Newforma licenses M-six technology!

This my friends is huge! It may not seem it to some, but you know when something is gonna be awesome! Read the press release here...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/newforma-licenses-m-six-veotm-platform-to-further-integrate-pim-with-bim-2012-07-31

Monday morning crew chief -- The rap(p) on CRTs, etc.

Attack got some good PR in the weeks leading up to their first-of-two wild card/CRT entries. But it ended in disappointment as Rapp missed the 107% cutoff (of pole time) and failed to qualify for the race.

Rapp would'a needed to find another half-second or so to make the grid. Failing to qualify, under the circumstances, shouldn't have surprised anyone. Attack didn't have their bike together nearly soon enough. Remember the first few winter tests of the full-time CRT machines, in Spain? They sucked. That's the development stage that Attack's at right now. To put it in perspective, Martin Cardenas on his 600 was as close to Steve Rapp as Steve Rapp was to the slowest rider who made the MotoGP grid.

I want to believe that the Attack bike is capable of running with, if not the big dogs of MotoGP, at least the lap(ped) dogs. But getting the bike up to speed doesn't just take track time. To really evaluate your bike and improve it, you need to be on the track with other bikes and riders as fast as you are.

There's an official AMA Superbike test day the week before the Indy MotoGP event. I don't have a MotoGP rule book, so I'm not sure what the MotoGP rules have to say about wild card riders practicing on the circuit in the weeks leading up to the race. If Attack's allowed to practice on the circuit along with the AMA Superbikes, it would be nice if the AMA invited them to the test.

It was interesting to see just where the CRT bikes are vis-a-vis the American-rules Superbikes. When the current U.S. rules package was defined, there was a lot of complaining that the bikes were 'dumbed down'. And yet, the fastest three Superbike qualifiers were in the 1:24s, as were the slowest three MotoGP qualifiers. Hayes' Superbike race-winning average speed (151 kph) was about the same as the slowest CRT finisher's.

I realize it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. The fastest U.S. riders all have a lot more seat time at Laguna Seca than those CRT riders (who, for all I know were seeing it for the first time.) It's not a particularly easy track to learn. It's slow and technical; on a faster track like Philip Island, I imagine the CRT bikes would have stretched their legs a bit more. And of course they're on different tires.

But still. It's clear that in qualifying trim, the CRT bikes are not much faster than AMA Pro Racing's Superbikes. They're not any faster than World Superbike machines, even though CRT rules are quite a bit more flexible than SBK rules, and a lot more flexible than U.S. rules.

The lesson in this is not that CRT bikes are crap (no matter what Colin Edwards says.) The lesson is that production (and production-based) bikes are so good that performance is barely rules-limited.

Jig saw puzzle connection !

paper model

I think have found a new way to make (or approximate) compound curved shapes with flat sheet. Plywood material is flexible and can be deformed to a compound curvature. On my computer I have modelled a spherical wheel cover consisting of 7 pieces. They will be connected with jig saw puzzle joints. I have deformed the piece on the computer to a flat plate. The picture shows a paper model. I hope to present a model in plywood soon. The jig saw puzzle joint can be produced easily with laser cutting machines and I expect the assembling with some glue is easy too.

Easy connecting with the jig saw puzzle connection. The curved sides will deform the flat plate into a sphere segment.

Summerlab was OK

I presented the plywood velomobile to on the Summerlab in Nantes. Watch the video. We tested the machine. The seat, the front suspension, the soft top and the chain guidance were failed or considered inadequate and than repaired and improved. Thank you guys!

We have thought about how the plywood sheets can be attached. Below you see a sample.

provisionally attached with staples...

glued with wood construction glue (foaming PU)

will we ever get these staples out again?

To get experience we tried to make a hard top too.

The chain is guided by four toothed chain wheels to reduce the losses up to the max. But it would easily derail from the rear sprocket because it could not be tensioned properly.

