The Commonwealth Express

 

The Commonwealth Express, featuring rare CWG memorabilia, arrived at Bangalore on Thursday 2nd of September, 2010 to give Bangaloreans a glimpse of the history of the games.
Five coaches of the Special Exhibition train on Sports and Information Technology are devoted to the Commonwealth Games. The train was stationed at Cantonment, the second major railway station in Bangalore, till Friday 3rd September 2010.

The special train, comprising of 11 coaches, has been journeying throughout India from June 24 to promote the Games (Oct 3-14) which will be held in New Delhi.
The Commonwealth Express is being run jointly by the Ministry of Railways (through its Railway Sports Promotion Board) and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Idiom captured glimpses of the train which showcased - History of the Games, Commonwealth Nations and the Mascot of New Delhi Games ‘Shera’; Queen’s Baton Relay and interesting facts about the Games; Details of venues and the Games; Display of sporting events and calendar of sporting events; Portraits and action photographs of Indian sports legends and Railways’ role in nurturing budding Indian sportsmen, star railway sportspersons and display of trophies bagged by Indian Railways.

In case you still didn’t know, Idiom has and is designing the look of the games as well as the logo

-Posted by Mallik

Onam at IDIOM

Onam is the biggest festival in the Indian state of Kerala. It falls during the first month of the Malayalam calendar which is Chingam (August–September) and marks the homecoming of the legendary King Mahabali. The festival lasts for ten days and is linked to many elements of Kerala's culture and tradition. Intricate flower carpets, elaborate banquet lunch, snake boat races, Puli Kali, and the kaikottikkali dance all play a part in the festival. Onam is celebrated by the all the natives of Kerala, irrespective of caste, creed or religion.

This year Onam was on the 23rd of August, since it was a holiday at IDIOM, we decided to celebrate Onam on the 21st. It was a Saturday, and the office was abuzz with excitement. Some of the guys had laid an onapookkalam (floral carpet) as well as cooked for us (we had Onam Sadya with lunch). Everyone celebrating Onam looked great (the men in their lungis and the women in their traditional white saris). Onam was a fun day and we hope to celebrate many more festivals just like we celebrated Onam.

Posted by Rahul

Design Education in China

On Sunday I was with a young man all of 25 who was a sales manager at this fixture factory that Suresh from our office had ordered shop fittings from. Curious about his background I asked him what he did in college. Two years of Industrial Design he said.

So I asked him why he was not practicing industrial design. Not the best career option he said. "Sales have more possibility." So why not an MBA?"  “Oh too tough to get in, ID easier."

"I love designing but with my qualifications I can work in the engineering department where I will be far down the pecking order …. No fun"

China has more than 200 universities and colleges that offer courses in Industrial design alone that produce about 30,000 graduates of varying skill levels through 2, 3 and 4 year programmes. Many of them teach drawing and sketching, CAD, ADOBE- Photoshop and AI with a bit of engineering and MT and very little of design research leave alone Design Intelligence.

This is what I find out on Monday from Sheng Wang at VIM DESIGN, a product design office run by him. He is an industrial designer educated in China running a 25 person studio in Shanghai in Building 800 that’s occupied largely by galleries; the contemporary art museum and a number of design and allied firms even those dealing with consulting on intellectual property.

Not surprisingly or should I say surprisingly Sheng does not speak English at all.....
It is a young office with 5 interns just about 19 years old, 2 engineers in MT which I reckon is material technology and the 15 odd designers working there would not be older than 22 years old on average.

The problem Sheng tells me is that there is no quality in the 190 or so colleges that churn out designers. The other issue is that among the students themselves there is not enough general awareness about design hence the students who stumble into design….. Well….. Stumble into design.

Out of the 200 colleges and universities I ask how many deliver quality education, Sheng and his young designers start counting literally on their fingers and come up with ten, which produce at best 1000 graduates a year. The design schools at Beijing and Shanghai are considered the best. The schools however teach more the skills and less of the thinking.

There was a great deal of curiosity about our methodology and design research. They were surprised to hear that we don’t actually go about interviewing customers but rather rely on observation.

They would love to do research for their projects but have not done so, so far as their clients have not offered to pay for it. When they design products for western markets they depend on information gathered by their clients for consumer insights.

Business design drew a complete blank; packaging is also not done at the studio although that is something that they would like to do in the future.

The model making they enjoy is Fabulous !!
I saw a range of CP fittings being developed for an MNC that were absolutely gorgeous.

Multi national companies like Whirlpool, Ariston, A.O. Smith, Samsung etc that operate in the Chinese market have been good pay masters though they have to deal with middle managers and not the very top managers.

There are also a few Chinese companies that are employers of designers like TCL, Haier, Lenovo etc.
They look to hiring VIM Design because of the broader perspective they bring in although all of them do have in-house design studios.
The largest design offices in the country that employ upward of 100 designers are almost entirely in the public sector or have some kind of government stake in them.

Idiom and VIM Design can look at collaborating on product design projects especially those that need manufacturing and production support in China and this is something we would be looking at in the future.



Posted by Jacob

What is Design Thinking?

What is Design Thinking?

Wikipedia defines it as "a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas.

As with design, there’s probably no one definition of design thinking everyone will agree on. The word design can refer to nouns such as designers, physical products, and style. The word can be a verb, as in process, create, and make. For example, Charles Burnette in his IDeSiGN curriculum calls it, “…a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained.”

