IDC at IIT Bombay
Microsoft Research
Faculty Summit 2006
July 17 – July 18
IDC at IIT Bombay
Content:
4 Mapping the design mandate at
IDC, IIT Bombay
4 Defining the ethos of design for
our purpose
4 User context relocated and
redefined – an epistemological
framework
4 The design process through
student projects
IDC at IIT Bombay
Introduction:
4 Mapping the design mindset at IDC,
IITB in context of a country finding its
foothold in a gradually industrializing
market: 1969-present
IDC at IIT Bombay
Indian Institutes of Technology
The IITs
4 Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Madras, Guwahati,
Roorkee, Kharagpur
IDC at IIT Bombay
Design Programs:
4M
4M
4M
4M
Des in Product Design – 1969
Des in Visual Communications – 1984
Des in Interaction Design – 2006
Des in Animation – 2006
4 Ph D in Design – 2004
4 B Des program from 2007
IDC at IIT Bombay
Industrial Design:
4 to develop skills, knowledge and
attitude among students to help become
creative problem solvers who can
effectively use different design methods
4 The students are encouraged to solve
socially relevant problems.
IDC at IIT Bombay
Industrial Design:
IDC at IIT Bombay
Visual Communication:
4 Visual communication in a developing
country with its varied cultural heritage &
socio-economic polarities has a vital role
to play.
4 The emphasis is on meeting the unmet
communication needs of community, for
which normally resources are not readily
available.
IDC at IIT Bombay
Visual Communication:
IDC at IIT Bombay
Cultural Tradition:
4 Understanding, assimilating and
innovating upon the rich visual
heritage of India and its design
traditions.
4 Research and Documentation
4 Analysis and Application
IDC at IIT Bombay
Core Areas:
4 Work of a ‘lasting nature’
rather than the trendy or the
transient
IDC at IIT Bombay
Unmet Needs:
4 Learning:
Schools, Children, Adults
4 Social Communications:
Health, Agriculture, Disaster management
4 Infrastructure and Communications:
Transport, Banking, Postal,
4 Indian Language Typography:
Multi-lingual communication
IDC at IIT Bombay
Major focus areas:
4 Designing for Children
4 Collaborative Environments
4 Digital Folk Tales
4 Interfaces for All
4 Designing for Rural Folks
4 Transportation Design
4 Green Design (Bamboo initiative)
IDC at IIT Bombay
Committed designers as intention:
4 who understand the value of design
as a tool for social development
4 value of design as a competitive
edge
4 50 graduate designers per year
in a country of 1 billion
Sphere(s) of influence
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Design for need:
4 Social Sector
NGO’s, Voluntary agencies
4 Design for Rural folks
ICT applications
Products and medias
4 Green Design
Bamboo initiatives
Alternate energy applications
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Design for need:
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Designing for Children:
4 Collaborative Environments
Play and learning
4 Stories and tales
Digitising folk tales
4 Games and puzzles
Communication devices
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Designing for Children:
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Interaction Design:
4 New Media Design
Gaming, Mobile technologies, e-Learning
4 Interface Design
Product Interfaces
Software applications
Communication devices
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Interaction Design:
IDC at IIT Bombay - influences
Indian Language Typography:
4 Development of Indian Language Fonts
Technology development for applying to
Indian Languages
4 C-DAC
Software companies
4 Major Publishing Houses
Newspapers – Ananda Bazaar Patrika
- Malayalam Manorama
Ethos of Design
IDC at IIT Bombay
Defining an ethos of design
for our purpose
4 Ananda Coomaraswamy (critical thinking)
4 Kapila Vatsyayana (critical thinking)
4 Pupul Jayakar (textiles)
4 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (crafts)
4 Rukmini Devi Arundale (dance)
4 John Keay (cultural history)
4 Romila Thapar (cultural history)
IDC at IIT Bombay
What students construe of design
as a philosophy:
4 the dilemma of the ‘cultural’
vs the ‘modern’
IDC at IIT Bombay
The blind spots and radical chic:
4 fudging the ‘relevant’ in design
cultural factors, social constructs,
user contexts, globalization……….