Jacques and ? (sorry I forgot your name) are adapting the wheel mount so the chain can be tensioned properly

Joris wanted to make a one wheeled trailer (remorque). I showed him my plywood design. Building a simple trailer was a fine way to learn (developing the sheet, bending the alu tube... )

Joris has made a mock-up to evaluate the shape and generate the development of the sheet

unwrapping the sheet

The edge at the top of the trailer will be reinforced with a tube. Bending it is not so easy. Because we did noty compensate for the elastic relaxation the tube did not get its definitive form directly...

bending aluminium tube Dxt 18x1

for the last turn we fix at a new position the tube so we can release the first par

oops ! We should have filled it with sand...

But not only details were studied. Scale models and a 1:1 mock-up was made too:

 

On the wiki you will find some more !

The summerlab was a very pleasant gathering of interesting people and thoughts. Although not presented at the summerlab and already written in 2004 to me the most intriguing was the philosophy on cyborgs of Natasha Roussel.

As you can saw in this video, all curves are fixed each other to make sure there are no Gap issue according to the software tolerances construction options... For this surface I will strat with 3 generation curves and 2 rails (one with a tangence condition).

After this first surface, do you have some questions / comments / remarks / explanations / other workflow to share???
I am very interesting to have some advices... Thank you in advance.

Now, I build some sections... This is my workflow for ALL my 3D models.
When I said "section", it means I chose one X section for this Door accross the panel and I REBUILD this section with some simple curves (less degre as possible... Sorry but I always say that less degres, more simple, but this is for me the way for keep a good quality of your model).

I chose one X section on the middle of the arm rest. Why?
With this section I can check how to build the arm rest, the top of the trim panel, the bottom of the trim panel close to the perpandiculare from these parts...

After you built a mesh section we need to rebuild it like that:



I moved these 3 sections for show you the differences...
In my worflow, when I build the section I start already to think about the patch layout, the shape of my model, the step I need to do, means after I built 2 or 3 sections 90% of my thinking work is done! After that I need "only" to transfer my mind in my software, only...

Normally, after 5 years experiences you will do the same.

Now I will show you how to build the surface of the top by video... soon!

A note from the Dept. of Gone But Not Forgotten

I guess I should take a month off more often, because with 10% of the month remaining, July 2012 has been the #2 all-time month here on Bikewriter.com.

While on the subject of 'gone but not forgotten', I noticed a slightly out of date friend suggestion the last time I logged onto Facebook...

The most important before strating is to have some knowledge about the patch layout creation... It is impossible for me to teach you how to do... Also the most important is to have a (your) logical way.

If it is your first time to rebuild one existing shape, you can try to reproduce the styling line of this Door.

For me it is the most important STEP. If you can do that "correctly" this 2D curves (I will tell what is correct for me later) 40% of your work is done!

In this video you can see some tools who can help you for clean the scan data (called Mesh in Alias)... As someone know, other software can help you to divide your mesh according to the curvature transition shape and detach "automatically" your mesh as you can see in my video. In Alias if you want to do that you need (in 2012) do by "hand" as I showed you in this video...

At the end we have the most important styling line of this Door trim in 2D.
Take care to manae the parameter of these curves, the minimum order needed for make the styling shape.
IMPORTANT: Use maximum degre 5 curve (6 control points) at this time.

For Class A (in general) try to use for your "main surfaces" called also "primary surfaces" 5 degre parameter. You can use degre 6 and 7 maximum for many standard for the transitional surfaces called also secondary surfaces if you are using G3 continuity...

One thing to keep in mind: it could be possible to increase the number of CV if you need to add more "quality" of your shape. BUT it will be pratically IMPOSSIBLE to reduce the number of CV if you have got too many at the beginning!

REVERSE ENGINEERING

I will try to show you ONE workflow to help you when you need to use some scan data come from a physical model.

First thing: becarful on Internet and/or some software company but I saw often (too many in my point of view) when we see this can of tutorials the most of the time they use the scan data come from their 3D surfaces!

Means they built the shape and after they convert the surface to mesh. After that when they "rebuild" the shape they already know exactly where to put the curves of the path layout and they know also which surfaces / curves parameters done before ! ! !

Also with this way, all tools (softwares) work very well... Of course!

I show you how to check that:

Everyone can see the difference between left and right, no?

> First there are any nose on the right surfaces...

> Second every triangles have a similar size and very clean flow...

