GINGER: The Design of a “Smart” Hotel Chain in India

Lessons for the use of design in the arena of public utilities and facilities in India Image: GINGER Reception at Agartala
How do you think of a new hotel chain is created when none exists in the specific category or with the business model that you think will be a good offering in the world today? Of course you would have to Design it from scratch. That is you will need to have a dream and then explore all its dimensions and details and then refine the offering through an iterative process that blends imagination with action in the real world. All this is done before you can build a first prototype and figure out whether the concept that excited you in the first place actually works in the real world. This iteration continues as you build the other elements of the chain with each learning being fed back into the next hotel and then the next till you have a fine tuned chain with a brand and a compelling reputation. So what is proposed is not a one time rational activity, that of building specifications and then using a “cookie cutter approach” as Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize winning scientist would have us believe, problem first and the solution later. However here we see an example of a caring, feeling and iterative process that consolidates all learning and then adjusts the offering in a sensitive manner to changes in the market and the environment in the real world. This process is best described by the word “Design”.

Image: GINGER hotel in Kejur Baghaan in Agartala. Note the Kejur (Date Palm) trees in the background. This is exactly how GINGER, a new hotel chain set up by the Taj Group of Hotels came into being some four years ago in India. All, hotel chains are built the same way, but this one is special for me because it is designed by a team that is headed by one of my students who had studied product design at the National Institute of Design and interestingly the product is endorsed by the management guru C K Prahalad who by the way never uses the word “Design” in any of his speeches or for that matter his books, but that is another story. This raises another question for us as design educators in India and that is how do we educate our designers who would have the flexibility and the ability sets to be able to offer future requirements in an extremely complex context of the Indian market and this has always excited me as a design teacher. We had at NID chosen in the late 80’s, if not earlier in an implicit manner, to adopt the systems model at the heart of our education offering and this and other such stories are perhaps a vindication of the success of those moves in re-designing design education. This approach is explained in two papers that I have prepared in 2003 (Avalanche Effect…pdf file 55kb) and in 2005 (Creating the Unknowable…pdf file 50kb) and the models and design theory that evolved can be seen at this link to my website. Another important question for me is, how do we make design at this level visible to managers and Governments across the world?

Amit Gulati, an NID graduate in Product Design and founder partner of INCUBIS Pvt Ltd, a New Delhi based design and architecture firm, was asked by the Taj Group to pitch a concept for the proposed budget hotel to be set up in Bangalore. They were successful in their bid which is as yet unpublished or celebrated, but that particular bid led to the creation of the first prototype hotel aimed at the youthful traveling software professionals in Whitefield area in the IT hub of the city. It was named The "Indi-One" and it was a runaway success from the word go and the offering was later re-branded with market expertise from the Landor Group, UK, when the name GINGER was proposed for the expanding chain of budget hotels in India. INCUBIS was contracted on an exclusive design service and supervision basis to help create all the other hotels in the chain and now we have 10 such offerings, in as many cities, with Pondicherry joining the chain as the newest offering which opens to the public later today. Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Durgapur, Haridwar, Mysore, Pune and Trivandrum are the other links in the chain and the strategy to address latent needs in the tier-two cities in India has created an exciting growth model for the company.

Image: BCDI as it was in January 2002 when we commenced the programmes for the local bamboo craftsmenI am writing this post from the GINGER in Agartala where I have come to sign a “Statement of Intent” between the Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) (which I happen to Head at the NID) with the Tripura Bamboo Mission (TMB) and ironically the hotel is located across the street from the BCDI in Kejur Baghaan where we used to have our tea breaks amidst a number of Kejur (Date palm) trees when NID was given the responsibility of creating a new curriculum and in managing the BCDI as part of a contracted project arrangement with the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India. Here we were designing a new educational system for training young professional craftspersons for the bamboo sector and our involvement continued from January 2002 to June 2004 before we were rudely evicteded from our base in Tripura by administrative indifference and perhaps a complete lack of understanding at what we were trying to do there.

