Looking back : Visitors to Design for India

One and a half years on, looking back at the stats of visits, visitors and page views on the Design for India blog.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image 1: Graph of visits, visitors and page views on the Design for India blog over the past 18 months.

As the year 2008 winds down with a sharp fear of worldwide recession that has been sweeping the global financial markets we have a chance to look back at the year that was in the context of this blog about Design for India. Design it seems is drawing growing attention from around the world and in particular Design for India has shown a growing trend in terms of visits, visitors and page views that have been clocked over the past 18 months that this blog and its visitors have been actively monitored across a few parameters of interest.

Image 2: Visits to Design for India from 115 cities across India.

Where do the visitors come from?
The single largest block is from India and I am happy for that since it tells me that interest in design is growing in India and that internet users too are getting to visit a site about Design for India. However it is a bit disturbing that most of these visits are from the major metros although there is still an unaccounted set that could be coming from small towns these do not show up in the Google Analytics view of cities from which the traffic is seen. 115 cities in India have accounted for 23,878 visits and bulk of these came from Ahmedabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Going down the list of cities it is gratifying to see small towns in remote areas listed and we do hope that the message from this blog will reach more schools and workplaces across India where it really matters in the year ahead.

Image 3: Visits from 52 regions of the USA.

The second biggest block of visits comes from the USA and all 52 Regions have shown visitor traffic of 8268 visits and here California, New York, Illinois, Texas and Florida rake in the major share as the top five regions for visitors to the Design for India blog. These 52 regions include as many as 1943 cities with Los Angles and its suburbs, New York, San Francisco and Chicago contributing the largest number of visitors from the USA.

Image 4: Visits from 153 countries across the world with India and USA as top sources of visitor traffic to this blog.

The worldwide picture is also showing some interesting statistics. 42,511 visits have come from 153 countries with India topping the list at 23,878 visits, USA at 8,268, UK at 1,738, Canada at 744, Australia 578, Germany, 480, France, 384 followed by Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland. The city count amongst the top countries are as follows: UK from 296 cities, Canada from 127 cities, Germany from 149 cities and France from 121 cities, and so on.

The top pages visited are listed below and in all 72,071 page views have been recorded across the 105 articles posted on this blog over the past 18 months.

1. Mayo Clinic Sparc and IDEO Design – 1,186

2. Ginger: Design of Smart Hotel Chain – 1,169

3. Herman Miller and Vitra in India – 1,157

4. Bamboo Mat Boards from IPIRTI - 948

5. LEGO: Toy for all ages - 926

6. Rainwater Harvesting: FURAAT Systems - 919

7. Handmade in India: Handbook of crafts of India - 910

8. Charles and Ray Eames: Legacy in India - 908

9. Jewellery and Retail sectors in India - 832

10. Making of Design Entrepreneurs in India. - 668

11. KaosPilot: A Business School that teaches Design - 651

12. IFA: Bamboo exhibitions in Stuttgart and Berlin - 643

I look forward to an active period of design use ahead in 2009 that starts from tomorrow and I wish all the visitors a

Very Happy New Year

We also wish that this kind of design use will be supported by sustainable models which is the theme for the World Economic Forum in January 2009 at Davos for which we have just concluded a series of workshops and charettes on sustainability through which we hope to reach out to the policy makers in industry and governments across the world. Design for India and design from India will, I hope, make an impact across the world in the days ahead.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Four New CAD Solutions from CADDIT in 2009

2009 heralds the most interesting CAD CAM program portfolio ever serviced by CADDIT in Australia and New Zealand. Come see us regularly at http://www.caddit.net/ in 2009 for scheduled video presentations of the following four great new CAD software features:

1) VariCAD 3D parametrics. 2009 should see useful enhancements for Linux's favorite 3D industrial design CAD software program. Fully editable solid models make this light weight industrial design program the perfect low cost CAD for Linux. VariCAD is also offers native 3D CAD for Windows.

2) progeCAD 2009 reveals their best low cost AutoCAD design compatibility software yet. Additional to this products current support for AutoCAD-like commands, AutoLISP and native DWG file editing, progeCAD 2009 Professional designer software will offer advanced AutoCAD like features, such as DIESEL expressions and a greatly improved product registration process, for a far lower price than a single seat of AutoCAD LT (lite version). Additionally CADDIT will introduce three important new vertical applications for Australia and New Zealand:

1. progeARCH architectural design software for faster drawing of architectural floor plans, layouts and drawings.


2. progeEARTH civil 3D land survey software for advanced 3D Digital Terrain Modeling, road design, sewer design, parking layout and more.


3. QuoteCAD for fast project estimating, quoting and cost calculation using BOM (bill of materials) pricing based on the blocks used in a CAD drawing.
   

3) TransMagic delivers more CAD translation and collaboration resources for enterprise business with version 8. TransMagic products now offer robust visualization of JT files and full “read” and “write” support for exchanging JT files between any 3D CAD/CAM/CAE applications, including CATIA, NX, Pro/E, SolidWorks and Teamcenter. TransMagic already offers 3D file sharing and translation support for SolidWorks SLDPRT, CATIA V5 CATPRT, CATIA V4 .MODEL format, Unigraphics NX .PRT, STEP, IGES and more.

4) Mystery product. 2009 will see CADDIT launch a third level of CAD CAM solutions to Australia and New Zealand. Visit our site to see this additional line of CAD CAM soon.

