An Ecology for Design: A call for integrated action in India

An Ecology for Design: A call for integrated action in India

I was invited to a panel discussion at MICA, Ahmedabad (MUDRA Institute of Communication) as part of the National Seminar on Ecology, Communication and Youth: An ICZMP initiative at MICA campus, Shela, Ahmedabad from February 25 – 27, 2013 organised in partnership with, Gujarat Ecology Commission (GEC). 
 The participants were NGO's and Field workers who are all youth from across the country, ecology and communication scientists and researchers and I was asked to speak in Hindi, which I did. The speakers at my session were scientists from ISRO, SAC and International expert in disaster management and the title of the session was Science and Arts for Managing Coastal Resources and as usual design was missing from the session title. My paper that I presented at the seminar is quoted below and the visual presentation can be downloaded from this link here as a pdf file. 
Download visual presentation here as a pdf file 3.8 mb
Text file of my lecture is here as a pdf file 65 kb size

I did not stick to the text submitted below but I did vent my thoughts on the disparity in funding and support from the Governemnt of India as well as the States for science and technology when compared to design although the premier Institute for design has now (finally) been accorded National recogntion by the Union Cabinet with the status of an Institute of National Importance. The scientists present at the seminar conferred with me and in response to my enquiery told me that the SAC gets about Rupees 600 crores a year and the parent organisation ISRO gets Rupees 6000 crores per year as their annual budget support for the year. Add to this the Rupees 5000 crores per year that is given to the CSIR and many hundreds of thousands more to defence and other sectors in the name of technology you will see that there is a complete absence of support for design in comparison. My stated position is that our country will not be able to solve its critical problems if this kind of disparity of funding continues in the future and I hope this message is heard and acted upon by the Finance Minister in his forthcoming budget or in a followup action when the matter of design as an activity of national importance is brought before the Indian Parliament, hopefully soon.

An Ecology for Design: A call for integrated action in India

M P Ranjan
Professor – Design Chair, CEPT University
Ahmedabad

Presentation at National Seminar on Ecology, Communication and Youth at MICA, Ahmedabad on 26 February 2013

Preamble
Quote from her “A Note from the Author”
“As corporations, which play such a powerful determining role in our species’ behavior as a whole, understand and abide by the sustainable survival principles of living systems, their goals will come into harmony with our personal and community goals. We can then mature like other species from competition to cooperation and build a human society in which the goals of individual and community, of local and global economy, of economy and ecology are met. This will shift us out of crises and into the happier, healthier world of which we all dream. Let it be so!”
                                                     Elisabet Sahtouris, September, 1999

as quoted in Elisabet Sahtouris and James E Lovelock, Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution, iUniverse, 2000 (ISBN-13: 978-0595130672) This excellent book can be downloaded from her website here. or from a direct link as a pdf file here Earthdance.pdf 800kb

Ecology and Design
For me the seminar at MICA that will focus on the ecology of coastal Gujarat is an occasion to reflect on the terms – “Ecology” as well as “Design” – since both of these for me are central for understanding the world as a system and not as a collection of parts that we most times tend to do in order to achieve administrative convenience. 

The word Ecology is perhaps well understood by this gathering as the overarching processes of nature that includes the scientific study of the relationships that living organisms have with each other and with their natural environment. It alludes to the manner in which the various parts of the natural environment relate with each other and contributes to the sustainable survival or demise of the whole system.

My definition of the word Design, however, may not be generally known nor accepted easily since we all carry so many versions for this particular word. So let me state it here in brief to explain my arguments further. 

Design is a cultural system just like literature, music, art and philosophy. Design is driven by human intentions and actions that shape our environment and over time it shapes us and the culture and values that we hold dear. It is not only informed by culture, but also helps create it and is one of the central contributors of both the tangible and intangible resources of any cultural entity through a constant process of evolution and assimilation that these living cultures tend to do. Design at a deep level deals with all aspects of human evolution and in the production of culture through the human use of local resources as well as the unfolding of human imagination and political action that brings change. Therefore this search is not just for truth that exists (which is what science does) but a search for what could be the imagined possibilities and options and these are preferably aligned with an existing trajectory of culture so that it is more acceptable to local inhabitants and the holders of that particular culture. Therefore, design imaginations offerings cannot be tested in a laboratory but can only be manifested in the world through its acceptance by the people who wish to own it and put it to use. They need to be prototyped and visualized at an early stage and then taken through many stages of refinement and testing before a wholesale adoption of the se offerings can be made practical and desirable. Design is also a profession and here our understanding of its knowledge, skills, sensibilities and its scope are all changing as we continue to gather insights from our practice and research here in India and today it is substantially different form when it was introduced as a modern discipline in India some fifty years ago

Design is a discipline that uses all the disciplines known to humanity in order to build a synthesis of new offerings –settlements, products, spaces, services, activities as well as organizations – for the betterment of our society and to meet their aspirations, needs and desires with the natural and cultural resources that are available and accessible at any given time and place. Over time, what we build tends to shape us and all that we think and do.

Design as a System
I have used the metaphor of fire to define design using a model that was developed with my students. When we look at fire we see that it has various components — Fire (Agni) is a process of transformation — a material is transformed by organic exchanges with the environment and an effect is the product of this exchange. The process is always situated in a particular context and this context is represented by the ground on which stands the fire, both time and place taken together form the context. The process of burning and the products of light, heat and smoke are all in close interplay with the environment and design too is an activity that can happen only with reference to its own context. This fire therefore represents the kind of complex transaction that I consider an adequate expression for the systems metaphor for design.

This means that we see design as a complex activity. There is not a single product that we can call a simple product. Take for example the simplest of products that you can think of and explore its possible effects. If you look at it only as a product of technology, that is, as some material transformed into a functional shape, then it would seem to be simple. However if you consider its entire life-cycle and its impact on society, it is quite another matter altogether. So it is becoming increasingly evident that design has to look beyond the object itself as a mere artifact, as produced by technology, to the effects that these objects have on a complex set of user-related parameters and finally the effects of these objects on the environment and culture at various stages of their life cycle need to be taken into consideration while we design them.

