Young Designers 2009

 
Saumyajit Ghosal
Acting Dean
R & D Campus
Bangalore
NID

 

Innovative Pedagogical Models for Emerging Markets....

 

 

 

This year is a historic one for the National Institute of Design. Soon, It will be completing its Golden Jubilee. It is also a historic year for the R&D Campus because it marks the completion of first two years of the two new PG programmes on ‘Design for Digital Experience’ and ‘Design for Retail Experience’ which commenced in June 2007. It is with great pride that I will watch 23 Students of the first batch graduating in the convocation. The collaborative efforts and teamwork of all faculty members from our Bangalore Campus and key faculty members from both our Heritage Campus and PG Campus have helped us develop relationships with a large number of Indian and international industries and academia. I consider this as a success story especially for the reason that approximately three years ago, we foresaw the need for such niche programmes in the industry. Our forecast and vision have been proven true. Despite the global recession, our students did not feel any adverse impact in the market. This scenario portrays a demand for a specialized workforce, and by extension, a demand for such specialized programmes in emerging markets.
Today, potential business opportunities exist in the areas of providing better interactive communication on robust platforms, offering innovative direct or indirect value based products and solutions, providing better ‘designed’ services such as health care, transportation, wastage management, green- and eco-friendly endeavours. We are geared to take on these upcoming opportunities.
I believe, there are possibilities of providing newer opportunities to a large number of aspiring candidates in the newer emerging markets through specially tailored design programmes which emphasize ‘design thinking’ to enable them to make an impact on future social, industrial and other socio-economic clusters at a systems level.
These proposed newer and specialised programmes (both PG and shortterm) in Design will ideally completely intertwine education with the demands of and supports from the industry. The new programmes will also focus on creating social and economic impacts by developing new avenues and processes.
I am quite hopeful that we will be able to achieve this vision through proper selection of aspiring candidates, mentoring existing faculty, inducting newer faculty, and constantly interacting with willing technology and academic partners in the industry and academia both at the national as well as international level.

Communication
Design