MP Ranjan On PhD-Design MSTR 2003 Sept T PDF

MPR on PhD-Design_Mstr 2013 May.
docx
Reflections on PhD-Design: A collection of posts on the PhD-Design discussion list by Prof M P

Ranjan over a ten year period: 2003 to 2013 <PHD-DESIGN@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Prof M P Ranjan
Professor – Design Chair, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
Author of blog – www.DesignforIndia.com
Posts on PhD-Design discussion list by Prof M P Ranjan upto 30 May 2013 from 01 September 2003 in
response to various comments by list members who are all either teachers at design school or those
interested in design as a discipline and a group of PhD scholars currently engaged in their pursuit of a
PhD in Design. PhD-Design was created to discuss, and exchange information about PhDs in design. In
the past 10 years the list has grown from 1200 members to about 2800 members today. The list was set
up in 1998 after a conference of the Design Research Society and has remained active ever since. The
List archives can be seen at this link and it is open to anyone who is interested in the topic. While
anyone can view the archives, one needs to register in order to post to the list.
<www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/phd-design.html‎>
The most recent posts are in the front while the earliest posts are at the end of this document arranged
in a descending order a total of 191 posts till date.
The first line of each post is assembled from the list archives showing the List serial number, date and
time of post followed by the subject head. The second line is my own reference number with date while
the rest of the post is from my particular submission to the list on that day.
021827 2013-05-30 20:50 Re: Design of Fire

MPR on PhD-Design_2013_05_30-02
Dear Harold and Klaus
I would love to join you at the beer session as the key to design and understanding its inner workings lie
somewhere between imagination and articulation, visualisation and language based communication that
inform all the action stages thereafter.
M P Ranjan
from home in very hot Ahmedabad
30 May 2013 at 8.50 pm IST
MPR on PhD-Design_Mstr 2013 ©©2013 M P Ranjan page 1/232

021823 2013-05-30 15:04 Re: Design of Fire
Dear Harold and Klaus
I have been using "Fire as a Metaphor" for design at the systems level since 1993 when a group
students in my systems thinking class at NID proposed an image that used Fire as an image that could
explain the various flows and processes that influence design in a culture and also show its impact on
society and the environment. You can download the image along with other design thinking models that I
use to explain the various dimensions and processes of design action and design thinking from my
Academia.edu site here.
<http://www.academia.edu/3627352/Understanding_Design_Models_Fire_Values_Levels_Process
> More recently, after a meeting at IDC, Mumbai some ten years ago, I developed a model to explain the
role of design in shaping our civilisation and Fire is at the very beginning of the journey. This model can
be downloaded from here. This places design as a human ability that ore-dates Science as well as Art,
Take a look. <http://www.academia.edu/3626560/History_of_Design_Model_Stool_and_Fire>
Klaus, thank you for your inputs on language and communication. The evidence of Visual
communication comes very late in the human evolution since cave paintings and other external images
seem to appear quite a while after the appearance of tools. Symbolic communication is a more evolved
form of design it seems. Vocalisations and verbal language must have evolved much earlier but there
does not seen to be evidence that can help us date the development, or is there any? Richard Dawkins,
in his book The Ancestor's Tale (2005) places the first use of Fire for security only as far back as one
and a half million years ago based on scientific evidence of the ground magnetise the soil when a fire is
built repeatedly at one place, usually in front of a cave. (Page 60 - story of the Ergasts) If, such use of
Fire, before the art and science of fire evolved is accepted as an act of Design, a leap of faith, then we
can extrapolate and say that all of science, in its early stages is based in its early explorations on design
and design thinking. Klaus in his paper "Design Research, an Oxymoron?" Krippendorff (2007) suggests
this in his own way. This is how I read it anyway. What do you think?
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my Mac at CEPT University
30 May 2013 at 3.00 pm IST
021799 2013-05-27 10:30 14 papers on bamboo & design uploaded on Acedemia.edu –Ranjan
MPR on PhD-Design_2013_05_27
Dear Friends

I have uploaded a collection of 14 papers written between 1983 and 2011 on my Academis.edu site
under a new section titled Papers on Bamboo at this link here.
<http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP/Bamboo-papers> These papers on bamboo related design
research represent field explorations and design action and insights from these numerous projects and
can be read along with the development of my design thinking theories that are informed by these and
other real life experiences at the National Institute of Design and these have been arranged in a
chronological order for future reflection and research use.
<http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP/Design-Thinking-papers>
With warm regards M P Ranjan
from my Mac at home
27 May 2013 at 10.30 am IST
021797 2013-05-26 22:29 New Collection of Papers on Design Thinking from 1994 tlll date - Ranjan
Dear friends
I have uploaded a new collection of old papers on Design Thinking from our India experiences at NID
Ahmedabad on my Acedemia.edu web site at this link below. These 13 papers are what I could locate
just now but there are more which I will look for and add at a later date. Take a look here.
<http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP/Design-Thinking-papers> Some of these have supporting
visual slides that you can find under Conference Presentations section here. More later....
<http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP/Conference-Presentations> I have been doing some spring
cleaning with my digital archive that has been collecting dust since 1990 or so....
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at home on the NID campus
26 May 2013 at 10.25 pm IST
021796 2013-05-26 09:56 Language and design - Ranjan

Language and design - Ranjan
Dear Prof RAMA KANT AGNIHOTRI
Your article in the Hindu of 25th May 2013 makes very interesting reading.
<http://tinyurl.com/q9fvzq3> I have posted two comments there and these are quoted below for your
immediate review and I am sharing these with the design community at large as well. I Quote "Wonderful
insights on the nature of language and its living variety here in India. However the issues and proposals
for going forward as stated in the last paragraph may need to be debated with a different mindset of
imagination. Here, I refer to the easy mindset of accepting science as the only way forward. While there

is a science of language there are other dimensions to be studied and understood. How do languages
evolve? Why do languages exist in such diversity? and How do we help preserve this variety and
through this the cultural knowledge that the diversity represents? These and other questions have been
discussed and debated by some of us in the design community but these debates have not been on
scientific forums from where we are debarred by the process of peer review. So our debate takes place
inside the marketplace through our work and expressions in research and actions of design offerings
that deal with language just as it does in other fields that need Design. More.... Design as a way forward
stems from experience in designing for language that creates new opportunities and not just for analysis
of what exists but an opportunity to create new forms and structures that are the need of the place and
time. My former students from NID have designed new typefaces to meet various challenges and new
expressions for books and multi-media settings. In some cases even new scripts for languages without
an existing or living script through a process of design. Neelakash Kshetrimayum <
http://tinyurl.com/np59uem> created a Manipuri script and Vaishnavi Murthy <
http://tinyurl.com/o9toh5k> on Tulu and Neha Bahuguna < http://tinyurl.com/qcs6z33> a Hindi as
written by hand and Satya Rajpurohit <http://tinyurl.com/p7h4svg> a range of digital fonts. Mahendra
Patel (NID) <http://tinyurl.com/pxd5pm6>and (late) R K Joshi (IDC), <http://tinyurl.com/ntfunw8>
both teachers of design, have a body of work that is impressive. However using design as an approach
to understand culture, education and social transformation have been stymied by the science mindset
and we are all in a dilemma. When will we think differently? Will the new NIDs be able? Unquote I have
added links to the designer stories in the text above, which is not in the Hindu comment site. Font and
type design is but a small subset of what design can and should do with language and we need to
explore all the dimensions in a country that is steeped with illiteracy and a lack of universal access to
education. Design if applied can address both these problems I am sure, many more as well.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at home
26 May 2013 at 9.45 am IST
021788 2013-05-22 23:59 Papers on Design Education and Design Thinking from India
Papers, Books and Conference Presentations on Academa.edu - Ranjan
Dear Friends
I have uploaded another set of my Papers, Books and Conference Keynote Presentations on my
Academia.edu page here to make it more accessible. Take a look.
<http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP> There s a huge backlog and I am now organising my other
papers on Design Thinking going back to the late 80's and these too will be uploaded shortly. Also under
processing are my papers on bamboo and design explorations in the field.

With warm regards
25 May 2013 at 9.40 am IST
021788 2013-05-22 23:59 Papers on Design Education and Design Thinking from India
Dear Friends
I have uploaded several papers on design education and design thinking from my work in India and
these can be seen and downloaded from these links below. 1. <
http://www.academia.edu/3573380/Design_in_the_Real_World_The_time_has_come_to_repositio
n_NID > 2. <
http://www.academia.edu/3573287/Institutional_frameworks_and_design_development > 3. <
http://www.academia.edu/3573264/Design_Support_in_India_Institutional_experiences_in_a_gro
wing_industrial_economy > 4. <
http://www.academia.edu/3573067/Creating_the_Unknowable_Designing_the_Future_in_Educati
on > 5. <
http://www.academia.edu/3573006/Cactus_Flowers_Bloom_in_the_Desert_Reflections_on_Desig
n_and_Innovation_in_India > 6.
<http://www.academia.edu/3571808/Styles_of_Design_Thought_and_Action> 7. <
http://www.academia.edu/2514454/The_Avalanche_Effect_Institutional_frameworks_and_design_
as_a_development_resource_in_India >
M P Ranjan
from my Mac at home
22 May 2013 at 11.55 pm IST
021551 2013-04-06 00:12 Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense
Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense
Dear Klaus
I included that part of nature that I believe are mediated by human actions and prolonged selective
practices of culture formation, sometimes over centuries of action and existence of social practices,
beliefs and preferences. The plants and vegetables that we cultivate are all products of such sustained
design action. According to Claude Levi Strauss many of our vegetables come from the Mayan
civilization and in our study of the bamboo crafts of the Northeast of India for our book Bamboo and
Cane Crafts of Northeast India (1986) we found evidence of selective cultivation of particular bamboo
species by local communities so that these could be used for extraordinary applications that could

support their preferred lifestyles and meet sustainable practices in their rural settings. I have reflected on
this particular aspect in my paper titled "Ecology and Design: Lessons from the Bamboo Culture" (1991
Oita, Japan) and you can download the text from this link here as a pdf file
<http://tinyurl.com/d32a5f7> In this paper (1991 Oita, Japan) I have a definition of design and I quote it
here for immediate reference I quote
Design: An Alternate definition when I use the term 'design', I do not wish to refer to design as an elitist
preoccupation but to design as a developmental activity, a powerful tool for economic and social
development. The development of this definition of design represents the current state of art in the area
of design as a discipline as we now see it in India and in our perception this interpretation can be used to
improve the quality of our lives. Design as a multi-dimensional process and design as a strategy are
quite different from the more commonly understood definition that covers the limited roles that designers
play in the service of organized industry. Design as a discipline necessarily draws on a vast body of
human knowledge that are appropriate to the task at hand to generate the scenarios that could be
subjected to rigorous evaluation. design activity focuses on the user's needs. Unquote
With warm regards
6 April 2013 at 12.10 am IST
021544 2013-04-05 13:10 Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense
Re: Ideas and definitions of what is "a design" in a broad sense
Dear Kari-Hans
Interesting question and position. For me a "Design" is a response to an opportunity or challenge. A
product of some agency human or natural. (animal architecture) These could be deeply thoughtful and
skilful (think and do) responses or intuitive ones (do and think - if at all) or even accidental or emotional
responses, the incidental response (the great India *Jugaad*) or much worked through multiple iterations
and trials (professional design) or (plodding and boring 'design' and scientific research as in molecule
finding algorithms in the biotech space). "Design" as a result of human agency is visible all around us
including the trees and plants in our landscape through selective breeding and cultivation. The intangible
cultural norms and social practices too are "Design" manifestations in culture and society. Laws, policies
and business models as well as processes and events are "Designs". So, we have objects - parts and
wholes, communications - elements and messages, spaces and structures and systems, environments
and eco-systems all manifestations of design, cultures and social norms. Arjun Appadurai gives us the
concept of social imaginary, which could give us a rich description of design – ethnoscapes,
mediascapes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediascape>, technoscapes, financescapes, and

ideoscapes. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arjun_Appadurai> all humans and other actors contribute
and it would be an interesting space for serious research.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at CEPT University
5 April 2013 at 1.00 pm IST
021220 2013-02-28 13:49 Re: design research and design practice

Dear Terry
For me the specifications come at the end of a design journey and not at the beginning when you may
start with a design intention but with zero specifications for a brand new application, if there ever is one. I
recall a model shown to us by Prof Bruce Archer when he visited NID in late 80's . He had two
intersecting cones going in opposite directions. The cone of intentions (left to right) gradually reduces
and focuses on possible solutions and it finally ends with one that is chosen. The other cone of
specifications constantly expands as the decisions and strategies are decided and that cone (right to
left) becomes almost infinite when the final synthesis has been achieved. Design is therefore about
creating the appropriate specifications to meet a particular intention and not about following them. In
mature product categories the prior art may have a strong influence on specifications that get included.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan Professor - Design Chair CEPT University, Ahmedabad
from my Mac at CEPT campus 28 February 2013 at 2.00 pm IST
021088 2013-02-12 08:06 Re: Collective design
Dear Chuck
Thanks for this link, the article is indeed very inspiring and shows a new way in which design is being
used by a technology led company as they become user focussed. Many new ways are emerging for
design use and approaches, which are growing in a number of directions, some new. <
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3904134/google-redesign-how-larry-page-engineered-
beautiful-revolution > One of our design research colleagues, Uday Dandavate from California, has
posted a note on his visit to The Strelka, a new age design school in Moscow that is looking at using
design in unusual ways. You can see this link here as a pdf file. <*http://tinyurl.com/b3hkxh7*> I have
just come out of a very stimulating three day design festival at New Delhi, The UnBox Festival 2013 that
explored many dimensions of design thought and action in an unusual format.
<http://unboxfestival.com/> Yesterday, I had dinner with John Thackara of Doors of
Perception<http://www.doorsofperception.com/>and a group of senior Faculty from the new School of

Design at the Ambedkar University in New Delhi and they too are discussing ways in which design can
be integrated into their multidisciplinary university with many humanities disciplines, perhaps a first here
in India after all the focus on technology and science based investments here. This will be an interesting
space to watch and connect with in the years ahead I am sure.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at Hotel Vista in Sultanpur, New Delhi
12 February 2013 at 8.15 am IST
021046 2013-02-07 08:53 Re: The Bibliography Behind A Theory of Design Thinking
Dear Chuck
I had already posted the message directly to the PhD-Design list since I felt that this would be
appropriate and help develop a discussion on the various routes that each of us have used to arrive at a
fairly common set of knowledge resources as well as beliefs about a subject and this was in particular
reference to the area of Design Theory and Design Thinking. Your list is a wonderful effort to share your
personal route and it reveals the journey that you have made and sets many of your papers in
perspective while giving us a glimpse of your position along the way. I realised these differences in
approaches when I compared my own list of sources with that of Fritzjof Capra's bibliography offered at
the back of his books when he was dealing with the subject of systems thinking and sustainable models
for human futures, areas that I too have been writing about over the years. My own list varied quite a bit
but we had arrived at much the same conclusions and the difference was that he was using primarily
scientific sources while I was using sources from design and architecture and there were few overlaps.
This reminds me of the discussions on this list that spoke of two sides of a river in spate, the two banks
on which we stand are quite divided and there do not seem to be too many bridges that connect the two
it seems!! A chronological listing of sources is not adequate to figure out the manner in which the
concepts were assimilated by an author or even a community of scholars since we know that the papers
may have existed after they were penned but these may have been accessed only when the author
either made contact with the paper or when they were intellectually ready to access and understand the
content in the process of transforming their own belief system through engagement and study. History is
replete with such parallel routes and all of human knowledge flows in uneven ways from East to West
and North to South as well as from one discipline to another where the boundaries seem to be quite
watertight and the transmission takes a lot of time. The path to knowledge and to ignorance is quite
convoluted and meandering indeed especially at the leading edge. Yes, your call for other list members
to share their bibliographies is in order and we will all be the wiser from such a sharing. Bernhard Burdek
has pointed out another difficulty and that is that of language. I can access only resources in English and
must wait for advanced concepts from other languages to be translated and filtered down for us to make

access and use these in some meaningful way. Google translate, as it gets better may help bridge this
gap, but the resources must be made available in the first place for us to be able to access these. Today
design scholarship is moving to many local languages in Asia as well and we will need to look at many
new sources for insights to inform and sustain design thinking and design theory in the future.
With warm regards
021016 2013-02-06 13:03 Snehal Nagarsheth: Bibliography on Design Thinking from Charles Brunette - Ranjan
Dear Snehal
This is with reference to our conversation yesterday about Prof Charles Brunette's bibliography. I attach
here the Bibliography provided by Prof Charles Brunette on his Academia.edu web page. This is a fairly
comprehensive list of all his papers as well as those that he claims have influenced him personally as
well as widely helped in the shaping of Design Theory as well as Design Thinking and Design Methods
from early beginnings at the turn of the last century. I have a few other authors in my own list who have
influenced us at NID and in India since we have had access to these authors during our student days at
NID as well as during the period of our own explorations into design education since the early 70's. The
journals from the HfG Ulm were a potent force for us and all these volumes were available in the NID
library and now these are available online from my blog Design for India for download. The Ulm theorists
include Tomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsieppe and a whole host of other teachers there. I would include
here Bucky Fuller and Frei Otto who are not listed in Chuck's list. Further, Stafford Beer, Gregory
Bateson and Piere Teilhard de Chardin who influenced us to explore systems thinking are not on his list
too. There are others such as M K Gandhi and J Krishnamurthy who shaped our ideological
perspectives in design thought and action and some of these I have expanded on in my paper of 2009
for the Istanbul conference titled "Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics of Design" which also includes the
development of semiotics as an influence in design thinking through the work of Klaus Krippendorf and
Liz Sanders etc. Take a look at both and we can discuss these in the light of some that we both may
have missed from an architectural perspective. The most updated list should include The Design Way
(2nd edition) by Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman from the MIT Press, The Semantic Turn by Klaus
Krippendorf and 101 Design Methods by Vijay Kumar. In the mid 70's and early 80's we had access to
several books from the Open University, UK that were authored by Nigel Cross and Robin Roy. NID
Library has a very good collection of books from the Design Council, UK as well. KD may kindly give
Kiritbhai a copy of both these papers.
with warm regards
M P Ranjan from my at CEPT University