This leads us to re-evaluate the role of design and to anticipate the shape of the design activity in the years to come. We are beginning to understand the complex nature of design, which means that you also need a fairly complex method of dealing with it. Design methodologies need to be reevaluated and innovated to cope with this complexity. A lot of technological development in recent years has created negative results, some with catastrophic consequences. We are certain that the exploitation of technology without the use of design processes that take cognizance of the long term needs of users and environments will lead to disaster.

We can call this an ecological view of design when we are attempting to deal with the complexity of both natural systems as well as how they connect and are influenced by human interventions and activities.

Three Orders of Design
In a paper that I had presented in Istanbul in 2009 titled:” Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design” I had proposed a new organization of our understanding of the design activity as the three orders of design. 

The “Ethical Design Vortex” that moves through these three orders in sweeping and overlapping stages includes various manifestations of design thoughts and actions along a growing spiral of influences and categories listed below:

• The First Order of Ethics in Design
Material – Craftsmanship – Function – Technique – Structure
This level of design is recognized by most people and is the commonly discussed attribute. Here material, structure and technology are the key drivers of the design offerings as these help shape the form that we eventually see and appreciate in the artifact. We can appreciate the offering as an honest expression of structure and material used and transformed to realize a particular form that is both unique as well as functional. It is here that skill and understanding of the craftsmen are both used to shape the artifact through an appropriate transformation with a deep understanding of its properties and an appreciation of its limitations.

• The Second Order of Ethics in Design
Economy – Society – Communication – Environment
This level is influenced by utility and feeling of a society and is largely determined by the marketplace as well as by the culture in which it is located. Here aesthetics and utility are informed by the culture and the economics of the land. We can sense and feel the need for the artifact and the trends are determined by the largely intangible attributes through which we assess the utility and price value that we are willing to accord to this particular offering, which is quite independent of its cost.

• The Third Order of Ethics in Design
Politics & Law – Culture – Systems – Spiritual
This level is shaped by the higher values in our society and by the philosophy, ethics and spirit that we bring to our products, events, systems and services. At this level value unfolds through the production of meaning in our lives and in providing us with our identities and these offerings become a medium of communication in themselves, all about ourselves. It is held in the politics and ethics of the society and is at the heart of the spirit in which the artifacts are produced and used in that society. There are deeply held meanings that are integral to the form, structure as well as some of the essential features which may in some cases be the defining aspects of the offering, making it recognizable as being from a particular tribe or community. These features define the ownership of the form, motif or character of the artifact and these are usually supported by the stories and legends about their origin and give meaning to the lives of the initiated.

Conclusion
I do not have much time to elaborate these positions and provide all the case studies that we have gathered over the years. These are described in my previous papers as well as on my blog – “Design for India” – and can be accessed from there. However this presentation will not be complete without stressing that we need to build a suitable ecology for design itself to flourish here in India since we seem to have adopted specialization as our preferred approach to dealing with problems as and when they crop up while relegating the organized integration of these special knowledge and tools to chance encounters of committees that we put together to manage these events as they come to our attention. On the other hand we speak of public private partnerships where we place these actions in the hands of some entrepreneur who is supposed to first create these new offerings by inventions and also “jugaad” without the benefit of a nurturing environment on which these activities can take place in a sustained and effective manner. India needs to reconsider its approach to design and to recognise design as an ecological offering that has many layers and relationships and also to set up processes and organisation that can use that language and tools of design to transform our society and the environment on which they live, work and play. We will also need to look at the manner in which design can be integrated into all our activities and not leave them as domains of specialist activity as they have been in the past. For this to happen we will need to look at how design is being taught in our schools and institutes and how these will change to accommodate the new understanding of design that we now have arrived at through our various journeys and from the crisis that some of our past actions have created at the level of the ecology, while looking at the health of the whole and not just the parts.

References
1. Elisabet Sahtouris and James E Lovelock, Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution, iUniverse, 2000 (ISBN-13: 978-0595130672)
2. Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman, The Design Way, (Second Edition)
Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World, MIT Press, 2012 (ISBN: 9780262018173)
3. M P Ranjan, blog “Design for India” www.designforindia.com

About the Author

M P Ranjan
Professor – Design Chair, CEPT University
Design Thinker & Author of blog www.designforindia.com,
Ahmedabad

Prof M P Ranjan is a design thinker with 40 years of experience in design education and practice in association with the National Institute of Design. He helped visualize and set up two new design schools in India, one for the crafts sector, the IICD Jaipur and the other for the bamboo sector, the BCDI Agartala. His book Handmade in India is a comprehensive resource on the hand crafts sector of India and was created as a platform for the building of a vibrant creative economy based on the crafts skills and resources identified therein.

His book on bamboo opened up new frontiers for design exploration in India. He has explored bamboo as a designer material for social transformation. Bamboo has been positioned as a sustainable material of the future through his work spread over three decades. His work in design education covered many subjects including Design Thinking, Data Visualisation, Interaction Design and Systems Design

His blog “Design for India” has become a major platform for Indian design discourse.

He is on the Governing Council of the IICD, Jaipur and advises other design schools in India and abroad. He lives and works from Ahmedabad in India. He has been acknowledged by peers as one of the international thought leaders in Design Thinking today

~

The Design Way: Dr Harold Nelson at NID, Ahmedabad

The Design Way: Dr Harold Nelson at NID, Ahmedabad

Prof M P Ranjan’s archives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prof M P Ranjan’s archives

Sustainability Charette: World Economic Forum in New Delhi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prof. M P Ranjan

Footprints in Time: A Crafts Ecology for India

Footprints in Time: A Crafts Ecology for India

M P Ranjan: A Propsal for the IICD, Jaipur as part of their Vision & Mission explorations.

Image 1: Systems model for the proposed Crafts Ecology for India as part of the IICD, Jaipur’s Mission and Vision articulation in 2008.