What actually has been designed at GINGER? Everything is designed – from the business model of the self-help systems to the liquid soap dispenser in each toilet in the hotel. These include all the tangible and visible signs, products and spaces as well as the intangible look and feel of the service as well as the details and location of all features that have been included in the offering. The slogan “Please help yourselves,” explains it all. Arriving at the smart arrival port at a smart looking building that has all the semantics of a hotel, there was no liveried bellhops at the door but a row of baggage carts with a help-yourself sign that was tastefully placed in the hotel’s chosen type-style and colour scheme. The door is automatic and opens across as the cart is rolled in, notice no moustached door keeper in the good Indian palace tradition. ATM style self check in are I am told available at other centres but in Agartala it was a smart young receptionist who handed over my swipe-card that would let me into my room number 106 and the clear black and white plastic stickers with a red border tell me that the card goes into the card slot near the door which sets of the lights, air-conditioner and the TV all part of the energy saving design strategy. Other labels in self-sticking plastic signs tell me that tea and coffee made in the room using the auto-stop electric kettle are compliments of the management and the mineral water in the small refrigerator too comes free but refills are available on each floor in the Guest Pantry where one can iron your clothes as well. Another sign on the telephone socket tells me that I can connect the lead to access the internet but in Agartala this is not yet a reality. A booklet in the room tells me that I can help myself to all the services, the pantry, the vending machines and the gymnasium as well as have access to a cybercafe, breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets, all at a reasonable charge. Interestingly the room tariff and service charges change with each city, keeping in mind the cost of living index and fortunately for me the Agartala offering comes at the lowest price of them all. I have stayed in most major hotels in Agartala over the past many years and it is clear that GINGER will give them all a run for their money. Design being a reflexive activity I am now interested in seeing how these competitors will respond to this new offering.

The rooms and lobby are spotlessly clean and so are the smart bathroom and the linen in the room. A comfortable in one corner with a conveniently located plug point for my laptop tells me that the designers intended to facilitate my use of my laptop and this is close to the telephone socket and all the other switches that I need to manage my room. The flat panel TV occupies no space on the wall and it is located at a convenient height across the bed and next to the full-length mirror. The wardrobe, refrigerator and luggage rack are all rolled into one integrated offering which also provides a platform for the kettle and the complimentary tea bags satchel. The rubber wood trimmed furniture are all fixed to the walls and clear off the ground with stainless steel legs for the table and ceramic tile faced platform for the bed that shows a clear concern for the cleaning crew which is small but effective to keep costs down to the bare minimum without compromising on quality and hygiene. Energy efficient lamps in very smart steel trimmed fittings are strategically located in the access corridor as well as the room and a wall mounted lamp assists reading in bed and at the adjacent table, very well located indeed, or should I say designed?

What is not visible is the CCTV surveillance system in the foyer and the lobby and all floors have a view of the reception through and the back end systems of housekeeping and online bookings all designed with care and concern for the user. A tie-up with Café Coffee Day has a pay and use walk in facility on the ground floor garden and lobby level all day coffee shop for the guests and vending machines for fast food and toiletries. What have they missed? Not much, but no room service and at Agartala no STD phone access to the room but that I am told is a temporary problem from the telecom supplier. An empty room at the entrance proclaims a sign “ATM Room” perhaps a money exchange for the international traveler and a promise of “Smart Basics” a trademarked offering from the Roots Corporation Ltd, the owners of the chain which is in turn a fully owned subsidiary of the listed company Indian Hotels limited (IHCL) which in turn is a part of the TATA Group in India. The booklet in the room proclaims that the concept was developed in association with C K Prahalad but there is no mention of the design minions who have done the fine detailing and translated the offering in the real world with sensitivity and good practical wisdom of an experienced designer. INCUBIS was and is still involved with all the new hotels in the chain and this ensures that each is contemporized to the changing market and the aspirations of the guests and this ahs given us a great but still invisible quality offering from the design in India stable and we hope to see more of these in the days ahead.