6 February 2013 at 1.05 pm IST
020933 2013-01-20 23:10 Re: "Institute of National Importance" for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad
Dear Don
In the din of all the responses that I got on my blog post, including yours which I responded to there in
the comments column, I missed replying this particular post on the PhD-Design list to you and the rest of
the list members, sorry. The post on my blog about the new status of "Institute of National Importance"
for NID has really raised quite a debate and many interesting angles about design education and the
role of design in a developing economy and in India in general have been raised and I have answered
each one of the comments that were made so far, quite unprecedented for my blog at least. I have also
made a long response to your post there and I do thank you for your effort. In India, this is particularly
significant since our national investments are skewed towards science and technology education and
research, while similar activities in design have suffered severely over fifty years of gross neglect which
may be changing now, I hope. China has suddenly woken up to the need for design education and has
made great strides from what we hear now and I wonder if other countries too are changing their attitude
and their national investments and strategies in design and I would like to learn about such moves if they
are indeed afoot. So many interesting issues have been raised that it seems that we will need many
more discussions here in India as well as elsewhere to explore all these dimensions and the significance
of design in the world going forward. In all we have 24 comments to date in response that have been
recorded and can be seen here at this link below. <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2013/01/recognising-roots-nid-accorded-status.html> The India Design Council
that is charged with the implementation of the National Design Policy in India has announced a major
conference on design education that will take place in Pune in March 2013, rather hurriedly it seems.
You can see their website at this link here. <http://www.ddei.in/> I have tried to register at the
conference through the Pre-Registration format but that did not seem to work and then I tried the
Contact button which did elicit a response by email and I hope this will go forward to a very stimulating
discussion of what needs to be done in India on the design education front in the days ahead. Those
interested can email this link for immediate response. <msidc@nid.edu> Thank you also for the personal
comment of appreciation and it means a lot coming from you. My response to your post is here at this
link below. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2013/01/recognising-roots-nid-accorded-
status.html?showComment=1358142775724#c1121129491064156654> or at this one through
TinyURL that some may prefer to use <*http://tinyurl.com/a8qso4f*>
With warm regards
20 January 2013 at 11.05 pm IST

020901 2013-01-13 10:57 "Institute of National Importance" for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad
Dear Friends.
The New Year has opened with the exhilarating news that the Indian Union Cabinet has finally approved
the status of "Institute of National Importance" for the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. I have
written a post on this event and what could be the actions going forward and you can see it at this link
below. http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/2013/01/recognising-roots-nid-accorded-
stat\us.html<http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/2013/01/recognising-roots-nid-accorded-
status.html>
I invite all of you to share and comment on this significant event on my blog as well as discuss the
impact and forward-looking strategies here on this list as well. Ranjit Menon, from the Aalto University in
Helsinki has already commented on this post and he calls our collective attention here in India to the
formation and role of SITRA in promoting the use of design across all sectors of the economy in Finland
and this could be a model that India too could follow in the days ahead., There is much hope. Take a
look at SITRA here http://www.sitra.fi/en> The Helsinki Design Lab that was set up through the SITRA
initiatives has case studies of design use across the world and it is not a surprise that they have
discovered the "Daily Dump" in Bangalore as an excellent case study of design use for solving the
wicked problems facing our cities today where design has made a difference already. Take a look at
their case study here. Poonam Bir Kasturi who has built the Design Dump is an NID graduate and we
are proud of her initiative and results. http://www.helsinkidesignlab.org/casestudies/daily-dump>
Perhaps there are other significant policy initiatives around the world that the Government of India and
the Indian design community needs to learn from in the days ahead. I would be happy to get your
suggestions on these as well here on this list.
M P Ranjan
Professor - Design Chair, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
13 January 2013 at 10.55 am IST
020734 2012-12-13 09:15 Re: Design Thinking Readings -- going deeper

Dear Kama Mustaqim
It seems that this discussion is in a thesis by Altino Joao Magalhaes Rocha in a M.Sc thesis titled
"Architecture Theory 1960 - 1980: Emergence of Computational Perspective." Download from here. <
http://dcg.mit.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/rocha_emergenceOfComputationalPerspective.pdf >

I have placed all the HfG Ulm Journals as digital scanned files as part of our conference DVD for the
events that we conducted in Bangalore and Kolkatta in 2010. The ful DVD can be downloaded from my
blog "Design for India" at this link here and the download is available from the left hand side column on
the blog. The DVD is titled "Look Back Look Forward: Hfg Ulm...." it is a large download of about 2GB
size. It includes 20 issues of HfG Ulm journals. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/> More info about
the conference as well as other downloads are here at this lonk below. <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2010/08/hfg-ulm-and-basic-design-conference-at.html>
With warm regards
13 December 2012 at 9.20 am IST
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Prof M P Ranjan* *Design Thinker and author of blog
More info about the conference as well as other downloads are here at this link below. < http://design-
for-india.blogspot.in/2010/08/hfg-ulm-and-basic-design-conference-at.html >
With warm regards
020704 2012-12-12 00:38 Re: Design Thinking Readings -- going deeper

Dear Eric
Great list and blog. The suggestions from the PhD-Design listers are excellent additions too. There are
many more that we could add since design draws from so many disciplines and these authors have
contributed to our understanding of design. I have a long list of papers and book that I called my design
bookshelf. My list of 55 books and 27 papers are listed in my 2009 paper for Istanbul titled "Hand-Head-
Heart: Ethics in Design" which you can see on my blog and download if you wish to from this link here. <
http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/2009/10/ethics-in-design-istanbul-conference.html > To this list I
would add some others and more recent books that I list here for immediate reference as they come to
my mind.
All my books are packed in boxes and not at hand just now unfortunately. 1. Understanding Design by
Kees Dorst <http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Design-revised-Kees-Dorst/dp/9063691491 >
2. Design Expertise by Bryan Lawson and Kees Dorst <http://www.amazon.com/Design-Expertise-
Bryan-Lawson/dp/1856176703> 3. 101 Design Methods by Vijay Kumar <
http://www.amazon.com/101-Design-Methods-Structured-Organization/dp/1118083466 > 4. In the

Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, by John Thackara, MIT Press, 2005 and there are more from the
management literature on design thinking and here Roger Martin, Tim Brown and Tom Kelly come to
mind. I would add books by Don Norman and many more..... With warm regards
M P Ranjan Professor - Design Chair CEPT University, Ahmedabad
from my Mac at home on the NID campus
020215 2012-10-24 09:23 Re: Papers/Books on refexivity in Design in international development context
Dear Anne Schiffer
The following links are recent entries on the PhD-DEsign list that include reflexivity. 10th August 2012
<*http://tinyurl.com/8vhvzjp*> 15th August 2012 <*http://tinyurl.com/8us4d8q*> 15th August 2012
<*http://tinyurl.com/8k6x6dw*> These are my posts in response to Klaus Krippendorff and Ken
Friedman. There are many more (51) references in total on the list dating back to 2000 from Klaus
Krippendorff and Ken Friedman;s reference and shared note from Phil Agre.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan Professor : Design Chair at CEPT University, Ahmedabad
from my Mac at home on the NID campus
24 October 2012 at 9.20 am
020161 2012-10-17 10:01 Re: Design principles from design research findings?
Dear Terry
A lot of work that is handled by designers may at some time be done by machines and software. These
would be routine tasks as well as multiple iterative testing routines that should ideally be left to machine
mediated processes if we have developed software to handle this adequately. However there would still
be tasks that would need human intervention and creative interpretation that should be the subject of our
current schools of design thought and action. Gunnar suggests that some of the automated tasks may
not be called design and I too think we would need alternate terminology to explain those kinds of tasks.
Design is a process that uses multiple types of skills, knowledge and abilities all applied in a complex
array of stages and contexts. So it is not a single task nor is it limited to one iteration since many design
offering go through numerous stages and some in the real world as test beds for scaling up at a later
stage. Yes, we do need theory to explain many of these and I am sure new challanges will come up as
we go forward.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at CEPT University

17 October 2012 at 10.10 am IST
019791 2012-08-24 06:41 Re: Design Education - Rethinking the role of Design History
Chuck
I continue... Sorry, the reply was posted without the links that I mentioned in my post < http://design-
for-india.blogspot.in/2012/07/evolution-of-dcc-course-at-nid.html > < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2012/07/design-thinking-design-journey-revisited.html > Yes, we do need a
theory for design action and learning from reflection to be build on the ground offered by Donald Schon
and here my model of the "Mind Body Map" may help in understanding the deep seated biases that we
all carry from our own life experiences and culture and the manner in which it can and does effect
"Design Percention" leading to resource maps that we create as well as "Design Opportunities" that we
are able to imagine and create design opportunity maps. Our biases determine what we can see as
resources for design action and what we can possibly imagine as a way forward. This is work in
progress. take a look at the links above.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at Delhi University campus on tour
24 August 2012 at 6.45 am IST
019788 2012-08-24 06:30 Re: Design Education - Rethinking the role of Design History
Dear Chuck
Your post brings some important insights to this conversation about design history and its role inside
design education. I do believe that it has a role in the modes of reflection that it can support and we do
need a theory that can help teachers and academic planners to grasp this need and apply the principles
to curriculum planning and assignment design. I believe that assignment design is at the very heart of
design education since it can frame the way in which learning uy doing can be steered and insights from
this practice can be harvested by the student and the teacher alike and I further think that it is best done
as a collective activity in teams rather than as individual journeys within design education. This has been
on my mind for many years now and through the courses that I have developed during my teaching at
the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. We stated experimenting with "Learning by Doing"
as an institutional policy way back in the 60's when the institute was led by the sibling team of Gautam
and Gira Sarabhai who took the Eames India Report and converted it into a programme of action along
with a highly motivated and committed faculty and student team. For this Gautam Sarabhai drafted and
shared a seminal document titled "NID - Internal Organisation, Structure and Culture: September 1972"
and you can download this from my Dropbox link here. <

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vq1gdykpudt3rej/NID%20-
%20Int%20Org%20Str%20%26%20Culture.pdf > Seen along with the Eames India Report that was
the vision document one can feel the power of design through a culture of reflection and action. My own
work in design education has been documented on my blog "Design for India" and several papers that
are available for download from here and two recent posts try to reflect of our design education
experiments particularly in the area of design thinking that I developed in a course called "Design
Concepts and Concerns" see these posts at these two links below.
<> <>
019754 2012-08-20 10:07 Re: Looking for a good (short) good overview of the history of design
Dear Ethel Leon
You have made a very important post on the PhD-Design list and the issues that you raise are as true
for India as they would be for most "peripheral countries" to borrow and use Gui Bonsiepe's terminology.
There is much work to be done and many that are available but not known to a wider audience. For
instance when we were working on the Handmade in India book, my wife - Aditi Ranjan - and I as
editors, we met up with Ram Guha, an eminent Indian historian, in Bangalore and he gifted us a book by
K T Acharya on the evolution and technology of the Ghani – traditional oil expellers – used in our
villages in India. The book published in 1993 is a gem and covers all kinds of oil expellers and their
historic development across several regions of India. K T Acharya on Wiki
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._T._Achaya> Ghani (out of print) on Amazon <
http://www.amazon.com/Ghani-The-Traditional-Oilmill-India/dp/0917526058> Our own book
"Handmade in India" has been designed to be an access book for design and architicture students and
covers India's hand crafts sector across 600 clusters and on each page we provide lists in the margin of
keywords that could be used to garner live information from the web based search and this covers all
geographic and cultural regions to one who is not aware of the terminology to begin with. I mention this
here in the context of history of design since I believe that such a format could make history very
accessible in a contextual manner if we were to assemble such a resource and have it available online.
You can download the full book as a searchable pdf file from my blog at the links below and read more
about it if you wish from my posts listed here. However, the paper edition is available commercially in
bookstores across the world as well as on Amazon but students (and others) can have it free from my
blog. :) Handmade in India download 337 MB <
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j3lnkd6bp0rw95b/Handmade%20in%20India_Book.pdf> more about
the book < http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2008/11/art-book-centre-launches-handmade-
in.html > < http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2008/07/handmade-in-india-team-and-
mission.html > < http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2008/07/handmade-in-india-book-

launch-in-new.html > Another very useful history resource that we have made available online
happened when we conducted two conferences in India in collaboration with the HfG Ulm Archive. titled
"Look Back-Look Forward - Hfg Ulm and Basic Design for India" (Kolkatta September 2010) and first one
in Bangalore (March 2010) titled "Look Back-Look Foward - Hfg Ulm and Design Education in India".
Read about these here below. However, we also made available the complete set of HfG Ulm Journals
for all the participants, design teachers at these conferences, a digital copy of the Ulm Journals since
only one copy of these Journals was available in India at the NID library. These were shared with
endorsement from its editors/authors Gui Bonsiepe and Tomas Maldonado. This set can be downloaded
as a zip file from my blog here as a 968 MB zip file that reproduces the full interactive DVD. This also
has archival material and books on NID and my own papers on design thinking. Take a look and share
with your students as well. Download Look Back ... DVD <
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ihrxs0840n6u2m/Look_Back_Look_Forward_DVD.zip> Read about
Kolkatta event < http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2010/08/hfg-ulm-and-basic-design-
conference-at.html > Read about Bangalore event < http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2010/04/look-back-look-forward-bengaluru-event.html > There are other
resources here in India that would be available in local languages, but alas these are not accessible
even for me since we have as many as 14 major languages and over 800 dialects that make up the
complex matrix of India and to study history it is a major venture that may take a very long time.
However, there are new papers and publications coming out of India and as Bonsiepe had predicted the
evolution of design competence is accompanied by a increase in published material and India is
approaching a more advanced stage in this structure that was proposed by Gui Bonsiepe. Indian school
are now offering the PhD degree in Design and Design Studies and this too will make a lot more new
material available from here I am sure. I visited Milan in 2010 to attend the D4SB conference at IED,
Milan and used this opportunity to continue m=y ongoing research on HfG Ulm and its impact particularly
in India. In 2005 and In 2008 I had visited the Ulm Archive to further my research. But the Milan visit was
special since I got to meet Tomas Maldonado and spend quality time discussing his views on the past
and future of design education and I am still to develop these discussions into a published form. He is
amazing and his book Design Nature Revolution (English 1972) clearly tells me that design is a political
activity and we discussed some of these dimensions which I will write about sometime, hopefully soon.
These are unknown thoughts even to design authors and scholars it seems since I find no mention of
Maldonado in the new book and very good book "Adversarial Design" by Carl Disalvo from the MIT
Press in a series on Design Thinking and Design Theory edited by Ken Friedman and Eric Stolterman.
There is so much that is not known and there is much work to be done here.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan Professor - Design Chair, CEPT University, Ahmedabad
from my iMac at home on the NID campus

20 August 2912 at 9.55 pm
019739 2012-08-17 22:56 Re: Looking for a good (short) good overview of the history of design
Dear Eric
I use a one page model of "History of Design" that starts with the use of Fire about 2 million years ago
and through each major break through that humans designed as they journeyed through time and place
to arrive at today. This will continue into the future as well. We will design our future, however clumsily,
we will move forward through time. I also use a three legged stool that shows the three legs of human
knowledge generated through Design, Art and Science, in that order. You can download it from my
dropbox link here below as a 450 kb pdf file . <
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27333579/Stool%20%26%20History%20of%20Design%20Model_Comp.pd
f>
With warm regards
17 August 2012 at 10.50 pm IST
019730 2012-08-16 23:46 Re: Design education (was Activity Theory and ANT and computers are capable of
design?)
Dear Terry
There may be many ways to move forward to achieve our goals. First, we may need to see if the goals
that we set are valid in the first place. This will need debate, discourse and cooperation. I am not sure if
accreditation and regulation with norms and processes in place are a way forward. Here in India much of
higher education is accredited and regulated through Government and Public Statutory institutions but
the desired quality is not necessarily assured by these systems. It only leads to high levels of corruption
and we can easily see that this is not the only way forward. Ethical values and sensitivity in individuals
and in groups that can act in concert may be a way forward and design needs this just as much many
other professions would. There will be huge variety and not standardised outputs, but I believe that this
would also help in addressing the huge variety of tasks and areas that would need to be addressed here
in India. We will need culture to drive these changes rather than rules and regulation in my view. The
challenges are huge and we will need to deal with our proverbial elephant in the room as best we can.
Each in our own way, but with feeling and deep empathy for the context and situation.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my iMac at home on the NID campus
16 August 2012 at 11/40 pm IST

019721 2012-08-15 23:04 Re: Activity Theory and ANT and computers are capable of design?
Dear Ken
Your arguments are sound and well grounded in reason and scholarship. Designer, Design and the
Designed objects or offerings as in services and rules etc and the concept of "Agency" will all need to be
seen in the context of another concept that has been proposed by George Soros and that is "Reflexivity"
(as applied to financial and economic areas) and I tend to think that this is perhaps what makes design
such a powerful "political" force after all. Here "Agency" would be from sociology, philosophy and ethics
– as we can see from the wiki definitions below Sociology
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology)> Philosophy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)> Moral
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_agency> and Reflexivity a la Soros - from financial and economic
fields <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#Reflexivity.2C_financial_markets.2C_and_economic_t
heory > It is other humans in the prevailing context who act on the design and the designed thing and
make it valuable or a disaster – beyond the imagination and the intention of the designer – value bumps
far beyond the intrinsic value of the material and its various configurations – unpredictable but real.
Suddenly, there is a huge value bump that could soar far above expectations as in a fashion movement
or trend or in the runaway success of a bestseller product, at least for the time being. Design is a human
activity that begins with intentions and the results of design are shaped and acted upon by the prevailing
context and new and unintended but perhaps hoped for results may or may not ensue. Scarcity,
inflation, and value all follow from these relations. Now, what about computers? What about automated
trading algorithms that can make or break a market without any reference to the fundamentals of the
underlying asset? It is all getting very complicated at a very high speed and we will need to look closely
at some of these designed situations and services to fathom the consequences of our designed
offerings. Can we make the mission of creating responsible designer in education something that would
include the processing and anticipation of these outcomes as part of the design process? Perhaps this is
why I called my course at NID "Design Concepts and Concerns" - It is not just about design thinking –
but also about being sensitive to all forms of outcomes including climate change and human conflicts
that could ensue as a consequence of our expert actions. I called it the Avalanche Effect, but not may
takers for this concept it seems. see this post on my blog Design for India for more about this. <
http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2012/07/evolution-of-dcc-course-at-nid.html >
With warm regards