Further to my post titled “Mission and Vision : Crafts Ecology for IICD Jaipur” that was shared with our colleagues at the IICD, Jaipur on 18 October 2008 I have had some time to ponder and expand the ideas expressed in the model that I call a Crafts Ecology for India. We hope that the activities at the Institute and the collective actions of the Institute and its partners and stakeholders along with the wider collective of crafts persons, incubates and entrepreneurs all working in concert with the enablers and providers would achieve a sustainable local action in each chosen area and make a real impact over time. This model needs to be elaborated and designed in its finer details as we go forward and invest time and resources to make it happen. We invite those convinced to join the team at IICD, Jaipur and help realize these potentials, which we do believe are real and palpable.

Image 2: The 5 principles of Design led action

I came across a remarkable paper by Bruno Latour, the French Sociologist, titled “A Cautius Prometheus?” *full title given below. And I was mighty impressed and I purchased all his books from Amazon, I now have t read them, but the insights that he brings about design at the broader level I have not seen these held by many designers nor design professors, and we have much to still learn about design. The full paper is available as a pdf file 152 kb size from here. More about Bruno Latour from wiki here.


Reference:
A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Towards a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk) Keynote lecture for the Networks of Design meeting of the Design History Society Falmouth, Cornwall, 3 September 2008 by Bruno Latour. download pdf 152 kb.

M P Ranjan

Rockytoys as a Model: The Mini Wheeler Series

Rockytoys Experience: The Mini Wheeler Series and beyond
Image: Mini Wheeler series designed for Rockytoys in 1975 using spindle moulder profiles for mass production.
The Dinky Toy™ range and the Matchbox™ range were an all time favorite at our shop ever since I first saw the little cars in the late 50’s during our frequent visits to our shop, Rockytoys on General Patters Road. Die cast in zinc with a great attention to detail, each car was a fine replica of the one that the toy represented. Kids and their parents seemed to love these and those who could afford them had large collections and they were used for imaginative play. As little children, my brother and I had a large collection of these Dinky Toy cars, thanks to our fathers liberal position about our access to these toys when we visited the shop, and this extended as well to the Meccano™ construction kits that brought us hours of fun and productive labour in building and dismantling wonderful structures at our home in Guindy in Madras. My father was an avid collector of old toy prototypes and on one of his visits to Calcutta he came back with an enormous set of Hornby™ Model Railway engines, wagons and a huge supply of 0 gauge tracks. It was enormous and we could set up tracks all over our long bedroom at our old house at Guindy and it has stations, level crossing and changing tracks, all made in tinplate construction that was precise and robust in construction. Two clock-work engines and two complete sets of passenger and goods wagons came with the set. He has also obtained a number of catalogues of toy company Tri-ang™, and we spent several hours each day pouring over these books while playing with what we had at hand.

This experience must have been in the back of my mind when I decided to develop a range of little cars for production in our factory using wood as the primary material. I remembered having seen an old book in my fathers collection that showed the creation of the Noah’s Ark and all the animals using a cart-wheel type construction that was then turned on a lathe in the profile of each animal and the animal shape was revealed when the “cart-wheel” was eventually sliced radialy into narrow slices such that the cross section was the shape of the animal concerned. These slices were then whittled and shaped to make a range of realistic animal shapes which could then be included in the Noah’s Ark toy. Each lathe turned “cart-wheel” would produce a large number of identical animals, very clever indeed.

Image: Detail of the BUG, DIX and other three-letter named car toys made using moulded wood profiles in stained wood finish.
Inspired by this process I developed a range of spindle-moulded car shapes using a small number of cutter blades since there was little investment funds available to make these cutters. I mixed an d matched the cutters for the front and back of the cars and thereby produced a range that I called the Mini-Wheeler series”, all an extension of the same design strategy that had started with the making of the Big Wheeler and Small Wheeler range, that of using one size of wheel and wheel assembly to produce a range of new offerings. I used a uniform size of drill holes to suggest windows and the form was an extreme simplification but the message was clear. Each car and train set were made using a limited number of cutters and the intention was to offer these in graphic packaging that had large typography and the profile of the car on the outside of the box which was to be printed using the screen printing technique since once again small scale production would be used to establish the product and if they turned successful theses could be scaled up using other manufacturing techniques. These toys never reached large scale production that I had intended but several hundred sets were produced and sold in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The wheels were turned using rosewood stock that had come from a bulk purchase of root segments from a forest auction that my father had participated in during the 60’s and these were ideal for making the wheels since the material was rock hard and the small components were not too difficult to manage from this stock. The body was made using white cedar and another wood called “Manja Kadamba”, which was a local hardwood that was fine grained and white in colour. I used dye colours to shade the finished blocks and no painted version was offered for this range since the stained and natural versions were found acceptable in the market.

Image: Mini-Wheeler Train set and the range of cars using the spindle moulding process.
Much later when I had returned to NID I developed another toy which was prototyped but never produced which I called the “Acrobats” which was based on the spindle moulded dolls, boy and girl shapes that could be stacked in a variety of ways, being modular in dimension, and these would form a human pyramid when stacked by the child like in the “Janmashtami” function of “Matka Phod” that is very popular in Bombay and all over Maharashtra State. However, design is an investment, and it can be encashed at anytime if the conditions for that particular offering are dusted out from the shelf and offered to the market in an acceptable form and price. These toys can have a life of their own once again and I do hope that some young enthusiast will revive some of these as modern versions and reach these to children who need them for play and learning. Crafts communities in India and elsewhere could use these design offerings and the process of innovation that these represent to kick-start entrepreneurship in their own locations and offer some of these toys to the local markets in a sustainable manner. This form of innovation can be a great driver of the economy but it is still not understood in India for what it truly is. One year after the launch of the National Design Policy in India last February, the Finance Minister today in his 2008 Budget speech made no mention of any special allocation for Design Promotion like Korea has done or Design Support like the Wales model both much needed in India today, just as in the last year the only mention about design was at the tail end of his speech when the service tax on design services was announced for the first time in Parliament. I wonder when design, as we understand it today, will be recognized in India for what it can really do in the core areas of our economy and society and not just for the superficial qualities that are those dealing with the aesthetic quality of products, which is perhaps well understood, but unfortunately these are equated to luxury products and services and not for the core applications across 230 sectors of our economy as I have been arguing here on this blog.

LEGO: A Toy for all Ages – Can it be localized for India?

