WebInnovation2007: Web 2.0 Conference at Bangalore

A well-attended two-day conference at the Ashoka Grand in Bangalore with 750 professionals from the Information Technology sector included engineers, marketing executives and designers, all eager to understand and appreciate the various dimensions of the emerging Web 2.0 paradigm. Rupesh Vyas and I made a presentation that explored many opportunities for Web 2.0 applications that we see in India and in our presentation we focused on grassroots level explorations that had been initiated in our classroom projects at the NID and those that could be taken forward with real impact to a huge user base across India. The presentation titled “User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India” defined design as we now understand it, an activity where human intentions mediated with thoughts and actions are used to produce value, great value.

Image: Study of Sahpur is offered as an opportunity for the use of Web 2.0 approaches to connect villagers in the Indian sub-continent to map local resources and aspirations for development initiatives across India.
The whole morning session was dominated by discussions on how the business sectors dealing with Web 2.0 could indeed generate revenue streams. It almost seemed that the speakers and the audience were obsessed with how anyone could create community and use this to create a monetized value for himself or herself. Little discussion on what could be done but much on how and how much, very disheartening indeed. The keynotes too kept returning to the concept of making money and the difficulty faced by web based companies in retaining their hard earned leadership in a highly competitive space. Perhaps the industry should try and focus on what can be done in India at the grassroots where it is needed the most and the value generated would create wealth for all of us across the country.

Image: Project INFARM done in 1995 as part of the Apple Design initiative is offered as an example of farmers as users of rich Web 2.0 applications in India.
In my presentation I talked of the Web 2.0 as being a new mind-set rather than a new technology, although many new technological as well as business processes can be listed as part of this new and emerging paradigm. However at the core it is for me about people working together on a spirit of sharing and this has less to do with many of the concerns of the industrial economy and even he knowledge economy as we have come to understand it today. We need a new attitude to understand the offerings that are springing up all around us in the form and shape of the Web 2.0 economy, or should we use another term to describe this phenomenon that is perplexing all of us who are trying to make sense of the emerging paradigm.

Image: The Heritage Walk in Ahmedabad as a opportunity for creative mapping of our cities by students using GeoVisualisation tools to create citizen generated content and rich local knowledge sharing that can create value for tourists as well as visitors to the city.
Thinking about the evolution of human ideas while sitting in the conference it did cross my mind that we have evolved from the hunter gatherer era when fire and tools gave humans an edge over other species on our planet. The settled agriculture era saw the rise of land holding as our currency and measure of wealth and this also spawned the zamindari attitudes and created the nobles and commoners. The smokestack industries were built on mined minerals and energy from fossil fuels. Land, minerals and finance formed the backbone of the economy till this was disrupted by the hi-tech industries that used knowledge and technology as the prime drivers of the economy. The emergence of the web and the internet opened a new space for creative disruption and the brick and mortar establishments had to give way to the dematerialized economy where finance flowed through electronic networks and crossed national borders at will. We have now arrived at another disruption and suddenly concentration of wealth of the previous eras is being challenged by individual content creators and a new paradigm is needed to explain the open source characteristics of Web 2.0 and I think that we will need a new mind set to understand what this has in store for all of us. Surely creative sharing will be the driver of the web 2.0 era that is almost on us as we blog and share and build new applications that can accommodate all of us and our needs like never before.

Image: Handmade in India as a database that could bring Indian craftsmen on to a Web 2.0 platform as part of the creative economy of the future.
The four case examples that we used in our presentation called for design action starting from a deep study of user needs and aspirations and the users included villagers, farmers, students and craftsmen across India, who are all unusual subjects for a Web 2.0 initiative. However we believe that it is do-able if we can put together multi-disciplinary teams that can work closely with each user group and help build prototypes and concepts that can be refined and delivered in each of the sectors in which action is required. These cases are only indicative of what kinds of opportunities that we see in India and the scale of what is possible is indeed staggering. The details of the WebInnovation2007 Conference is available at this web link above and our presentation titled User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India is a PDF file which can be downloaded from this link as a 2.2 mb file. The abstract of the presentation is quoted below.