019715 2012-08-15 15:37 Re: Activity Theory and ANT and computers are capable of design?
Dear Susan
You have brought an important aspect for discussion on the list and I agree with you that the work of
Latour and that of Fry are deeply interesting if we are to understand the various dimensions of design.
Latour in my view exhibits a profound understanding of design and I was hugely impressed by his paper
"A Cautius Prometheus?" to the Design History congress in 2008 and I have since been following his
writings and I discover more insights of great value as it draws me deeper.. <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.in/search/label/Bruno%20Latour>
Design is complex and we need to look at it from many angles and perspectives as I have mentioned
earlier and there can be many positions, all of which could be true and valuable. There is not one correct
answer. Wicked indeed.
With warm regards
019695 2012-08-13 23:01 Re: Defining Design

Dear Ken and Gunnar
This is getting interesting. IMHO, Design is neither a "science" nor is it "art". It stands apart as a third leg
in my metaphorical stool of human knowledge and skill sets - both tacit as well as explicit ones. Design
Research is trying to make it a science and Design Practise is trying to perfect it as an Art, or so it
seems to me from all these arguments and ongoing discussion about the definitions of design both here
on this list as well as elsewhere. My first design teacher at NID, Prof Kumar Vyas, told us in the sixties
and seventies that design is easier explained than defined and the situation I believe has not changed
since then, although we have hundreds of new books on the subject and many of them in the design
theory and design research space. Ken, your horse will have to wait for several rounds of reincarnation
that the Hindu faith provides for if it is to have a chance to breast the tape, if at all. I tell my students the
parable of the blind men and the elephant when it comes to defining design. This old Buddhist and Jain
parable has many interpretations and there are several interesting versions of this online including one
on YouTube that is listed below. Wiki has this
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant> Jain world site has this <
http://www.jainworld.com/education/juniors/junles19.htm> and You Tube has this
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JseHDbrm6Lc> I must distinguish the term designer from the
term design. Terry is right. The tasks that (traditional) or (new-fangled) designers did or will do in the

future could be replaced by new processes (and teams) or automated by new tools including computer
based tools besides others including ideas, innovations and methods. However, wicked problems are
wicked just because they cannot be defined and these will need design and strategy to address them
adequately. However, "the designer" is an evolving form of human response and we will need to accept
that reality in both education and in practise. I do not see how science centric explanations and
definitions can or will resolve this dilemma. This is why Jonas's swamp appeals to me. Yes, we need to
explain the value of design to business and government decision makers as well as to the academic
world. Design has always had this problem in all periods of human evolution since it always leads from
the front and helps form culture in its wake. Design will perhaps live outside the frame of acceptable and
defined (peer reviewed) science since having solved one set of real world opportunities we will move on
to the next set of challenges that will raise a whole lot of new issues and questions. What do you think?
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at home on the nID campus
019688 2012-08-13 10:25 Re: Defining Design

Dear Gunnar.
Well said. There are so many definitions of design around that in my view we will need to look at a
matrix of levels from the Tactical to Strategic and on the other hand we have Three Orders of Design
from the Material to the Spiritual and in the third dimension we have 230 sectors of Need and
Application. These three have been described in some detail in my papers that can be downloaded or
reviewed from the links below Brazil (1998) <
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z6cr30k5zo3i3ia/Strategic_Design_Brazil.pdf<gunnar@gunnarswanson
.com> > Istanbul (2009) <
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0an2c5ovrrt8720/Ethics_in_Design_Paper.pdf> and my blog post 2007
– Design Policy India < http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2007/06/wish-list-for-indias-
national-design.html > and 230 Sectors of our Economy < http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2007/07/230-sectors-of-economy-for-design.html > Yesterday I spent much of the
day reviewing Bruno Latour and his take on Design, very insightful. <http://bruno-latour.fr/> Download
Spinoza lecture < http://bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/97-SPINOZA-GB.pdf> His Five Advantages
of Design are indeed insightful and I have a brief post on this as well with a model of a hand and five
fingers, each stands of one of these, the thumb for me is Ethics. Take a look if you wish. <
http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.in/2008/11/footprints-in-time-crafts-ecology-for.html > It is
not modern at all as Wolfgang Jonas tells us in his swampy tale. (A Scenario for Design - Design Issues,
Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 64-80) and now in his lead paper "Exploring the Swampy Ground"

from his book in a seminal collection of papers titled "Mapping Design Research" Birkhauser 2012
<http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Design-Research-Simon-Grand/dp/3034607164> And finally,
my recent blog post on the DCC Course that I used to teach at NID, now unfortunately discontinued by
the school as too advanced for Foundation students. < http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2012/07/evolution-of-dcc-course-at-nid.html > Design is indeed not understood in
one single way, but in many many ways and there are conflicts galore in academia and in business and
we will need to learn to navigate all of this with our research and insights from practice or miss the point
altogether.
With warm regards
019654 2012-08-09 10:40 Re: Design and Politics

Dear Friends
The book by Tomas Maldonado is an example that comes to mid as one of the finest insights into
politics and design dating back to the 70's. Design, Nature, and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology by
Tomás Maldonado (1972)
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at IICD Jaipur
019620 2012-07-23 09:38 Re: Design Thinking resources post

Dear Marcio Dupont Caballero de Carranza
Thank you for your posts on PhD-Design and these listings and links are indeed useful. I have six posts
on Design Thinking on my blog titled "Design for India" which are listed below here. < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2012/07/design-thinking-design-journey-revisited.html > < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2011/08/design-for-good-governance-call-for.html > < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2009/11/design-thinking-flavor-of-month.html > <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2008/01/systems-design-nid-way.html> < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2007/12/design-as-research-path-to-knowledge.html > < http://design-for-
india.blogspot.in/2007/10/design-thinking-what-is-it-and-how-do.html > Further this blog has many
of my papers on Design Thinking as well as interactive media as full DVD's and books that can be
downloaded directly from the left hand column. Take a look. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.in/>

Besides this I have a blog titled "Design Concepts and Concerns" where I have posts relating to my
teaching of design thinking at the National Institute of Design over the past 20 years or so. This blog
documents assignments done in my classes at the school over several years. <http://www.design-
concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.in/> There is a new book from Austin Texas that may be an
interesting addition to your list. It is Wicked Problems by Jon Kolko and I like the business model since it
provides access to pdf file at a discounted price that is affordable for students.
<https://www.wickedproblems.com/>
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my iMac at home on the NID campus
23 July 2012 at 9.30 am IST
019211 2012-03-29 08:57 New post on Lessons from NID History - Ranjan
Dear Friends
I have made a new post on my blog Design for India that is titled "Lessons from NID History" that
includes download link for the visual presentation. This was created for a lecture for senior corporate
managers of the Torrent Group from Ahmedabad and delivered at their executive conclave at Ranikhet,
Uttarakhand located in the cool and invigorating foothills of the Himalayas, earlier this week. Take a look
at the blog post and the visual presentation at the link below. The National Institute of Design was set up
in Ahmedabad based on The India Report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1961 and it is celebrating its
Golden Jubilee year and it is a time for reflection here in India.
<http://tinyurl.com/cx4ufqj>
I have chosen to divide the presentation into the following parts
1.1955- 1961 Inception & Early Years 2. 1961 - 1970 The Formative Years 3. 1970 - 1980 The Crisis
Years 4. 1980 - 1989 The Culture Building Years 5. 1989 - 2000 The Consolidation Years 6. 2000 - 2008
The Rapid Expansion Years 7. 2008 -2012 The Golden Jubilee Years 8. Lessons & Insights from NID
History
<http://tinyurl.com/cx4ufqj>
Take a look. This is not a full text paper as yet but it could be some time soon. It is work in progress.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac on tour at Flame campus in Pune

29 March 2012 at 9.00 pm IST

018651 2012-01-21 11:27 Innovation Clusters for India: Brainstorming in India
Dear Friends
India has proposed the setting up of innovation clusters to bring design thinking and design education to
many sectors of critical need which are not being addressed by our established education and research
infrastructures today. This is a crowd-sourcing request. There are groups of designers meeting across
many cities in India to brainstorm and try and articulate how and in what form these new clusters would
be developed. The Planning Commission team of the Government of India is led by Sam Pitroda has
initiated efforts to take these dialogues to Government and the designer groups are hopeful that India
would adopt design and innovation in a systematic manner in the days ahead. We would be happy to
hear your views on possible approaches and policies, infrastructure and resources that need to be
envisaged to make these clusters vibrant and sustainable. Activities and frameworks wil all need to be
placed before Government and Indian business to find political and administrative support as well as
much needed funding. Your thoughts and pointers are welcome. If there are models overseas that we
can look at do share these links as well. The designgroup is active under the banner of VisionFirst which
has set up a website to sensitise a wider audience here in India as well as to draw partners from
elsewhere. <http://www.visionfirst.in>
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at Korjan's meeting in Ahmedabad
018350 2011-11-25 22:55 Re: Philosophy and Design Thinking

Dear Chuck
It was a pleasure meeting you in Barcelona last week and it was indeed a very stimulating meeting
there. I would encourage you to continue to pursue your research and writings which stem from the
revisiting of "First Principles" and I am sure that this will give design and the design research a solid
ground on which the theory of the discipline could be built. The established methods of science enquiry
may not be the only way forward and design is indeed another way and it must discover its foundations
through reflections on practice as well as such search for "first principles" that you propose here. When I
joined NID as a young student in 1969 we had several meetings with the Institutes founders, Gautam
Sarabhai and his sister Gira Sarabhai. In these meetings they repeatedly asked us to return to first
principles when investigating a design need in our country and this kind of research enquiry has been
part of our working tradition at the NID over the years. In the early 90's I had started work on writing a
paper based on my experiences at NID and I had a working title for this in mind "Ideological

Perspectives in Design" and I did work on it for some time but I gave this up since I did not feel
adequately prepared to tackle all the complex dimensions of this enquiry at that time although I had
several insights on this matter. Much later in 2009 I prepared a lecture for the Istanbul Design
Conference titled "Ethics in Design" where I was able for the first time to crystalise and develop my
model of the "Three Orders of Design" and this is still work in progress as far as I am concerned. You
can see more about this paper and presentation from my blog at this link below and also download the
show and other related papers from here. < http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/10/ethics-in-
design-istanbul-conference.html > Good luck with your enquiry and we do look forward to some new
insights on this very complex area called design and design thinking.
With warm regards
24 November 2011 at 10.55 pm IST
018176 2011-11-03 08:22 Re: The History of 'Modern Flat'

Dear Esra and friends
What a wonderful thread which shows the power of cooperation over the web and what it can bring to
research efforts in a very short time. Reading the various contributions till date I was drawn into the
question myself since having "retired" from teaching at NID after about 40 years of living near or on the
campus the campus at Paldi in Ahmedabad my wife, Aditi Ranjan and I had never bought a car in our
life since we always walked to work while the city of Ahmedabad grew in size around us by magnitudes
that are unimaginable a few years ago. Now we have had to look for a new home and we could choose
any city in India and our criteria had many specific demands that were difficult to meet, particularly since
the price of flats has sky rocketed here in India that is growing while the West seems to be in recession.
So the last two years we spent looking around and exploring possibilities we selected a place in
Ahmedabad which has promise of good public transportation unlike any other city in India and we have
settled down for a flat in the North of Ahmedabad that is well connected to the Airport as well as the rest
of the city and with promise of marked development since the location lies on the axis between
Ahmedabad and the Capital city of Gujarat State, Gandhinagar. We now have a four bedroom flat for the
two of us and my mother and for all our books and few other possessions while my daughter, Aparna
Ranjan has moved to Bangalore to live and work as a Graphic designer, but she has a room too for her
use when she would be with us. Sitting in Jaipur this morning I was enthused to look up the question of
"Evolution of Housing in History" on Google and the following link came up that as always on the button
when you ask pointed questions to Google!! <http://www.moyak.com/papers/history-housing.html>
The second link was more interesting since it looks at evolution of life itself.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_life>

The "Evolution of Housing and Floor Plans Since the 1600s" by Moya K. Mason (link above) gives a
further link titled "Housing: Then, Now, and Future" by Moya K. Mason which too may be a useful one
for the questions posed by you at the beginning of this thread and it provides a reading list as well. Take
a look <http://www.moyak.com/papers/house-sizes.html> I must now get back to my preparation for
my lecture at the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design this morning and through the day with the Faculty
of the school where we are looking back at the core of design education and how it can be improved
through our efforts today and tomorrow at the conclave to discuss the design curriculum for the school
going forward. Here again the PhD -Design list would be a great place for collecting conversations and
with all its contradictions and misunderstandings about what design could be and what should and could
go into design education which keeps reminding me of the torrential river that divides us on the two
banks, art and design and the other the science of design banks, the reflections go on and the river
remains turbulent as ever. I did not want to get drawn into the conversations with Don Norman, always
provocative nor with Ken Friedman and Rosan, or with Terry or Gunnar and so many other regular and
interesting contributors on this list since although I am "retired" I am working and travelling perhaps more
than when I was "working" at NID.... and my blog too suffers since the frequency of my posts have
tapered down with each month since I "retired" last year in November, however I have posted my
keynote lectures at numerous conferences there at a special download section on the first page, which
reminds me that Esra should look at the work done at HfG Ulm on housing and you can find the material
in the HfG Ulm journals which can be downloaded from my blog under the conference resources for
"Look Back Look Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India" as an interactive DVD that contains
the digital versions of the journals. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/>
The last time I visited Ulm for my research on the contributions by the great German school on Indian
design education I visited Stuttgart and had an occasion to see the work of Mies at the Weissenhof and
it was an education for me after visiting Frei Ottos lab that showed shapes of things still to come... Thank
you guys for all the stimulating conversations and do keep going and some of us will continue to lurk and
enjoy the exchanges in a very "retired" mode.. I will be in Lucerne (13 to 16th November) and Barcelona
(17th to 20th November) this month and hope to see some of you there.... On 5th and 6th I am on the
Jury of Design for Change at the Riverside School although I was also required to be at the convocation
of the IICD jaipur on the same day. However I have to be with Kiran Bir Sethi, my former student who
won this years INDEX Award for her work on Design for Change and this does show us that design is
indeed different in many parts fo the world and we are still discovering what it really is and whet it can
indeed do for all of us if we care to understand it deeply. <http://dfcworld.com/>
With warm wishes
M P Ranjan from my hotel at jaipur on tour to the IICD

3 November 2011 at 8.25 am IST
017806 2011-09-23 14:15 Re: Design in Education and the Idea of a University
Dear Jude Chua Soo Meng
Last year we conducted two workshops on design education in conjunction with a traveling exhibition on
the HfG Ulm at Bangalore and Kolkatta. These were titled Look Back Look Forward where we used the
design pedagogy that was developed at the HfG Ulm as a backdrop for discussing the state of design
education in India and to look forward to new and emerging concerns and strategies. For this conference
we had prepared an Interactive DVD that included the HfG Ulm journals as well as papers from The
National Institute of Design which may be of interest to you in your current effort. My colleagues and I
are working on a more detailed documentation of the proceedings which we will present in a published
as soon as these are completed, hopefully soon. These papers and presentations can be downloaded
from this link below as a 968MB interactive DVD that contains interlinked pdf fiiles through a common
interface. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/1grn1o> The description of the events can be seen on my
blog Design for India at these links below: < http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2010/08/hfg-ulm-
and-basic-design-conference-at.html > < http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-back-
look-forward-bengaluru-event.html >
With warm regards
23 September 2011 at 2.20 pm
017804 2011-09-23 09:02 Re: Material Studies

Dear Ken and Michael Yap
To this very exciting list of high quality to which I would add one by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, better
known for his book Flow and Good Business etc. The particular book that I recommend is Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the
Self,<http://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Things-Domestic-Symbols-
Self/dp/052128774X/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316747899&sr=1-14> Cambridge
University Press (October 30, 1981) This is great advise, I quote from Ken Quote ...One technique that I
suggest to research students is the value of spending an hour or two with a book that sheds light on the
topic even when they don't have time to read it completely. Careful work with the introduction, table of
contents, first chapter, bibliography, and index open the book to inquiry -- and lets you know whether
you ought to go further. This also gives you something to come back to when you find a later gap that
the author fills. UnQuote John Chris Jones in his book The Internet for

Everyone<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Everyone-Cyber-editions/dp/1899858202>talks about
different styles of reading to access his book such as the rabbit, goat and sheep..., yes knowing where
to find an insight is an important aspect of research strategy.
With warm regards
23 September 2011 at 9.00 pm
017399 2011-07-13 22:44 Re: projection before analysis

Dear Ken
Thanks. I am sure that you will be thorough in your response. Just one additional fact for your
consideration is that at NID we have had a policy of engaging students with real world situations from
way back in the late 80s. Over the years there is a huge body of student work that has reached market
but not all of them are on the policy level however this is different from most other schools that I know of.
Very little of this is unfortunately published and there is much history work that is pending on this front.
NID undergraduates have gone on to establish the design profession here in India and they have a
critical presence across many design sectors, some of which they have pioneered and they have worked
their way up the order to be at leadership levels in many verticals and i have been trying to capture
these contributions on my blog but much work remains to be done. More recently many students have
incubated their own companies and we have a design business incubator that has incubated thirty start
ups in the past four years. Many of these experiences inform design thought and action on campus and
the past forty years has been a period of much experience but little documentation unfortunately.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my imac at home on the NID campus
13 July 2011 at 10.45 pm IST

