Revamping Design Education
Design has become a tool that is prevalent in every field. With the proliferation of information and technology in everything we do, as well as the more holistic role of the designer, the precepts of design education are pushed to a complete shift. Design educators are moving fast, anticipating the need for change and the evolution of the design curriculum. The three foremost academics in the design field share their experiences.
Melding design education with science and technology
At the Institute of Design JK Lakshmipat University, Prof A. Balasubramaniam has sought to bring a fresh approach to design by re-imagining the curriculum to make way for new skills, new methods of working, and new pedagogy. Says Balasubramaniam, “I was keen to follow Don Norman’s vision of creating a new kind of design education: Design education has to move away from schools of art and architecture and move into the schools of science and engineering. We need new kinds of designers, people who can work across disciplines, who understand human beings, business and technology, and the appropriate means of validating claims.”
The Institute of Design, JKLU collaborates with the Institute of Engineering & Technology and Institute of Management, making the program truly inter-disciplinary. Design becomes the glue that holds everything together. Focussed on creating tech-savvy and business-savvy designers, Balasubramaniam explains, “We stayed clear of disciplines like Fashion Design, Interior Design or Jewellery Design and introduced future-ready programs like Product Design and Interaction Design as well as a new program, the Inter-disciplinary Design curriculum.”
Responding to design’s unique ability to bridge disciplines, the design curriculum at JKLU was developed to sit at the crossroads of technology, business, society, culture, and people. Balasubramaniam says, “Students will understand technologies like AI, IoT, and automation that are transforming the nature of Design. Product Design students will be comfortable handling an artisanal product as well as artificial-intelligence products.” And beyond this, he emphasizes that designers have to be creatures of empathy, conscious of their role in shaping society, sensitive to people and cultures; they must be aware of how design can be highly influential.
A key concern is for designers to be better positioned for leadership and management roles, meeting the challenge of environments outside their natural ambit. Drawing from worldwide sources, JKLU’s program includes Blended Learning (bringing online resources to substantiate classroom), Collaborative Approach (building knowledge by sharing and interaction), and Hands on, Minds on (studio-based courses with workshop practice). Courses at the Institute integrate technology, business, communication, and critical thinking, and students are given a wide variety of choices. The existing Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation facilitates entrepreneurial start-ups, aligning with the business culture of Jaipur.
This professor believes in embracing holistic thinking while specializing in a field. His heart is in two special features of the program, the “Anytime, anywhere, any size learning” that teaches students to be life-long learners and the DEAR time in classes — Drop Everything and Read. There is a push to fit and adapt anywhere, as Balasubramaniam emphasizes, “We are aiming to create the new kind of designer who is both intuitive and analytical, creative yet logical, a generalist with special interests — life-long learners who are adaptable to new environs.”
Design(ing) Education: In Flux
“Whenever we are asked to click, to agree to terms, whenever we use Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, eBay, Google or Facebook our world is being designed for us. Prejudice is designed by algorithms that invite us — irreversibly — into a world we do not realize but shapes us every minute. Design has always been about manipulation and control as it is about inversion and deceleration. Can design teach us to unravel prejudice, intolerance, power, and silence — the editing project?” says Professor Roger Connah. “How are we to keep up with the change that even changes itself? Why should we feel compelled to keep up with change?” says Connah, concluding, “If we take the Prejudice Project/the Editing Project seriously, critical and transformative pedagogies could intelligently disrupt accepted, default educational practice.”
Right from identifying the ‘problem’ suitably, the design process poses restrictions. Therefore, designing ‘awareness’ and contesting our embedded prejudices is crucial, says Connah, an ardent supporter of ‘deschooling’. Aware of the superficiality and cover-up that comes with design, a sophisticated tool that can conceal appearances, Connah warns us of ‘escape attempts.’
Quoting Victor Papanek from his 1984, Design for the real World: Human Ecology and Social Change: ‘All men (and women) are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to human activity’, Connah says, “It is not difficult to see how design (and design thinking) has become one of the major drivers of such personal and societal change. Design is offering new responses to global and local problems, from waste management to an endangered stepwell in Gurgaon.” Connah proposes three options for rethinking design institutions: the first instinct is to do a quick fix, ‘plug and play’, which may stem the immediate decline but does nothing for long-term innovation. The second option would be to look at a complete transformation whereby design begins to play a much bigger role in our lives, by redesigning and repositioning the programs: if allowed to run efficiently and openly this could mark a significant shift in the ability of ‘design’ to operate in an inter-disciplinary manner.