LEGO is today 50 years old and it is a great design event. Innovation knows no boundaries and here in India too we need to celebrate the 50th birthday with an appropriate response that is fitting to the occasion. What could this be? I will get to that shortly.

What is LEGO? Why are we celebrating it?

To answer this is not a simple task since it is not one product but a multitude of things to a multitude of people and as a system of components that make up the whole it can be used and enjoyed by all ages and genders or almost by all ages and genders if we go by the age recommendations on the boxes and the instruction manuals that accompany each kit that has been sold in the market ever since it was introduced to the world in 1958 by its inventor designers. I quote here the Time magazine report on the toy and the company:
I Quote.. “.It was at 1:58 p.m. on January 28, 1958, that then-Lego head Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for the iconic plastic brick with its stud-and-hole design. Since then, the company has made a staggering 400 billion Lego elements, or 62 bricks for every person on the planet. And if stacked on top of one another, the pieces would form 10 towers reaching all the way from the Earth to the Moon.” UnQuote
see the full story at the TIME website titled “Lego Celebrates 50 Years of Building”, By LEO CENDROWICZ Monday, Jan. 28, 2008 at this link here.

I have been fascinated by these kinds of modular construction kits and building blocks ever since my childhood when I had access to a variety of Meccano and the large Montessori blocks which incidentally were manufactured in my fathers toy factory in the 50’s and 60’s in Guindy at Madras (now Chennai). The factory was called Modern Agencies and made wooden toys and school furniture and teaching aids. The LEGO blocks however started appearing in India through product imports that slipped through the stringent import control Raj in India in 70’s and in larger measure in upmarket toy shops the early 90’s at the beginning of the era of economic liberalization in India. But for that hindrance we would perhaps have seen this product in India in my fathers toy shop as well in its hay days when it stocked over 3000 varieties of toys, dolls, games and teaching aids, all playthings that would make a child excited and fulfilled. My father’s business policy was to carry and sell only toys as playthings which had educational value and he used to frequently tell us – “my shop does not carry plastic buckets and toys, which was the format for most other toy stores in the city with the exception of the India’s Hobby Centre, which carried stocks of aircraft models and a large variety of toys. Unfortunately in the late 60’s through the mid 80’s when I had access to the shop located at the corner of General Patters Road and next to the now extinct Wellington Cinema as well as the right to take home any one that I liked, very privileged indeed, we did not have stocks of LEGO, my loss. However my daughter was more lucky since I was able to indulge my interest in the toy kit and obtain several sets of these multi-dimensional blocks with the excuse of educating my daughter when I returned home from my professional visits to Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan to further my interest in bamboo and design. Lucky girl. She still holds on to these sets although she has graduated from NID and is working as a designer in Bangalore these days. Perhaps LEGO was partly responsible for her choosing design as a profession besides the fact that she lived on campus at NID, which is the hothouse for design in India in any case.

In 1991 I had shared my daughter’s LEGO blocks with my students in the systems design class and used this as a case study of a great modular system that affords many insights into the making of good design. The blocks are well made with fine fits and tolerances and they are non-frustrating for the child since they work and provide hours of fun in imaginative play in a continued state of creative expression, wonderful. The assignments for our students that I now reflect on was set in that year as an analysis of an existing system so that we could through our study discover properties and principles that would help us in the design of our own system, in this case modular furniture systems, since the two students were from the Furniture Design discipline for whom the class was on offer. Aruna Venkatavaradan and Harkaran Singh Grewal were the students in question and both of them were assigned the task of carrying out the analysis that would lead up to the making of an informative and insightful document. Aruna’s document is thankfully available in the NID Resource Centre (now called the Knowledge Management Centre) titled Lego: Analysis of the toy as a System. Through her analysis she discovered the principles of modularity and inter-operability of the blocks on offer as well as looked at the multiple levels of organization that was used to make and offer variety and affordances to the child the ultimate user of the toy. She had categorized all the blocks using her own nomenclature and from this built her description of the toy as a system. Aruna discovered that the various block and their features could be classified and organized under a system and structure in the following manner.

The Geometric Module: Form, Dimension, Compatibility
The Functional Module: Hinges, Pins, Tubes, Features
The Marketing Module: Packaging, Economic Groups, Age Groups, Interest Groups
The Semantic Module: Form, Colour, Texture, Terminal Elements, Context
The Ergonomic Module: User Capability, Need, Age Matching, Complexity
and finally
The Economic Module: Production Features, Finished Product Configuration, Set Configuration etc.,

The geometric level was for instance provided by the shape and size of each block, the differentiation level was offered by the colour and symmetry and asymmetry of the blocks, the semantic level was offered by the cultural meanings of the terminal blocks such as hats, flowers and head types that permitted the assembly to carry different meanings for the child and so on. She used the process of sketching and drawing using isometric and orthographic views to analyse each block and then used language to sort and arrange the elements into a meaningful structure and this process revealed the inner structure of the toy and the potentials on offer by each kind of block. Great learning for her as well as for all of us involved in the discussions and debates that ensued.

What can we do in India with the LEGO legacy now that the patent that started ticking on that eventful day of 28th January 1958 when the patent application for this fascinating toy principle was filed by the son of the company founder with the new and improved principle on offer. Many me-too variations have been offered but design and imagination can make a huge difference to bring cultural relevance to the toy, which I believe is a significant one for the era of globalization, and unfortunate homogenization that we now see in all toy offerings around the world. Localisation could well be practiced and Indian themes can now appear from the stable of some enterprising Indian company who may come forward and offer the Mahabharata LEGO or the Warli Lego, to suggest only a few options here, where the semantic layer could be manipulated by the use of design imagination and explorations, particularly since the basic product is now off patent. LEGO International itself offers many Western themes but should these be the only ones that Indian kids have on offer? This is a call for design students in India and elsewhere to take up this challenge and show how the popular and effective toys (just as critical drugs and medicines could be developed from proven offerings) and these can be localized to meet extant conditions in India and other developing countries. I am not suggesting that totally new approaches cannot be attempted, do so by all means if possible, but the world of artifacts in any culture are made up of incremental innovations as well as design imagination and we must recognize this fact and invest our efforts to make the most of our resources and build quality offerings that can reach all our schools and homes.