Dear Ken
I think that you misunderstand the statement "Action" before "Analysis". This represents a mindset
problem in my view of the present scientific management community that runs most of our governments
and our industrial and economic activities. This mindset comes from the other side of the "River". There
is a deep held belief that for any serious "policy" issue the immediate response must be to invest in more
research of the analysis kind and that happens all the time here in india and I am sure this is the case in
many parts of the world since the analytical science community draws out much of the available
resources towards such research that is grounded in a deep belief in analysis as a way out of the difficult

and complex problems that we face today, and here we do need more investment in design research
that is not of the analysis kind but that is projective and one that looks for and seeks out new and
imaginative scenarios that the managers can seriously look at as possible policy shifts. Design operates
at many levels and in my classification of these levels, the three orders of design apply to all design
problems and opportunities but the focus could shift from one level to the next depending on what the
designer or the design student is addressing at the time. We have been training our students to be
sensitive to all three levels even at the undergraduate level and in my course that I created for the NID's
Fundation programme this has been the fundaments assumption that informed the content and
treatment for the course. I started teaching this course as a traditional introduction to design methods in
1988, what you would call a typical course in an Art and Design school curriculum but ten year down the
line with many iterations and insights from our engagement with students as well as our professional
contacts in the complex issues from the field in India we had modified and changed the course from
being focused on individual brilliance to that of team work and visualisation of complex issues faced by
our society in India and these included poverty, malnutrition, hunger, water, education, health,
employment and many many other pressing issues where our policy makers have failed miserably to
address and we did believe (and still do) that the use of design could bring significant break through in
the quality and content of the policy offerings that could be made. The course is now called Design
Concepts and Concerns and deals with Design Thinking and Action that is laced with feeling and deep
empathy with the reality on the ground. The action that is proposed could start with projected concepts
as well as mapping of the context, however imperfect, since we act on the basis of our current
understanding and belief. However projected actions in the form of scenarios and models of the situation
as understood by the team gives them a visualisation and an external model from which they can bring
in additional stakeholders who may be able to add value to the understanding of that situation. Having
done this we also find that there is a need to bring a sense of openness and suspension of ego as the
team moves towards shared perspectives that becomes the foundation for the next round of scenario
visualisations that would follow. These are iterative and synthesis is followed by periods of analysis and
these processes are what I think are at the heart of design thought and action. In 2001-2002 I was
invited by a visiting scholar to write a paper on my course to be published as one of the contributions
from a collection from India on a special issue on India of Design Issues that was then proposed. I did
write and submit that paper and I titled it "The Avalanche Effect: Institutional frameworks and Design as
a development resource in India". I think that the claims that I made in that paper was unacceptable for
the peer group at the Design Issues editorial team and it was rejected and there fore not included in the
published version of the India focussed issue. I got the message about its rejection when I was working
in the field at Agartala at the new design school that we had set up to help bring design focus to the
bamboo sector in India. Since I was a member on the PhD-Design list at that time I posted the full paper
immediately on that day in 2003 on to the list and many interesting discussions followed from this list. It

is obvious to me that the claims that I was making on behalf of design action first was found lacking in
credibility in the peer review space of the esteemed Design Issues journal. Download paper here in pdf
55kb <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/00lybg> Link to the PhD-Design post on 1 December 2003 is
here below < https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind03&L=PHD-
DESIGN&P=R180559&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4 > I
quote from my post on PhD-Design from December 2003 "I am sharing a recent (unpublished) paper
that I have prepared for a design journal which may give the list an insight into the perspectives for
design in India (not generally available) and some of the processes that we have followed in our own
education programmes at NID as well as my own interpretation of systems thinking as it could be
applied to complex and non-traditional design tasks, that is other than the design of artefacts,
communications, software and spaces. In this case study reproduced below, the design tasks that were
assigned to Foundation students at NID dealt with the conception and articulation of new institutional
frameworks for design, each focussed on one selected sector of the Indian economy in critical need of
design action (in our opinion – there was no client). The intention is to show that application of design at
the strategic level can be a very powerful tool for the solving of very complex problems, involving many
disciplines and spheres of knowledge, that goes well beyond the usual scope of design tasks as
traditionally defined and taught in design curricula. Perhaps, speculatively attempting to articulate a kind
of design for future generations of designers in India." UnQuote
Three years later I wrote up another paper titled " Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in
Education" which was submitted for peer review to the EAD 06 conference at Bremen, Germany where it
was accepted and presented in March 2005. Here too the claims were the same and the design world
was willing to look at these new claims in a more acceptable light. I have since then started my blog
called "Design for India" and another blog that dealt with my course at the National Institute of Design
called "Design Concepts and Concerns. (DCC) Download the EAD 06 paper as a pdf file here <
https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/s9mr9c> Links to Design for India <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com/> Link for DCC blog <http://www.design-concepts-and-
concerns.blogspot.com/> I offer these blog posts as my argument to support the claim that design can
address complex policy issue and that it can be taught in design schools with great effect. I have found
that the science and technology establishment in India is interested in specifications that can be used to
inform policy that can address the critical problems that are faced here in Indian. Many projects are
funded to support the creation of these specification and huge funds are expended to support the
analytical activities that lead to the drafting of these specifications. However very little is done on the
other hand to invest in design exploration to discover new and innovative directions even in the form of
visualisations that can help policy makers to take forward looking decisions and not looking at past
successes as the only way forward. Ken, I do agree with you that the traditional art and design school

curriculum cannot address the kind of policy issues that you are referring to. This is why a group of
designers from India made a concerted effort to influence national design education policy earlier this
year when the Government of India announced a scheme to bring in public private partnership to the
setting up of the four new NID's that were proposed as part of the design policy here in India. We set up
a social network and a group called "Vision First" and took our call to the Government and I must report
that we have had success in this initiative since the Governments hasty actions have been stayed and
we have been invited to the policy table and the proposal is to have a series of round table discussions
and visuialiastion sessions that could map out the outlines of a new drive forward which could be shown
to the policy makers just as out classroom assignments in visualising complex Indian design
opportunities showed us many insights for real action on the ground that was possible. We had meetings
with the Department of Industrial Policy and Projects (DIPP) which is in charge of the new design
schools and of design policy here in India as well as meetings with the National Planning Commission to
take our views into account in a democratic manner. Our statement was that the design community in
India must have a say in the matter of the future of Indian design schools that would be set up by the
use of public funds and we have been successful in getting the Government to listen to us. You can see
the developments of this initiative on our website here at this link: <http://visionfirst.in/> Coming back
to action vs analysis first, all I have to say is that the "River" does exist and we sit on opposite banks
with vastly different beliefs in the theory of design and in the traditions that we have been grounded in
over years of experience. However, both sides have much to offer and we will need to work together to
bridge the gap in the years ahead. We do believe in Vision First and action on the basis of convictions
based on these visions that are tested through the design processes of visualisation, modeling and test
prototyping etc. In May 2011 I delivered the opening keynote lecture at the conference in Amsterdam
titled "What Design Can Do." you can download my lecture and slide show from the link provide below.
In this lecture I had called for a major change in Government policy as well as the location of design
within the structure of government here in India which I believe must happen if design is to be used as a
effective tool for good governance here in India. Take a look at the models that I propose. Amsterdam
lecture (Zip pdf 2.3 MB) <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/rlmjp1>
With warm regards
13 July 2011 at 11.50 am IST

Dear friends
Long post: with many diversions and quotes: This thread intrigues me and it is quite clear that the
participants come to the field of design and design research from very different perspectives and in this I

include the irreverent manner in which design practitioners treat research methods and traditions that
have been established in the sciences. This also reminds me of a thread here on this list from way back
on 2nd October 2009 when I had made a post to the list in response to posts by Klaus Krippendorff and
Ben Jonson (see links and summary below)
< https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1457&1=PHD-
DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4 >
I did a search for "River and Banks" on the PhD-Design archive and these three posts came up and I
quote the summaries below: Item #14234 (2 Oct 2009 21:35) - Re: On design - again?
<https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1457&1=PHD-
DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>
PhD-Design and it has been most educative and stimulating. I must thank all the other contributors as
well and the "treacherous *river* full of currents" that Ben Johnson refers to is indeed such a place when
we try to navigate As a designer and a design teacher I have always kept my life jacket handy whenever
I have tried to cross this *river* and in many occasions I have had to look for access books that could
become my life inflatable dingy to carry those stakeholders who need to use it. Difficult, but we must
continue to try. The *river* must not run dry! With warm regards > theory and practice, as witnessed in re
debate, suggests to me solid > foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak. > ------------------------------
Item #14232 (2 Oct 2009 09:56) - Re: On design - again? <https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1316&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-
3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>theory and practice, as witnessed in re debate,
suggests to me solid foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak. ------------------------------ Item #14229
(2 Oct 2009 09:19) - Re: On design - again? <https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1172&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-
3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4> In attempting to bridge the troubled waters of
design research, spanning theory and practice, as witnessed in re debate, suggests to me solid
foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak. UnQuote
The metaphor of the fast and treacherous river with two distinct banks, one populated by the scientific
researchers and the other one populated by the design practitioners and both are trying to cross over to
meet common ground to make design more understandable and more effective, if at all. For me,
Rosans' call for "Projection before Analysis" somehow rings true since it corresponds with much of my
experiences as a practicing designer and as a design teacher who has watched his students grapple
with extremely difficult and complex design challenges here in India over the past 40 years of my
experience. Dreams and impractical visions dealing with possible solutions for seemingly intractable
problems in India provide the initial motivations for them and their teacher to engage with a difficult
subject but as time progressed and after much effort new insights emerge and there is deeper conviction
in the direction but no proof. Further involvement results in a range of concepts and options that emerge

which can be subjected to testing and these are offered for deeper analysis through the process of
shared visualisation and serial prototyping that would never have begun in the first place if the cussed
designer (teacher or student) had not persisted with the most imponderable concept in the first place.
This is akin to design led entrepreneurship since the only persons to believe deeply, sometimes
foolishly, in the particular design possibility that is in their dream and then take the practical plunge to
make investments of time effort and then money and knowledge of others and to bring in partners to
make it work out right, a long and frustrating process indeed. The second aspect that I sympathise with
is Rosan's act of summarising her readings from the seminal texts of Rittel and Nelson and attributing
this to the spirit of the author and not the specific quotes by the author as an argument for or against an
idea as if it has been proposed by that author. Let me explain. I have read and re-read many texts from
Bucky Fuller in my student days and then again and again over the years and it will be difficult for me to
quote verbatim from any one of these since I do not know when and where I had read these particular
texts, since I came from that side of the river, that of design practice and not from scientific research.
However my reading of Bucky Fuller is deep and my take on the spirit of Fuller is also quite firm in my
mind and having met him personally twice in my career at NID, the spirit rings true and although his long
winding texts do not make sense for most people if these were quoted and used as a source of
argument to establish some facts. I have a kernel of an idea of what Bucky was telling us and this kernel
of insight and not fact is what informs me as I take his ideas forward even if he never said it in quite the
same way ever in any of his texts or speeches that I have witnessed. So, is this poor research? So be it,
but this is the way design has been as far as I know it, by using facts and knowledge and insights which
will perhaps continue to do so in the years ahead. Tell me If I am completely off base here and the river
is indeed wide and treacherous we do need to get across but not loose sight of the value of each bank,
one from the design tradition of practice first and theory later and the other from the scientific bank of
deep analysis and hard evidence before action. Looking back on the fifth anniversary of my starting to
monitor my blog "Design for India" and to see the blogs traffic using Google Analytics which started on a
long journey on 9th July 2007. The first blog post was in June 2007 but the record of traffic starts on 9
July 2007, five years ago today. Have we come far, yes and there is a long way to go before we
understand What Design Is, What Design Could Be and more importantly What Design Can Do. Links to
my first five posts in June 2007.... the search goes on and the river is wide, and pretty treacherous
indeed
< http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/science-and-design-reality-check-for.html >
< http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/wish-list-for-indias-national-design.html >
< http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/theme-lecture-at-usid2007-hyderabad.html >
< http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/reflections-on-indian-design-policy.html >
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/mission-statement.html>
With warm regards

017358 2011-07-06 15:04 Re: chaos and design

Dear Uluufuk Ulusan
The person that you can talk to would be Prof Kirti Trivedi from the Industrial Design Centre in IIT
Bombay (now Mumbai) He has written several articles on fractal qualities of the design of Indian temple
architecture in numerous journals. One such link can be seen at this Springer link to the Visual
Computing Journal article < http://www.springerlink.com/content/j5k40p11577t8620/> Unfortunately
the full text is available only for subscribers. The other person that I can think of is Prof Haresh Lalvani of
Pratt, New York. He is an expert on morphology and design and he is in the Architecture department at
Pratt Institute. You can see his recent work at this link below and then chase up his publications and
references on the web if you wish. <http://www.core.form-ula.com/2009/09/29/coreprofile-haresh-
lalvani/>
With warm regards
6 July 2011 at 3.10 pm IST
017161 2011-06-18 18:49 Re: Research, writing and thinking

Dear Prof Kari Kutti
Wonderful, thank you for your stimulating input on thinking types and styles. I would like to add one
category that I do not see here which I seem to use all the time while in the midst of design and strategy
building actions which is (perhaps No. 7.) "Thinking with Visual Scenarios". A dream like state of still and
moving images floating through an imagined & animated series of possibiities without drawing or
articulation but that can be recalled as memory after an intense period of thought that would be
equivalent to seeing a motion picture inside the head of imagined settings, players and actions and
examining consequences all at the same time. This is used for constructions, process design as well as
scenario mapping for strategy check about the possible consequences of a statement at a meeting etc. I
seem to use these kinds of imagination to select and identify images for my lectures on design and
design thinking. I do use sketching to supplenemnt this free imagination kind of thought as well. My two
recent keynote lectures at Amsterdam and Bangkok can be downloaded from these links here below.
Amsterdam <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/rlmjp1> Bangkok
<https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/v2tgxk> I am off on travel again to the USA in a couple of days to
Atlanta (22 to 24 June at UPA Congress - Designing for Social

Change<http://www.upassoc.org/conference/2011/index_alt.html>) and then Chicago (25 to 27
June) visiting ID IIT and the Millennium Park. I would love to catch up with list members (if possible)
while I am there.
With warm regards
18 June 2011 at 6.50 pm IST
016998 2011-06-06 11:06 Re: lego limits and freedoms

Dear Keith
Wonderful observations. I have always been fascinated while watching children play and Lego has been
an all time favorite for me. I did set an assignment for my class in furniture design many years ago
where the students analysed Lego from the systems prespective to appreciate the many levels at which
they work. I am sorry to see that Lego is loosing market share and have had to discontinue the large
quatro blocks. When Lego crossed their 50th year in January 2008 I had posted on my blog "Design for
India", a note on my thoughts and insights from Lego and the way we had used it for design education
assignments here in India. < http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/01/lego-toy-for-all-ages-can-
it-be.html >
The second part of your observation is on how human children seem to very quickly loose their ability to
experiment and learn to play by the rules, a poor setting for the sustained use of design thinking within
our education systems. Here too there are opportunities to look at the content and delivery of formal and
non-formal education in our society and design has a huge role to play here. In India we have been
facing a sort of crisis in design education which too has reached the 50 year landmark with the setting
up of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad in 1961 which is celebrating its 50th year this year
based on a report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958. The Government of India had announced a
National Design Policy in 2007 and this year they came forward with a proposal to set up four new NID's.
However the manner in which these were being proposed led to some of the NID's alumni to express
their concern and a form of democratic design activism has taken root here with the formation of a group
calling for "Vision First" as a way forward. Vision First is a movement and a volunteer action group that is
calling for a rethink of design education as well as a broader call to look at the manner in which design is
located and used with in government action across all its ministries. You can see more about this
initiative here on the Vision First blog that is mapping the unfolding thoughts and action here in India.
<http://visionfirst.in/> Last week I was in Amsterdam to deliver a keynote at the conference "What
Design Can Do" that I titled "Nature of Design: The Need for Nurture in India Today". The definition of
design is expanding and design education, research and use of design by government and industry all

need to be reviewed and taken to new levels of integration into our way of doing things here. My paper
and presentation can be downloaded from my blog from this link here as a 2.3 mb zip file in pdf.
<https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/rlmjp1>
We are proposing a series of regional round table meetings here in India followed buy an International
conference that could bring many diverse stakeholders for design thought and action to the table so that
we could explore the new directions that design education can take in the days and years ahead. I am
hoping that this list too would join in these deliberations in the days ahead and that we can draw
considerable benefits of insights from members of this list as well. The problems taht we are facing here
in India may not be unique and other countries too may be facing similar challenges and I will be happy
to hear about initiatives and ideas from list members on the directions that design education would need
to take in the future. I and my colleagues on the Vision First group look forward to suggestions and
discussions from the list.
With warm regards
6 June 2011 at 11.05 am IST
016894 2011-05-13 09:12 Re: Why design education must change