Abstract of Paper and Visual presentation to the Web Innovation Conference, Bangalore in December 2007

User Driven Web 2.0: Design Opportunities for India

Prof. M P Ranjan
Chairman, Geovisualisation Task Group, DST, Govt. of India
Faculty of Design
National Institute of Design

Rupesh Vyas
Faculty of Design
Coordinator Information Design Discipline
National Institute of Design

India lives in many centuries and the rapid strides of development are impacting the lives of all of us particularly those who live and work in the rural sectors of our economy. It is here that most of our people live and perhaps where we should be making an effort to impact through a concerted impetus of design to make to make the tools and processes accessible to the people who need it the most.

How do we achieve this when the tools and technology have been held and operated by educated and urban oriented individuals and institutions for all these years? This is perhaps where design imagination and technological commitment can create new avenues for the application of these innovative tools and techniques in a democratic and ubiquitous manner all over our land. Is this a just in theory and like a distant dream or can or become a reality? Can we demonstrate this possibility in a few significant case studies so that it evokes a sense of commitment across the country to use these now widely available resources particularly in an IT enabled manner?

Can the emerging understanding of what is Web 2.0 create a platform of collaborators across disciplines to achieve what many institutions and Governments cannot do on their own? We believe that the time is right to take the technologies to the people and that we operate it in a bottom up approach with imagination and commitment to achieve what needs to be done. Do we know what is needed? Perhaps even here we will once again go to the bottom of the value chain and use the tools of co-creation to work our way back to new and exciting offerings that can transform our national, regional and local economies, one step at a time.

In this paper we will show that many new applications are indeed possible and these would cover the hitherto ignored areas of application in a participatory manner. This should make it both usable and relevant to the local conditions and meet the aspirations of the people whom it is to serve. Some suggestions have been made using examples of classroom and research projects conducted by the students and faculty of the National Institute of Design to show how these tools and knowledge domains in the area of Web based communication and exchange can be applied to new and interesting applications. This would establish that we can reach far into our rural hinterland and show that these could become a mission that would be achieved through active user participation to address local needs and aspirations in a variety of critical areas of application.

These could be called design opportunities since the intention is to add value to the local situation through making the information and knowledge both usable as well as accessible to the users in their own domains is a starting point for the design journey. With partners from technology and the user base much can be achieved which was hitherto not attempted. This is an invitation to imagination of what could be and not what is; do join us in this journey.

AIDI Launches a Face-to-Face Initiative: Discusses the National Design Policy in Bangalore

The AIDI, which started as the Association of Industrial Designers of India, was renamed as Association of Indian Design Industry at the full day meeting on 11 December 2007 at the Royal Orchid Hotel in Bangalore. The agenda of the AIDI was to assist the Government roll out the National Design Policy that was announced on 8th February 2007 by the Honorable Minister of Finance, Shri P Chidambaram after a meeting of the Indian Cabinet and it was championed by the Honorable Minister of Industries and Commerce, Shri Kamal Nath.

The meeting of the AIDI was well attended with over 100 practicing designers, experts and international guests who have come for the CII-NID Design Summit starting on the 12th December 2007 at the Bangalore Exhibition Centre on Tumkur Road. Among the prominent guests were the speakers at the CII-NID Design Summit G K VanPatter of NextD, New York, Anna Kirah, Dean 180 Academy, Denmark and Daniel Buchner and Tom Burchard from the Design Continuum Team from Boston, USA, to name only a few that I met personally.

The day started with an Ice-Breaker session which was followed by Individual Ideation that would lead to lists of things to be done and with this list in hand we would work in pairs to develop the ideas and then bring them back to the group for a sharing and sorting session. The cluster of concepts captured by the small groups led to the articulation of category headings and a shared understanding. I was part of the Education group that was led by Poonam Bir Kasturi, The other groups and the respective leaders were Competitive Advantage by Design with Vinay Rao, Branding and Communication of Indian Design by Jacob Mathews, Design Parks and Funds by S Sunder and finally Culture, Environment, Social Development and Effective Public Spending led by Neelam Chibber.

Each group developed their concepts for the action programmes and priorities that could be taken up as part of the National Design Policy by the Government of India and after a great lunch we were witness to a Press Conference and a CII-NID PR launch of the Design Summit that is starting tomorrow. Dr Koshy, Director NID spoke at length about the plans ahead for the Institute in the coming years and listed the recent achievements. This was followed by the Press Meet while the rest of us had our lunch.