Image: A tree in Agartala on the way from the airport which I used as a title screen for a short movie that I had made in 2002 on the BCDI visit.
Can this be a lesson for the creation of new public facilities across the country? Be it public signage or toilets and affordable housing for the poor and facilities for the elderly in our fast moving cities there are a huge range of opportunities for action waiting to be realized as well designed and managed offerings. The National Policy discussions that will take place in Bangalore on the 11th December 2007 needs to garner the wisdom of the design community as Rashmi Korjan, another NID Graduate also from Product Design, has stated in her recent post on the DesignIndia list a few days ago. Yes, we do need to move the focus of the policy from being solely industry driven to get the Government to invest in design for the public facilities as well as design for society where few industries and business would like to tread, even if they have an active Corporate Social Responsibility programme in place. The KaosPilot, about which I have written about earlier has proposed the need for a “Fourth Sector” ..(download pdf file here) approach with the Government, Business and the Not-for-Profit (NGO) sectors forming the first three sectors that are not quite able to deal with the needs of society and the public in an effective manner today. Can we learn from their experiences and bring these lessons to the ground into India. By the way 35 KaosPilot students are planning to spend 3 months in Mumbai starting February 2007 and perhaps students from Indian design and management schools can collaborate with them in a mutually beneficial relationship. There are other ways in which we can act directly if we apply our collective imagination and track all the design opportunities out there and find the partners in the field to make it happen just like the GINGER story that has unfolded over the past three years with the use of Design at the heart of the offering. Yes, GINGER is a truly design driven offering from the house of the TATA’s. Great going, and keep going, and we are all watching and cheering from the ranks.

World Usability Day at Bangalore: Lecture on Social Equity and Design

Towards an Accessible World: Opportunities for Designers was the title for my lecture. This image is part of the model prepared by my students who as part of the Data Visualisation course at Gandhinagar Campus visited one village called Sahpur in Gandhinagar to look at design opportunities in a typical Indian Village. Looking at the particular as part of usability was my focus in my lecture. rather than talking about the Target Audience we need to look at the needs and aspirations of Meena and Mohan in the Indian context.

The World Usabality Day is a concept driven by volunteers across the world and by industry visionaries who have found value in supporting the event with corporate sponsorship. This year I was invited to speak at the mini conference at the National Institiute of Advanced Science (NIAS) auditorium which is located at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. From 3.00 pm to 7.30 pm on a Monday evening when Bangalore is hard at work dealing with the worlds information technology opportunities about 200 or more IT professionals from some of the leading national and multinational companies managed to get away to look at usability and design in critical areas of our lives. Braving the traffic and driving all the way across Bangalore they stayed till the end of the show only to spend the next hour or two to get back home after an eventful evening. The lectures were stimulating and informative and the crash workshop in envisioning usable new services and product concepts in three areas of need that was on the minds of the organizers, all volunteer IT professionals working in the usability space.

The enthusiasm and commitment that they brought to the workshop session was quite amazing. After some lead lectures by Dr. Girish Prabhu, a case study of a new internet access computer developed by Intel, Prof M P Ranjan speaking on design opportunities that can bring social equity to Indian villages and the lead organizer Sarit Arora of Human Factors, Bangalore sharing a usability test on the new Indian Railways ticket booking site the conference broke up into assigned teams to explore the design challenges. Three broad areas included services for the elderly, a low cost cell phone and a health information system for Indian villages. Each challenge zone had three teams and the format for innovation was intense and got all the creative juices flowing for a few action filled minutes of discussion, ideation and modeling. The half hour extended to another quarter and the five jury members went around reviewing one group at a time, each in a two minute show and tell format, very exciting.

This exciting interlude was followed by two more lectures and case presentations. One by Dr Reynold Washington and his IT colleague H Gururaj on the health care information system that he had helped develop for sex workers in Karnataka and Maharashtra and the insights that were gleaned from this pilot study which is now being rolled out in an improved format. The second was by Sean Olin Blagsvedt from babajobs.com sharing the prototype services that they had developed for converting the informal networks that all of us use to get domestic assistances and their efforts to design and build it as a viable business proposition. The challenges in these two case studies revealed the huge opportunity that existed in India at the non industrial sectors for IT services and value added web services that could address latent needs that have remained outside the ambit of organized business at the bottom of the pyramid.