> Third we can see the patch layout as below:

_________________________

That is why for this new tutorial, we will use this door trim scan data found several years before by Internet.

This scan data come from a production car the Seat Altea.

For this tutorial, I will try to show you how to start the reverse engineering work. Please, feel free to ask me if something is not clear enough for you.

I will try to put some videos if I found time to record and build.

OK, I start to work now and come back soon...

One question Nobby Clark/Hall of Fame voters should ask: WWMHD?

I'm not actually sure when the voting opens or closes on the special supplementary ballot the AMA will hold, to determine whether Nobby Clark will get into the AMA Hall of Fame in the end (or, just get it in the end.)

But when ballots arrive, the voters (who include all living Hall of Fame members) need ask themselves only one question: What would Mike Hailwood do?

Mike "The Bike" Hailwood. Greatest motorcycle racer of all time. (Sorry Vale, you'll get consideration when you come back years after your GP career has ended, and win a TT.) Nobby Clark's best -- and favorite -- rider. Awarded the George Medal, Britain's highest civilian award for bravery, for assisting in the rescue of F1 driver Clay Regazzoni, from a fiery wreck in the South African GP. What would Mike Hailwood do? He would vote for Nobby.

0rz..........

真的有夠無言= =

每次發來的測試結果ppt檔

問題都一再重複

一再一再

吼!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

真的超北纜

明明就改了發回來的測試結果東西還在上面

任誰都會三條線

像我剛剛回的信就有三項是這樣回的

上一封信已經說刪除了
上一封信已經說修改了
上一封信已經說沒這功能

還有一項是這樣回

上封信, 上上封信說已修改

幹XD


或是ppt上說要加啥功能是當初不包含的

我覺得很誇張~~~~誇張到他根本不可能不知道這功能是他單方新增的

重點還不只一次.........真的很無言

我就回

不包含這功能

shit



而且想法也很奇怪

竟然會在A list要放B相關的欄位上去...........

我真的不知道為什麼要這樣放~~~~沒關聯呀


或是提到bug的問題

是在當初要做的功能以外的bug

我覺得以前的我應該會傻傻的幫忙改一下

可是現在我打死都不會........

除非我瘋了XD

Alta Kayak: another cottage paddling industry

We're fascinated by businesses born of necessity. We've written in the past about Snapdragon and Werner, two of the many Pacific Northwest paddlesport companies begun by enthusiastic paddlers who needed gear that wasn't readily available. But the truth is, most of today's best-known kayak-related companies began as cottage industries--a phenomenon well portrayed in Kent Ford's film, The Call of the River.

Taking David up on the claim, "If you break it, Alta Kayak can fix it!"

Yesterday, we dropped in on David Thompson, founder of Alta Kayak, a custom outfitting company on Orcas Island. We brought a boat for him to repair ("If you break it, Alta Kayak can fix it!" his website promises) and hung around to look at his current projects.

David's one-room shop.

David bills himself as a designer and craftsman--talents that predate his work on human-powered crafts.  He began working with his hands at the age of 14, helping his grandfather do stonemasonry. He did bodywork on airplanes in the armed services, then worked in boiler repair and construction. Six years ago, while living in Montana, he decided to apply his skills at building and repairing things to kayaks; four years later, he moved to Orcas, which offered the perfect combination of paddling opportunities and performance sea kayakers -- the kind of people who really care about customizing their boats.

David Thompson in his shop.

Today he specializes in custom seats to replace the ones that come from the factory. He creates some of them to solve specific problems, such as lower back pain, tailbone pressure or leg cramps; some to suit specific preferences for seats of a particular height, width or shape; and some for performance paddlers who prefer a composite seat to a plastic or foam one. Each seat is made to order, built by hand for a specific person and boat. 

One of David's hand-built molds for a kayak seat.

People learn about his seats mostly through word of mouth or by seeing them in other people's boats. If they can come to Orcas, they can buy a custom fiberglass seat for $150, or a carbon fiber seat for $200, and David will install it for $50. If coming here isn't an option, he can ship the seat and all the parts required for installation.

Rolls of carbon fiber, fiberglass and other material.