Let us celebrate the 50th birthday of the wonderful LEGO blocks and kits and help reach these to stimulate the imagination of our children for many years to come. Let us make an Indian “LEGO” today.

The TATA Nano Debate Rages on: A Call for Design Activism

As an outcome of the three posts on this blog about the TATA Nano launch at the Auto Expo 2008 we have had several comments made on the arguments here that would be of interest to both design students and professionals when taken together. I am therefore reproducing these in the order in which the comments have come in as one composite post before closing this particular thread.

I had wanted to make a major post on the new iBus that was exhibited at the Auto Expo but the Industrial Designers who contributed to the creation of the product are still restrained from making specific comments about the product due to confidentiality agreement with their client Ashok Leyland, Chennai, other tan confirming that they have contributed to the Industrial Design for the product. Congratulations, Abhikalp Design , Indore for the launch of their product, one of the few indigenous Industrial Design offerings that have reached market in India. We will get back to this product at a later date.

Now let us look at the comments that the TATA Nano posts have generated on this blog.

Soo… 11 January, 2008 1:45 PM
hi ranjan, i was reading an interview of Nandan Nilekani where he and his wife were in the process of setting up thinktanks in India (quite like what you suggest in the last para of this post). I don't know whether it would be a part of Infosys or a separate body, but maybe there could be some collaboration with that. just a thought!

prof M P Ranjan 11 January, 2008 2:45 PM
Thanks Soo ... I am advocating the use of design and scenario visualisation as a social procedure that can make the consequences of any major infrastructure investment visible to the lay man before it is acted upon by governments and industry even if they have the money and the power to do so. This will encourage true democratic processes and it may take a while to move things but once we get an understanding the movement forward would be quite dramatic and the consequences at the social and the ecological level both visible as well as manageable. We could go one step further and say that we could have laws in place that makes such visualisations and community sharing mandatory and time sensitive so that situations such as the Shingur and Nandigram conflicts as well as the Narmada issue that has been contentious.

In all these cases we have only had political activists opposing or supporting the scheme, whatever they may have been intended to achieve. However with design visualisation and scenario building with imagination so that all of us can see and feel the finer aspects of what could be the possible outcomes and then move forward with conviction.

murli said... 12 January, 2008 11:18 PM
I agree with every argument against the proliferation of automobiles in the world. The practical reality is that unless one has the power to change the political order such that reliable, comfortable public transport becomes the norm, it is sheer hypocrisy to drive around in automobiles while instructing others not to. Try to spend a day as a woman carrying a small child standing in 45 degree/95% humidity weather at a bus stand along with 50 others waiting for a bus that may not arrive, and which is already over-crowded when it does and thus may never stop; and one is required to take two or three such buses to get to work or school. Then the Nano is a godsend. Infosys founder Narayanamurthy was powerless to bring about positive urban change in his hometown of Bangalore -- and here's a man with the money, ideas and intelligence to make it happen.
I salute Ratan Tata because he is doing the best he can for the problems faced by a significant proportion of Indians. 
Since neither political will nor intent exists to create a transportation infrastructure, and since nothing short of a revolution is going to effect significant political change the alternative is to fill the streets with cars until somebody somewhere in power is forced to do something. That is the unfortunate reality in India -- not doing something until there is no alternative left. And this change in public infrastructure may happen just about the time when Maoist groups have succeeded in controlling every district in India (penetration exceeds 50% today).
Not a very positive perspective perhaps, but definitely a realistic one. And design is about reality, right?

prof. m p ranjan said... 13 January, 2008 11:00 PM
Dear Murli. I have argued here that "The Political Way" and the "Design Way" are both about methods for dealing with reality and the complex issues at hand. The first we are all familiar with in the Indian democracy and this seems to be the preferred way in India whenever there is a major problem that confounds all of us. Run to the politician or take to the streets and this is bound to lead to conflict and not solution, although we do get some kind of patched up truce, I cannot call it anything but 'jugaad", which was celebrated by India Today magazine as a unique Indian realisation, with pride, I believe. 
The free market is not going to solve such complex problems unless we are able to invest our imagination in creating the material and service alternatives and models that will give us a future that has value for each one of us. This blog is about design for India and the "Design Way" which is not as yet fully understood in India. Design is seen as the icing on the cake, the aesthetic layer, and not as the value of the core offering which some of us think it should be providing and we do have the tools and processes and the expertise that can make it happen. Alternatives can be "Designed" which cannot be negotiated by "Political Debate" alone.
This is what I am advocating and the Government of India and our Indian industry as well as the great leaders like Rattan Tata should take heed of this possibility and invest in design at the systems level to make the desirable alternatives happen within our lifetimes.

murli said... 13 January, 2008 11:20 PM
Dear Ranjan, I don't see The Political Way and The Design Way as distinct. The Design Way is to include every significant stakeholder in the process, and therefore should include politics. The neutral meaning of 'politics' is getting things done through dialogue among people. And isn't that how it should be? Colloquially, the term has a very negative connotation typically implying one-upmanship, greed, backstabbing, hidden agendas, quid-pro-quos, and the like. 
Also, I don't see distinction between Free Market and Collective Social Planning (or whatever) -- there is no pure political/economic/social system in the world. Even the putative Free Market that exists in the US is hugely influenced through governmental involvement -- with the participation, and often lobbying of corporate groups. Just a few examples: the Interstate system, the Internet, Social Security, Affirmative Action, etc. India's major problem has been excessive bureaucratic meddling at every level. Planning is far too important a process to be left entirely to bureaucrats, politicians and so-called 'intellectuals': I say 'so-called' because of their typical disconnect from reality. Mr. N R Narayanamurthy of Infosys took great personal interest in trying to improve the infrastructure of Bangalore. Didn't help. His Bangalore Action Task Force with eminent personalities on board was disbanded. As I mentioned, the 'authorities' refused to give him time of day. I have no doubt in mind that Mr. Ratan Tata is himself involved in many such initiatives. Indeed, his next dream is to ensure clean drinking water for the people of India. Not all industrialists are money-grubbing capitalists. The Western experience (as well our own Indian history) has shown that the achievement of great wealth leads to great philanthropy, Bill Gates being a shining current example. if some day, an efficient public transportation infrastructure is created (including safe lanes for pedestrians and bicycles), I will stop using my car. I have need only to go somewhere, and have no emotional attachment to a vehicle. And day in, day out, I see ordinary people suffer from lack of reasonable transportation. I think even the Tatas of this country are powerless before the festering sore that our political system has become. So they are compelled to go directly to the people. If you, Dr. Ranjan, in your influential position, are able to make a dent in this diseased fabric of our polity, you deserve something of a Bharat Ratna for it! Regards, murli