Lately many more people are talking and writing about the application of design thinking to intangible problems, design not only as a verb but as a way of — as Herbert Simon wrote — improving situations. I felt a need to review what has been said and define the term for myself before I could put it into use. Ways of thinking are always difficult to define, but I’m reminded of how Lao Tzu said “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” yet he still managed to write a book about it.

I have synthesized for myself what I understand design thinking to be…

• Collaborative, especially with others having different and complimentary experience, to generate better work and form agreement
• Abductive, inventing new options to find new and better solutions to new problems
• Experimental, building prototypes and posing hypotheses, testing them, and iterating this activity to find what works and what doesn’t work to manage risk
• Personal, considering the unique context of each problem and the people involved
• Integrative, perceiving an entire system and its linkages
• Interpretive, devising how to frame the problem and judge the possible solutions

I’m sure one could play with the language and categorization to find more or less characteristics, but I’m happy with just those six.

-Posted by Rahul

Introducing SPREAD

Conception:

 IDIOM is humbly today India’s largest multidisciplinary design firm in the country, In the last few years design professionals at IDIOM Design and Consulting, Bangalore have been using design thinking as a key strategic tool to help in the disproportionate growth of some of the most desired business houses in India. At Idiom we believe that this process could be used to create the same results of inclusive growth for the nation and beyond. Idiom has, in a short span of time, moved from the business of design to the design of business. Creating ideas for India that are taken from mind to market with skill, speed and imagination. Idiom is ‘more’ than a design firm. Design education does not address this need that we see in the market.
SPREAD was hence born as the design outreach program of IDIOM. Since its induction three years ago SPREAD has successfully worked with various institutions and business houses conducting workshops, seminar programs and lectures to make design a weapon to transform and grow our economy and to better plan our lives and environment.  Spread makes design thinking, tools and processes accessible to design and business students, practitioners and even school children.

Need:

As India strives to be the epicenter of the new creative economy. We at SPREAD realize two immediate challenges the nation faces for the desired growth.
India has a severe shortage of Design professionals when compared to countries like the USA or Japan and our education system has been structured to nurture production economy rather than creative economy.
Our aim at SPREAD is to create future thought leaders whose designs would tangibly transform businesses and life. We at SPREAD aim to ignite this thinking process to a wide range of audience from corporate / entrepreneurs / business houses / governance to school children to youth in colleges practicing different streams of specialization Young. We aim to make India’s creative future ready.
What we offer:
 Design education (Design thinking and Design doing):
Design as we see it, has two parts to it-process and skill. The process can be easily taught and applied to a wide variety of problem solving exercise. The process or design thinking as it is better known today is a way of seeing , observing , questioning and foreseeing a problem / demand to get a holistic solution.
Spread also plans to impart soft skill courses for the non designers.

Design research and consulting:

The design and ethnography researchers at SPREAD are constantly caning the market and society for viable insights and ideas that could lead to a sustainable growth opportunity.
Journey so far:
 In acknowledgement to our work in India, team from Idiom was invited to Parsons and Stanford D School in New York in the month of March this year to better understand the true potential of economic growth in India with design as the key driver. The visit resulted in  NODES (A network for design education) was set up as a platform to promote Design and Design thinking, collaboration between SPREAD (Idiom) and Design Knowledge Network (Parsons).   

Next step:

 NODES (Spread/ Idiom and Design knowledge network / Parsons new school of design, NY) will be jointly conducting the first series of workshops from 3rd to 10th of June 2010. Dr. Carlos Teixeira from Parsons will be leading this workshop.


  
Moving forward:

Design is not for the elite; it is for all and can be practiced by all for a truly conscious growth. Hence we must SPREAD Design.
We will be targeting education, consulting services and vocational training for schooling and graduate students, non designers, corporate, social entrepreneurs, governance, small and MSES.
We will also be looking to attract like-minded people, passionate about inclusive and conscious growth as partners and research sponsors on the NODES platform.

Key People:

Carlos Teixeira, Ph.D.

 Carlos Teixeira is an Assistant Professor and Director of Academic Affairs at the School of Design Strategies, at Parsons The New School for Design. He has a PhD in Design from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. His teaching centers on the application of design practices for innovation. He also leads a research lab on Design Knowledge Networks. As a practitioner, he has professional experience as a communication designer and strategic design consultant in the United States and Brazil.

Sonia Manchanda

Sonia is Founder and Principal Designer at Idiom Design and Consulting. She believes that design is and can be a potent tool for creating and recreating the world we live in and design is as much relevant to life, as it is to business. She has led teams and worked on large scale projects that are cultural in nature, created public movements, working with city stakeholders, created the thinking, culture and visual identities for some of India's largest and most recognizable retail brands, besides some truly Indian and successful corporate brands. Spread is an initiative that she launched along with Idiom cofounders, to find innovative ways to spread design as a way of thinking and doing things. She is a product of the premium school of design ,  National institute of Design , Ahmadabad and is in the program committee of EPIC an ethnographic conference to be held at Japan.

Nimesh Pilla

Nimesh Pilla is the Leader Learning at SPREAD Design and a consultant on design strategies to Idiom Design and consulting, Bangalore. He has masters in Design strategies from Politechnico Di Milano , Milan and specializes in design innovation and management linked to new product service systems. He is a visiting faculty to School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi where he had done his graduation as an architect. He has worked as an architect and design strategist in India and Italy.