Some Frosty Pictures

On Tuesday evening when I arrived home from work my wife was outsided taking the dog for a (very short) walk. She took a couple of pictures of me in the -30C temperatures.

Merry Christmas!

The Design Way: Dr Harold Nelson at NID, Ahmedabad

The Design Way: Dr Harold Nelson at NID, Ahmedabad

Prof M P Ranjan’s archives

Image: Dr Harold Nelson at NID and the poster for the mini conference at NID.

Dr Harold Nelson visited NID at our invitation and spent a couple of days on campus. His visit to India was unfortunately truncated due to the change of schedule for the CII NID Design Summit in Pune which was cancelled in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack. However we managed to pre-pone his visit to NID and during his stay we were able to organize a mini conference titled “Designing Designers: The Nelson Way.”

Most of my students are familiar with the book written by Dr Harold Nelson with Eric Stolterman, “The Design Way”, which is an amazing articulation of the various dimensions of design as we now know it to be today. Design for Nelson is an intentional activity that generates value. Design has changed and in order to explore the various dimensions of this change we decided to explore these dimensions in a mini conference for which we invited a panel of our teachers and juxtaposed it with the theme lecture by Dr Nelson.

Image: Harold Nelson delivers the theme lecture and the panelists at the mini conference (L to R) Dr Nelson, Suchitra Sheth, M P Ranjan, Shashank Mehta and Chakradhar Saswade.

The mini conference was called:
Designing Designers: The Nelson Way
NID in conversation with Dr. Harold Nelson

"Our ultimate desire is to encourage and promote a design culture… A design tradition requires the enabling presence of a design culture, one that defines conceptual expanses and boundaries, and provides a context for setting particular limits on any design project. Such a design culture acts as a catalyst in the formation of social crucibles essential for sustaining the intensity of design action."

Panel Members:
Mr. Shashank Mehta, Mr. Chakradhar Saswade, Ms. Suchitra Seth, Prof. M. P. Ranjan

Image: Dr Harold Nelson with his models for Systems Assessment: from apposition and analysis, through critique and interventions leading to change through delibrate re-design, adding meaning and creating value.

One of the ways in which we are engaged in the development of a design culture in India is through our models for design education. One task of design education is the designing of designers themselves: building the character and competence for design. The other is the awareness, development and recognition of design competence in other streams of education and in society at large. Both of these are essential to the creation of an environment that can help us realise the potential of design action.

There are a variety of inputs and many possible approaches in each of these tasks. There are also perspectives that design education must take cognisance of: social development, sustainability and macro economics, among others. The panel discussed some of these issues, and their views on design education for a creative society set the tone for the Q & A session that followed.

Image: Dr Nelson with students at the NID’s Product Design studio.

This led up to the theme lecture by Dr Nelson after which we had lunch with a group of faculty colleagues at the NID Guest House. The post lunch session had Dr Nelson meeting the students in a huddle in the Product Design studio and a lively session went on late into the evening since the Nelsons, Harold and his daughter Autumn, were leaving for Delhi early the next morning.

Prof M P Ranjan’s archives

BBC Radio on the Emerging Design Cities: Bangalore & Beijing featured

Design Cities from the BRIC Nations on the BBC Radio: Bangalore & Beijing featured
Prof M P Ranjan Papers

Image: The Design Museum lecture hall before the event. Prof Ranjan and Denis Cherdantsev in the foreground with Ou Ning from China and George Pegasiou of the British Council, London in the background of classic Eames wire chairs that were set up for the audience.

The morning session of the Design Cities Debate started with a visit to Bush House in London for a scheduled interview for BBC Radio along with Deyan Sudjik, Director of the Design Museum. Mark Coles of the BBC conducted the interview and set the tone for the discussion on the Design Cities Debate that had been set up by the exhibition at the Design Museum in London later in the day on 15th December 2008.

The full interview as it was broadcast on Tuesday, 16th December 2008 can be listened to at this link here (BBC interview link page) and those who wish can download the interview as a QuickTime file from this BBC interview download link here. Andrea Kidd was the producer at the BBC who had spoken to me in the preliminary tele-conversation that explored the scope of the discussions at the final interview and Mark Coles sat with the visitors in the small recording studio around a round table while Andrea could be seen through the glass wall while she managed the recording console on the other side.

This experience brought back fond memories from a far away past in my childhood in Madras since I used to then listen to the BBC World Service on shortwave radio every night before bedtime and on the hour (GMT) we heard the chimes of the Big Ben followed by the announcement “… broadcast from Bush House, London”, and here I was at Bush House London to attend the Design Cities interview with Deyan Sudjik of the Design Museum and Ou Ning from Beijing. The BBC interview was broadcast on the evening of Tuesday, 16th December 2008 and it is available online from the Arts and Culture module called the Strand on Tuesday, and the broadcast can be downloaded or listened to at this link below:
The Strand – Tuesday page Go to archives and look up the 16th December , Tuesday page to listen to the broadcast.

Listen to the broadcast here (26 minutes for the full three part module or the last third for the Design Cities discussion.)

The Design & Architecture team at the British Council had proposed this event to the Design Museum and it was through the support from the British Council in London and India that I managed to travel to London to participate in this exciting event.

