structure.

See also ...What is Design?

Fields of Design and Opportunities for India

Design opportunities need to be mapped across all 230 sectors of our economy and in a recent lecture at Hyderabad (see below) I had used a five fold opportunity matrix to set out one possible view of this indicative set. These included, at the macro level five terms that helped capture the field of possibilities in an easily comprehendible model that went from the marco to the micro levels of human activities on the planet and this would be useful for India at the policy level as well.

1. Nature: which would include opportunities dealing with earth, space & environment,
2. Society: opportunities dealing with culture, community, education and communication
3. Work: opportunities dealing with occupations, productivity and employment
4. Life: design activities leading to innovations in food production and processing, health and fitness
5. Play: those dealing with leisure, entertainment, media, sports and games


Model: Fields of Design and Opportunities for India

These design opportunities would need the designer to be empowered with knowledge sets from across a variety of fields as well as imbued with capabilities and sensibilities that can be used at the various stages of the design process, from goal setting and opportunity seeking, exploration and concept formation, scenario building and evaluation, business models and prototyping followed by detailed development, engineering and market delivery, all of which are critical and important if the innovation is to succeed in the particular context that it is to be developed in, particularly for India. These design sensibilities can be transmitted through good education models that can be adopted to reach across many disciplines and fields of expertise and these could be offered in multi-disciplinary frames at the university level as well at the school level so that design thinking and action become a natural capability of our society and not just be left in the hands of specialised designers who are today being trained in several selected specialisations within design schools. This would be a valuable way forward to build a creative society which can support a future economy that competes on innovation and knowledge applied in new and interesting ways that are both sustainable and exciting to generate great value in the near future.

Note: Model was created with Cmap tools developed by IHMC - A University Affiliated Research Institute, USA. More information about Cmap tools can be found from this link

Find out more....: What are Design Opportunities?