One of David's recent innovations is a carbon-fiber paddle holder that's bolted to the deck ($200 plus $50 for installation). And he's working on a deck compass light that doesn't interfere with night vision. 

David's paddle holders are sleek and secure.

Between projects, David still performs a fair number of boat repairs and keel strip installations. The best part of his job, he says, is being able to create things, and the positive response of the people who buy them. That and not punching a clock. We have to think that no small part of his job satisfaction also has to be living in one of the best paddling locations in the nation. That and getting out on the water as often as he can.

Design Concepts and Concerns: The Avalanche Effect from NID

Evolution of DCC course at NID: Reflections in 2012

Prof M P Ranjan

Image01: Models and lectures that were developed over the years for the Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID as they stood in 2005 as they appear in the EAD06 conference presentation at Bremen, Germany.

In 2009, Meena Kadri wrote about the course on her blog, “Random Specific”, and she sent me a link with a question – “Has not the DCC course evolved at NID over the past 40 years or so?” I sent her a brief note and then decided that the question could be answered at some length and perhaps some design historian or research scholar would be sufficiently interested in looking at the evolution of the pedagogy at NID which I do believe has made significant contribution to design education in India as well as in the world, much of which is as yet not appreciated due to a paucity of published references on the processes and personalities involved. Parts of this post appeared previously in July 2009 on my course blog named after the course – Design Concepts and Concerns – and here I am elaborating that post with reflections on what has happened after my retirement from NID and the directions that are being explored today by the institute and its faculty.

Image02: Cover and contents page of the Design Issues journal of Autumn 2005 dealing with Design and education in India.

The course as it stood then is documented at this blog site and through a couple of papers that I had written, first in 2002, specifically for the Design Issues magazine at the invitation of Martha Scotford who acting as a guest editor was compiling a collection of papers about design from India for the Design Issues magazine's volume on India. However, this paper that I wrote and submitted was called the "Avalanche Effect" and as luck would have it was not included in the final edited version, unfortunately. On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, after a long wait to hear from the editors I finally received a message from Martha Scotford about the rejection of my paper and I was at that time teaching at the BCDI in Agartala and I immediately posted the full text of my paper on the PhD-Design list which can be seen at this link here below: Avalanche Effect on the PhD –Design discussion list.

The Design Issues is a very respected peer reviewed journal from the MIT and the reviewers may have thought that the claims made by an unknown professor from India were a very tall order at that time or found some other shortcoming in my paper based on which it was declined. The journal came out with their volume about India and Indian design and this did not include my paper (“Design Issues: History Theory Criticism” volume 21, Number 4, Autumn 2005) The pdf copy of the “Avalanche Effect” paper can be downloaded from here as a 55kb pdf file.

Image03: Select pages from my presentation titled “Creating the Unknowable” showing the series of Assignments that are offered to NID Foundation students as part of their five week course on Design Concepts and Concerns.

However in the same year, in 2005, I wrore another paper about this course and my paper was titled “Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education” and this was also about the DCC course and it was accepted for a peer reviewed conference at Bremen Germany, the EAD06 coordinated by Wolfgang Jonas a design thinker at the Bremen University School of Design and I was able to share the DCC pedagogy and the underlying intentions for the first time on a public forum composed of critical design professors. (Download the full presentation from here as a 54MB zip file containing one pdf of the presentation and six linked movies inside one folder) Unfortunately, even here I faced problems of support from my own Institute. My travel costs would not be supported by NID authorities even though I was going to present a major course development done at the school over many years of experimentation and I had to bear the cost of travel myself. This does show how difficult it is to get support for design education in India in all these years when design thinking was being explored and refined through our teaching and design explorations, without much official support from the authorities that be. This lack of official support is captured in the title of my conference paper for the first National Design Summit in India called the CII-NID Design Summit that was held in Bangalore in December 2001. My paper was titled “Cactus Flower blooms in a Desert: Reflections on Design and Innovation in India”. Download that paper and the accompanying visual presentation from here as a 14.5 MB zip file containing three pdf files.

Image04: Thumbnails of OHP sheets used for the DCC course lectures in the late 80’s and early 90’s before the course was changed significantly in 1998.