Prof M P Ranjan Papers

Nice Day for a Ride

I rode my bike to work this morning. Here's the weather stats pasted from Environment Canada at about the time I was on the road early this morning:

Time (CST)	Conditions	Temp (°C)	Humidity (%)	Dew Point (°C)	Wind (km/h)	Pressure (kPa)	Vis (km)	Wind Chill
23 December 2008
6:00	Clear	-35	65	-39	SW 13	101.9	24	-47
5:00	Clear	-35	70	-39	W 13	101.9	24	-47

It turns out that with the windchill Saskatoon is apparently the coldest spot in Saskatchewan right now.

The ride itself wasn't bad, albeit quite slow. My goggles started to fog up after a kilometer or so, and I took them off for the last 1 km (6 km ride). My outfit included polypro liner socks, merino wool socks, long underwear, cotton pants, army surplus wool pants, rain pants (as a windproof shell), two fleece sweaters, Helly Hansen parka, winter boots, polypro liner gloves, army surplus mitts with wool liners, Carhartt helmet liner balaclava, fleece scarf, toque, ski goggles and, finally, a helmet. With all that stuff on my upper body was a bit too warm (I could have stopped to open up my zippers, including the pit zippers, but didn't), my legs were just right, my head & face were warm, and certain other parts were a tad cool (I need to find fur-lined boxers!). At -35C the bearings and rubber are stiff and the extra clothes help to slow the pace. Add to this the fact that I don't want to push too hard & overheat and it means the ride that takes 15 minutes in the summer, takes half an hour or more. It also takes a considerable amount of time to get dressed up.

It's too bad nobody was here to take some pictures of the frost which covered my head quite completely by the time I got to work.

Now I'm at work toasty warm while my grizzly bear samples incubate in a labelling reaction (hence the reason I had time to post).

BBC Radio from Bush House London: Bangalore Debate

Autodesk Mergers Continue; Buys Algor FEA

When I posted several days ago that economic downturn was a good time to invest in new technology, I didn't exactly have serial corporate takeovers in mind. Despite its fallen share price, Autodesk continues its series of acquisitions with its takeover of Algor. In business since 1974, ALGOR, Inc. is a long-standing provider of finite element analysis software.

It was announced on Tenlinks today that Autodesk is to buy Algor "for approximately $34 million". Similar announcements have been made on Yahoo Biz and Reuters.

According to the announcement in Reuters, "Upon completion of the acquisition, Autodesk's current intent is to integrate ALGOR into its Manufacturing Solutions business unit and to continue developing and selling ALGOR's core product line. Autodesk plans to continue developing the ALGOR products with an open approach, allowing direct data exchange between ALGOR products and multiple computer aided design software offerings."

Algor currently integrates their base static stress FEA "Designcheck" solution with several CAD CAM industry solutions, including Rhino, Cadkey, SolidWorks and Autodesk Mechanical Desktop. Several of Algor's strategic business partners were not anticipating the Autodesk takeover.

Bangalore wins Vote: The Design City of the Future

Bangalore wins Vote: The Design City of the Future

Prof M P Ranjan’s Papers

Image: Denis Cherdentsev from Russia and Prof M P Ranjan from NID Ahmedabad at the Design Museum terrace garden facing the Themes River with a view of the Tower Bridge and Norman Fosters famous Gerkin in the background view.

The British Council and the Design Museum in London had an exhibition to promote at their establishment located on the banks of the Themes River in London. They invited four designers and design thinkers from the BRIC nations to come all the way to London to a debate and each was asked to make a pitch about one selected city from each of their countries that had the most likely chance of becoming the next design city of the world. The Design & Architecture team at the British Council had proposed this event to the Design Museum and it was through the support from the British Council in London and India that I managed to travel to London to participate in this exciting event.

Deyan Sudjik, the curator of the Design Cities exhibition at the Design Museum and it current Director had made a selection of eight points in time when the world was changed in some significant way through the use of design. These eight events happened in seven different cities around the world and in his argument it started in London with the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851 and returned to London in 2008 and in the intervening period shifted from Vienna 1908, Dessau 1928, Paris 1931, Los Angeles 1949, Milan 1957, Tokyo 1987 and then back to London in 2008. The exhibition has an impressive collection of designed objects from each city and from the era that they represented and these were supported by pictures of the designers and some other related prints and texts. I am however surprised that Scandinavia of the 1960’s has been overlooked especially the work of the furniture masters at the Copenhagen school. Another point that crossed my mind is that the exhibition was almost completely object centric and the processes that formed the intangible parts of the visible offering did not form part of the debate in its favour. I am sure Deyan Sudjik has his own logic for the choices made from the vast array of possibilities that could be argued, for and against a particular city or an era when design made significant contributions to the world.

The people recognized by the curator in his catalogue are as follows:
William Morris and Christopher Dresser (London)
Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann (Vienna)
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe (Dessau)
Le Corbusier and Eileen Grey (Paris)
Charles and Ray Eames (Los Angles)
Gio Ponti and Joe Colombo (Milan)
Akio Morita and Tadao Ando (Tokyo)
Norman Foster and Paul Smith (London)
The exhibits included works of several other designers who were living and working in the specific contexts listed above and the return to London in 2008 included many contemporary designers who have made a mark in the artistic and commercial circles with their design offerings.

