By Ninad Panse
Need:
Industry around the world including India over the last century has undergone a see change in engineering field. From Industrial revolution to wearable electronics – variety of changes have been seen in the society. Automation and Software industry has played an important role in this change.
Industry has realized what is missing is the “Glue” between Engineering and consumer expectations! Design as field sits in-between the Engineering and Marketing world and gives the required edge to the business to meet the consumer needs!
Design by simple definition is Form, Function and Feeling, which culminates into Art, Science and Empathy in product and services. Design leads into Story Telling!
Today with heavy industrialization and mass production differentiators can be created by Design! Simple, Friendly, Empathetic, Emotional and Intuitive ecosystem defines presence of Design.
Background:
Design has deep roots in culture, society and traditional art. Design by nature is about sharp observation. Design needs Inspiration. Design needs out of box exploration. Design connects abstract to practical. Design needs connect with Laws of nature! Design is the manifestation of form in physical or the digital world!
Based on the different dimensions of design it is evident that to capture it in books would mean limiting the scope!
Historically, most education systems and universities could not bring the art and natural sciences in one subject matter and hence it is uncommon to see design as subject in traditional Universities.
At a fundamental level – Design Education is about innate individual experience of learning.
With Industry demand for the “Glue” between Engineering and Marketing the subject of Design has found relevance now in the Education world.
Positioning:
Children with artistic skills and strong connect with society were driven to become commercial artists and or architects by parents. Children know they are close but still not close enough to their area of interest!
Welcome to Design Education!
History:
University system, which is driven by Curriculum and set Syllabus, could not easily take up the Experience, Empathy and Environment in one go! Very few education institutes took the risk to build a “process” to capture creativity. Most of the institutes who started Design education, in the teaching process were learning about the curriculum! Except probably the age there was not much difference between the teacher and the student! Most often the student questions were defining the path of design education.
In India we have National Institute of Design – which started in 1961 – with Ministry of Industries. As expected very few students in the initial years and slowly the design domain found takers. Learning from NID has been that parents pushed their children to do a “Regular” education as foundation and then do the post-graduation with NID – low risk!
From 2003 onwards we have seen many institutes coming up with design education – SID (Pune), MITID (Pune), Srishti (Bangalore), DSK (Pune). Some of the recent ones have been DJ Academy, ISDI Parsons, Pearl, Raffles, UCEED to name a few.
With introduction of state private universities many universities across India are offering courses in Design.
Some of the Popular Design courses are: Product Design, Transportation Design, Graphic Design, Game Design, Interaction Design, Fashion Design, Furniture Design, Interior Design.
In any case, the fundamental course amongst all of them is Product Design!
Demand for Design Education:
With over supply of Engineering talent and Management graduates – students are looking for “Other Avenues” of Education. Rather off late, with well to do families and with education loan available – migration to other countries for undergraduate education is common to destinations like USA, UK, Germany, Russia, France, Singapore, Australia and Ukraine. From a long term planning for the students work permit constraints in many countries is no go! Hence specific options within India are being sought after.
Further, with national level entrance exams for architecture and constraints on the number of seats available – students are grappling for options!
Design at this time is not highly regulated and the field of education in that context is new – combination of Art and Science! The numbers of private universities are mushrooming and each one is looking for offering courses, which are unique, hence see a lot of them are in liberal arts and design.
Design is a career of heart or career of passion, which has combination of:
– Humanities: art, literature, linguistics, philosophy, religion, ethics, music, speech, theater
– Social Sciences: history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, business informatics
– Natural Sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth sciences
– Formal Sciences: mathematics, logic, statistics
Depth of subjects will be defined by the specialization in Design field. Visual thinking, Empathy, Feedback, Ideation, Prototyping, testing are principal components of design education and all these elements have human centered approach!
Industry Connect:
The most successful schools are the ones, which deal with real problems of society and industry from the beginning of the course– and if industry is on campus – learning becomes practical! Trainers from industry, Master classes from Industry, long projects from industry and Internship in Industry is the recipe for successful budding designer!
In Conclusion:
India needs designers in all walks of life!