Yes, to cut a long story short, the course dealing with design theory and design thinking has been evolving at NID for many many years from the original “Design Methods” that was first taught in its imported and refined form by Prof Kumar Vyas from the late 60’s and the early 70's for Product Design and then in the Foundation Programme and he was later assisted by Prof S Balaram and assisted by the young Dhimant Panchal. A variation in its title took place when the teachers of this course at NID started looking at processes within design in the 80's and it was then re-christened and called “Design Process”. A version of the course offered to Product Design students at the AEP Level was called “Product Design Process” and each discipline at NID had their own version of design theory being offered under different titles. In the mid 70's Prof Mohan Bhandari took over the Foundation programme after his stint of study and work experience in Germany with Professor Herbert Lindinger, a former faculty of the HfG Ulm, and he brought in the Environmental focus to the whole Foundation Programme but this course was still called "Design Process" and that was the case when I took over this course after his departure from NID in the late 80's.

Christopher Alexander’s papers and in particular his descriptive pages from his “Notes of the Synthesis of Form” were available at NID as cyclostyled papers, in a number of copies that were freely available on campus, which I had seen and I even had a personal copy way back in 1969 when I joined the Institute as a student in the first Post Graduate Programme in Furniture Design. These may have been here of many years before Prof Vyas’s course offerings and Alexander did visit India in the early 60’s as part of his research efforts for his first book that looked at an Indian Village as a source of inspiration for his theory about human settlements and design. It was only much later that I could understand the significance of Alexanders research since the Indian village held lessons of human evolution in an almost uninterupted manner in the Indo-Gangetic plains, a continuous evolution of over 5000 years that may not be found anywhere else on the planet. The cyclostyled papers could have been an early draft of his book which someone may have collected and shared with all of us in NID, I hope we get to know this background in some detail when the research about NID is conducted in some depth. There is however an official history of NID in the making and the deadline for its release has come and gone but there is still no sign of the book which has been a closely guarded secret even from members of the NID faculty who are not part of the inner circle of researchers on that project. The book - 50 Years of NID History – was "released" at the NID Convocation ceremony in December 2011 by the the then Chairman of the institute's Governiong Council, Salman Haider, as part of the Golden Jubilee launch but I am told that this was a dummy copy and a symbolic launch – very sly and a slight of hand; just to keep up promises made earlier - very disappointing indeed. I hope the book sees the light of day and we get to see it sometime soon.

Image05: Chart showing the evolution of the Design Methods and Design Process course in the 60’s and 70’s leading up to the formation of the Design Concepts and Concerns course in the 90’s.

In the mid 90's we changed the name of the course and called it “Design Concepts and Concerns” to bring focus to the broader issues that underpinned design action and learning. Some of us realised that ethical and value concerns and motivation with personal commitment are just as important as the tools and processes that designers use to address complex issues and derive suitable design offerings that could be the foundation for responsible design. This is a very brief statement on a long and involved process of course evolution at NID and that paper is still to be written. Many teachers worked with me from 1988 onwards. First it was Jatin Bhatt and Sangita Shroff who then went on to join NIFT. We then had Rashmi Korjan for a long time and Suchitra Sheth and Laxmi Murthy for a brief interlude. Since 1998 many teachers audited or assisted in the conduct of the course either partly or with full involvement and these include Alaxender Bosniak who now teaches in Germany, Dimple Soni, Meena Kadri, Bhavin Kotari, Harini Chandrasekhar, Bani Singh who teaches at NIFT Bangalore and many more that I will have to recall a long list of former students and faculty colleagues if the list is to be completed. Others on the faculty included Praveen Nahar, Ramakrishna Rao and Gayatri Menon in later years. In Bangalore, C S Susanth and Jignesh Khakhar, joined the course last year and we also had a senior student helping us in 2008 from the SDM discipline, Anand Saboo and so on. Many other senior students used to come in and hang out while the lectures and presentations were in progress and there was a rich discussion both inside as well as outside the course on the subjects being explored within the course each year since we had big themes and macro-economic concerns that were addressed, debated, brainstormed, modeled and mapped by each batch and each class producing a rich crop of design opportunities that were represented as visual scenarios that stayed in the mind for a very long time as a vision that cannot be shed easily, once it is found. Design thoughts and insights are not easy to forget if they are appropriately visualised.