The four architect/designers/journalist from the BRIC nations were asked to make a ten minute presentation each, back to back, followed by a rapid fire questions from the chair and the audience before the matter was placed before the whole audience to cast their vote to select the city of their choice based on their own reading of the four presentations. Ruy Ohtake represented Brazil and pitched for Sao Paolo as the next potential Design City. Denis Cherdantsev chose Moscow for Russia and Ou Ning offered Beijing as the choice from China while Prof M P Ranjan pitched for Bangalore, nay, Bengaluru as the next Design City from India.

The audience trooped in at 7.00 pm on the 15th December 2008 and the debate began with the first presentation about Sao Paolo followed Moscow, Bengaluru and Beijing. This was followed by questions from the chair and the audience and the when the matter was put to vote at 8.30 pm, Bengaluru was the clear winner by a decisive margin followed by Sao Paolo, Beijing and then Moscow. Systems models from Nature and people’s participation in a local Democracy were the highlights of the Bengaluru offering. The champions of the Bengaluru success are Poonam Bir Kasturi with her Daily Dump that promises to clean up the city through individual action motivated by the community and design scheme and this in turn promises to clean up the world when the design offering from Bengaluru is cloned in all the cities around the world just as the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) from Bogota in Colombia is now being cloned in New Delhi and Ahmedabad and soon will reach Hyderabad and Bengaluru as well. The other example from Bengaluru was the Industree success story as well as the scaling up achieved by Ray + Kesavan and IDIOM through merger and acqusition processes with big business involvement and the small and big design studios that have been set up by our designers as models for others to follow. The full presentation made by Prof M P Ranjan has been linked for download on the previous post on this blog.

I am happy that the audience gave the thumbs up signal to the Design City proposal from India in the form of Bengaluru and I do hope that this message will sweep back to India where design policy and design action is languishing due to government and industry apathy over the years. We do need to get local politics to take charge of design in the local context and move the action from the objects of desire in the consumer industry space to the much needed public facilities and shared facilities that are so critical for the city to become a place with “The Quality without a name” which had been explained by Christopher Alexander in his book “The Timeless Way of Building”, a quality that can be sensed and not necessarily be seen. Bengaluru has all the ingredients to make this work and show the world that the next design city will celebrate a new kind of design that transcends the material and deal with the intangibles that make a difference in the world and in the minds and hearts to the people.

The morning session on the 15th December began with an interview at the BBC at Bush House London the seat of BBC Radio that I used to listen to in my childhood days at Madras. Deyan Sudjik, Ou Ning and Prof M P Ranjan were interviewed by the BBC Radio team and the breadcast is expected later in the week and the schedules will be posted on the BBC World Service website. The next day in the morning a breakfast interview with the DesignWeek concluded our involvement in the series of Design City related events in London and their report is expected to be posted on the website here as well as in the print version of the magazine soon.

Prof M P Ranjan’s Papers

Playing with the Biscuits on the Green

From Biscuits on the Green

We just got out a few days ago on the Green with the protos of the Biscuit.
I figured I would show you the few shots that we got.
Yonton and Grace showing their playboating prowess.
Also a good reason to not run Gorilla at 5.5 inches.
This is what happens when you have done a river a bunch,
and it doesn't rain, and your mountain bike is broken,
and your girlfriend wants you out of the house?
You go run that river again but this time you go in a tiny boat
so that you can play your brains out and scare yourself a little.
Anyway here are a couple more shots of the Biscuits.

Later
Shane

From Biscuits on the Green

From Biscuits on the Green

From Biscuits on the Green

From Biscuits on the Green

Design Cities Debate: Bengaluru at the Design Museum, London

Prof. M P Ranjan's papers

Design Cities Debate: Bengaluru at the Design Museum, London

Image: Opening slide of my presentation in London at the Design Museum pitching for Bangalore, nay "Bengaluru" as the emerging design city of the world, provided the design community and the local political leadership get it right in the days ahead.

I was invited by the British Council, London to participate in the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London on 15th December 2008. On my way in here I wrote the following note to the DesignIndia discussion list since there was a raging debate already going on there based on the DNA news report that talked about my intention to speak about Bangalore as the potential Design City from India. The Design & Architecture team at the British Council had proposed this event to the Design Museum and it was through the support from the British Council in London and India that I managed to travel to London to participate in this exciting event.

My presentation slide show titled “Bengaluru: the making of a Design City” can be downloaded as a 2.4 mb PDF file from here


I quote my post on Design India below:

“Dear Uday and Friends…

I am sitting in the lounge at Sahar Airport and have some time now to respond to all the very interesting discussions that came out of this thread on Design Cities and now on the Design Capital.

I agree with you entirely that the concept of a capital based on a designer centric view is indeed an ego trip for the profession which is perhaps the last thing that we need to do in a climate of extreme lack of understanding of the core ideas of design as we know it today.

I was excited when the British Council in London invited me to participate in the Design Cities Debate to take place at the Design Museum in London on 15th December 2008 since this would give us an opportunity to explore the idea of design as it would and perhaps could apply to the shaping of a city of the future here in India. For me this was not a call to see which city had already arrived there or which one had the most designers and design related companies, however these would be an influencing factor, but not always relevent, since sometimes design is better off without designers.