Dr Prabhu reflected on why the Intel efforts had failed in India although they had used the best of class problem solving techniques in developing the product and the technology for the village based internet kiosk project. I saw that they had focused on the technology. Battery backup, heat tolerance and dust resistant casing and all the other front end and back end systems that should make the system work, but it failed, why? The focus seemed to be on making a robust and low cost solution but I did not hear what the village folks were supposed to do with the whole offering and it seems to me that this may have been the key to the failure of the whole effort, focus on technology and economy and missing the user and their particular condition in the location. The effort to evolve a general solution may have led to the local opportunity being missed and the product failed. There may be other reasons which we will only know if we look deeply It is ironic that the case was presented at a conference on usability when the core reason for the failure was caused by a lack of it.

Sarit Arora presented the Indian Railway ticket booking system and the tests showed a series of gross failures in addressing usability issues in the web based system and the interface. The home page had no picture of a train as one would expect and the user testing protocols showed a whole lot of missed opportunities and missed cues to help users move forward to achieve their objective of booking a ticket. My own assessment was that the case showed a stark failure of design from first principles which cannot be set right by usability testing. However most administrators and corporations would invest in usability testing of a poor solution rather than invest in a good design solution in the first place, a common problem that we see all the time in India. With huge investments being made in product testing and standardization and very poor investment in innovation and design across all fields of application.

The healthcare case by Dr Reynold Washington and Gururaj too was another example of a great challenge of a problem located in a complex context which was dealt with a huge commitment by the use of dedication and use of technology however in spite of all the data that was shared about the stated success of the efforts in containing the spread of HIV and Aids there seemed to be a complete lack of the use of design, once again the promise of technology and administrative diligence are held out as dependable and justifiable and measurable answers while we can envision that by using design at the macro micro level as a system the impact and effectiveness would be different. The use of the integrating force of design is missed here in their presentation which I do believe will make a significant change, if only they tried. Once again a missed opportunity for the use of the multiplier effect of design in a truly wicked problem.

Sean Olin Blagsvedt made an exhilarating presentation on their efforts to build a startup internet service called babajob.com and explained the business model of the social networking site which was also a business with clients, agents, mentors and applicants. The task is complex and it holds promise of delivering some real felt needs at an affordable price. A lot will depend on the quality of decisions that they take at both the strategic levels as well as at the level of detail, both will need to be addressed adequately if the offering is to be sustainable and valuable at the same time.

My own presentation dealt with design opportunities that could usher in social equity particularly in the rapidly changing rural landscape across India as well as in the numerous sectors of need across the thematic sectors such as Nature, Life, Work, Health and Play. These categories were used to get our students in the Design Concepts and Concerns course to explore and inform the range of possibilities and these explorations can be seen on our education blog here. The call for moving our focus from the general to the particular was characterized by the need to shift our attention from talking about a target audience at the general level to thinking and looking at “Meena and Mohan” as they live and work in their own situations and context in an immersive manner if we are to ensure a proper fit and result in bringing empowerment and social equity to all their transactions with business and society in general. The electronic voting machine and a study of a particular village are offered as case studies for the proposed design approach. The presentation 1 MB pdf file can be downloaded here.

The conference organizers here in Bangalore, the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and the CHI Bangalore have proposed to place the video recordings of the lectures on YouTube and when they do I will provide a link here. You can see more about the World Usability Day, Bangalore conference at this link here.

PDF file of 1 MB size of my lecture can be downloaded from this link here. Towards an Accessible World: Opportunities for Designers

Charles and Ray Eames: A legacy of durable impact on design thinking and action in India

Image: Eames Office Website
Eames Office website is a useful link for Indian design and designers since it holds the Eames Legacy which has had a major impact on the shaping of modern design education and practice in India over the past 50 years. From the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad through the legendary India Report of 1958 (pdf file 359 kb) drafted by the Charles and Ray Eames at the behest of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, to the setting up of the permanent Nehru Exhibits first at New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan and then at Mumbai’s Nehru Centre at Worli in 1998 gave NID and its designers a direct access to the insights of that Eamses had gleaned in their prolific explorations into many dimensions of design. We will soon embark on the celebration of 50 years of Indian Design and this will be in part a celebration of the contribution of the Eamses as well as the dedication and sustained efforts of the pioneers of Indian design from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Further the philosophic insights captured in the classic diagram of the design process which can be seen here has been a source of inspiration for all those who have had contact with his work.