But, as Connah says, we can do a lot more with design. “In 1991 Friedrich von Hayek described how ‘the curious task of economies is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they can imagine they can design.’ It is no accident he uses the term ’design’. This could be an intelligent and challenging response to the current trends in design and design education, beyond the school, even beyond India.” This brings us to Connah’s third option: The Editing Project — to rethink design education, re-structure programs and re-purpose the use of design in the present and the future. As he explains, “This is what many design schools around the world are now attempting, to various degrees of complexity, vision, and success. Some are speaking now of a human-centre design passing over to human-protective design.”
When asked about how we can cope up with change, he looks to Stefan Collini’s What Are Universities For (2012) about universities needing to be distinctive beyond just the need to make money. “Both the hype around globalization and uncertainty can come to our aid here as economic development of a school or university partners global knowledge sharing and communication. It might be that our curricula in (design) education must also be open to constant change to keep an area of studies open and autonomous in relation to a human understanding in constant flux.”
Rather than mimic what others in the West or China have done, in India Connah recommends an active self-assessment towards design as a social act, “It is not a backward step to realize and begin re-thinking The Indian Object, The Indian Household or The Indian Product; the tiffin, for example, the Shamiana wedding space or the spice box alongside the Indian version of the smartphone.” The need to grapple with the reality of the ground situation, the environment, ‘what is’ is prime to Connah’s thinking. Schools need to be located in this periphery to maximize learning and, as we constantly ‘switch codes’ an evolving design practice. And last but not least, the maverick educator underlines, “We cannot mock shallowness and superficiality so easily, nor can we keep on forgetting the past as if we are now comfortable in this zero history age. Design and young students have to engage in all this as a remix culture if they are to offer something for the future outside their own private trajectories.”
The Way of Teaching by Learning
“I don’t believe in teaching. If somebody is interested in something you don’t have to teach them; if somebody is not interested in something we cannot teach them. I believe in allowing students to learn.” Dr Deepak John Mathew, faculty at IIT Hyderabad had several challenges when he joined in 2014. He was at that time invited to make a vision document for the design department. Over his 14-year long stint at NID, he had been lucky to teach with and assist senior faculty M.P Ranjan, Prof Vikas Satwalekar, and S.M.Shah. Deepak was keen to have a program at IIT where design was not compartmentalized. “Students have no idea what is the pre-requisite to be a designer. Ranjan used to say there are chitrakaar and kalakaar and we get chitrakaar though we need kalakaar. I thought I should look at: how does the teaching — learning process happens? How do you teach and how do you learn design?”
This being the subject of his Ph.D. thesis as well, Dr. Mathew has been invested in how to let students slowly acclimatize to design. “Similar to what we were doing in NID, we decided teacher-student interaction would be continuous. Also, we decided learning would be a continuous experiment. We are always open to new things every semester within the overall course structure. Most times students come for product design, animation, or photography. People choose very randomly. Later they realize there are textile and other 15–20 specializations in India. By the time they realize their core interest, the time is up.” Deepak’s efforts have been to bring into focus the creative dimensions of design thinking. “Design students get to choose the specializations that they are passionate about rather than market driven. Instead of strictly training to be employable, they make informed choices as design practitioners, because they are able to traverse between disciplines flexibly at any level of their study.”
Setting up an open elective system with pre-requisites was one of the major steps Deepak made for the program. “We follow a fractal system, that allows more choices to the students. It helps the student to explore the breadth along with depth in specific fields.” Creating this democratic environment has been crucial for Deepak, who says, “In the same room so many things are allowed; students have the freedom and freedom comes with responsibility. The moment rules are made, it stops 95% from entering the room and daunts creativity.” A 2nd year B. Des student and an M. Des student could be in the same class for instance. Further, putting the onus on the learner adapts them to real-life situations in design, rather than the idealized environments in incubation that do not exist outside of design school. The faculty create classroom learning situations in a natural way. Says Deepak, “Almost all courses are taught through projects — a real life situation. It feels like it is casual, accidentally happening, but actually, we do a lot of pre-planning so that the discussions unfold — like a performance or cinema.”
A techno-savvy professor, Deepak is eager to see the best technology in India at his Institute. With VR and AI at the forefront, they are setting up the latest Cave for VR and a wonderful editing lab. On the other end, he nurtures a love for farming, his most relaxing occupation. In a not-very-big patch of land, he cultivates everything. “I have 10–15 trees including litchi and grow a variety of vegetables — tapioca, yam. I’m even growing orchids. There too I am following the same philosophy. Everything can grow.”
Interviews and writing by Sujatha Shankar Kumar
Illustration concept and execution by Anthony Lopez