Design for me is a basic human activity as well as a professional activity performed at many levels by a variety of professionals with their vast range of skill sets and an equally wide range of motivations and intentions, some deep and profound and some definitely shallow and short term, all of which may be needed and necessary based on the complexity and the context that is being addressed.

My approach was therefore to look at this as an opportunity to articulate what would be the attributes and necessary ingredients for a city to be called a design city of the future in India and then I looked at which city in my opinion could make the grade in the near future provided the necessary conditions and the public and political support could be mobilised to meet this end. All cities have the possibility to be called a Design City if they are able to meeet the conditions that I hoped to articulate in the process of this debate.

I chose Bangalore because I know it best and have been associated with the city from my childheeod visits in summer and I also see some very exciting things happening there that is far beyond the service provided by the practicing design studios, a sort of taking the design abilities and getting critical things done through the use of design thought and action in the public space. Here, I will comment that Poonam Bir Kasturi's Daily Dump is a shining example of such work that has the possibility not just to transform Bangalore but all cities in the world if the success here gets replicated in each local situation with the necessary local adjustments etc. Similarly the amazing success of Industree in mobilising 15000 women in rural India using local grasses and skills to provide fair employment and a hope for the future is another great example that is still work in progress.

Bangalore has also had two great scale building examples with R+K going to WPP and IDIOM joining Kishore Biyani and these show the way forward to meet the huge responsibility that design and designers have to deliver in India today. The other design entrepreneurs in Bangalore and the design schools for a platform that can catalyse huge change in the public space and for me this is very important. Design for industry has been harped upon for may years and I am not very impressed by these achievements. However social good that can reach the aam aadmi or the man in the street is still a far away dream it seems. The IT sector in Bangalore provides us an opportunity to use web2.0 tools to reach public needs be it services or local assiatance in local governance. Bangalore with the Janagraha and other public domocratic institutions are working together with design to help transform.

Yes, political will must be brought into the equation if massive change is to be achieved in geting the city to feel right for its citizens. The quality that Christopher Alexander has called "The Quality without a name", in his Timeless Way of Building", it is not Fashion but a durable and amazing quality that can be felt but cannot be seen or explained....

This for me comes back to the flower garlands that are made everyday in Bangalore and in many Indian cities, handmade strung flower by flower to make an ephemeral thread of fragrence that is worn on the head or offered in prayer on a daily basis. Nature has provided the abundance of flowers to Bangalore which is indeed the flower power of the world and the Rain Tree with its wide arching branches and its equally complex roots shows systems that we need to learn from so that our democracy can work as a designed offering to transform the city to a Design City of the Future. Bangalore can indeed show the way and I do hope that all our cities and villages will follow suit or take a runaway lead in a win win world of tomorrow.

With warm regrads

M P Ranjan
from the Clipper Lounge at Sahar
14 December 2008 at 11.55 am IST”

UnQuote

I am now in London and getting ready to join the other invitees from Brazil, Russia and China (The BRIC Nations) at an interview with BBC Radio at Bush House London and later in the day at the Design Museum for the Debate in the evening. I look forward to the event. More later.

M P Ranjan
Blogging from London
15 December 2008 at 7.30 am local time

Prof. M P Ranjan's papers

Four Reasons Economic Downturn is Good Timing For R&D

Global economies run in cycles. What goes up must come down. Likewise, we hope that what goes down must come back up. When we understand economic cycles we see, however, why a downturn is a good time to invest in R&D. Obviously cuts are in order during a downturn, this article explains four reasons why R&D shouldn't be one of them.

1) R&D is a better bargain. Economic downturn is a buyers market. Corporate lay-offs and budget cut-backs can yield a multitude of redundant professionals for cherry picking. The well known Bersin & Associates encourages "Rather than 'freezing all hiring', you should use this as an opportunity to upgrade your own organization. " Supply vendors, also under increased financial pressure, may lower prices for you to maintain sales. For those with cash, downturn is time to buy up, not sell out.

2) R&D keeps businesses internationally competitive. Most companies would agree with this. Some examples are Taiwan, North Ireland, and the USA. R&D also finds smarter and cheaper ways of doing things internally, thus directly saving companies' capital. Some governments award subsidies to product innovation, especially to innovation that will be exported.

3) R&D investment is easier to focus. Poor R&D investment quickly becomes manifest. Durable brands and quality products distinguish themselves from gadgets that consumers start doing without when belts tighten. In times of financial crisis, well focused R&D spending can really make products stand out from the crowd. Develop products and services still appealing to the buyers who do have money, not those who don't.

4) R&D discovers new markets. A recent Business Week article entitled "Innovate Out of the Economic Downturn" called R&D related activity "the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity". An example of this is seen in the American Biomedical industry. "The CHI and PricewaterhouseCoopers 2002 report, "Biomedicine: The Next Wave for California's Economy," showcases the importance of medical and biomedical research, development, and manufacturing to California's regional economies and ultimately, to the nation's health." - Business Wire

The afore-quoted Bersin & Associates went on to state, "Downturns should be expected, so plan for them. Do not be surprised or panic." Financial downturn can be a reckoning to see who really has planned properly - and who hasn't. Those who have planned for rainy days should reap these rewards of innovation at lower costs than during periods of economic growth, resulting in more competitive products and services to offer for the economic cycle's next financial upturn.