Dear Tulia Moss, Don and the list
The quote is from Jeffrey Chan on Nov 24 2010 in response to Don Norman piece on Why Design
Education must change. I agree with Don that design education must change but not that we have to
throw away the baby with the bathwater since there is so much of good that design can bring to the
world that our university education system does not seem to provide us with in spite of all the high
standards of scholarship therein. Some of us here in India have been arguing with the Government of
India and the Design education establishment here that a deep review of design education is necessary
and long overdue. You can see more about this initiative on the Vision First blog here at this link below.
Do join the debate and we can benefit from your wisdom. The Government of India has proposed the
setting up of four new NID's exactly after 50 years of the original National Institute of Design at Paldi in
Ahmedabad based on the vision report prepared by Charles and Ray Eames called the India Report, a
seminal piece of text on design thought, action and sensibilities, if there was one. Vision First blog
<http://www.visionfirst.in/> Eames India Report Download 360 kb pdf
<https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/h6ztro >
I quote the piece (by Jeffrey Chan) here
Dear Don and List, I read the article, 'Why design education must change' with mixed feelings. But let
me first say thank you for making this available for me before it appears on Core77. There are more than

a handful of ideas that demand slow digestion. But I pick up two points for a start: two points that also
recurred repeatedly through the article. (1) on experimentations Don, beyond the reasons you cited for
more in depth and scientifically rigorous experimentations for design, I cannot help but think that there is
a further need to distinguish qualitatively between experimentations done in cognitive science and
experimentations (to be) done in design. The basic purpose of the former is to falsify (and hence clarify)
and to describe. But the overall purpose of the latter is to create and to prescribe. Insofar as the inquiry
process is concerned the structure is similar; but insofar as the teleology is concerned, they are
dissimilar. For these reasons, to subject subjects to failure for the 101th experiment in cognitive science
may be permissible by the teleology of science. But to subject subjects for the 101th experiment just to
see how our designs may fail on these subjects are less permissible by the teleology of design. Hence if
designers must perform rigorous experimentations approaching the level of rigor in cognitive psychology
and the social sciences, I imagine that a whole new way of experimental inquiry that commensurates
with design must also emerge alongside. To build on your suggestion that design needs experimental
designs that are "simple and quick", I suppose these new experimental inquiry must be humanistically
sensitive as well. (2) on ignorance It is hard to argue for ignorance. But I am going to try. On this, I think
there is a need to make another distinction: to distinguish between heroic ignorance and modest
ignorance. I suppose in your article, you were arguing for the former at the expense of the latter, which
has merit and also happens to be a significant goal of Socratic teaching. To practice heroic ignorance
the designer expresses 'I know best'; but to practice modest ignorance--or self-conscious ignorance of 'I
know not'--it is in fact quite compatible with the nature of design, especially participatory design within
complex systems. Unless we accept this human condition of ignorance, and strive to attain the virtues of
modest ignorance, we cannot learn. If we cannot learn, then we also cannot design as well--because it is
impractical to design without accepting that learning is highly probable and desirable within the design
process. I am an architect by training, and so while I dabble in some product design on the side and
think I understand the arguments for a science of design, I am not a trained industrial designer. Even so,
it seems that the existing curriculums for many design programs (as I observe) still have their merits
because they nonetheless avail students to the possibility of (1) and (2) above. Jeffrey UnQuote
13 May 2011 at 9.00 am IST
015770 2010-11-23 00:36 Re: Herbert Read on "teaching through art and teaching to art"
Dear Eduardo
Well said, and I do agree with you or the approach that you have taken in your argument here. Design is
about the particular and the context is all important while it does contribute to the understanding of the
general when one looks at many instances of these particular contexts. Design is a general human

capability but it is also a well established profession that can be subject of education processes and
institutions. However we are now expanding the role of design so that its reach goes well beyond the
creation and refinement of the material artefact to the creation and refinement of social businesses as
we discussed in Milan. I had an opportunity recently to expand on some of these thoughts at a keynote
at Nanjing, China at a conference on Usability. <http://www.upachina.org/> Sorry no formal paper as
yet, but my visual presentation for my hour long talk can be downloaded from here, but I will post a note
on my blog a bit later when I have the time to do so.. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/go5qp8>
(downoad 10 mb pdf) Here I used our "research into Indian handicrafts" as a platform to argue that
social interfaces for public services in Asia would need to look at culture and local manifestations for
success and quality of service that would be expected in future offerings from digital tools and services
of the future. I expanded on this talk at my next conference in Hyderabad this week and I took this theme
forward with an Indian audience and delivered a modified talk to a group of IT UX professionals with the
huge opportunities that digital layering is offering us now that most public interfaces can be digitally
interfaced, for example out Indian stock market is almost fully dematerialised and now offers new
possibilities that never existed before. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/vj1r3x> (download pdf file 6 mb
size) These proposed design strategies are based on insights gained from research here in India and
not on "proven facts" as in a science based research offering either from the field or from a lab. This kind
of research is perhaps different, and not easily accepted or even understood as valid research. I know
this since we find it very difficult to get funding or formal support in this kind of work. The base document
that I used as my resource is the book Handmade in India that we produced as a research effort here in
India with the intention of offering a platform for the building of a creative economy in the future with the
identified skills and local resources as a basis for national development policies. This book is now
available online here as a series of pages at the COHANDS website. <
http://www.cohands.in/handmadepages/book0.asp> However the full book is also available from my
website as a pdf file but a very big file from this link here. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/f8p6p4>
(download pdf file 337 mb size) This research is an outcome of numerous designer forrays into the crafts
sector in India and the need for a comprehensive document to support future use of this very rich
resource that is a cultural and social resource along with the technical and material knowledge that is
part of the traditional wisdom held within these traditional crafts across our 500+ clusters all over India.
This is the first stage of a four stage strategy that we have proposed for India. Now is this design
research? Is this research through design? Is this research for design? One thing we do know is that is
done by designers in search of a way to solve a very complex situation of poverty and employment in a
rapidly changing world. We have more examples like this one in our previous work in the bamboo sector,
My 1986 book on the bamboo crafts was based on the same assumptions and we now have many
layers of iterations to take this knowledge to meaningful applications as part of our design strategy for
the region. <https://files.me.com/ranjanmp/7tc6w3> (download pdf file 35 mb size - book on Bamboo

and Cane Crafts of Northeast India - 1986 & 2004) Not all design efforts create such book type products
but we have done these as an intermediate step in our continuing effort to create useful knowledge and
strategies that could be used by many partners in the larger mission of develoment here in India. I am
not sure if these examples help in this particular argument but we do believe that this is design research
and we have been doing this for ages if you look at the 800 plus crafts study documents that are lying
unpublished in the NID library (now called the Knowledge Managemant Centre - KMC) Some of these
are listed in the book handmade in India as part of our annotated bibliography at the back of the book
but here the textile documents have been left out unfortunately. By the way I retire from NID at the end
of this month having crossed my 60th birthday earlier this month while traveling in the Far East.
With warm regards
015433 2010-08-10 09:28 Re: types of design research

Dear Klaus and friends
I agree with your statements Klaus, and thank you for this very clear and unambiguous exposition. To
put it simply, the future is essentially unpredictable as long as future human responses are at the heart
of the possible outcomes. This is why I like the two concepts proposed by Wolfgang Jonas on the one
hand and by George Soros on the other are so important for our understanding of design thought and
action. Jonas offers the concept of the Swamp, an unpredictable space in which design action enters
and he has outlined these in his papers and book "Mind the Gap". Soros offers the theory of Reflexivity
with reference ti the financial markets where every action and intention enters the public space only to
be responded to instantly or over time by other intelligent humans, all acting in their own self interest,
each shaping the possible outcome by virtue of their own response. Design is much like that in my view
and even design proposals and technology speculations have a way of affecting the possible outcomes
due to their collective actions. This is why preemptive marketing has such an immediate effect in the
new technology space and the new product space as we have seen in so many cases of competitive
behavior of companies locked in intense competition. Thank you for your comment. By the way your
Semantic Turn does give us a great platform from which to understand design within these terms of
reference. The last chapter on HfG Ulm gives us a rare insight into the early founding of these ideas at
the great school in Germany. I visited the Ulm Archive last May and stayed at the campus studio of Nick
Roerich in my research effort to find connections between HfG Ulm and NID in the early 60's and well
into the 70's and 80's through the contacts with Ulm alumni and faculty. We conducted a one day
conference on these conections in March this year at Bangalore in collabotration with the Ulm Archive
since we now have a major exhibtion on HfG Ulm traveling to three cities in India, Ahmedabad (February

2010), Bangalore (March 2010) and now Kolkata (September 2010). I mention this here since the work
at Ulm is amazing and forward looking and unfortnately not easily accessible when we look at the
influence of the Bauhaus traditions on design and design education. During the Bangalore event we
were able to prepare and release a digital multimedia DVD with 21 Ulm Journals prepared from the
single complete set that was available in the NID library. These were released with permission from Prof
Gui Bonsiepe who was the editor of the Journal in the 60's while he was teaching at Ulm. These files
and the conference proceedings (Look Back - Look Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in
India)<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-back-look-forward-bengaluru-
event.html>are now available for download at my blog, Design for India, <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com/> here at this link. I am sure that these will be a valuable resource for any research
into design thought and action particularly since there is a growing interest in design today and some of
these early explorations are no easily accessible to the scientific community outside the design space. <
http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-back-look-forward-bengaluru-event.html > We
are planing the next National conference at Kolkata on the 28th September 2010 and I will share the
details as soon as we have the formal approvals from the sponsors, The Goethe Institute and the NID.
The theme for this conference is basic Design, More soon on this event.
With warm regards
014718 2010-02-06 17:55 Look Back - Look Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India
Dear Friends We have just announced a one day conference on design education titled "Look Back –
Look Forward: Hfg Ulm and Design Education" which is in conjunction with an exhibition called "Ulmer
Modell" that has been put together by the HfG Ulm Archive and brought to India by the IFA and the
Goethe Institute/Maxmuller Bhavan Bangalore. Conference will be held at Hotel Taj West End,
Bangalore on 6 March 2010. You can see the details at the blog post at this link here or at the NID or
Goethe Institute websites from Monday. I quote below the conference announcement for your immediate
reference. to download the detailed conference announcement and the registration form look up the blog
link here. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2010/02/look-back-look-forward-hfg-ulm-
and_06.html> With warm regards M P Ranjan from my iMac at home on the NID campus 6 February
2010 at 11.15 pm IST ------------------------------------------------------------ Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of Design
Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST,
Govt. of India) (2006-2008) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off) 91 79
26623692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email: ranjanmp@nid.edu web site:
http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in blog:

<http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com> education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-
concerns.blogspot.com> education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com --------
---------------------------------------------------- Quote Conference Announcement: Conference Title: LOOK
Back – LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India Venue & Schedule: Hotel Taj West End,
Race Cource Road, Bangalore 560 001, India March 6, 2010 : Full-day Conference-cum-Workshop on
Design Education: 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Last date for registration: February 26, 2010 Organisers:
National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and Bangalore in collaboration with Goethe-Institut/Max
Mueller Bhavan (GI/MMB) Bangalore, HfG-Archive Ulm & IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations,
Germany) Stuttgart Background: The HfG Ulm, which started as a continuation of the Bauhaus
experiments in design education under one of its former students – Max Bill, soon veered from a
foundation in art to a science and society focus under the leadership of Tomas Maldonado. The HfG Ulm
faculty, all eminent teachers and thought leaders in their field, experimented with design education like
never before and documented the results of teaching in a series of 21 journals published between 1958
and 1968. These ten years of intense research and theory building and sharing has had a lasting impact
on the world of design education and the availability of these journals being one of the major factors for
this durable influence. Selected papers from these volumes located in the NID Library were reproduced
for a conference on design education in 1989 by Prof Kirti Trivedi at Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Powai
and these have been a further source of inspiration for Indian design teachers over the years. The
school impacted the world of design through its direct professional action with industry, memorably with
Braun and its successful range of products that hit the market in 1955 and continued with other product
successes that can be called the Ulm style of meticulous detailing and clean functional form. Hans
Gugelot was among the lead drivers along this track. Other teachers such as Otl Aicher influenced major
corporations such as Herman Miller and Lufthansa with significant contributions in graphic design. The
closing down of the HfG Ulm in 1968 saw the scattering of its faculty and students across the world,
each steeped in the Ulm ideology of public good with design theory and action, resulting in significant
action on the ground in the form of new design education in Latin America by Gui Bonsiepe, in India by
Sudhakar Nadkarni and H Kumar Vyas and in Japan by Kohei Suguira, besides the numerous other
influences in Europe and the USA that continue to this day. The Ulmer Museum/HfG-Archiv has brought
together the various threads of the Ulm school in a unique exhibition called ulm: method and design/ulm:
school of design 1953-1968 with archival objects, classroom assignments and multimedia exhibits never
before seen in India. The exhibition is presented in India by the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, in
collaboration with IfA (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Germany) Stuttgart and offers the
opportunity to both "LOOK Back - LOOK Forward: HfG Ulm and Design Education in India", a title that
aptly sums up the objective behind the intensive one-day conference/workshop on March 6, 2010 at
Hotel Taj West End in Bangalore, India, as well as to draw inspiration from the path-breaking work at
Ulm and reflect on the path forward here in India. An impressive catalogue published by Hatje Cantz

(ISBN 3-7757-9142-6) provides rich background research content on the school and the exhibition.
Participants: Design teachers and teachers from other institutes interested in design pedagogy, including
design research, design management and technology & design professionals interested in design
education. Limited places available for design student observers sponsored by each participating school.
Registration Fee: Individual designers and faculty : Rs. 2000/= Team of 5 faculty per school from India :
Rs 5000/= Design student observer : Rs. 500/= (limited seats) International Participant : USD 100 or Rs.
5000/= Exhibition Venue: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore - opens March 5, 2010 Conference
Venue: Hotel Taj West End, Bangalore – March 6, 2010 Organising Institutions Goethe-Institut/ Max
Mueller Bhavan Bangalore Dr. Evelin Hust, Director National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad &
Bangalore Prof. Pradyumna Vyas, Director Keynote Speakers: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jonas, Professor for
"system design" at the School of Art and Design, University of Kassel, Germany Ms. Marcela Quijano,
Curator, HfG-Archiv Ulm, Germany Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni, Dean, Business Design, Welingkar Institute
of Management Development and Research, Mumbai Prof H Kumar Vyas, Distinguished Professor,
CEPT University, Ahmedabad Conference Chair: Prof M P Ranjan, NID, Ahmedabad Co-Chair: Prof
Suchitra Sheth, CEPT University, Ahmedabad Registration: Registration fees are payable by Cash or
Demand Draft drawn in favour of "National Institute of Design" payable at Bangalore. Payment with
Registration Form duly filled to be delivered to NID R & D Campus, Bangalore or at the Goethe-
Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore. Last date for registration without late fees: February 26, 2010
Late fee payable after closing date: additional 50 % of registration fees above. (Limited participation so
please register early) Address for communication and registration 1st contact: National Institute of
Design, Bangalore Shashikala Satyamurthy, Conference Coordinator National Institute of Design, R & D
Campus, #12 HMT Link Road, Off Tumkur Road Bangalore 560 022 Tel: +91-080-23478939 (D) /
23373006 Fax: +91 80 23373086 conference email: hfgulm2010@nid.edu www.nid.edu 2nd contact:
Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore Maureen Gonsalves Programme Coordinator Goethe-
Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan 716 CMH Road, Indiranagar 1st Stage Bangalore 560 038 Ph: +91 80 2520
5305/06/07/08-203 Fax: +91 80 2520 5309 arts@bangalore.goethe.org www.goethe.de/bangalore End
Quote
014254 2009-10-06 10:40 Re: Revised Survey

Dear Gülden Malya
It was interesting to see your note and questions on sustainability on PhD-Design list and on your link
but the questions would take too long to answer just now. I am in Istanbul to attend and lecture at the 4th
National Design Congress at the invitation of ITU and will be happy to speak to you if you are there.
<Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/09/hand-head-heart-
ethics-in-design.html> > I have worked many years at NID Ahmedabad as a teacher and handled

many courses and projects that could be called "Sustainability focussed" over the past 30 year as a
teacher and designer at NID. You can see my papers on my blog and website and there is a lot of
material that you can use including the posters that we designed for an event of the World Economic
Forum in Davos this year, all available free from the links below. <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/> <http://www.ranjanmp.in> We have been researching bamboo and its use as a
development resource in India using design strategies as a driver and this work too has been ongoing
over the past 30 years now and much of it is documented on the links above and some of it is available
in print since it is an expensive medium and we are always short of funds it seems. My book on bamboo
published in 1986 and reprinted in 2004 and it is now available for free download as a pdf from my
website above or from this link here. (37.8 mb pdf) <NEBC_Book_Mstr.pdf-
zip.zip<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/.cv/ranjanmp/Sites/.Public/NEBC_Book_Mstr.pdf-
zip.zip> > The posters on Sustainability, all five of them can be downloaded as pdf files from this blog
link here: <Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Posters in PDF<http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/02/sustainability-design-at-davos-2009.html> > I will be happy to answer
your questions if we are able to meet in Istanbul on the sidelines of the Conference as I am there from
the 7th to 12th October 2009 at the ITU as a guest of the Industrial Design Department.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my office at NID
014234 2009-10-02 21:35 Re: On design - again?