Image06: Table showing the course structure and contents in 1995 when I had used this image to share the development of the Design Concepts and Concerns course in a presentation to the NID Faculty Forum as part of a course critique at NID in those days.

I purchased a SONY digital camera in 1998, my first really expensive buy, and the first one freely available at the institute and I used it to record all our classes in great detail. I have shared detailed digital pictures of the student assignments done during the course from 1998 onwards and developed the use of digital images as a source of extended memory for the students to revisit their experiences during the course. These images were shared with all students in individual CD-ROMs, one for each student to take away and when the NID server was set up these images were made available to the whole institute without any editing. Besides this sharing of images, there are many xerox documents in the NID Library of selected student notes and project documents from the earlier phase (from 1988 to 1998) that may need to be revisited. In that early phase we did project based assignments that were assigned to individual students and this was after a phase of lectures and group assignments about design concepts and methods and these projects were done by individual students and that called for individual guides which we fondly called the OPD (out patient department) and here we had Pradyumna Vyas, Vinod Parmar, S M Shah, P M Choksi, S Balaram and several others as project guides for the foundation students as part of the Design process course from 1988 to about 1998 when I dropped the individual project since it was becoming a ritual and not really contributing to any form of deep understanding in the student. The teachers who were guiding the students did not really contribute to a better understanding of the design thinking dimensions but were instead, I realised,  focussed on getting the students to deliver great solutions rather than them learning about the nature of design itself as the core activity and the aim of the project. From here on the course became more team oriented rather than individual focused and group processes and group grades became the norm much to the dismay of the Academic Administration, since I refused to give individual grades.

Shown above in Image04 are picture of an OHP sheet that I had used in 1995 to describe the design process and this is available for download as a pdf that gives the shift in content and assignments as it stood in that year which can be downloaded from here – Download OHP Sheets used in 1995 as pdf file - these are based on hand drawn OHP sheets that were used from 1988 onwards. On 15 August 2007 I had made a post on my other blog “Design for India” about this course and we have another description of the course and its intentions and effects at the link below: Design for India – Post on the DCC course.

Image07: Foundation students of the 2009 batch at NID created these models during the DCC course that showed us how India could get new design education strategies that could address the needs and aspirations of the various regions of the country. Six groups developed concepts and of these three are shown above. My last foundation batch at NID....

By 2002 the course was accepted for both the under-graduate foundation programme as a core offering as well as for all Post Graduate courses offered at the Institute. We started offering this course at NID Gandhinagar campus for the new disciplines of New Media, User Interface Design as well as for the Strategic Design Management students there. When the NID Bangalore campus was set up for three new disciplines this course was offered there as well and these are documented at each offering on the DCC Blog for those who may be interested in the details of what were the themes and the work done by the student teams – all documented in some detail there. I offered this course at NID till November 2010 when I retired from being a faculty at the NID. Last year the course was offered to all batches of students at NID in much the same way that it was designed and developed over the years. However this year I am told that the curriculum review process has decided to drop the course and to adopt the older name of design methods so that the teachers at NID could focus on teaching tools and techniques of design research and not get confused by the macro issues that have been the hallmark of this course since it was revised in the late 90's. The argument, I am told, is that foundation students may not be mature enough to address the complexities of the real world at the early stage in their education that and these would be better reserved for a later stage in their education at NID. Is NID education reverting to the design paradigm of the 80's? Only time will tell!!


When the Government of India announced the setting up of four new NID's in different regions of India it set alarm bells ringing amongst a group of NID alumni who expressed deep concern on the social networks and discussion forums in India. Almost organically a group came into existence and it was called the "Vision First" initiative. It so happened that all members of this group were NID alumni and they took up issues with Government and called for a national debate and discourse on whether the same model of the old NID at Paldi would be followed for all these schools or should we have a fresh think about where design is heading and this debate is documented in some detail at the blog set up by the group here –Vision First – a call for new design initiatives for India by a group of very concerned design professionals and academics from India. I do hope that both NID as well as the Government of India will listen to the voices from these design activists who have had varied experiences in design for development right here in India. Design Thinking and its application is indeed gaining greater acceptance in India as well as overseas. Management schools and research agencies are beginning to use design thinking to address complex problems and to search for solutions  to products, services and systems that make up our lives. Governments too are looking towards design and we will need to build capacity to respond to these kinds of opportunities besides the traditional capability of giving aesthetic form to products of industry and to create marketing messages for commercial ventures in the form of advertising and business communications. I have written about these areas and more needs to be articulated here. Some of my previous posts are listed here for easy access in the context of why the DCC course is important to nurture and take forward as it has been evolving at NID over the years.