The Four Os For Finding Work (as a CAD Designer)

Personally, I think that the four Os for finding work are really more or less an elaborate way of saying "gather more information", with four keyword points that just help us remember four useful aspects. This article focuses on applying them to find work in design careers, but they can be used in other fields too:

1. Offer: You need to know what the actual offer is, the real "give and take" of your current job market. Knowing (and accepting) the general offer climate is important when negotiating any specific opportunities discussed in point two. Have you discussed your search with those who already work in the field? What skills do you offer now? Should you offer more? What are employers really offering in return? Do they offer more elsewhere (or less)? Is money your only consideration? Will you get a better offer in another line of work? Do not assume that a more affluent country automatically offers higher wages in all fields. Finding an appropriate salary survey sometimes helps, like this one from AUGI (Autodesk User Group International) for 2008.

2. Opportunities: Establish all potential employment you are willing to accept. Do you know all of the specific design opportunities in your region? Are you willing to work part-time? Full-time? There are a number of online contract work portals available:

• Elance
• ScriptLance
• CAD Ground
• CADAuctions
• GetAFreelancer
• iFreelance.com
• DesignQuote
• Sologig
• Space Master Interiors
• countless more... (comments and feedback welcome)

As a tip, I find the most successful job hunter is never unemployed, because to him/her finding a job is already viewed seriously as opportunity. One could ask oneself, "What opportunities am I NOT yet using to find work? For example, do my friends and/or family know I am looking for this kind of job? Have I checked with all local employment offices & employment websites? Am I willing to try contract work agencies and temp services?"

3) Obstacles: Know why you are unemployed now. Is it the area you live in? Is it your level of experience? Is it new technology? What is it? Be honest, at least with yourself. Know the answer and fix it if you can.

4) Operation: Once you gather information, use it to your advantage - even when you don't have a job yet. Understand intimately the needs of each potential employer before the job interview, not after. Know your market and find your niche in it. Learn new skills that are marketable. Find ways to meet others already successfully working in the field you want and listen to them. Sometimes CAD Internet forums can be useful for finding the right community of people to talk to. Finally, share your research with other people who are, in turn, willing to share with you. If you aren't sharing then don't have friends. But if you share too much, other people might just start to use you. Try to find that balance.

Design Policy for USA: Long Ripples from India

Big strides towards a Design Policy for USA: Long Ripples from India

M P Ranjan

Image: Screen shot from Dori’s Moblog showing her with the members of the National Design Policy Summit held in USA

This is a long story that for me hinges around the Indian National Design Policy that was set in motion by the Government of India on 8th February 2007. I was in the USA that very day at the Asia Society in New York that day with NID Graduates Uday Dandavate of Sonic Rim, Surya Vanka of Microsoft and Sudhir Sharma of Elephant Design to promote the “Design with India” initiatives in the USA and in India that started with the plans for the CII NID National Design Summit in 2006. We had traveled to the USA to help bring attention to Design with India and for the promotion of deep partnerships between designers, industry and policy makers that could make design a central capability that would be put to use in solving the many development issues that face India today.

Uday had earlier invited me to speak at the IDSA Conference in Austin in September 2006 where I first met Elizabeth Tunstall – Dori – with her Mac connected to her blog live from the conference. My presentation at the IDSA Conference (pdf file 812 kb) was titled “Giving Design back to Society: Towards a Post-Mining Economy”. Dori commented on my paper (pdf file 42 kb) that day and we have been in touch since then on a new discussion list that she set up called the Design Policy List on Yahoogroups, now with many members.

Elizabeth Tunstall, is better known as Dori to friends and for those who read her blog, Doris Moblog. I did a search on her blog and her first post on Design Policy is on 11 February 2007 where she talks about the Indian National Design Policy after online conversation with me. Diori has been very active since then in organizing and mobilizing designers and design researchers around the world to develop strategies and approaches to bring design policy to nations that need to understand the significance of design as a social and development tool and not just a handmaiden of industry in the search of innovation and profits. The following links show her series of posts on “Dori;s Moblog”, that tell the story more fully
February 11, 2007: Indian National Design Policy
April 20, 2007: Shortlisted for IFG Ulm designing politics programme
April 30, 2007: Mapping Design Policy Landscape
May 06, 2007: Designers designing public policy
June 04, 2007: Two reasons for the failure of design policy
August 12, 2007: Clearview typeface: case study in design policy
September 21, 2007: Results from Ulm
January 30, 2008: Deaf Culture and Expressive Captions for TV and Film
March 16, 2008: Design Policy and CCBHS final presentations
July 29, 2008: Is AIGA a labor union?
and finally the latest post that tells us about the status in the USA after the Summit organized by Dori with design leaders in the USA.
November 20, 2008: U.S. National Design Policy Summit
Her latest mail to the Design Policy List is quoted below in full for immediate reference. We look forward to further developments on the USA and the ripples will most certainly come all the way back to India and help strengthen our own Design Policy initiatives here in India.
Quote from Dori’s ,message to the Design Policy List on 24th November 2008
“Hello DP group,


So we pulled it off, the US National Design Policy Summit. Here is the official release, but I am very excited about the next steps, including the finishing the report. It was really cool to have this happen after the Obama election victory. It think it created an opening for participants to be focused more on the future and collaboration, two elements that were necessary for the Summit’s success. There is a lot a work that needs to be done, but it will be thrilling to do the work.


