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?