Dear Klaus
Thank you for your sustained offerings over the past several weeks on PhD-Design and it has been
most educative and stimulating. I must thank all the other contributors as well and the "treacherous river
full of currents" that Ben Johnson refers to is indeed such a place when we try to navigate design action
across diverse knowledge fields each having been carefully guarded by the diverse gatekeepers, the
experts and qualified champions of those fields. As a designer and a design teacher I have always kept
my life jacket handy whenever I have tried to cross this river and in many occasions I have had to look
for access books that could become my life inflatable dingy to carry me over new intellectual territory
that I know intuitively that I need to know but I am unable to interact with the acknowledged experts in
the field since they cannot understand their language nor they my intentions and needs a s a designer.
So many such bridges will be needed and design research will hopefully be a place that will produce
these access books or access tools that will enable both sides to cross over if we are to see the creation
of the integrated design disciplines of the future. I have been invited to deliver a keynote lecture at the
National Design Convention at Istanbul on the 8th October 2009. My paper and presentation are ready

and in this paper I am addressing the very issues that have been discussed on the list over the past few
years now. My paper is titled "Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design" and i can share this with members of
the list who may be interested. Send me a mail and I can forward both files as low res pdf's 4.7 mb size.
An abstract of the paper is on my blog at this link below and high resolution pdf files will be uploaded to
the blog after I get back on the 14th October: <http://tinyurl.com/ydclyyf> In this paper and visual
presentation with models and case studies I have tried to answer the six questions listed below: 1. What
is Design today? 2. How did Design evolve from being a core human activity to become a modern
discipline with a significant future? 3. What are the unfolding dimensions and orders of Design that we
can call the “Ethical Vortex of Design”? 4. Who are the thought leaders who have anticipated these
expanding dimensions of Design particularly from an ethical perspective? 5. Are there some critical
cases in this broader filed of Design that could provide clues for our journey forward at each of these
ethical nodes towards an “Integrated Design of the Future”? 6. How do we move towards a new Design
education that can “Create the Unknowable – the future for all of us”, in an ethical manner and still be in
tune with the needs of our times? Big questions and no simple answers but we must forge ahead and
help bring design the the table at many meetings about the future and sustainability from which it is
missing today since we have not been able to explain it to those stakeholders who need to use it.
Difficult, but we must continue to try. The river must not run dry! With warm regards M P Ranjan from my
office at NID 2 October 2009 at 9.20 pm IST Today is Gandhi Jayanthi, the 140th birthday of Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi who was great with using design at the political and social level here in India with
his Khadi ideology of self help using hand spun and hand woven fabrics and yarns along with the swaraj
non-violent action principles, very effective indeed in achieving independence for India. See the Wiki link
below. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi>
M P Ranjan
02 October 2009
013660 2009-07-01 10:58 Re: Betraying the Planet

Dear Jan and Ken
Thank you for your thoughts and references, rather alarming indeed. It is not just the US Senators and
the tobacco industry that is in denial but so are so many other industry and business sectors which wish
to ignore the writing on the wall and bash on as if nothing has happened, in spite of the current deep
financial crisis. Designers have a role to play and I am not sure that we are equipped to play this role
going by what is taught in schools and how the profession itself is organised and the manner in which
these concerns are being expressed and the influence that we wield on the politics of climate change
and other such pressing issues that confront us on a daily basis. Look at the automobile industry, and its
advertising blitz, as if nothing else mattered. The WHO report on traffic safety tells us that 1.3 million

lives are lost from road accidents and more than 50 million serious injuries are caused and this is a
direct result of design action in my opinion, both industrial design as well as effective communication
design and i am sure you can add design research to this list if you so wish. (0 percent of these deaths
are in developing countries!! <http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/en/> The
same can apply to the mining industry with open cast mines and the business telling us that there is no
option to the ecological destruction of pristine forests in India and the hydro-electric business that tells us
the displacement of people are for the larger good and in the name of development and all this in the
face of great political opposition by a variety of activists. I find this politics of opposition and obstruction
is the only voice that is heard today and the politics of imagination (deep design as I now call it) that is
the design way, however is a very feeble voice indeed. As a community we are not placing the options in
front of our politicians in visible ways and for this we would need to be both visionary as well as
politically saavy, but our schools and institutions go on as if this is not their turf at all. We do not have a
theory of public good while the good old Adam Smith dictate of private good as a base for our capitalist
and market economy dictates the directions of our politics all over the world. Some are talking of
transformation while others talk of innovation as the ultimate mantra, can old fashioned design play a
role here? Any thoughts from the list?
With warm regards
013658 2009-06-30 23:16 Re: Mexican New Science and Technology Innpvation National Policy
Dear Mario Dupont
Thank you for bringing this significant event to our attention. Innovation seems to be the central thrust of
the policy document although design is not mentioned in any depth we can see that eventually this
policy will support the growth of design use if it is steered in that direction, and special effort will be
needed to sensitise the user groups to understand and use design as the implementation moves
forward. I am quoting below the full text of the policy document in English which has been translated
quickly using Google Language tools to make it readable (with some unclear areas however) Good luck
to Mexico and its designers in this important venture.
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan from my iMac at home on the NID campus
30 June 2009 at 10.45 pm IST
013346 2009-04-22 16:48 Re: Research Request: Co-Creation


Dear Ken
Significant work in this field of co-creation has been done by Liz Sanders and her papers can be
downloaded from her website here which is a rich repository of papers on participatory design and co-
creation: MakeTools: Generative tools for collective creativity <http://www.maketools.com/>
With warm regards
013155 2009-03-29 17:22 Beyond Grassroots: Reports, Books and CD ROM now online
Dear friends
I have posted a detailed note with several links to resources that we created as part of a development
project between 2000 and 2004 in India. This is documented in a CD ROM titled "Beyond Grassroots"
which is a CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI. "Bamboo & Cane Development Institute, Agartala
(BCDI): CD ROM as a live documentation of intentions and actions of the design team from NID,
Ahmedabad in partnership with the team from BCDI, Agartala. – “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as
Seedlings of Wealth”. This CD ROM was produced in 2003 - 2004 using reports, movies and pictures
that were part of the very detailed visual documentation that was maintained by the NID and BCDI
teams using digital tools that were constantly available as a project policy. The intention was to build an
Institute that could address the very complex needs of the “Grassroots sector” in rural India through the
creation of human resources, knowledge resources as well as market linkages with the use of a potential
local material such as bamboo which could be used to support a whole spectrum of development
activities that could lead to positive change in the lives of the people. This CD ROM can be downloaded
as a 560 MB zip file that unpacks into hyper linked folders and files all connected through a series of
navigation screens shown on the blog. We believe that India and other nations may need many institutes
like this one if we are to use design to transform our rural economy with the use of local resources in a
sustainable manner and in a politically stable eco-system that can survive well into the future with the
use of design, democratic decentralized local governance and local entrepreneurship. <Beyond
Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/03/beyond-grassroots-cd-rom-on- institution.html>
With warm regards
29 March 2009 at 9.55 am IST
013144 2009-03-24 09:39 Beyond Grassroots: CD ROM now online: see links

Dear friends
Beyond Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI Bamboo & Cane Development Institute,
Agartala (BCDI): CD ROM as a live documentation of intentions and actions of the design team from
NID, Ahmedabad in partnership with the team from BCDI, Agartala. – “Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as
Seedlings of Wealth”. This CD ROM was produced in 2003 - 2004 using reports, movies and pictures
that were part of the very detailed visual documentation that was maintained by the NID and BCDI
teams using digital tools that were constantly available as a project policy. The intention was to build an
Institute that could address the very complex needs of the “Grassroots sector” in rural India through the
creation of human resources, knowledge resources as well as market linkages with the use of a potential
local material such as bamboo which could be used to support a whole spectrum of development
activities that could lead to positive change in the lives of the people. This CD ROM can be downloaded
as a 560 MB zip file that unpacks into hyper linked folders and files all connected through a series of
navigation screens shown on the blog. We believe that India and other nations may need many institutes
like this one if we are to use design to transform our rural economy with the use of local resources in a
sustainable manner and in a politically stable eco-system that can survive well into the future with the
use of design, democratic decentralized local governance and local entrepreneurship. <Beyond
Grassroots: CD ROM on Institution Building at BCDI><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/03/beyond-grassroots-cd-rom-on-institution.html>
With warm regards
013140 2009-03-17 00:07 Bamboo Boards & Beyond CD ROM now online
Dear Friends
We have been working on bamboo applications for sustainability and eco-friendly future applications for
some years now. In 1998 - 2001 we had carried out research and product design applications using
bamboo laminated boards with sponsorship from the UNDP and the APCTT and a multimedia CD ROM
was created to document and disseminate all the work done during the research phase as well as the
product design stages. This CD ROM is now available online for free download with a detailed
description on the "Design for India" blog at this link below. The CD ROM is available as a single zip file
of 550 MB which expands into folders and self contained multiple files for offline viewing for those
interested. Take a look at the link below for details, interface screens, sample pages and the link for full
download for those interested in our ongoing multi-facetted design research at the Centre for Bamboo
Initiatives at NID, India. <Bamboo Boards & Beyond: Multimedia CD ROM on design explorations for
India><http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/03/bamboo-boards-beyond-multimedia-cd-

rom.html> This is the first of two major CD ROM publications that was produced over the years and the
next one is due for release shortly. the second is "Beyond Grassroots: Bamboo as Seedlings of wealth"
that was published in 2003. We would love to get feedback on the contents in due course from the lists.
With warm regards
013026 2009-03-01 23:53 Digital Books and Papers on Bamboo and Design
Dear Friends
I have just posted an article on my blog "Design for India" with a fairly detailed illustrated note on our
work in the bamboo sector aimed at rural development in India. This post has links to a new digital book
on bamboo furniture and our macro-micro strategy called "Seedlings of Wealth". The book is called
"Katlamara Chalo" – meaning Come to Katlamara – and you can download it from links on this webpage
below: <Katlamara Chalo: Seedlings of Wealth in Action><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/02/katlamara-chalo-seedlings-of-wealth-in.html> At the foot of the post
are links to several papers, books and websites on the premises and intentions of the bamboo and
design project which have been written over the past twenty years, all done at NID, Ahmedabad with a
large number of collaborators including faculty colleagues and students. Do take a look and this is work
in progress and we would love to have your comments and observations as we go forward from here.
With warm regards
012994 2009-02-26 20:22 New Design Book from an NID Faculty on Saris of India
Dear friends
I have just posted a note on my blog about the soon to be launched new book from an NID Faculty
colleague, "Indian Saris: Traditions - Perspectives - Design" by Vijai Singh Katiyar. There will be a social
function and a panel discussion at London on 20th April 2009 for the book launch by the publisher and
the book can be pre-ordered from a number of sources online as well. Do take a look at the links below
for details: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/02/indian-saris-woven-fabrics-of-
fantasy.html> <http://textiledesigninindia-indiansaris.blogspot.com/> The Slumdog Millionare's
sweep at the Oscar has brought a lot of attention to India and perhaps Indian fashion and its traditional
sari too will have its place in the sun... our several million handloom weavers and their children would
just love that.

With warm regards
012923 2009-02-09 21:08 Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009

Dear Friends
Sorry for cross posting. I have just uploaded a set of five posters on the theme of "Sustainability and
Design" that were used at Davos at the recently concluded World Economic Forum 2009 about which I
had made a recent post on this list. These posters are now available in A3 size as printable PDF files
which can be used as a resource for further work on the subjects. These have been linked to my blog at
"Design for India" so that is is accessible to a wider audience and we would love to have your feedback
in the days ahead. <Sustainability & Design at Davos 2009: Posters in PDF><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/02/sustainability-design-at-davos-2009.html> The Sustainability posters
and the themes covered are listed below: 1. Poster on the theme of Co-Creation for Sustaibnability: PDF
file 2.9 MB 2. Poster on the theme of Dematerialisation for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.2 MB 3. Poster on
the theme of Essence Making for Sustaibnability: PDF file 3.1 MB 4. Poster on the theme of Innovating
the Value Chain for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB 5. Poster on the theme of using Emerging
Technologies for Sustaibnability: PDF file 2.7 MB Previous posts about this project that started in
September 2008 can be seen at these links below: <World Economic Forum – Sustainability & Design at
Davos><http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2009/02/world-economic-forum-sustainability.html>
<Sustainability Charette: World Economic Forum in New Delhi><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2008/11/sustainability-charette-world-economic.html>
We look forward to your comments.
With warm regards
012910 2009-02-02 18:46 Sustainability and Design at Davos

Dear Friends
In my introductory post to this list I had mentioned that we were working on a series of posters on the
theme of sustainability which were intended for a meeting of CEO's at the World Economic Forum at
Davos last week. The event took place on the 29th January 2009 at the World Economic Forum and we
have a preliminary report on the event from the organisers which I have posted on my blog "Design for
India" along with images on the five posters that we had designed specifically for this event. Some fifty

CEO's of global corporations and officials of the World Economic Forum used these posters and the
case studies included to explore the wider implications of the themes and have developed strategies that
could be taken forward in each of their efforts in the days ahead. The posters can be seen at this link
below and I will report on the details of the event when I get more news from Davos when the organisers
complete their report on the outcomes from the event. <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/02/world-economic-forum-sustainability.html> While the blog post
includes jpeg files that are readable on screen I have printable resolution pdf files in A3 size of all the
posters which I can share freely but I have to figure out how to upload these from our slow connection at
my school. Those interested can write to me offline or on this list and I will figure out a way to get these
out to those interested.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my room at Jor Bahg New Delhi on tour
012869 2009-01-21 23:40 Re: U.S. National Design Policy Initiative

Dear Anne
I have been following the developments, as well as encouraging from a distance, the movement towards
the setting up of a design policy in the USA, and the meetings organised in Washington is a significant
move forward towards this end. I met Dori in Austin Texas at the IDSA Summit in 2006 and we did get to
discussing the role of design policies at the National level. I was back in the USA in February 2007 for a
brief meeting at the Asia Society in New York that was set up by discussions and collaborations across
continents to bring design action to India as part of the "Design with India" initiatives that were being
promoted by a group of interested designers on the DesignIndia discussion list as well as part of the
influence on the CII-NID Design Summit that has been taking place in India since 2001 with one National
level meet taking place each year. CII is the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Government of
India has supported this initiative through its Department of Industrial Promotion and Projects as well as
the National Institute of Design which is the first design school in India which was set up by the
Government of India in 1961 based on a insightful report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958. <Design
Policy for USA: Long Ripples from India><http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/11/design-
policy-for-usa-long-ripples-from.html> This is a long story, and although the Government had set the
ball rolling in India as far back as 1958 and we have also had a significant meeting at Ahmedabad in
1979 called the UNIDO-ICSID conference on "Design for Development" which resulted in a extremely
well drafted Ahmedabad Declaration of 1979, the Government of India failed to adopt the declaration or
make any forward movement on the National Design Policy all of which have been discussed in India
over and over in numerous situations with and without official participation. The National Design Policy

has been announced in India on the 8th February 2007 when I was in New York and we were happy for
this big step forward although we are not happy with the limited scope of the Policy Initiaitive since it is
highly restricted to improving prospects of Indian Industry through design, old hat, but fails to see design
as a driver of value in all spheres of our economy and society. Few authors have had the vision or the
conviction to argue about design at this level of reach and I do believe we must create the platform for
this through the work of design research to make visible the deep qualities of design to bring massive
change in many sectors of our economies. I have written about the National Design Policy in India on a
number of posts on my blog called Design for India and I have also reported about the initiatives in the
USA as well. Recently I was invited to London to debate the question of which would be the Design City
of the Future which was an event at the Design Museum in London in mid December 2009. I argued that
Bangalore could achieve this mark not because it would produce products of the future but for the way in
which the city could muster democratic processes and people participation in solving local opportunities
that could make life in the city a far better quality with the use of design at the City Governance level. My
arguments and my presentation got the support of the informed London audience and it was voted as
the Design City of the future in front of Sao Paolo, Beijing and Moscow which were the other
presentations that day. <Design Week on Bangalore: "Design City" of the Future><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/01/design-week-on-bangalore-design-city-of.html> <Design for Politics &
Good Governance: Electoral process and Design for India><http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2009/01/design-for-politics-good-governance.html> <Design Cities Debate:
Bengaluru at the Design Museum, London><http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/12/design-
cities-debate-bengaluru-at.html> Drafting a policy for a Nation is indeed a daunting task but we must
set the ball rolling and it will take a long time before politicians take on the process forward and bills do
get drafted that will help nations use design for development and social action agendas in the days
ahead. Designers alone cannot change the mindsets in government and industry about the use of
design and the role that it can play in shaping the future of our cities and our lives. Richard Farson in his
new book "The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything" has broadened the scope and
reach of design thinking and action and this is also in line with the thinking articulated by Thomas
Maldonado in his 1970 book "Design, Nature, Revolution" and it also is in the spirit of the book "The
Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World" by Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman.
<http://www.advanceddesign.org/book.html> <The Design Way: Dr Harold Nelson at NID,
Ahmedabad><http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/12/design-way-dr-harold-nelson-at-
nid.html> Richard Farson papers: <http://www.wbsi.org/farson/commentary.htm> Design at this
level is indeed politics, but I think of it as politics with a difference in the modes of action and influence.
Many of our democratic processes are resolved in the street so to speak. People who support and those
who oppose both take to the streets in India and there are heated debates about the pros and cons of
each situation. However there is rarely any well thought through and developed alternatives that are

included in these debar=tes and it then boils down to the raw numbers game. It is here that design
thinking and design visualisation can make a huge difference in making the various options visible to the
policy makers and stakeholders alike and in the process swing the investments and committments in
favour of the better alternative, at the local level, at the city level, at the regional level and at the national
level and if I may say at the global level as well. Last week we at NID were involved with the articulation
and creation of five posters that could inform and provoke discussion at the World Economic Forum at a
special session on Sustainability which would be attended by global CEO's and political leaders. I
believe this is a small beginning and I will report the developments on this particular initiative on my blog
after the Davos event unfolds and from this I do see that design is getting fresh attention from new
quarters and this is indeed an encouragement for the belief that some of us have been holding about the
power of design far beyond the measures of the monetised economy. I hope I am not leading too far
ahead of reality. Let us see in the days ahead. These posters will be available for download early next
month and I will post the links to these when we are ready to disseminate these widely next month. I
joined your new list (SUSDESIGNTEACH) particularly since I believe that Sustanability amnd Design will
be getting a growing share of attention from a variety of quarters and designers and design schools will
need to equip themselves to improve their own understanding of the subject as well as try and bring their
teaching materials and programmes to cope with the expanding role of design as we are beginning to
understand it today.
With warm regards
21 january 2009 at 11.05 pm IST
012317 2008-08-24 18:31 Re: Great Anthropological Diagrams (or Anthropology has always been visual)
Dear Dori
Yes, this flickr site is a wonderful resource but I was a bit disappointed since many images were very low
in resolution and I could not read some of the texts that appear on the images. I am indeed pleased to
hear that you are taking up a course together with Hugh Dubberly who is a master at these image
representations and on his website I did find a great resource that mapped all the major Design Methods
in the form of diagrams and supporting texts that would have otherwise taken a few thousand pages to
get across in an educational situation. I did share this fantastic resource and also wrote to Hugh
Dubberly congratulating him for this huge contribution. These can be found at this link below:
<http://www.dubberly.com/articles> The pdf file of the book "How do you Design" can be downloaded
from this page below: <http://www.dubberly.com/articles/how-do-you-design.html> or directly from
this link here: <http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/ddo_designprocess.pdf>
This offering by Hugh Dubberly can grow to include other offerings, particularly the thesis by Chris

Heape that deals with a new understanding of how to teach the fairly convoluted processes that we call
design as well as the higher order understanding that is represented by the book "The Design Way" by
Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman and a simple visual representation of these newer offerings would go
a long way to get design teachers around the world better aligned to these new ways of understanding
design. I did share my own model of the Design Journey which is available for download from my
website at this link below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html> or directly as a
pdf file from this link here below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/Design_Journey_Think_Report.pdf.
pdf-
zip.zip?a=downloadFile&user=ranjanmp&path=/Public/Design%20Journey_Think_Report.pdf> or
here as a shorter URL a 275 kb pdf file. <http://tinyurl.com/3kanf7> I have got a great little book called
"Introducing Anthropology" by Merryl Wyn Davies and illustrated by Piero and published by Icon Books
as part of a series of illustrated books on various themes including Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology
which I find very useful as accessible material for design students. (ISBN 1 84046 663 4) However
talking about design in simple understandable terms is a fine art which mane resources still miss
altogether and here the book by Norman Potter, "What is a Designer: things, places, messages" stands
out from all the offerings that occupy this space over the past thirty years or so. published by Hyphen
Press, London revised and extended fourth edition is an improvement on the classic first edition offered
by Studio Vista in 1969, a great or should I say an alltime great introduction to the complex field of
design!! (ISBN 0-907259-16-2) I look forward to more such resources on the web about design and
anthropology which can be used by our students and many others who need to understand design in the
context of emerging needs and the huge opportunity that this would unfold in the days ahead.
With warm regards
012309 2008-08-16 21:54 Re: Design Methodologies Readings