prof. m p ranjan said... 14 January, 2008 12:19 AM,
Dear Murli. I am neither "Doctor" nor a "Bharat Ratna" aspirant. However I am interested in getting design understood in India and have it used by all professions and not just by designers. Design for me is a broad human field with the ability and tools to realise human intentions and build value for a sustainable future. 
Politics in the broad sense is also dealing with these actions but it is understood differently as a negotiated process of change and the use of design in building alternate scenarios that are both tangible as well as testable makes the "Design Way" one that can help offer a number of possible scenarios and from which we can build a future for ourselves using all the political will that is available. I am making another post with some examples about scenarios that design can offer to make the definition a little more clear.

anuganguly said... 14 January, 2008 12:40 AM
we've already reached a stage where the average speed of a car on calcutta roads is 12 kmph and the max. speed of a bicycle is 14 kpmh. the math is easy.
thank god for the tata nano. its given us the need to think urgently about how badly we need to re-evaluate our attention to the transportation system. 
there's a reason why our taxes arent going into maintaining buses, why all taxis and buses are not fined for fuming, why bus drivers are still paid on a commission basis, forcing them to drive at reckless speeds. are we putting enough effort to pressurizing our local media and governments to stop pocketing the money of our land and put it where it belongs? does all this sound naively idealistic? good. because the WILL to effect change has always been the only force behind anything thats EVER happened in the universe.

anuganguly said... 14 January, 2008 12:50 AM
Dear Ranjan, I was just reminded of this:
In an interview in 1997, Miuccia Prada, fashion designer, articulated the conflicting emotions inherent in feminist discussion of fashion and design in general, "even in my political phase I loved fashion, but people made me feel ashamed of it...I don't see a contradiction between beauty and politics: politics is man trying to live better; aesthetics is man trying to improve the quality of life."

murli said... 14 January, 2008 11:36 AM,
Dear Ranjan, it might surprise you to learn that I too am interested "getting design understood in India and have it used by all professions and not just by designers," although I am not formally a 'designer' myself in the way that it is usually understood in lay -- or even design -- circles. I have no desire to be adversarial -- indeed, I am absolutely thrilled that India has people such as yourself, something that one could only dream of a couple of decades ago. Bringing about such changes in India is a huge undertaking, and it really doesn't help to criticise someone (Ratan Tata, in this instance) who is genuinely trying to tackle a problem in the only way he is permitted. Let a thousand flowers, bloom, I would say -- let each person try to work with the system to solve problems and eventually, society will be the better for it. The Nano may be a short term solution until the infrastructure improves. That's no reason, however to look down upon it. As John Maynard Keynes once famously remarked, "In the long run, we're all dead."
I eagerly look forward to your next post where you lay out some scenarios.
Regards, Murli.

murli said... 15 January, 2008 11:34 PM
Ranjan, Ratan Tata is fulfilling his dharma as businessman/industrialist in providing solutions that people need and want. If there isn't really a market for the Nano, then few will buy it and the problem will take care of itself without any socialistic meddling. If there is indeed a need for the Nano and yet you would like to finesse the problem of people buying it then you must do at least two things:
1. Work with cities to plan future development in such a manner that most transportation can be done on foot or through public transportation.
2. Approach the public directly and educate them on the need to avoid personal transportation like the Nano.
If you are unsuccessful at either of the above, then let the Nano solve people's problems. I don't think we should begrudge anyone the right to offer solutions to people's problems at all. 
I am sceptical about any short term improvement in the infrastructure in India. The story behind the lack of good public transportation outside of New York and few other cities is that the auto and oil corporations lobbied (code word for bribed) Congressmen to kill public transportation there. In Bangalore, the powerful autorickshaw lobby has prevented the improvement of public transportation for decades. Politics -- including dirty politics -- is a reality in the US and in India (and elsewhere). One cannot avoid incorporating politics into any systems view of design and development. No point in railing against reality; it is what it is. And I think Gandhiji would have agreed. 
Kill the Nano if you must, but kill it in the marketplace by providing people with an alternative they would be loath to refuse.
Regards, Murli

prof. m p ranjan said... 16 January, 2008 12:06 PM
Dear Murli. I somehow expect our business leaders to be statesmen as well as philanthrophists, which the TATA group has always represented for me, unlike many other business groups in India, from whom I do not expect anything but black profits. I will therefore continue to expect Ratan Tata to look at the larger picture while continuing his business interests in India as well as around the world. 
Global warming and social equity kind of problems are man-made and the men making these are to be held responsible in my view even if new laws are to be drafted to enforce these positions. I have been advised by a friend to read the book "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives" by Edwin Black. I am sure it will be an instructive read but my gut sense tells me that in the case of known threats we cannot leave things to market forces as Adam Smith has had all of us believe nor can we take the Malthusian stand that these are inevitable. Economics needs to be redefined and innovation too needs to be placed in perspective and they too carry responsibility and we are trying to build responsible designers even if industry is only asking for competent ones. I am not advocating either communism or socialism here and we need to seriously look at a new path that is sensitive and informed innovation as political drivers going forward. I hope our politicians are listening
Regards, Ranjan