2012 July - Design Thinking & Design Journey Revisited
2011 August - Design for Good Governance
2009 November - Design Thinking: The Flavor of the Month
2008 January - Systems Design: The NID Way
2007 December - Design as Research: The Path to Knowledge Creation
2007 October - Design Thinking: What is it?


Besides these posts from my Design for India blog here below I have linked several posts on the Design Concepts and Concerns blog that deal with the theory associated with this course.


2010 March - Business Models for Designers: Learning from the Field
2009 December - DCC 2010 - Foundation Batch 2009-10
2009 March - Scenario Visualisation: Indian Village as Visual Panorama in DCC2009
2009 March - Scenario Presentation: Learning about Composite Images in DCC
2009 March - Scenario Visualisation: Assignment on Composite Images and Mental Maps
2009 February - Business Models: Learning from the Field


The world of design and design education is moving inthe direction that we had anticipated in the DCC course at NID and we now see evidence of this is the new publications that are emerging from the West. I will draw attention here to one particular recent book that is available online with a good and interesting business model that makes it very accessible for our design students in India due to its attractive pricing policy for the digital version. The book that I refer to is "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving " by Jon Kolko, Austin Centre for Design, 2012 and it is a recent example of the emerging expanded approach to design thinking that is being explored and shared.


Returning to the idea of the "Avalanche Effect" and the claims that I have been making over the years in my papers and presentations about this course needs to be revisited and validated. I took over from Mohan Bhandari in 1988 and I remember that  Kiran Bir Sethi was in my early class and her document of the course and her design project are preserved in the NID library as a xerox document that I had placed there for posterity along with others over the years. Her "Design Process" project was on Design Education and there is no surprise for me that she is today running a school in Ahmedabad called Riverside School  that uses design thinking as a core for delivering the school curriculum and she is also the author of the world's biggest design education effort, Design for Change Project, with millions of children being introduced to design thinking at the school level. I call this phenomenon the "Avalanche Effect" and I see this happening all the time in design schools that encourage its students to think big and connect with the real world and address real problems and opportunities in the real world.
Prof M P Ranjan

Great Lakes skills meet ocean conditions

Seth and Sharon in a tidal race in the San Juan Channel.

Paddling on the Great Lakes can be challenging at times. Strong winds generate large, steep waves; hard break walls produce chaotic clapotis. But we don't have tides, so many ocean features are less familiar to us: massive eddy lines, whirlpools, overfalls, and the complications of navigating in current.

Current creates fun features on the ocean.

We've enjoyed seeking out challenging water on the Great Lakes as well as on rivers, and we've trusted that the skills we've developed would translate well to the ocean environment. But there was only one way to be sure: get out to the coast and paddle.

Alec prepares to "speed launch" off a barnacle-encrusted rock.

It works as well here as anywhere.

Over the past two weeks, we've practiced doing self and assisted rescues in strong current, rolling in whirlpools, maneuvering around rocks and ledges, extracting swimmers from craggy slots, and surfing in tide races.

Leon and Alec control their boats in a slot.

Dynamic water definitely puts skills to the test. As we tell our students, everything we do -- from strokes to rescues -- has to be executed in a manner that will work as well in wind, waves and current as it does on flat water because we need them most in more complex conditions. Pool-proof rolls and sloppy rescues are of no use in Deception Pass. Let go of a boat or a paddle, and it will be swept away. Every skill needs to work when conditions are exciting or it is of no use. Except, of course, standing on your boat. (At least for now.)

Sharon demonstrates an essential flat-water skill.