Dori


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U.S. DESIGN LEADERS ATTEND U.S. NATIONAL DESIGN POLICY SUMMIT

Leaders representing the major U.S. professional design organizations, design education accreditation organizations, and Federal government design assembled in Washington D.C. on November 11-12 to develop a blueprint for a U.S. national design policy.

United by a shared vision of design’s integral role in the U.S.’s economic competitiveness and democratic governance, the Summit generated over 250 proposals for how the design communities and the U.S. government can work together to drive:

- innovation that supports American entrepreneurial spirit and economic vitality,

- better performance in government communications and effectiveness, 

- sustainable practices for communities and the environment, and

- design thinking that advances the educational goals of all areas of knowledge.
 

Summit participants ranked proposals by their value to the American people and the design communities as well as their operational and political feasibility. Brad McConnell, economic adviser in the Office of Senator Dick Durbin, assisted the group in determining political feasibility. The Summit concluded with the proposal of several immediate action steps for developing a U.S. national design policy:

1. Re-establish the American Design Council to serve as a unified body representing all the U.S. design fields

2. Create a report of the Summit and its proposals as the first publication of the American Design Council

3. Seek funding for a report on the contribution of the design industries to the U.S. economy

4. Encourage and support the National Endowment for the Art’s proposing of a U.S. National Design Assembly in 2010 and Federal Design Improvement Program in 2011

5. Develop case studies from each design field that demonstrates the economic, social, and environmental value of design

6. Engage design industry CEOs to provide testimonials of the value of design

7. Propose a holistic design award that will represent the highest honor in American design.
 
Organized by Dr. Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the U.S. National Design Summit participants included:


From Professional Design Organizations
 

- Richard Grefé, Executive Director of AIGA
- Paul Mendelsohn, Vice President, Government and Community Relations, American Institute of Architects

- Leslie Gallery Dilworth, Executive Director, Society for Environmental Graphic Design

- Deanna Waldron, Director of Government and Public Affairs, American Society of Interior Designers

- Earl Powell, Lifelong Fellow, Design Management Institute

- Frank Tyneski, Executive Director, Industrial Designers Society of America

- Allison Levy, Managing Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs, International Interior Design Association

- Paul Sherman, President, Usability Professionals Association


From Design Education Accreditation Bodies
 

- Catherine Armour, National Board Member, Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design

- Holly Mattson, Executive Director, Council for Interior Design Accreditation

- Samuel Hope, Executive Director, National Association for Schools of Art and Design


From U.S. Federal Government


- Clark Wilson, Sr. Urban Designer/Environmental Protection Specialist, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

- Frank Giblin, Director Urban Development Program, U.S. General Services Administration

- Janice Sterling, Director of Creative Services, U.S. Government Printing Office

- Ronald Keeney, Assistant Director of Creative Services, U.S. Government Printing Office
 

Summit Facilitators


- Renata Graw, Principal Plural, University of Illinois at Chicago MFA 2008

- Siobhan Gregory, MFA student in Industrial Design at University of Illinois at Chicago 

- Alicia Kuri Alamillo, MFA student in Graphic Design at University of Illinois at Chicago

- Matthew Muñoz, Principal Design Heals, North Carolina State University MFA 2008

- Sean Burgess, IDSA
- Tim Adkins, IDSA”
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UnQuote

I too have made a number of posts about the Design Policy issues for India and these links include 11 posts at the advocacy level and 24 posts that contain comments linked to the National Design Policy that I have made over the past one year.

M P Ranjan

Why Buy AutoCAD LT?

Economic slowdown, credit crunch, sustainability - these once academic buzz words have become household language in the last several months. But the falling prices of oil and stocks hasn't affected the high price of AutoCAD and its limited feature version, AutoCAD LT. Professional engineering staff, including architects, civil, structural and industrial designers in various disciplines are affected. The American Institute of Architects reports, "The AIA’s Architecture Billings Index (ABI) recorded its ninth straight monthly decline in October. However, the October drop to 36.2 was the steepest decline in its history, surpassing the weakness reported last February and March as the broader economy was just beginning to decelerate".

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass admits, "We realize that there is no quick or easy response to the current economic environment." For years Autodesk enjoyed good profits from its popular brands in a lucrative industry. However, Autodesk has offered no significant initiatives at this point to ease the financial burden felt by many of their customers. Retail price for Autodesk's latest AutoCAD LT 2009 ("lite" version) CAD software still averages well above $1000.00 USD.

Seeking an affordable alternative that they can trust, CAD engineers are choosing to use progeCAD instead. progeCAD sales have increased a dramatic 400% over the past year in some areas. This may be partially due to the increasing reliability of the overall progeCAD program to read and write AutoCAD files, as well as to offer a user interface and commands very similar to those used in AutoCAD. But it may also have to do with the fact that a company can buy almost three licenses of progeCAD for the same price they would pay for one of AutoCAD LT.

The full version 30-day demo of progeCAD (save and printing are not disabled) can be downloaded from CADDIT. Try it yourself!

Charles Eames Centenary: Photo Exhibit at NID

"The Gifted Eye of Charles Eames"
: A Portfolio of 100 images
M P Ranjan

Image: Collage of Eames images from previous posts on this blog and some from the net about the Eames legacy in photography.