Dear Tamara Christensen
I have been meaning to respond to your request but other committments kept me tied down for a while. I
have been teaching a course dealing with Design Methodologies for close to thirty years now at NID,
India and over the years we have moved a great deal to discover new approaches and have shifted our
emphasis from teaching set methods to providing the students with a sense of direction as well as the
possibility of building their own positions with reference to the world of design action. This led to the
normanclature of the course itself being changed a number of times over this period and the various

names included Design Methods (after John Chris Jones) Design Processes, Design methodologies and
now it is called "Design Concepts and Concerns". The course is rooted in current issues that are being
discussed in the media and is at the top of ones mind in each period in which the course is conducted
and the students are asked to connect with this reality directly from as much field exposure as possible
in our cities in India outside the school. We have found this very useful in bringing an awareness of the
real world nature of design thought and action and these developments have been documented in a
number of papers and visual presentations that are aviailable on my personal website at thsi link below:
Design Theory papers
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html> Further I have
started documenting these courses in almost real time blogging at my education blog called "Design
Concepts and Concerns" and this has been active for the past one year now and can be seen at this
website link below: "Design Concepts and Concerns" <http://www.design-concepts-and-
concerns.blogspot.com/> This course started with addressing the needs of Undergrad students at NID
and it continues to be offered each year at the end of the common Foundation Programme before
students branch out to all the disciplines offered. However over the past ten years this course has also
been offered to all our Post Graduate disciplines at a preparatory level and for the Foundation it is a five
week course and the the PG level it is a two week course, much truncated, since the time available is
much shorter. Both these courses are discussed on the blog and all the assignments are shown as the
courses progress. The background issues that form the major theme each year is discussed on another
blog that is an advocasy blog called "Design for India". This year the theme for all the batches at NID is
"Food, Inflation and the Economy" and the students are required to work in teams to address and
discover design opportunities across many disciplines that would help address the issues and concerns
that are identified during the early stages of investigation. You can see this at the blog links below:
Design for India <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com/> Both these blogs have a list of
recommended websites that would inform the students about the emerging approaches to design
thinking across the world and these are discussed in our class in groups as well as when the particular
opportunity comes up in the course of our explorations. Some links from the blogs are listed below:
Jerome Diethelm <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~diethelm/> Design Council, UK
<http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/> Charles Brunette
<http://www.idesignthinking.com/main.html> NextD <http://www.nextd.org/> Dori: Design
Anthropology <http://dori3.typepad.com/my_weblog/> There are many more and the web is now quite
rich with design resources and this list is growing by the day and we intend to use these as we go
forward. However there are some books that would be a great resource for our design students. Harold
Nelson and Eric Stolternman, "The Design Way" is a great resource that we recommend as a must read.
John Thackara, "In the Bubble", is a wonderful and readable resource that can help set the agenda for
design action. I will be happy to expand on the list of books, websites, thought leadrers and approaches

that we introduce our students to if you so wish and my own course is documented in my papers on my
website. I had made a presentation of this course at the EAD06 conference in 2005 at Bremen,
Germany and the papers can be downloaded from their website and from my own website here below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html> The Paper is
called "Creating the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education" take a look. Design for us is
changing and we may need to discover new ways of sharing these changes with our students going
forward. I would like to hear of other efforts in this direction in education and I am sure thtre are many
happening across the world today since design is in flux and we can use these discussions to map out
all the dimensions of the change that is being discovered out there.
With warm regards
012255 2008-07-19 07:04 Handmade in India: Book release in New Delhi

Dear Friends
We are happy to inform you that the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, Government of India
and COHANDS have decided to release the book "Handmade in India" edited by Aditi Ranjan and M P
Ranjan at a simple function on the 21 July 2008. The long awaited book release will take place at the
Rajiv Gandhi Handicrafts Bhavan on Baba Kharaksing Marg, New Delhi at 9.30 am on 21 July 2008 and
the Shri Shankarsinh Vanghela, Honorable Minister for Textiles has agreed to preside and release the
book. The book was researched and produced at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad by a large
team of faculty, students and researchers over the past five years. Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, will
make the books available at all their distribution channels immediately there after. I have just now posted
a note about the book on my blog, Design for India, and this can be accessed from this link here below:
We will have more posts when we have more details about the post release plans from the publishers.
<http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com> An earlier note about the book that appeared on the
blog has details of the contents and treatment of the information architecture at these links here:
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/08/handmade-in-india-handbook-of-crafts-of.html>
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/12/webinnovation2007-web-20-conference-at.html>
Handmade in India: Edited by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan Book design by Ms. Zenobia Zamindar and
Girish Arora. 576 pages, 3500 colour photographs and 140 maps, 9.5 x 13.5" (240 x 340 mm) Core
content includes information, maps and images of the crafts of 530 clusters across India, Key words and
local names on each page is a wayfinding device to facilitate web research and a platform for a web
portal that is planned for the fourth phase of this project. End matter includes a Technical Glossary,
Annotated Bibliography, Craft Categories, an Index and also a detailed Acknowledgement and Credits.

Co-published in association with COHANDS and Development Commissioner of Handicrafts,
Government of India, the book is produced by Mapin.
With warm regards
012246 2008-07-14 15:44 Re: Food and AnthroDesign

Dear Terry
This is a wicked problem, if ever there is one. I do not have the answer yet, but we are addressing these
in our class at NID and I will come back with our findings and imaginations/insights of design
opportunities ahead. Food is also a local problem and can vary from location to location and from time to
time. We have more mouths to feed and the supply chain is getting longer by the day, perhaps that is
the problem. We intend to explore it and see where it leads us using our design sensibilities over the
next few weeks.
With warm regards
012241 2008-07-14 06:33 Food and AnthroDesign

Dear Friends
I have just made a post on "Food and AnthroDesign" that may be of interest to this list's members. Do
take a look. <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/07/food-and-anthrodesign-approaches-
and.html>
With warm regards
011913 2008-06-15 18:55 Indian Institute of Crafts and Design: IICD Jaipur: Faculty Recruitment call
Dear Friends
I am posting this call for Faculty Recruitment from the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, Jaipur on
behalf of their Director, Prof. Sangita Shroff. You can get more information about this school of design
from their website or from my blog post on "Design for India" at the link provided below: <http://design-
for-india.blogspot.com/2008/05/indian-institute-of-crafts-and-design.html> <http://design-for-

india.blogspot.com/2007/10/new-education-strategies-and.html> Quote Indian Institute of Crafts and
Design Jaipur Institute Website: <http://www.iicd.ac.in> The Indian Institute of Crafts and Design
(IICD) is an autonomous institute of excellence, set up by the Government of Rajasthan in 1995, to act
as a catalyst for the crafts sector. The Government entered into a unique ‘public private partnership’ with
Ambuja Educational Institute in October 2007 with the central idea that the Institute evolve a sustained
program of efficient growth and development of both, crafts persons and the craft sector in an integrated
manner. The Major Education programs at IICD are mandated to develop high quality, motivated human
resource and change agents – young craft designers and design managers – who would work in a
vibrant climate of experimentation and innovation. IICD is currently offering Under Graduate programs in
Soft Material Application (textiles, leather, paper) and Hard Material Application (wood, metal, stone). In
the Post Graduate program the specializations offered are Furniture Design and Interior Products and
Home Textiles (floor covering & furnishings). As a part of our Capacity Building initiative, the Institute is
looking for dynamic professionals, who want to be part of the ‘Craft Development Story’ of India. Design
professionals and Design academics with a strong emotive and cultural association with the Craft
wisdom of this country are invited to participate with missionary zeal on the task at hand – to train
students, do craft development work and research along with curriculum development – at the foremost
Institute focused on Craft Design in India. We invite design professionals and the positions on offer are:
1. DEAN, POST GRADUATE PROGRAM: Profile: Senior Academic, with prior experience in
professional design practice and design academics with skills in Course and Syllabus design,
pedagogies, ability to network with Industry, Govt. and Non - Govt. organizations. The person should
have scholastic / research capabilities. The position is of an Associate professor/ Professor (work
experience of minimum 15 years and more}. Commensurate package would be on offer. 2.
FURNITURE/PRODUCT/ACCESSORY DESIGNER: Profile: Dynamic young designer with a body of
professional work, preferably in Craft design and a keen interest in practice as well as academics. The
person should be strong on form as well as keenly interested in materials & technology. 3. TEXTILE
DESIGNER: Profile: A designer with a body of professional work in Print, Weave, Embroidery Design,
ability to work hands on, with a keen interest in color and traditional textile repertoire. S/he should be
willing to travel and work in rural craft clusters. 4. COMMUNICATIONS DESIGNER / ART HISTORIAN /
ANTHROPOLOGIST: Profile: A communications designer, keenly interested in Design, Craft and Art
theory, research and ability to do primary theoretical and visual research or an Art Historian /
Anthropologist interested in studies related to Material culture, techniques of making and production
processes. The above three positions are for Assistant professor (work experience of 3 to 7 years) /
Associate professors (work experience of 8 to 12 years). 5. ADJUNCT FACULTY; Profile: IICD invites
senior design practitioners and pedagogues to have a sustained association with the Institute. (This
could be in a part time format or full time). They would teach, help build academic vision and be involved
in faculty development initiatives. They could also work as resident designers, being involved with our

other craft development initiatives. Two positions of Adjunct association are possible immediately. IICD
would offer commensurate package. Applications may be sent to Director, IICD Email:
director@iicd.ac.in before 10th July 2008. Or by post INDIAN INSTITUTE OF CRAFTS AND DESIGN J
8, Jhalana Institutional Area, Near RTO, JAIPUR: 302004 Tel: 0141 2703105 Fax: 0141 2700160
Website: http://www.iicd.ac.in UnQuote
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Imac at home on the NID campus
011743 2008-04-28 02:02 Re: Design for Sustainable Development with Bamboo
Dear Friends
I have posted several links on my blog "Design for India" from which you can download the following
books and reports in pdf format from this link below: <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2008/04/centre-for-bamboo-initiatives-at-nid.html>. <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com> 1. M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer & Ghanshyam Pandya, "Traditional Wisdom: Bamboo
& Cane Crafts of Northeast India", Development Commisioner of Handicrafts, New Delhi, 2004 (34.7 MB
pdf) (Soft bound - reprint of hard bound version of 1986) 2. M P Ranjan, "Katlamara Chalo: Bamboo for
Rural Development", National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2006. (three part pdf file of 46 MB) 3.
Links to several papers and reports on the setting up of the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute,
Agartala. (each in pdf format) Do take a look at the link above and download the files from the links
provided there.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac on tour at the IIT Mumbai campus
011721 2008-04-22 20:13 Re: Design as service

Dear Terry
For me, politics is the process by which groups take decisions. It is not about power equations which it is
often considered to be. Those in power will take decisions but these need not be correct nor do they
have to be sustainable. However in a true democracy, people have a role to play in moving their
politcians to act on their behalf and in an accountable manner. Designers must be equipped to be part of
this process and offer their sensibilities while being a part of this group process. When design is about
shaping the future by the creation of value it is most effective at the leading edge where decisions are
taken. Perhaps you would be more comfortable if I stated that I would like to see politicians adopt design

and the design language in their decision making processes and not just use rhetoric and economics as
their base. We need to put design into the hands of those who take decisions and in this way the design
sensibilities, which is not driven by knowledge and truth alone, but by sense and conviction based on a
variety of explorations (samplings, prototypes and trends), would inform and support a sustainable
decision for all of us. My use of the word politics is aligned to the HfG Ulm Foundation for Design, see
the competition announcement at this link here: <http://www.hfg-ulm.de/443.html?&L=1> Further,
Tomas Maldonado in his book "Design, Nature and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology" Harper &
Row, New York 1972, does give us a very perceptive view of the shaping of design at this level of action.
With warm regards
011714 2008-04-22 10:29 Re: well-structured and ill-structured activity in designing

Dear Klaus and Terry
You said: "i prefer designers to talk about visions of possible futures and to find compelling arguments
for enrolling stakeholders to realize that vision (see the semantic turn)." I tend to subscribe to this view of
design action and learning. To teach this approach we have innovated many assignments as part of our
courses at NID at both the undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels across many disciplines. One
particular assignment deals with "Scenario Visualisation" that is based on informed and well researched
subjects where the students first work in groups before they carry out individual explorations and
scenario expression in both word and image. I have posted 23 such examples on the course blog that is
an outcome of a recently concluded course at NID, Design Concepts and Concerns, each dealing with
the macro-subject of Design Opportunities for Water in five specific geographies in India which are both
climatically and culturally quite different. I invite you to take a look at these posts as well as the team
based research assignments that are designed to introduce design thinking and expression in the
Foundation students at NID. The blog link is here below: <http://www.design-concepts-and-
concerns.blogspot.com/> I must disagree with Terry's point of view that this kind of action represents
the act of playing "GOD", which the designers are asked to assume. Far from it. Today, on "The Earth
Day" we do need to reflect on the role that design can play in the whole area of Global Warming and
Climate Change, and I do believe we have a major role here and we must not abdicate this to politicians,
At this level design is politics and we must learn many new skill sets and attitudes to help us play this
role adequately and with confidence. I so invite other members of the PhD-Design list to review the
contents of this particular blog as well as the other one that I have set up specifically to try and influence
public policy in India for the wider use of Design across 230 sectors of our economy, and it is called
"Design for India". <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com/> GK has a very good point about the

nature of design being so vastly different when we look at it from different perspectives. For these
massive and complex problems we will need new attitudes and skill sets that are perhaps not yet fully
embedded in traditional design schools today. I look forward to your views and comments going forward.
With warm regards
011280 2008-02-03 22:45 Re: Evidence of what?

Dear Friends
I agree with Michael. In design the "Evidence" of the kind that would be found embedded in the
"Artefact" would have many meanings, each one that corresponds to a particular point of view that is
held by the researcher. One position is influenced by the very nature of design and its layers of
influencing factors. Design influences can be felt and measured across many layers from the material
and aesthetic to the technical, economic and the social and the political levels and we will also need to
factor in the systems levels of ecology and spirituality before we complete our analysis of any given
situation or product completely. I have been using a model to explain this for my students and I call this
the "Iceberg Factor" in design, with a few visible and measurable attributes as seen in the "Artefact" and
a huge layer of intangible and invisible attributes that would represent the intentions and the value that
the particular event, product or service could or would provide. I have shared this model in the context of
the debate about to introduction of the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, that was unveiled at the
Indian Auto fair in New Delhi last month by Ratan Tata. I have shown this model in my blog post at this
link below: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/01/tatas-one-lakh-car-systems-failure-
on.html> In another situation when we studied the bamboo crafts of the Northeastern States of India in
the late 70's and early 80's we collected as many as 400 baskets, all different, from the field work that
extended over a region that included seven states of the region and from as many as 50 different tribes
and communities who lived there. Our analysis of the these products was done in order to understand
the basket in the context of material properties of the bamboo used as well as the form and structure as
appreciated by the local mind, a sort of traditional wisdom study, that would give us a basis to use the
material for our intentions which were to bring development to the region socially and economically using
a local resource and by not imposing our own notion of aesthetics while doing our design work, very
complex agenda. Our book, The "Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India" by M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer
and Ghanshyam Pandya published in 1986 was based on our 1979-80 field work and has a very
detailed index that looks at many dimensions of the product universe that was studied. I now call it the
Traditional Wisdom guide since we were able to identify and list both visible and invisible attributes in the
two distinct indexes, the Subject Index that covered names and places while the Technical Index

covered the structural, material and geometric attributes as well as properties of materials, techniques
and local knowledge that we found in our discourse of these products and these included as many as
8000 attributes in all. These hidden and visible attributes have informed our further work in product
design with the local material, bamboo , as well as our formal and aesthetic decisions that we could
keep aligned to the expressions that we found and articulated through detailed drawings and textual
descriptions in the research process that led up to the book. If I were to extend this method to a range of
artefacts from our contemporary culture we can see that our electronic products as well as our
automobiles could be subjected to such an elaborate analysis that includes functional, social, aesthetis
as well as economic and ecological parameters and we would that be discussing the influence across all
these parameters in a design discourse. History of design misses such a deep analysis and most of the
descriptions that I am familiar with is stylistic analysis or technological advancement related studies and
much work needs to be done in this area. So the whole issue of "What Evidence" is both complex and
related to the point of view and the hypothesis that is held by the researcher. Each discourse of the
research would open up new layers of meaning and contexts that can be further explored. In a recent
post I have shared some preliminary systems analysis work that was done by one of my students in a
systems design class that was conducted in 1991 about the Lego Toy at the systems level. You can see
this at my blog post below: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/01/lego-toy-for-all-ages-can-
it-be.html> The analysis of the product showed the multiple dimensions that needed to be examined in
order to both understand such a product as well as to apply these principles to a new system of similatr
complexity and effect. She found several dimensions: The Geometric Module: Form, Dimension,
Compatibility The Functional Module: Hinges, Pins, Tubes, Features The Marketing Module: Packaging,
Economic Groups, Age Groups, Interest Groups The Semantic Module: Form, Colour, Texture, Terminal
Elements, Context The Ergonomic Module: User Capability, Need, Age Matching, Complexity and finally
The Economic Module: Production Features, Finished Product Configuration, Set Configuration etc.,
See this post at the link below: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com/2008/01/lego-toy-for-all-
ages-can-it-be.html> Lego has just completed 50 years and going and some of our product systems in
India and elsewhere have a lineage of over 5000 years of tradition behind them which are very complex
to fathom, even if we were to look at all the possible angles, even if we could.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my mac at home on the NID campus
3 Ferbruary 2008 at 10.40 pm IST
011249 2008-01-30 10:31 Re: The Entailments of History -- [Was: language and fiction]
Dear Friends