IDC at IIT Bombay
Dealing with blind spots to facilitate
the design process:
4 via a deconstruction of
terminologies
IDC at IIT Bombay
Globalization:
Boundaries and Milestones pushed by
broad, global-scale ambitions
late 1400’s
(Gutenberg)
Printing
Spain, Portugal( power
bases)
Start of mature markets
(West, Japan – post 1945)
Tordesillas Treaty (1494)
500 years
½ century apart
late 1900’s
(ARPA,Tim Berners Lee)
Internet
USA, EU, G8 (power bases)
Start of emerging markets
(BRIC’s developing countries)
Harvard Symposium
(1999)
source: Globalization: a brief history’,
Alex McGillivray, 2006
IDC at IIT Bombay
Globalisation: faultlines establishing
axes of supremacy:
source: Globalization: a brief history’,
Alex McGillivray, 2006
IDC at IIT Bombay
The connections between design
and globalization:
4 what were the key shifts?
Technology intersection patterns
(tangibles vs. intangibles)
IDC at IIT Bombay
What really changed?
4 Economically-determined to
Culturally-determined markets
Key shake-ups
4 Mature
markets
to
4 Emerging
markets
West and Japan
BRICs ( Brazil, Russia
India,China, others)
IDC at IIT Bombay
The shift from the mature to the
emerging markets:
4 what were the key paradigmatic
shifts guiding design?
4 Economically driven
Design paradigms
4 Culturally driven
IDC at IIT Bombay
key paradigmatic shifts guiding design:
Design paradigms
Design
predicators
4 Technology,
Engineering,
Visual Design
Product-driven
environment
4 Mindsets &
Worldviews
User-driven
environment
IDC at IIT Bombay
User context relocated
and redefined:
4 an epistemological framework
of inter-related conditions from
user-context
IDC at IIT Bombay
User-centric – cause and effect
factors:
4 Human behaviour
4 Social
phenomena
(External
Factors)
4 Cultural
practices
(External
factors)
4 Sensory-driven
psychobehavioural
(Internal factor)
IDC at IIT Bombay
Types of Holarchies:
Interior-Individual
Exterior-Individual
(concepts, symbols
emotions, perception)
(neuronal, neo-cortex (brain)
motor sensory, etc)
Interior Collective
Exterior Collective
(cultural practices
->worldviews)
(social phenomena ->
organisations, family, village,
division of labour, etc)
source:
Ken Wilbur: ‘A Brief History of Everything’,1996,
2001
IDC at IIT Bombay
The epistemological matrix..1
World views
Techno-econ base
Philosophical base /
Market Paradigms
- Foraging
Horticulture & Agrarian
- Physical /environmental
determinism
- Industrial
- Economic determinism
- Informational
- Cultural determinism
- Archaic
- Magic (imageries)
- Mythic
(gods & goddesses)
- Rational
- Existential
- Digital
reference:
Ken Wilbur: ‘A Brief History of Everything’,1996, 2001
source:
Ajanta Sen: ‘Culture and Technology’2004
IDC at IIT Bombay
The epistemological matrix..2
World Views
- Archaic
Civilisational attributes
Invention of language = beginning of human race
- Magic (imageries)
- Mythic
(gods & goddesses)
Invention of writing = beginning of classical civilization
- Rational
Invention of printing = beginning of modern civilization
- Existential
Invention of computing = beginning of post-modern civilization
- Digital
reference:
Donald Robertson: ‘Phase Change’, 2006
source:
Ajanta Sen: ‘Culture and Technology’2004
IDC at IIT Bombay
The epistemological matrix..3
World Views
Techniques for approaching
study of users
- Archaic
Explosions / informationhandling techniques
Signs, symbols
Invention of language
- Magic (imageries)
Invention of writing
- Mythic
(gods & goddesses)
- Rational
Information Ages
- Market survey driven
(market-centred)
Invention of printing
- Ethnographic Driven
(user-centred)
Invention of computing
- Existential
- Digital