Herman Miller, USA and National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad are sponsoring an exhibition of 100 images by Charles and Ray Eames assembled by the Eames Office from their vast archive to celebrate the centenary of Charles Eames. For NID this is a significant time as well soince it is the Golden Jubilee of the writing of the classic Eames India Report based on which the NID was set up in Ahmedabad way back in 1961.

I will come back with details of the making of this exhibition and the story behind the picture after the exhibit opens at NID on the 20th November 2008.

Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames and the chairman of Eames office, will be there to show us the philosophy of the Eameses at a lecture at the NID Auditorium at 10 am on the 20th November 2008.

The exhibition will be open to the public from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm each day from the 20st to 30th November 2008 at the NID Design Gallery.

M P Ranjan

Sustainability Charette: World Economic Forum in New Delhi

India Economic Summit, New Delhi as a venue for the First Sustainability Charette of the World Economic Forum.
Prof. M P Ranjan

Image 01: NID designers Anand Saboo, Vishnu Priya, M P Ranjan, Praveen Nahar, Shreya Sarda and Mitushi Jain at the India Economic Summit’s Design Charette with world industry and expert participants across six groups that examined and developed innovative concepts and frameworks for sustainable futures leading to design opportunity offerings for many sectors of the consumer industry.

The World Economic Forum made a call earlier this year for collective action to manage Sustainability for Tomorrow’s Consumers Initiative. A series of steps were hence initiated to lead up to a CEO Report to be taken up at the Davos Governors Meeting on 29th January 2009. The first steps included the New York strategy meet, which kicked off the search for directions and solutions to the worlds pressing problem of bringing sustainability to its Consumer Initiatives. The WEF developed a three-stage framework to tackle the issues and these are listed below:
1. The Business Case for Sustainability.
2. Design Innovations for Sustainability
3. Shaping the Framework Conditions.
For the first time the WEF turned to designers in India and this brought them to NID, one of India’s leading design schools, to participate in the proposed Design Charette in New Delhi with students and faculty involvement along with a carefully selected group of lead industries and experts in sustainability to examine the issues and perspectives across several consumer industries in order to innovate and build prototypes and models for future sustainable practices and products and services.

Image 02: Participants at the hands on Design Charette set up by the World Economic Forum team with Deloitte consulting at Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi on 15th November 2008.

The six groups looked at six broad product categories from the future sustainability angle to examine resource constraints, regulatory and policy implications as well as possible design opportunities that the situation offered to take stock of the current and future trends and make sensitive offerings at business process, product design and behavior change levels that may need to be addressed by businesses as well as governments of the world. The charette was a stimulating learning setting for all participants and it brought together designers from industry, social entrepreneurs, economists and experts all looking at the multi-dimensional problem of sustainability using systems thinking. I am pleased that we were involved in the first such event in New Delhi and we do hope that design will now be brought into the centre of our global search for solutions and through these we will build a sustainable future for all. The World Economic Forum’s initiatives are here at their website and I am sure more will follow as the work done in New Delhi grows to become a movement for the use of design across many geographies and sectors that are in search for sustainable models for the future.

Image 03: Three Social Entrepreneurs shortlisted for the final award of 2008 making a presentation of their innovation concept and action on the ground. Rajat Gupta delivered the keynote lecture at the event.

The evening event shifted to the Hotel Imperial on Janpath where the celebrations were on to felicitate the three finalists for the “Social Entrepreneur of the Year India 2008”. The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship was started by the founder of The World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab in 2000 and since then the process has identified and felicitated over 150 social entrepreneurs in 40 countries. A significant achievement by any standard.

I hope that they will some time discover designers who have been working in the grassroots sector in India and elsewhere in the years ahead. I remember the group of girls in my DCC class of 2001, who were telling us that they had discovered the way to eliminate poverty using start-up entrepreneurship and they called it the “Baadal” strategy, named after the Indian Monsoon, which picks up good practices from all over India and rains it back over the population just as the monsoon does. They have been working at it for a few years now, in refining their concept and in building their own individual capabilities across many attributes that are needed to deliver the action on the ground and I am sure that in a few more years they would deliver what they had held out as a concept to all of us at NID during their concept presentation to the public which we called the “Concept Mela”. We need more such concept melas and more designers joining the action on the ground in the days and years ahead. These Design Charettes do much the same thing with the participants, small attitude change which would lead to the big sustainable actions in areas where they work and live in the years ahead through design and leadership that they would provide to those around them.

Prof. M P Ranjan

Paddling the great indoors

The outdoor paddling season is far from over. We'll still be on the lake for another month or so (and, we hope, the annual New Year's Day paddle on the Chicago River). But the indoor paddling season has begun. It's a delightful period of overlap, when we can paddle in water that's 70 degrees one day and 50 degrees the next.

Dave Olson (left) visits with paddlers at the UIC open pool session.

Wednesday nights are open pool sessions at the University of Illinois at Chicago, thanks to Dave Olson of Kayak Chicago. Dave rents the pool for 40+ weeks and welcomes paddlers to pay by the night or by the season to use it. He also rents boats for those who arrange it in advance, and he offers lessons.
We mainly come to work on skills and enjoy weekly time on the water in the dead of winter. This past Wednesday was the first pool session of 2008/09, and most people just seemed happy to see one another again.

Wendy Madgwick and Hannah turn a single into a double.

Alec demonstrates a C-to-C roll.