Image: Nehru Exhibition opens in New York: from the NID Documentation 64-69
My own contact with the Eames philosophy gave me a new world view and later their practical tips on design action which focused on the minutest details in a “nothing-matters-more-than-the-details” point of view came from my association as a team member on the Nehru Exhibition on a number of occasions. As a student of Furniture Design at NID in the Post Graduate Programme that was started in 1969 we already had a head start into the Eames philosophy since we had access to a number of Eames designed furniture originals in our prototype collection which had been gifted by the Museum of Modern Art, New York after the collection of great designs had traveled in India before finding a permanent place at NID, Ahmedabad. Analysing the Eames collection and watching the collection of Eames films from the NID library were a great source of inspiration for many generations of NID students and faculty as well as for me as well. While this was the source of inspiration for me from 1969 to 1972 as a student at NID I got to experience another dimension of the Eames legacy in November 1972 when I had the opportunity to work as a member of the team on the Nehru Exhibition that was being set up in New Delhi in a new building that was being specially designed to house the exhibit permanently.

Image: Nehru Exhibition: from NID Documentation 64-69
I got to know the exhibits of the Nehru exhibition like the back of my hand having spent many nights hanging around the exhibition team in the photography department, the letter press studio and the wood workshop where the various parts of the exhibit were being assembled at the NID campus in Paldi. My task was to help design an auditorium with informal seating for a proposed theatre at the exhibition that would show films about Nehru and in another room create a audio-review system that could be used to listen to the many speeches by Nehru while standing next to a set of panels that had some contextual information about each speech. While these were my specific tasks, I had hung around all the other work groups long enough to be aware of the details of all these exhibits as well in a deeply interested and informed manner, which was encouraged in those heady days of "learning by doing" at NID of the 70's and 80's. The Eames treatment of all the elements of the exhibit that was being re-interpreted by Vikas Satwalekar as the then project head was a wholesome learning experience for me. During this same period I was involved with Dashrat Patel and Sen Kapadia in another project being executed at the Pragati Maidan which was also to open in November 1972, the Our India Pavilion where my specific task was to design the ventilation system and the large circular ports that were stuck outside the building, a concept that was a visual feature of Sen’s architecture for the stark building that still stands today as Hall No 15 in the Exhibition grounds at New Delhi.

Image: Charles Eames on his last visit to NID
These two experiences brought me professionally closer to both Vikas and Dashrat. They had both worked with Eames in 1964 and they headed the respective projects at New Delhi. When the team for the Chile leg of the Nehru Exhibition was being decided through an emergency call from the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi, I was selected to travel with Dashrat and B V Mistry to Santiago as a team member and a “crisis manager” to help set up the Nehru Exhibit in Santiago that was scheduled to open on the 26th of January 1973. Our team departed hurriedly on the 14th January 1973 along with 100 kg of excess baggage with photo prints, odds and ends, textiles and nails and adhesive, all that would be needed to set up the Nehru Exhibit in Santiago. Our task was to take the version of the exhibition that had arrived in Chile from Australia and make it ship-shape and presentable in an appropriate layout in the National Museum at Santiago. These experiences gave me a deep insight into the Eames sense of fine detailing and of their ability to handle both communication as well as material structures in one smoothly blended offering. The backs of panels were draped in fine Indian textiles as were the side structures on which the knock-down panels with large photographic exhibits were supported.