reference:
Ken Wilbur: ‘A Brief History of Everything’,1996, 2001
source:
Ajanta Sen: ‘Culture and Technology’2004
IDC at IIT Bombay
The epistemological matrix..4
World Views
Styles / aesthetics
Movements way of life
Markets
(i)(organization & size) (ii)(composition)
- Archaic
- Magic (imageries)
- Primitive
- Mythic
(gods & goddesses)
- Rational
- Existential
- Digital
- Modernism
- Post-Modernism
- Ecological / Green
- Digital / Cyber
Virtual
- Transnational
MonolithicCentralized
Eurocentric
traditional
mature markets
(West, Japan &
Asia)
- Multicultural
emerging
Multinational &
markets
centralized
(BRIC)
Globalisation
Developing World centric
reference:
Ken Wilbur: ‘A Brief History of Everything’,1996, 2001
source:
Ajanta Sen: ‘Culture and Technology’2004
IDC at IIT Bombay
User context relocated
and redefined:
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
the mechanistic
the objective/functional
logico-scientific
cause-and-effect
mapping paradigm
(Modernism)
empirical
product-centric
mature markets
economic determinism
the West and the ‘other’
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
4
4
4
4
4
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.
4
4
4
4
4
the organic
the subjective/emotional
reflexive/interpretive
the narrative
the mapmaker’s paradigm
(post-Modernism)
experiential
user-centric
emerging markets
cultural determinism
an Indian-ness vs. ‘the other’
source:
Ajanta Sen: ‘Culture and Technology’2004
IDC at IIT Bombay
Outlining an essential ‘Local-ness’
of the user and product as the key
identity issue for design
4 the search for principles of
universals as well as cultural
specificities
reference:
Richard Lannoy: ‘The Spaeking Tree’, 2003
IDC at IIT Bombay
The design process:
4 mapping design principles onto
user context, not vice versa
IDC at IIT Bombay
Towards a design solution:
4 design process sequence and
design mappings (situated-ness,
ethnography, history of
technology etc., as some of the
working aids to understand a
design problem)
User
interaction/
feedback
4 Identify design problem
4 Search for design opportunities
4 Cross-mappings to locate user context
4 Ideate for concepts
4 Iterate and Prototype
IDC at IIT Bombay
The design process:
4 Demonstrating the design
process through recent
applications in student projects
on Interaction Design
Marine Drive:
Marine Drive
An Expressive Enhancement
Prarthana Hariharan, Aditi Babel, Hemant Kumar, Anand Prahlad
Kotachiwa
di:
IDC at IIT Bombay
In conclusion:
4 finding ‘neverland’ for that
magical ‘something’ as a bridge
to the user’s mind
4 recognizing the passage from
design problem to design solution
as a design journey with students
Thank You
Marine Drive
An Expressive Enhancement
Prarthana Hariharan, Aditi Babel, Hemant Kumar, Anand Prahlad
Chowpatty Beach
Spatial Observations
Node points
Charni Road
Marine Lines
Marine Lines
Wankhede stadium
Nariman point
Marine Lines
Light of the people
Light of the people
Marine Lines
Sacred Spaces
Zones of silence are created where people can
meditate or just appreciate the silence.
Marine Lines
Noise cancellation technology
The devices are integrated within seating devices.
Windows to the world
Acting as a giant global telescope, Windows to the
world acts as a lens to the other side of the planet.
Marine Lines
Using broadband technology
Panoramic vista is generated.
Marine Drive:
IDC at IIT Bombay
In conclusion:
4 finding ‘neverland’ for that
magical ‘something’ as a bridge
to the user’s mind – recognizing
the passage from design problem
to design solution as a design
journey with students
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