…create manageable changes through appropriate innovations
for bettering the quality of life. We have successfully completed the first year of the two PG
programmes “Design for Digital Experience” and “Design for Retail
Experience” and the second batches of students of the respective
disciplines are already in. From this academic year, we have introduced
another PG Programme on “Information and Interface
Design.” While on one hand, the process of content creation of
these PG programmes had gone through a large number of iterations
with a good number of stakeholders in the Industry, they
are being maintained in a quite updated and contemporary way,
particularly to keep pace with the requirements of the continually
changing scenario in the Industry.
To achieve this, apart from the requisite guidance from the respective
coordinators, a number of specialists and domain experts
(both national as well as international) were also invited from various
industries to enrich the education programmes – who also
acted as reviewers of various assignments in the curricula.
During the conception of the R&D Campus and its activities,
we mandated ourselves with a big ‘R’ approach which is now
proving to be right and quite foresighted since a large number of
industries are shifting their focus from “another idea” to “research
driven insight generation” as a clue to drive their business directions.
It is becoming important to understand how society and the
customers are responding to the infl ux of new technologies. Our
PG programmes are mandated and positively challenged with the
importance of these research needs.
In research, this calendar year produced a project on ‘Service
Design’ sponsored by IBM, seven projects out of the ‘NID – Asian
Paints Colour Research Initiative.’ A good number of course modules
in the three PG Programmes have a bias towards research
and we are expecting at least six monographs on these. As far
as solution delivery in consulting projects are concerned, there
is a generally perceived myth that application of R&D in solution
delivery takes time. For a good number of consultancy projects
we have learnt to how to achieve this in a shorter time cycle –
the art of managing ‘design R&D.’ Examples of this include the
design detailing of the cockpit of the Hansa III – India’s pilot trainer
aircraft, for the Centre for Civil Aircraft Design & Development,
the interior of the RTA-70 – India’s proposed Regional Transport
Aircraft for the National Aerospace Laboratories.
Currently, we are focusing on “Service design” as a major upcoming
area for R&D driven design interventions. This includes
Healthcare, Traffi c and Transportation including Aviation, Waste
Management, etc. The other areas of interest are the Manufacturing
sector, Agro sector, Banking and Finance, Social services
including Security, Defence, Infrastructure, IT products and services
including Digital Communication etc. We believe that in the
recent future, apart from product level innovations, the very process
of R&D driven design thinking and creative innovations shall
play a major role in designing macro systems.