The structure itself was made stable using textile pouches that could be filled with sand locally so that a heavy base was not required to be transported across the world as the Nehru Exhibit was designed to travel to New York and later to many destinations across the globe. The system for typography and the method of building a history wall were some of the lasting contributions that many generations of NID exhibition and graphic designers perfected while working on the Nehru Exhibition with the Eames’s and their trusted colleagues who came to NID for the first such experience in the mid 60’s. Later the Eames History wall held sway on many NID exhibitions and the hierarchy of typography and the photo style and organization all had the Eames branding strongly embedded in the numerous outings and offerings from NID, be it the Agri-Expo in 1979, the Energy Exhibit in 1983 or the My Land My People in 1994, all mega exhibits handled by the NID teams following the Eames traditions. Quality was in high demand. Sensitivity was demanded from every team member and everyone contributed to the “menial tasks” of cutting and pasting hundreds of photographs and thousands of captions and labels, without a blemish, and here the learning about the finer aspects of design sensitivity were transferred from faculty to student and from carpenter to apprentice. The right-angle was the king, and the plumb-line informed the eye to see the vertical in all its perfection, the results were judged by the same standards that Eames had used for the first exhibition and the traditions of perfection were driven deep into the Indian design community at NID. The re-making of the Eames History Wall was an excellent introduction to information design and expressive visualization.

The other dimension of the Eames contribution was the India Report itself which can be downloaded from this link here. The Lota and the message about the Indian craft and culture of innovation and how it would need to be nurtured in a rapidly changing world order were all but lost to the Indian administration who did not seem to understand the role and purpose of design or NID. However having set up the NID and let it operate away from the harsh glare of daily politics in far away Ahmedabad, Indian Design could grow quietly, mature and take roots and build a whole generation of young practitioners who are the cream of Indian design profession and academia today in almost all fields of design education and action. The Eames contribution continued with their continuing interest in the Institute that they helped create in India and Charles visited NID in 1978, a few months before he passed away, and so did Ray, who came to NID to give away the Eames Award to Kamla Devi Chattopadhya in 1988, again a few months before she too passed away on the very same day and date as Charles, 21 August 1988, exactly 10 years apart. While this is a very personal tribute to the Eames legacy in India there are many of my colleagues who have worked directly with Eames as well as in their office in Los Angles at different times of their association with NID and through the amazing process of osmosis that happens when you are in their presence a great deal of learning about design has got transferred to Indian designers which will be mapped and evaluated in the years to come, I hope. The often repeated Eames quote at NID was – “do not say I will design a chair, rather say I will design something to sit on” – and the idea of broadening ones perception and including an open interpretation of the subject and the context were messages from the Eames that reverberated at NID and informed the education culture at the Institute over the years. The classic diagram that Charles offered when asked about the nature of the design process is another fine example of insight that has shaped the NID way in shaping the individual and their character through the value systems that were cherished in the NID’s education culture through the 70’s through the 90’s.

My most recent contact with the Eames legacy was when their grandson Eames Demetrios visited NID along with representatives of the Herman Miller group to reestablish contact with NID and to distribute his book “An Eames Primer” which I have a signed copy on my bookshelf. Soon after this I got online and obtained for myself a full set of Eames films being offered as a DVD set of six in a box at a very affordable price, much recommended for every design student and school as a source of inspiration and sensitization to be a thinking acting designer with feeling, which for me is the key message from the Eamses, Charles and Ray, thank you.

Image: Eames House: Modular from Industrial materials, much like the NID building system
The Eames connection continues to this day since one of my students, Sagarika Sundaram visited the Eames House this year and brought back the pictures that I use here and I am sure the Eames inspiration will mobilise many generations of young designers to come and the Eames Office on the web will be a much sought after destination for design students in their wanderings across the vast contours of the internet.

Image: NID building as envisaged in 1966 by the team led by Gautam and Gira Sarabhai and published in the NID Documentation 1964-69
NID too has now opened another chapter of the Eames Award and Fellowship set to begin this year which can be seen at this link here.

Design inside education: A strategy for India

Yesterday I was invited to speak to a group of school teachers at the Riverside School in Ahmedabad about the need for placing design inside education if we are to bring change and effectiveness to the way our children are groomed to face personal and professional challenges as they pass through the education processes in the days ahead. Riverside School
The pdf file of my presentation to the teachers can be downloaded from my website link here.