murli said... 17 January, 2008 1:10 AM
Dear Ranjan, from all our exchanges so far, I see no disagreement in our goals. You and I see eye to eye in regard to a goal of creating a earth-friendly and sustainable socio-economic architecture of which the transportation infrastructure is one key component. You suggest that it is irresponsible for corporations -- particular reputed ones - to introduce solutions that are not sustainable, even if there is a market demand for it. An implication of your argument is that the population at large is better off living in their state of sufferance until a sustainable infrastructure in put in place. And further, it is the responsibility and duty of corporations to work toward those sort of solutions. I agree that corporations should demonstrate responsibility, but they should not shirk from providing solutions that might appear a short term fix. Let's take a few other things that some people consider 'bad' -- alcohol, tobacco, junk food, and pornography. Is the solution to ban the manufacture of those things or to educate people to avoid them? Your counterargument might be that while the morals of the above items might be debatable there can be no two views on whether promoting the use of fossil fuels and traffic congestion is morally or even ecologically acceptable. 
Such a view as at least borderline patronising to the population at large - the view that We Know What is Good For You Better Than You Do, So Hang Around Until a Better Fix Is Found. 
This might just be the right place to initiate a people's movement that pressures the political and administrative machinery to do something. Or perhaps the People's Movement could pressurise Corporations. It isn't, in my view the responsibility of corporations to assume the role of Knights In Shining Armor. They have enough on their plate to worry about. 
And if you would like to get a People's Movement going, I'm ready to sign on.
Regards, Murli

murli said... 17 January, 2008 2:04 PM
Dear Ranjan, since my last post, I've been thinking about the idea of a People's Design Movement. Is there such a thing already in India? If so, I'd love to know about it. NGOs and activism is a big thing in India. Is there such a thing as Design activism. My specialty, if you will is innovation -- mindset, skills, processes and culture. I see design as innovation, and innovation as fundamental to design. 
I like the idea of Innovation and Design Activism. Or Innovation-Design Education-Activism (I-D E-A) whose purpose is to not only build design/innovation awareness but also to provide skills and tools to people at large: schools, villages, neighborhood groups, govt departments, universities, corporations, etc. 
Our once beautiful and harmonious-with-nature human settlements have metamorphosed into the ugly, festering sores that pass for Indian cities (save for isolated pockets). The ugliness also reflects the sense of alienation that urban denizens have with respect to each other. The sense of community and interdependence has all but vanished. Each home has become a fortress outside of which whatever happens, one scarcely cares about. Rebuilding community goes hand in hand with fostering good design. And this cannot be achieved by appealing to the good sense of industrialists -- it has to emerge from the grassroots. Regards, Murli

prof. m p ranjan said... 17 January, 2008 3:38 PM
Dear Murli, The closest thing to design activism that I know of is the Khadi movement by Gandhi and his followers and now it has all but run out of steam although much lip service is given to grassroots innovation and the falvour of the moment is to celebrate science and technology in a pretty sloppy way and justify poor quality since it is handled at the grassroots with a jholawallah culture that is adopted by the practitioners. Strong criticism, but I am afraid that this is how I see it today. There is a bandwagon effect that is spawned by the availability of easy funds from uncritical science and technology support programmes in India and a huge investment climate exists where a very large number of state sponsored labs and training programmes as well as awards and grant in aid schemes are managed by the state and central government agencies which are science biased and which is rarely assessed for what they are worth since the sacred cow of Indian science and technology establishments may not be questioned and the stake holders and vested interests protect this space with the threat that without such standards and test procedures the R & D driven knowledge streams would dry up to the peril of the leadership that India may have in a number of related areas. This grassroots kind of science action is very widely dispersed in a number of areas and good work has been done in some of these sectors. However I am yet to see one where design thinking and design action is at the heart of such innovation efforts and as a result the application of the principles do not end up as compelling new services and products, with very few exceptions.
We cannot equate science and technology innovation to that provided by design innovation although many would like to argue that they are the one and the same thing. While the aim of science is the production of new knowledge the role of design is to offer people centric solutions in the current reality and this may or may not represent new knowledge, but it has to work for the stake holders as well as for the environment and the larger systems within which it is embedded.
The best international example that I can think of is the ongoing efforts in the Northeast of England with the DOTT07 project that is being handled by the Design Council UK under the leadership of John Thackara and his team. John has tried to bring these ideas to India as part of his "Doors of Perception - East" initiatives as well as the regular events held in Amsterdam over the past ten years and the team involved has grown in size as well as credibility through the "Doors" conferences and the people that they were able to attract for action on the ground. The other group who has made good progress is the Politechnico di Milano group headed by Thomas Maldonado and Ezio Manzini on the whole front of sustainability. They have used what we could call design activism and awareness building at the youth level across the world as opposed to the political activism in the field that is represented by the action and style of the groups such as GreenPeace and the Ruckus Society who deal with environmental issues and others like Free Trade and Human Rights activist groups that deal with social equity issues by direct research and voluntary support action in the field. These do not necessarily have elements of innovation attached although they could do a lot if they did include this as a part of their offering.
What we perhaps need are multi-disciplinary panels of experts who can adopt and use design innovation as a way forward and through their creative prototyping actions show the way forward for major investments to be made and here industry could be a very viable area of action if they are led by visionaries and this is not a far fetched dream, very possible in the emerging creative era. 
Thank you for your comments that have provoked me to elaborate on my ideas about economics and design action. I am not likely to set up an activist venture myself at this stage in my career but will be happy to advise and interact with young groups that would like to take these ideas forward. Many of our students are already doing this and I propose to write about their work in the days ahead so that they gain the visibility which is today being ignored due to the print and TV media glare on fashion and glamour type of design action at the cost of exploring real work that is happening at the grassroots level.

TATA Nano and Design Education Challenges for India

Image: NID students and faculty at the Auto Expo 2008 send back images of TATA Nano.
The TATA Nano is sexy and cheap; a potent combination when taken to market and that is exactly what Ratan Tata has done. Consumers and designers alike are enamored by the offering. Many designers on the DesignIndia list have chosen to praise Ratan Tata for achieving the price sensitive Nano which was unveiled at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. I too admire the achievement in a qualified sort of way, particularly in automotive design, engineering and marketing and Ratan Tata has taken a step ahead of the Japanese car makers in offering a competitive price point with quality and having met the existing benchmarks for cars of this kind. The will surely be a different place from now on.

