Conference on Geovisualisation at NID: Concluding Remarks by Prof. M P Ranjan

Image: Detail of a map of the Heritage Walk through the Walled City of Ahmedabad designed by NID student Sujay Swadi Sanan in the classroom. He used hand drawn facades of each building along the route showing a unique and creative expression of Geospatial Data that can be used by tourists and heritage enthusiasts.

Concluding Remarks to the 1st National Conference on GeoVisualisation held at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad on 28th to 30th November 2007. This was co-sponsored by The NRDMS (DST) Government of India, New Delhi and the NID, Ahmedbad.

M P Ranjan
Chairman, Geovisualisation Task Group
and
Faculty of Design, National Institute of Design

As the Chairman of the Task Group on Geovisualisation it is my task to use this occasion to make my concluding remarks that would help delineate the agenda of the task Group as well as list the areas of focus the we would need to focus on in the days ahead particularly in the context of the deliberations and recommendations that have come out of this wonderful conference. On behalf of the Task Group on Geovisualisation I would list the core areas of emphasis that would help us set priorities and directions for the work in the field of Geovisualisation in the Indian context in the days ahead.

1. The first Conference on Geovisualisation has helped us bring together a large number of expert groups at a design institute who have a great deal of cumulative experience in the subject and we are grateful to the speakers and participants for sharing their insights that have culminated in the drafting of the recommendations that would be reviewed by the NRDMS DST, Government of India to take this initiative forward.

2. We have a good list of proposed Demonstration Projects and domain specific initiatives that is an outcome of this conference as well as the ongoing activities of the Task Group in identifying and initiating these through the expert groups who can carry out the research required to deliver these demo projects and then help realize in on the ground where it is needed.

3. The proposed Centre for Geovisualisation at NID has taken a step forward with the NID team putting together the first Conference on Geovisualisation and this event has given us the opportunity to review the scope and dimensions of the field and this will help set the plans for the research and education activities of this Centre in the days ahead. The infrastructure and skill sets that would be brought to this Centre too would be informed by the ongoing discussions with the various expert groups that the NID has been able to bring together under a common platform of this Conference and in the days ahead I am sure that these small steps will be supplemented by a sustained programme of research and design action that will give a strong impetus for the field as a whole particularly since one of the key roles will be the challenges that come with the field being multi-disciplinary and therefore having many implications of the integration of a diverse set of skills and knowledge into usable and high quality offerings in the field of GeoVisualisation.

4. Promotion of the concepts of Geovisualisation and the need for the use of Geo-Spatial data bases in a effective manner with the help of Geovisualisation tools and procedures needs to be embedded in many sectors of our stakeholder groups and in this initiative it is recognized that we will need to make a sustained effort to reach out to all the stakeholders be they young students who need to understand the concepts or to decision makers who would need to use these tools and concepts for the various fields of application that have been discussed in this Conference.

5. The promotion activity would need to extend to the Policy makers at the National as well as the Regional levels and to a large number of our administrators who would be sensitized to the future possibilities and critical features of the Geovisualisation activity space. We would also be working on the area of Policy guidelines that can enhance and extend the use of this knowledge and skill through the drafting and processing of supportive policy frameworks so that much of the data that is held in the Government sector can be mobilized for development initiatives in the local Panchayati Raj Institutions across the country in a decentralized manner.

6. We need a good Communication Platform in order to achieve the reach and impact of a rapidly growing field as well as the locate India at the leadership position that it had in the field of Cartography and public data use for good governance. We propose to set up an Web Portal that uses Web 2.0 standards to empower rapid and sustained participation of a large number of players as well as support cooperation across domains and institutional boundaries in an open source framework to make the whole initiative cost effective and accessible to all sections of our society.

7. The whole area of Training, Content Generation and Demonstration through the identification and creation of suitable exemplars has assumed a major significance in the task of the Geovisualisation Task Group. The expert groups are requested to address this urgent requirement and create fertile experiments and elective based offerings in existing institutes and university departments to fast track the development of these critical resources which can then be offered through a mass contact programme as e-learning initiatives to the numerous stakeholders that would need to be reached by these training initiatives in the days ahead.

8. The Task Group on Geovisualisation would also flag the Key Policy Issues that would need the attention of Government and try and articulate the areas of priority and the desirable directions that would need to be taken in this composite field that is now called by the broad term of Geovisualisation. One of the key recommendations that have been stressed by a number of speakers is the use of Government funding and policy and legislative supports to make these inputs an Avenue for the Open Source movement to grow in India in such a manner as to ensure easy access to such resources at the grassroots level all over the country.

9. The Task Group on Geovisualisation is also determined to Expand the Base of Experts and Partners who can contribute to the Geovisualisation movement taking root in India and here in addition to technology, science and design we will need to bring on board management and administration at many levels so that a seamless transfer of research to the land can take place through the creation of useable products and strategies in all fields of application.

I compliment the NID and NRDMS-DST teams for the excellent conduct and planning of this Conference on Geovisualisation and we do look forward to a sustained programme of activities in the days ahead. I would like to thank the National Institute of Design and its Director, Dean of Gandhinagar Campus and the Anchor Faculty from NID for being excellent hosts and for the three days of stimulating discussions and presentations that have brought a good number of insights that can be taken forward by the Task Group on Geovisualisation with the active support of the NRDMS-DST Government of India.

Contact Information for Proceedings and Resources
For obtaining copies of the proceedings and any additional information the contact person is Dr Bibhu Dutta Baral, Chief Coordinator & Anchor Faculty: Geovisualisation Research Initiatives at NID
email contact:

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.

Visible Information India: A new blog on Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation and Information modelling is emerging as an important field of design action and in the age of media and computer based interaction the opportunity to make data visible is both an art as well as a science that needs to be used in all walks of life as well as in the core offerings from business and governments alike. This blog called "Visible Information India" is therefore a platform that will be used by students in the Data Visualisation class at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar to share and showcase their ongoing efforts with their teachers as well as with others interested in taking this new activity to a higher level of professionalism. This course was created three years ago with the first batch of students from the new digital design disciplines at NID and it has been found useful for other groups as well as by the industry representatives who had come for the placement activity at the end of these programmes. This year, the two week course is conducted by Prof. M P Ranjan and Rupesh Vyas at the Gandhinagar campus for students of the Information and Digital Design discipline (IDD). The first assignment given to the students is the analysis of modelling data flows on the Google Analytics service as they are applied to the design of institutional and personal websites and we hope to see this work documented and shared in near real time during the conduct of this course at NID.
"Visible Information India" blog on Data Visualisation


Experimental assignment done last year on mapping village resources for use by local people in a village near Gandhinagar.

Through this platform of, "Visible Information India" blog, the faculty will also share their insights and comments on the emerging field as well as post book reviews and discussions on current developments that may be pertinent to the subject at hand, making critical and useful information visible for and in India. This resource will cover design approaches for the creation of maps, models and diagrams as well as dynamic data representations of a number of domains such as financial, medical and decision support, to mention only a few.