Samarth Bhagwat | IDC IIT Bombay

Doubt & Design

A Manifesto
To the creators,
Begin with doubt. Doubt every statement you make, doubt your intention, doubt the outcome, the
process, the need to use materials, the people who will see what you create, the masses, the public, the
media, the wants, the needs, the desires, the system that defines them, the structures we worship, and
the need to doubt itself. Scrutinise. But don’t doubt the need for your creation, as it is a fundamental
question.

Your voice is necessary, your creations are worthwhile. Your liberty lies in doubt and so does your
entrapment. Claim the liberty and move towards purpose. Inaction from doubt leads to passivity.
Anguish is a condition of action.

Don’t lose yourself in the barrage of content that is freely available for consumption.You will get
nothing by seeing and hoarding content if you don’t keep creating your own. For certain input there
must be necessary output. Passivity in engaging with information doesn’t help us in any way.

Cogito ergo sum isn’t enough.

I create, hence I am.

Know that the world is uncertain. In such a world, where the constructs of just and unjust evades us,
we must maintain the balance, and when one arm of the scale tips too heavily, issue counters to bring
it in check.

Don’t hesitate to take a stand in the face of doubt. The very scale of the problems that we must design
against could be enough to make us falter in our will.
But we are the creators, the designers, the artists, the writers. And we cannot rest.
We must find our peace in the heat of the conflict, raise our voices of dissent where we must.

Maybe this is too much certainty. But buy into it if you must.
Regulate between doubt and action.
As a man once said “Danger, makes us classical, and all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk”.
So lets create dangerously.
 Samarth Bhagwat | IDC IIT Bombay
A Thought
I’ll begin this enquiry by addressing doubt, as it is a feeling of uncertainty I have felt and seen others
deal with time and again. This doubt usually concerns the state of flux a person of creative disposition
might feel at a certain point in time due to a multitude of factors, ranging from their emotional state of
mind to a sudden change in climate, or even a piece of new information received. It could be triggered
by competition or comparison with people of the past who have worked in similar fields, present day
influences or even the very people surrounding them who intentionally or unintentionally provide
perspective to the otherwise rather self-centred soul. We live in interesting times, and with the advent
of these interesting times come the fair share of baffling problems, at a global scale, which find their
points of conflict in more than just one area of expertise. A creator, when confronted with these
challenges would feel doubts of every different colour, as the doubt of the necessity for their creation
eats their very will to act.

This feeling of discontentment, doubt, dissatisfaction, anguish, regardless of what we call it, is crucial
to creation.

Discontentment drives design. Sensitivity to a context lies at the crux of good design. Identifying
problems involves being able to perceive the complicated interwoven nature of culture, history,
language, politics, psychology, biology and the environment or ecology, and locating the problem
within this dense network. Then again what do we actually see as problems. What seems like a
problem to us, would sometimes mean nothing more than a few compromises to the people affected by
it. The argument to be made in this case is that if discontentment and dissatisfaction allows for
consciousness and change, do we allow ourselves to compromise and adapt to it? We are a tolerant
race, by nature. We are no better than the frog that sits in a kettle as the water around it heats,
unresponsive to the discomfort. That problem won’t be a problem unless you sensitise the people to it.
Global problems remain unattended as people remain complacent about them. But it is also necessary
to be able to take note of the platform of privilege we stand on while assessing these problems. A
design education grants us the sensitivity to realise this. But what about the general public we are
designing for? Are they sensitive to the larger world?

There is another question in this enquiry. Do we choose not to Observe? Not because of the fact that
observation opens us to an array of possible information which most people usually have no direct use
of, in line with their perfectly passive lives.This choice to not observe is taken, because with a decision
to observe comes a choice to act. A failure to pursue a call to action, which are abundant around us if
we allow ourselves to observe, according to me is a rather passive approach to life. Design is an act of
hope, which is the result of pursuing a call to action which has been observed and validated, the hope
existing in the fact that when the action is pursued to an end, it could cause a change from the current
state of matters.

We must learn to act, to pursue a call to action. The necessity to act is the first decision we must take
when confronted with the crucial question, action or inaction? When we see our doubt in the light of
liberty associated with the act of creation, it upholds the idea that we are what we purpose ourselves to
be. This doubt is a result of the freedom we sense, that we could be everything and nothing, and that
must empower us, not limit us. Everyone feels doubt, but this must not lead to lack of faith in our
creation. Hence our creations, regardless of the circumstances they are made under, hold immense
 Samarth Bhagwat | IDC IIT Bombay
power as they are still purely an act of design. Hope, as a famous author said, lies in the premise that we
don’t know what would happen, but in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.

Anguish is a condition of action.

Doubt in the necessity of our creation should be left behind. But doubt as an element of scrutiny must
always remain. How can we ever be sure about anything? And if we do feel certain about something,
might we also remember that all certainty is also subjective. Hence a balance of doubt and action is
necessary to maintain. Too much doubt and no action leads to passivity, and too much action with no
doubt or scrutiny could create too much momentum in directions we only believe to be right, when
the notions of right and wrong themselves remain ambiguous. Another aspect that saves us from the
tyrannies of the world is that with doubt, worshipping any ideology becomes impossible, and hence it
reveals itself as an inherent manifestation of liberty and entrapment, the balance between which is for
us to maintain.

Don’t hesitate to take a stand in the face of doubt. The very scale of the problems that we must design
against could be enough to make us falter in our will. But we are the creators, the designers, the artists,
the writers. And we cannot rest. We must find our peace in the heat of the conflict, raise our voices of
dissent where we must. In an uncertain world where the constructs of just and unjust evades us, we
must maintain the balance, and when one arm of the scale tips too heavily, issue counters to bring it in
check. The time of the solitary artist and designer is over. Every one of us is responsible in the face of
the adversities we face today.

So don’t lose yourself in the barrage of content that is freely available for consumption. You exist as
long as you create. Waste time in putting things down. Don’t sit on ideas until they fade away. Just get
them out there. Churn out artefacts, gauge responses, debate and discuss, design it again. That is how
you progress. That is how you observe reactions and understand people. You will get nothing by
seeing and hoarding content if you don’t keep creating your own. For certain input there must be
necessary output. Passivity in engaging with information doesn’t help us in any way. Cogito ergo sum
isn’t enough. I create, hence I am.