The post lunch session was filled with a lot of work organizing the brainstorming data and in making sense of the data that was generated. Each group gathered the insights that had emerged and they went about preparing the final visual presentations that were then shared with the whole group. The AIDI will take these recommendations and make a format that will be taken back to the Government. This is the first time that the design community in India has regrouped after the failure of the erstwhile SIDI to fill a gap that has been felt for over two decades now. I do hope that this initiative takes root and the design community sheds its indifferent attitude to national Politics and get engaged in shaping the roll out of the National Design Policy in the days ahead.

Tripura Bamboo Mission: Design as a Partner in Grassroots Development Initiatives

Image: Meeting of the Tripura Bamboo Mission at Agartala on 8th December 2007 Chaired by Shri Manik Sarkar, Honorable Chief Minister of Tripura.

The State Government of Tripura has to deal with the onerous complexity of initiating and sustaining development actions in their land which is a locked territory located in the remote Northeastern Region of India lying on the east of Bangladesh and with road and rail connections to the rest of India and the outside world only through a long and difficult path through Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal. Besides this geographic complexity, they also have to cope with the absence of any industry that has taken root in the State over the past fifty years since Indian Independence. The State has also faced a long period of political unrest as well as being impacted by similar conditions in many of the nearby states in the region. Rural poverty is therefore a major problem and the economic condition of the large tribal population in the state is also an area of deep concern. The State of Tripura has a long common International border with Bangladesh and Myanmar but these are closed for all practical purposes due to the absence of trade and political agreements between the countries involved.

It is in this challenging geo-political situation that the State Government announced the Tripura State Bamboo Policy, the first such initiative by any state in the country and well ahead of the National Bamboo Policy which came up later. A number of progressive measures were initiated and over the past few years there have been many development initiatives that have been done by the State including a major conference on Bamboo to discuss the proposed Bamboo Policy, another last year to explore and showcase areas of application and the setting up of a University programme for educating bamboo experts who could help the rural people mobilize their local resources in a systematic manner. Last year the Government invited the IL&FS, New Delhi to take on the task of manning a mission mode development initiative that could move the local bamboo crafts and small scale industry from a gross turnover of about Rupees 25 crores per annum to about Rupees 75 crores per annum in the handicrafts, mats and agarbatti sectors which employ a huge number of people, all to be done in a time bound manner of three years.

The NID teams having worked in the Northeast and in Tripura on a sustained basis for over the past 30 years was identified as a natural partner for providing design supports for this new initiative in the State. Several NID graduates are also included in the list of design support providers while the IL&FS will use their own management and local infrastructure to manage the relationships on the ground and provide the integrated linkages with the Government and all the local stakeholders in the particular locations. The Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) has built a body of experience as well as a portfolio of bamboo based designs that are being offered to the Tripura Bamboo Mission along with a framework of locally delivered training and quality establishment processes that could be linked to the matrix of market needs and producer capabilities in the selected cluster in rural Tripura. These actions would be taken through the stages of sensing, exploring, making, evaluating and sharing. Through these stages we expect to grow the participation of our stakeholders in the rural locations and in some cases we would want these to be women’s’ groups who could manage their entrepreneurial ventures themselves. Our faculty and student teams who would be supported by skilled craftsmen who have been trained at the BCDI and capable of supporting the prototyping tasks that we anticipate as we go forward with our design support project in the state.

On the 7th December 2007 we were invited to a formal meeting that was organised by the IL&FS in Agartala where all the partners of the Tripura Bamboo Mission met to exchange a Memorandum of Association with these partners and a Statement of Intent with the CFBI-NID on bringing design skill sets to the activities on the ground. The meeting was chaired by the Honorable Chief Minister of Tripura, Shri Manik Sarkar with an active participation and addresses from Shri Sashi Prakash, Chief Secretary, Government of Tripura, and Shri Tapan Chakraborty, Honorable Minister of Industries and Commerce. The MoU’s were signed between the Tripura Bamboo Mission represented by the IL&FS on one side at the partners on the other and these included one with the ITC Ltd. For development of the agarbatti industry in the State, another with Cottage Industries also for this sector. The Industree Crafts of Bangalore were requested to support market access for rural producers. The CFBI-NID signed a “Statement of Intent” to provide design supports and know how across three broad product categories of fine bamboo loom woven mats, splits and split based furniture and Bambusa affinis based whole bamboo furniture from the Katlamara cluster which would be disseminated to a wider audience that has now taken up cultivation as part of the Tripura Bamboo Mission based on our design demonstrations.