Riverside School is setting new standards for primary and secondary education in the city and it is being noticed for the change that their efforts and style of functioning is bringing to the behavior and confidence of their very young students. They seem to be doing something right. Founded in Ahmedabad by Kiran Bir Sethi – an NID design graduate – a graphic designer turned educationist, it is now showing clear demonstration of the results that can come from using design principles and sensibilities at all levels of the school’s functioning. The infrastructure, the curriculum, the style of teaching and the content and delivery are all child friendly and not parent or government dictated as most other schools in our region tend to be. Being a designer herself and an educator by experience and choice, she has been able to create a unique framework of relationships and models of action that are a test-bed for a innovative new school experience for both child and parent as well as for the teachers who choose to work with Riverside, and now more schools from far and near want to learn the methods and have signed up for teacher training and curriculum sharing arrangements and the influence is growing rapidly. Kiran has now launched a campaign to make Ahmedabad a child friendly city by a design strategy called “Aproch” which can be seen at this site below. The Riverside School with design inside now promises to make the city child friendly – and next the country? APROCH

So what is this “Design” that Kiran and her team are managing to put inside education at Riverside and is this something that can be extended to more levels of education across India. Last year I asked this question along with my teaching colleagues at NID when we set the theme of the “Design Concepts and Concerns” (DCC) course for the Foundation programme students at NID. The course that is now called DCC was previously labeled Design Process (DP), Design Methods or Design Methodology (DM) in the past having been borrowed from international traditions of Bauhaus and Hfg Ulm as well as the RCA driven movement in the UK in the 60’s but I changed the name after teaching it for many years when we realised at NID that design was not just about concepts and skills and techniques but it was also about feeling and values which were at the heart of all the thought and action, irrespective of the discipline and the field of enquiry. In this DCC2007 we chose the theme of “Design inside Education” and assigned five batches of students areas of focus that included “Pre-school education in India”, “Primary education in India in the Rural and Urban sectors” respectively and the other two groups looked at issues and perspectives that would influence the “Education of youth in India”, all based on their own fairly recent immersion in the Indian school system from their personal journey through it.

Students were taken through a series of assignments that I have outlined in my paper titled “The Avalanche Effect”, which can be downloaded from my website and these assignments took them through the DCC course from articulating and visualizing their personal experiences, their collective experiences by brainstorming, followed by model building to understand the structure and content of the educational system as it applied to each of the focus areas that were assigned to each of the five groups. The first assignment had them sharing with us their school experiences which revealed both the pleasures and the traumas of school systems in India as scenario visualizations, some elevating and others shocking by the expressions that were shared in the class. During the class we all made a trip to Riverside last year and our design foundation students were both surprised and excited by the fluency with which the little kids from Riverside took them through the school and explained its working methods and teaching content and style, all with a great deal of confidence and pride.


Model showing: Issues of Pre-Primary Education

The DCC class of 2007 that set about exploring, researching and imagining alternate scenarios that could help them build models and identify design opportunities across each of the school educations sectors that had been assigned. The models suggested deep understanding and empathy and these led to each group exploring numerous design scenarios that could transform the education sectors in India by addressing imaginative and innovative alternatives for infrastructure, products, procedures, services and communications opportunities in each of their groups assigned projects.


Model using a tree metaphor: Issues of Rural Primary Education

This five week assignment was for the student a journey through the design landscape from the macro and the micro perspectives which is in keeping with our design philosophy of macro-micro design action from policy to the very minute details, all of which have to be in perfect fit and balance if the design is to be truly successful as a whole and not to be seen as fragmented parts.


Model using "Nataraja" and Creeper metaphor: Issues of Youth Education and Renewal of existing systems

Education is just one of the 230 sectors in which design can be used at the macro-micro levels of action and I do hope that we see it being used more in India in then days ahead. Other themes in the past for this DCC course have been macro issues such as “Impact of Globalisation” (2004), “Khadi as an Ideology for Design” (2003), Retail as an Emegring Experience (2001), pictures of which can be seen at my website from this link below. Others which are not yet on the site include “Creative Industries of the Future” (2004), “Six Design Institutes for Six Regions of India” (2005), “Response to the National Design Policy for India” (2006), “Design inside Education for India” (2007) – each year we took a new theme and this went back many years, but are still to be documented, hopefully soon on this blog. For instance “Home Office and New Services” was the topic for the 1996 batch of foundation students which was particularly memorable, but others will also be reflected upon and discussed in the days ahead.

The author's home page can be viewed at this link Prof Ranjan's website