However I am afraid that at another level this will contribute to the growing mess that is now our Indian city and I would hold Ratan Tata just as responsible for that since he is among India's business leaders who has the means to make a real difference by working at the systems level and in influencing government to act responsibly as well. In the emerging world of Web 2.0 all of us are responsible and the clear cut separation of responsibilities that have been carved out for each in the era of industrial specialization, the separation of church and administration, and later the separation of industry and governance, have all but blurred to give us an online community that responds in an online democracy in real time responses. The theories of economics from the industrial era all hold that the consumer and market responses will somehow shape the events that flow in the free-market but I have some counter arguments for that and we are at a stage when we need to rethink our macro-economic theories and bring in innovation and design into the equation which is not being done nor has it been done at anytime in the history of man. Innovations were seen as individual pursuits or as business activities of individual companies that would need to be therefore protected by law so that future inventions could be encouraged in society. This may be so in the pre-internet era of poor communication but today we need a new paradigm and the open-source movement and the creative commons are helping rewrite the way innovations happen in our society but business still goes on as usual and countries compete, companies compete and individuals compete as if this is the only way forward for society since we are all victims of the Malthusian beliefs and the theory that he had proposed and we are not able to operate at any other level of imagination. I believe that we are entering an era of massive cooperation where our notions of competition will be challenged and will need to be replaced by new attitudes that foster a dialogue between the players and a whole new way of creating our future.

We need to explore ways in which we can get business leaders and politicians from all parts of India to listen to some of our dreams as well and the design vision can then be a driving force for the shaping of tomorrow’s cities. I have been working in bamboo for many years and we have several break-through innovations that promise to give a good future for our rural folks and we have numerous failures from which we have learned a lot about the material as well as about human behavior. Design for social good is a mission that can be achieved but too little is being invested into that direction because we do not have faith in that direction since it is not yet a measurable offering as science, technology and market offerings are in labs, tests and the market with a look at the bottom-line only. Companies such as Infosys are among the most respected ones in India, in my personal view, since they have exhibited extremely high ethical standards in all their operations but several other large companies in India cannot be included in their league of ethical operation even when the government itself is moving onto a regime of extreme transparency with the new Right to Information Act. Design is an act of faith and a matter of judgment. Faith by itself is not a bad thing if we can support it with insights drawn from experience in the real world and from our imagination of what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved. Blind faith, on the other hand, is to be feared since it fosters fundamentalism and extremism as a reaction. However, design thought comes in the first category, faith based on experiential insights and on informed intentions but it can never be subject of reason unlike science and technology. Therefore design looses out on every engagement that requires proof before it is accepted and in India huge investments are made in Science-Technology schemes while design has been left out and this cannot be the responsibility of the design community alone, especially since design can indeed offer real solutions if only we tried. Design good cannot be proved but it can be sensed and modeled or simulated and tested through that route, if only the necessary investments are made in that direction and when sufficient time is given to create the models that could be appreciated and apprehended first conceptually and then in more rigorous ways.

Image: NID stall at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi.
I have moved some distance in my journey in understanding design and I am now convinced that we need to take our arguments to the business and government without being apologetic in any way. Design is complex and while I can admire the engineering achievement of Ratan Tata and his team I bemoan the huge catastrophe that this will portend for all of our society and us in the days ahead. I have been thinking about the directions that we have chosen to take in our educational ventures and sometimes I feel that we need to stop and think a bit about both direction and speed. While a hyper-fast "mind to market strategy" may be a desirable activity for business success it could also be a sure sign of disaster for society if the direction of movement is wrong for the context in which it is applied. Speed and efficiency need to be tempered with relevance and direction that is desirable if we are to benefit from the speed and efficiency that is on offer by raising the bar and coordinating our efforts. I would have liked to see some imaginative public transport solutions rather than just some more sleek automobiles being exhibited at the Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi. Perhaps we need to take systems design more seriously and get all our disciplines to work together in the final years to show India just what can be done by a determined young team of designers, all moving in the desirable direction. This direction should come from our analysis of the Eames challenge that he had set in 1958, "what qualities does India and Indians consider to make a good life?"

The TATA Nano has raised many questions which need to be answered in this context and as the premier National Institute of Design we are just as responsible for our actions as is Mr. Ratan Tata as the senior Industrialist and businessman of India in the 21st century. I do hope that these matters are discussed at the Institute and in the design community in India since design at the systems level, which is being ignored by both industry and government for over fifty years now, since the Eames India Report was written and which led to the establishment of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, needs to be reexamined in the light of our current needs and aspirations as well as in the context of global warming and social conflicts of the day, for us to find direction forward from here.

There has been much debate about the Nano in the DesignIndia forum and the note by Sagarmoy Paul that Arun Gupta has so kindly shared with all of us at NID and it is just one such debate that is in progress there which can have a wider participation within design schools across the country.

Image: City Tablet – A concept scenario for socially accessible transportation for our cities by NID student Varsha Mehta in the DCC class.

Image: Water Focus – A concept scenario of water based alternate transport for Indian cities by NID student Vinay Jois.
I would like to share here two design opportunity visualizations that were prepared by two of our students in the last semester as part of their Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID. They were looking at mobility options in the city and came up with scenario visualisations based on the insights that they had garnered in their group brainstorming and research in this very short foundation course in design. I propose that such socially relevant challenges be taken up at the systems level in senior years in our design schools and that these be funded and supported by our industry and government agencies who are looking at the whole area of transport design in India. Such assignments could be conducted in a collaborative space that is carved out from a new partnership between design, engineering and management schools in the same city and there may be other possibilities to get several multi-disciplinary teams together, if there is a will to do so.

Will the design community pursue the government and industry to make this happen? I do hope so for the good of all of us. Perhaps it is also time to explore new theories of economics that is informed by the possible use of disruptive innovation as a way forward not just as a market driven mechanism of competition between nations, companies and individuals in the WTO framework but a new order that is based on open-source ideology of cooperation and community based innovation particularly for innovations of objects, services and infrastructure for public and social good. This can only happen if we are able to take the understanding of design and layer it with a new theory economics and politics of innovation that can be set in motion in a cooperative framework going forward. Design schools have a role to play in shaping these frameworks and much of the initial explorations that are needed by society can happen within the classrooms of the future and these in turn will help us build scenarios that will be moderated by the community to actually build a desirable future for all of us.