We are looking forward to an active period of partnership with the IL&FS teams in Tripura and with the Tripura Bamboo Mission over the next three years to bring design capabilities to the producer groups in Tripura.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

User Centric Design Opportunities for GeoVisualisation

Paper and Visual presentation to the first National Conference on GeoVisualisation (GVDRP-2007) at NID in December 2007.
Image: Case Study on village resource mapping assignment by the students of Gandhinagar Campus of NID.

User Centric Design Opportunities for GeoVisualisation: A presentation to the first Geovisualisation Conference at NID.

Prof. M P Ranjan
Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group, DST
Faculty of Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad

Abstract
The first National Conference on GeoVisualisation (GVDRP-2007) gives us a unique opportunity to reflect on the design opportunities that are emerging in our country for the creation of User Centric Design in the field of GeoVisualisation. Design can bring a new approach to the use of the amazing technologies that have been developed by science and technology and this is an area that we will need to focus on if the current developments are to be put to effective use by ordinary people in their day to day lives.

India lives in many centuries and the rapid strides of development and the forces of globalisation are impacting the lives of all of us, particularly those who live and work in the rural sectors of our economy. It is here that most of our people live and perhaps where we should be making an effort to make a positive impact through a concerted effort to make the tools and processes accessible to the people who need it the most. How do we achieve this when the tools and technology has been held and operated by educated and urban oriented individuals and institutions and when these are not designed to be available to the rural inhabitants? This is perhaps where design imagination can create new avenues for the application of these new tools and techniques in a democratic and ubiquitous manner all over our land. Is this a pipe dream or can or be a reality? Can we demonstrate this possibility in a few significant case studies so that it evokes a sense of commitment across the country to use these now widely available resources particularly in an IT enabled manner.

Image: Case Study of a student project by Sujay Swadi Sanan made by hand drawn buildings to illustrate the Heritage Walk Map for the Old City of Ahmedabad. In this paper we will show that many new applications are indeed possible and these would cover the hitherto ignored areas of application in a participatory manner to make it both usable and relevant to the local condition and the aspirations of the people whom it is to serve. Some suggestions have been made using examples of classroom and research projects conducted by the students and faculty of the National Institute of Design to show how the tools and knowledge domains in the area of geovisualisation can be applied to new and interesting applications that can reach far into our rural hinterland and how these could become a mission that would be achieved through active user participation to address local needs and aspirations in a variety of critical areas of application. These could be called design opportunities since the intention is to add value to the local situation through making the information and knowledge both usable as well as accessible to the users in their own domains.

The areas of application that we see are in mapping out the resources and local knowledge resources in a highly usable geospatial data base that is empowered and enabled by local participation and with the close involvement of local school and professional participants. For this to work we would need a back end that is technology enabled and based on web based tools as well as a field level strategy to keep the database alive and locally relevant. The fields of application could be for stakeholders in primary and secondary education as well as to empower the enormous skill base that promises to become the foundation of the creative economy of the future just as it has been an active ingredient in the sustenance of the rural economy in the past. Blending the past and the future to meet emerging needs could give us immediate benefits as well as long term resources to move our economy forward with wide participation of many sectors of our population. The areas that we envisage are village resource mapping that could be carried out and maintained by the use of simple and usable technologies in conjunction with sophisticated but highly usable backend technology tools and infrastructure. Such maps would keep local data of interest to local stakeholders as an area of priority and the creation and utilization could be carried out in a decentralized manner while remaining usable for a host of administrative and developmental situations.

Image: Case Study of the proposed web enabled and geo-referernced database of handicrafts clusters in India that could be used to empower and enable the creation of creative industries based on a rich local resource of skills and tarditional knowledge. The examples that are shared include a heritage walk at Ahmedabad, a village resource and design opportunity mapping venture, a craft skill and distribution mapping research as well as some speculative applicatioins that are proposed to be taken up with design students at NID in the near future. These design driven applications and explorations will be local in character but some of the insights that are gleaned would help set the agenda for a wider mission based application that would bring huge benefits to the stakeholders across the country. It is proposed that the DST and the NID Centre for Geovisualisation could partner in the research that is needed to make these design journeys that will set the tone for new and effective applications of Geovisualisation in the country.

The visual presentation titled "User Centric Design Opportunities for GeoVisualisation" can be downloaded from here as a 1.9 MB pdf file.

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:

First National Conference on Geovisualisation: Welcome Address by Prof. M P Ranjan

Image: Screenshot of village study done by NID students as part of the Data Visualisation course to explore applications for geovisualisationWelcome Address delivered 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.

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

Welcome to NID and this is a good time to raise some questions as well as to try and provide some answers.

I have four key questions and a host of associated answers. So let me begin with my Welcome address by addressing these one by one.

1. Why GeoVisualisation? What is it anyway?
What are the Issues and opportunities? What are the domains of application? In my personal agenda is another big question, which is, how do we make complex data dealing with geographic spatial implications visible and usable to the ordinary citizen in India.

We stand on a great tradition of cartography in India. A few years ago NID was requested by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India to work with the Office of the Survey of India to develop an exhibition to celebrate the Great Arc project which was the first ever mapping of a part of the globe and this had happened in India some 200 years ago. Since then India has been at the forefront of cartographic traditions and now it is time to take leadership again through excellence in Geovisualisation. In this we would be happy to partner with the NRDMS-DST who have sponsored this event as well as reflect on the work done in Ahmedabad by ISRO and many other organizations that has set a platform for this new field of Geovisualisation to take root in India with a strong partnership between Design and science and technology initiatives.

2. Why Design?
Design is now being defined as a much broader field that takes intentions to the creation of value to society and ecology through a process of thoughts and actions. Design deals with products and applications and it has a user focus while the dominant ideology is having a technology focus especially in the fields of application that we are dealing with in the areas of geovisualisation.
Through design we intend to address the needs of many sectors including education, development, planning, management and most critical of all in the induction of innovation into this sector and all the potential applications so that we can unfold huge value in the process of both creation as well as delivery.

3. Why this Conference?
The geovisualisation agenda can only be addressed by adopting a multi-disciplinary context as a given condition for moving forward since so many disparate skill sets would need to be integrated and this is an attempt to bring all these skill sets to a common platform to address our complex needs and opportunities. This is also an attempt to bring together the multiple knowledge domains of geography, cartography, computation, visualization and design in the service of real challenges that call for the use of geospatial data and representation for the core tasks of local planning as well as in decision support systems in a number of domains of application. We also need to build awareness, commitment and the linkages that are necessary to make the whole operation to be useful to the people at large in many parts of the country as well as in many walks of life and at many levels, local and national.

4. Why at NID?
The Institutional objectives of NID has taken us down a path of discovery and in recent years NID has set up a number of new initiatives that deal with technology design fusion that has culminated in the setting up of new programmes and disciplines and the setting up of two new campuses in Gandhinagar and at Bangalore. Both these initiatives are to supplement the work that has been done over the years at the Paldi campus dealing with promoting design as a core ability in a huge number of sectors of our economy, in my estimate, about 230 sectors that are in critical need of that discipline. NID has proposed the setting up of a Centre for Geovisualisation to provide a platform for research and design explorations in the various sectors of application of geovisualisation which would need a strong interface with the already developed areas of science and technology with particular emphasis in making these applications user friendly by addressing opportunities in usability and accessibility by those who need it the most. We hope to use this conference to help build the agenda for research and education to be conducted by the proposed centre and I would call on the participants to provide directions and suggestions for the NID team to take forward in the days ahead. We are also interested in showing through our interest and actions that the various investments in science, technology and management need to be supplemented by investments and the use of design in this very critical new field and that this would influence other such initiatives for partnership across disciplines in the days ahead.

Welcome to NID and to Ahmedabad. I would, like to take this opportunity to welcome all the speakers and delegates, students and experts to NID as well as to compliment the NID and DST teams that have done the background work to make this happen. I would particularly mention Dr Bibuda Baral and Rupesh Vyas of NID and Dr D Dutta of NRDMS, DST, Government of India and to their teams for their sustained efforts to help realize this event. I would also take this opportunity to thank the Geovisualisation Task Force team as the Chairman of the Committee for their active support in leading the deliberations that have culminated in the launch of the first National Conference on Geovisualisation and for setting in motion a chain of events that will be of huge significance in the years ahead. I will be speaking later on the theme of usability and in my presentation I will share my views on areas of application and on the design opportunities that I see for the read ahead in the field of Geovisualisation in India.