I tend to agree with Terry on his post below. I have been a mute witness to this amazing debate and
have as a result learned a great deal for which I am most grateful to the numerous contributors. I have
written off-list to a number of members and we should figure out ways to keep the discourse going
without letting it slip into personality based controversies, if we can, but we are all human and this list
does not give room for the use of emoticons, which sometimes removes the stress from our exchanges.
Our recently concluded Cricket Test Series between India and Australia has had its share of
controversies and the closure is not at all satisfying with the money bags coming in the way of the
players sorting things out amongst themselves and that is not "Cricket" either. I have been quite silent on
this list for a long time not because I am not involved, far from it, the discussions are positively rivetting,
do go on. I have been pretty active on my blog these past six months and now have about fifty posts
online for anyone who may be interested in catching up on the design concerns that keep us alive and
kicking in the Indian sub-continent with its huge problems and equally huge opportunities for design
research and action. Do take a look in case you are interested. <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com/>
With warm regards
011009 2007-12-10 11:15 Re: Criticality In Design / The Blind Spot

Dear Terry
Thank you for your list of questions to classify knowledge in design. I quote below from your post: Quote
What you know (e.g. day to day reality) What you don't know (e.g. knowledge held by others) What you
know you know (e.g. Science, good information, reflection) What you don't know you know (e.g. intuition,
tacit knowledge) What you know you don't know (e.g. emerging issues, scenarios, knowledge from
asking questions) What you don't know you don't know (outside your paradigms and ways of thinking)
UnQuote I would suggest that you need to add one more category and that is: What you want to know
but one cannot know by any science or method ( eg: Conditions of the Furure, which unfortunately is the
core offering of design) This means that we can never have certainity and therefore never be able to
state these as specifications however deeply we want to have the comfort of knowing in advance a
glimpse of the future. I have made a post last week on the design of a new hotel chain in India called
GINGER which in my view is an example of design which responds to local conditions and is sensitive to
shifts in the world through change in a number of parameters so the design group is in constant touch
with the managenment for each new hotel in the chain to respond to the local challanges and to the
emerging situation. Take a look at the case on my blog post at this link below: Friday, 7 December,
2007: GINGER: The Design of a “Smart” Hotel Chain in India <http://design-for-

india.blogspot.com/2007/12/ginger-design-of-smart-hotel-chain-in.html> There are other attempts
to make design a central tool for such flexible and responsive offerings and we are trying to get the
Government of India to recognise this unique role in design and thereby shift some of the huge
emphasis only on science which cannot answer those questions in any convincing way. Yes, the Future
is our blind spot, but design does have a way to deal with this, we have to live with this and refine our
ability to be rresponsive as we go forward.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac on tour in Bangalore at the NID R& D Campus
010981 2007-11-30 21:38 Re: The design process as the construction, exploration and expansion of a conceptual
space
Dear Dr Heape
Please accept my hearty congratulations for a huge task well done. I am downloading the document just
now and I will get back to you after I have read through the offering. Thank you. Thank you for the very
generous sharing of your thesis and I am sure that my students and colleagues at NID and designers in
India will benefit enormously from having access to it in almost real time.
With warm regards
010798 2007-09-24 21:45 Re: Changing role of the designer

Dear Lars
Thank you for sharing your research and thoughts on teamwork and group design shifts that you see
happening in the design space. Design is changing and in more ways than we can describe just now
since we are inside it and it is difficult to have a distant view as one would in history, but we can feel the
change and we are responding to it in practice and in education. However I do beileve that we will soon
have an accepted framework of theory since so many researchers are working on this across the world
and I see lists like this one making a huge contribution just as the many peer reviewed journals did in the
past. This is not to say thet the journals will not continue to play a major role in the future but the internet
has changed their role in more ways than we have appreciated as yet. I have just made a post to my
blog called "Design for India" in order to explore just such a change in our education and focus in India
and the post is called "Sustainability as a Principle for Design action in India" which can be seen at this
link below. <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/09/sustainability-as-principle-for-

design.html> We are not alone in this kind of thinking about design and I am pleased that the net
access is bringing together many like minded people (as on this list) to very quickly act in sharing to
collaborate and explore the boundaries of these changes as they happen in our own spaces, in action or
in theory, and in education as the case may be. We have been exploring the changed format in our
understanding of design thinking and action in some of the courses that we teach at NID and I must say
that many of these moves are inspired by the great pathbreaking work that was done at the HfG Ulm in
the 60's and shared with the world in their 21 Journals and of late many new books are being made
available from the meticulously indexed archives that I am learning from on a daily basis. The course
that I teach at NID is called "Design Concepts and Concerns" and the name was changed in 1997 from
Design Methods and Design Process, which was how it was addressed from way back in the early 70's
when it was offered to our students in Product Design as a major course in the curriculum. Today it is
offered to all the 17 disciplines offered at NID and it is a core course at the Foundation Programme for
the Undergraduate students who would then move on the all the disciplines offered at this level. It is
here that we are able to offer our new perspectives on design thinking and action which is a shift away
from looking at the product alone to looking at the product along with the context and beyond at many
tangible and intangible aspects that we can now see as critical to a designed offering. I have set up a
new blog to discuss thye course in a contemporaneous format and you can see this unfold as we teach
it at NID across all our campusses, at Paldi, Gandhinagar and Bangalore. Some of you on the list may
wish to comment on our explorations and this would help shape our movement forward with conviction
and resolve. You will see that most of the assignments are offered to the whole team of designers who
are assembled in an organic manner and the tasks are assigned to the group and there is a value that
we find in this format. <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com> I look forward to
other contributions from the list in the days ahead.
With warm regards
24 September 2007 at 9.40 pm IST
010690 2007-08-18 16:03 Re: Announcing an Award for a Design (Articulate Plan) to Tie Shoelaces
Dear Jerry and Ken
Describing the design process and worse, trying to define Design, does get everybody into a tizzy, all
knotted up, and now I believe it more than ever before. Jerry, your arguements quoted below reminds
me of a lecture by Prof Bruce Archer at NID when he showed us a diagram that explained the process of
design from the point of view of potential or goal setting (intentions) on the one side and specifications
and descriptions on the other, shown as a set of interpenetrating cones along a time-line of decision
making. According to him, when we set out to design we have an infinite or almost infinite set of

possibilities from our point of departure while the specifications would be close to zero. However as we
take a series of decisions along a time line towards the ultimate goal the possibilities offered by the
particular situation of intention start diminishing along the cone till it reaches the apex at the specific
solution or synthesis. At the same time the other cone, that which represents specifications, moves in
the opposite direction and from being almost zero at the tip it grows to be almost infinite when the final
solution is manifested and articulated. The early decisions are strategic in nature and the later ones are
more tactical in nature. I have made this diagram as a model which I use to explain this phenomenon to
my students since I could not find the original offered by Prof Archer anywhere (except in my memory of
that lecture), unless someone on this list can find it for me. A business leader in Ahmedabad explained
this phenomenon to me many years later in another way when he was describing the process of drug
discovery and approval process particularly for the US markets where he said that for a single drug to be
finally approved through the rigerous process of State regulatory approval system he would have to ship
out as many as seven truck-loads of information in the form of paper documents to achieve the closure
of the process. I wonder how many truck-loads of documents would be needed to meet the task set by
Ken, if we are to assume the same levels of critical definition that is required by the US drug
administration? Ken, you have not specified the kind of shoe that would be laced. Nor the number and
location of the holes, if any, that would need to be threaded to achieve the anchoring of the lace or laces
before we can actually tie the laces down in one "informed gesture" that is based on the description that
is to be produced by members of this list. The imposibility of the task gets more onerous when one looks
at the many kinds of laces that are now available (see online sources) all using numerous weave
techniques and with new hardware being invented each day to make non-threaded laces in the form of
drop-in-place or hook along kind of lace-stays, the task gets even more interesting. Where do we begin
and where does it all end? Jerry is right when he declares that at any stage we would have to set a
lower limit to what is accepted as known, otherwise we may have to define each and every word in the
description and the unstated set of words that would make the ones used make sense as a language.
What about the language of description, can it be in plain English? In India we have 14 official languages
accepted by the State!! I will let you ponder this one and I am not going to attempt the dinner date with
Ken but I would like to look through the window at those who finally make it, good luck.
With warm regards
010576 2007-08-09 20:05 Re: Design as design research and design culture
Dear Uma and the PhD-Design list

This is a long post and it has a long tail which I have not edited since Uma and I, both the Indians have
been self critical and have had an offline set of exchanges which we felt should be shared with the list
for those who may be interested in this particular thread while the others may delete the whole post
since it is long, very long. Your concerns about the crafts persons and the power equations as
disadvantaged persons is a real one which needs to be addressed in any form of research or
development action. The other threads on the social consequences of design I am sure will address
some of these concerns. Business too is changing their attitude towards the use of design from what I
hear. Yesterday we had a lecture in the NID auditorium from a senior member of the IDEO team in San
Francisco, Joanne Oliver, who spoke at length about the internal processes that addressed ethical
practices and the consequences of design at IDEO while she also shared examples of projects that
could illustrate this approach and the experiments that IDEO had conducted in the project dealing with
Recycling, Reuse etc. In the Q & A session some of us asked probing questions about the ethical
standards in business about the use of design as well as about IDEO's stand on such matters, which
was both candid as well as informative. I am sure that if practice has become sensitive to such matters
and not just about making the business go at any cost I am sure that the design research community too
would find ways to track and build on this practice that is being talked about in design circles a lot.
Europe has called for a multi-national programme for addressing climate change and this too is
becoming an agenda item across the world as are the social consequences of planning, design and
government action. I will not elaborate here but save it for another post since this one is already very
long. I do look forward to hearing more from the list about work done in other situations about social
audits of design action and how these are done and what have been the effects of such action. Yes, I do
agree with Victor that we need more of this kind of research but I also agree with Ken that some of this is
being done but outside the umbrella of what is seen today as design research.
With warm regards
Dear Professor Buchanan
I was hoping to hear from you about your analysis of my earlier statements. Have I not answered your
question, partly at least? On hearing your interpretation I can respond further. I am not sure if you
misssed my earlier reply.
With warm regards

Dear Uma
Thank you. It is indeed good to have the printed book in hand, very satisfying after so many years in the
making. The 800 crafts documentations and craft design project reports that I mention are both those
done by (undergraduate) students as well as those done by faculty teams with students and researchers
in response to specific development situations that they have been asked to address in India by clients
from both government , industry as well as non-government agencies involved in development
initiatives. All these documentations have been done through direct field work and live contact in the field
with living crafts communities since India is a rich living resource of crafts practices all over the country
and at NID we have found this kind of contact a very stimulating way of informing design students about
the cultural resources that could inform design values. The second question that you ask cannot be
answered without substantial research which has not yet been done, since these documents are not yet
published and they are not freely available for a wider discussion, although I do wish that they were.
However all of these are accessible to those who visit NID Library and after a procedure to ensure the
safety of the documents our students, faculty and visiting researchers have been using it as a resource
to inform design action in that particular craft or region. The quality of the documents vary quite a lot
based on many parameters but some are worthy of great respect since they have been done with
passion and with maticulous research which would put many qualified researchers to shame, even if
they have been handled at the under-graduate level. All these documents have been done with an
underlying intention of their being used as a design resource and to make the study a take off point for a
development initiative and very few have been done only for the sake of creating knowledge about the
craft, although these may be the most informative sources that you may find about the far flung places
about which very little may be available in the published space. Our new book is filling that huge void in
India and we hope that we can continue to expand this base by our strategies of using the web as a
platform which is the fourth stage of our ongoing project at NID. In the context of our discussion on this
list about design research, I do believe that all this work is valid design research and it has helped
support many design and strategy initiatives initiatives that we have undertaken over the years in the
field as well as those that use the resource as a back drop for contextual information where none is
available, particularly in the whole area of rural development, be it health, education, employment or
infrastructure, to name only a few areas of design action from our huge list of potential areas, 230
sectors in all. This does not mean that all the avenues for design research are covered nor does it mean
that we should not initiate higher studies and post doc projects in all these areas. I have proposed an
area of action for our Institute which I called Design Audits for Industry and Governments. As part of our
Design Policy initiatives I have suggested that India should set up a seven stage action plan to bring

design thought and action to the 230 sectors of our economy. I have posted this message on the blog
Design for India and you can review my proposal at this link below: <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2007/06/wish-list-for-indias-national-design.html> or at this short link here
<http://www.tiny.cc/ep8qg> These seven stages are as listed below: 1. Design Opportunities Mapping:
Setting goals and defining objectives in close cooperation with the stakeholders. 2. Design Awareness
Building: Promoting and informing all stakeholders, the public, government, business and society about
the use and processes of design action and research are reproduced here. 3. Design Support Initiatives:
Enabling and empowering user groups and stakeholders to access and manage design to meet their
core needs through incubating, incentiviceing and hand-holding supports. 4. Design Advocacy Services:
Initiating and catalyzing action in high risk areas through planned investment and regulation of
infrastructure and policy initiatives for growth and sustainability. 5. Design Action Initiatives: Public
infrastructure and good practices in governance can be designed through a systematic programme of
government action through public private partnerships to ensure that what is built is an umbrella for
sustained and balanced development across all sectors of need. 6. Design Evaluation and Regulation:
Impact assessment and systems audit on an ongoing basis will inform future investments as well as help
regulate and instill good practices across the board in all development initiatives funded by government.
7. Design Planning and Vision: Support and direct investments in public interest research and design
development initiatives that are both visionary can ensure the future proofing of our economy in a
climate of cataclysmic change. My other posts too have been about such an informed action and these
are listed here for immediate review: • Design inside education: A strategy for India • Global Warming
and Design Concerns in India • 230 Sectors of Economy for Design Action in India • Fields of Design
and Opportunities for India • Science and Design: Reality check for India • Wish List for India’s National
Design Policy <http://www.tiny.cc/ep8qg> • Reflections on Indian Design Policy 2007 Take a look. In
the wish list the design audit is proposed as a procedure to generate accountability through critical
review of design offerings as well as the procedures and methods adopted to achieve these results. I will
get back later if there are further querries from the list or if you have any other suggestions and
questions.
With warm regards
Dear Friends
We have been discussing the lack of research into many aspects of design and design research and I
agree that this is quite true from many angles. However It is also true that many areas of research do

cover the intentions and the outcomes of design action although these may not be percieved as an area
of design research by many in the field as well as outside. At NID we have been doing sustained
research into the crafts traditions of India and these have so far been only available to NID schollars who
have access to the single unpublished copies in the NID Library, over 800 study documents if you do not
include the ones on textile crafts and the design projects. These have remained unpublished both due to
a lack of funds and also due to a lack of vision that thse are of great value to our design movement in
India and elsewhere. However, I am happy to inform you that we have just recieved an advance copy of
the book "Handmade in India" that was researched and created at the NID based on 40 years tradition
of crafts documentation and the last five years of intensive research by over 50 teams from NID and it is
published and produced by COHANDS and Mapin Publishing Pvt Limited with the support from
Development Commissioner Handicrafts Government of India. I am one of its editors and the first copy is
at hand and we are quite pleased with the results. I have posted a note about the book and its design
intensions on the Design for India blog at this link below: <http://www.design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2007/08/handmade-in-india-handbook-of-crafts-of.html> There is another post
about the information architecture used for the book at the Visible information India blog at this link
below: <http://visible-information-india.blogspot.com/2007/08/information-architecture-for-
handmade.html> We hope to have the books out in bookstores in India by early October 2007 and you
can see more about the book at the Mapin website at this link.
<http://www.mapinpub.com/Handmade_in_India> Mapin proposes top make the book available
globally when the second reprint is released later this year. RMIT produced a book titled 'Design
Research" by Peter Downton and the key premise here is that every design project is a platform for
research and I do agree with this point of view but we do need to find ways of publishing these design
research findings and perhaps the web based approaches to publishing that are being achieved by
portals on design may actually help us bridge the gaps that we are discussing today. What do you think?
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at Gandhinagar
010516 2007-08-05 23:51 Re: A question about movies

Dear Punya
You could think of using some of the short films made by Charles and Ray Eames in the 60's and 70's
which are both evocative and exqiisite in their expression of form and content. I would particularly
recommend 'Tops' and "Black Top" which are poetic expressions on film and there are a whole lot more,
all available easily from the very reasonably priced DVD set of six in a box now available from the
Eames Office website managed by Eames' grandson. <http://www.eamesoffice.com> I first saw these

films in the early 70's as a design student at NID and now I have a personal set which I use in class to
stimulate discussions on sensitivity and design thinking. Check out the website and get the set of six
DVD's since the entire collection is just great for students and can be watched year after year and still be
stimulating for the viewer, they never fail to amaze one, just fascinating.
With warm regards
010513 2007-08-05 09:09 Re: a question -- Outcomes and Results of Design Process
Dear Ken
Very interesting thread and a wonderful summary of ideas and concepts associated with design. I would
just add a couple of aspects from your note below which I have quoted here. Quote one: .......Science
examines the natural world including human beings > in their role as natural creatures. Science seeks
objective truth. > The humanities examine the world of human experience. The humanities > seek
subjective understanding. Design in this larger sense examines > and works with the artificial world.
Design works through practice > and examines the realm of the appropriate. UnQuote I would add the
ideal here which is informed by spirituality and religion as the fourth domain of action. Nelson and
Stalterman include this as the seeking of Truth (science), addressing Real (design), finding the Ideal
(religion) and your subjective category does take care of human subjective criteria for viewing the world
which is also critical for design action. The second quote: ......Design solves problems embedded in the
world of > human action, where limits on time, resources, and information > constrain every design
process as solution-oriented but imperfect. > Every solution must - in Herbert Simon's (1956) term -
satisfice by > selecting among constraints. Meeting one constraint more fully means > accepting lower
values on others. Understanding design as a general > human phenomenon therefore requires us to
understand the nature, > conditions, and consequence of successful design process. UnQuote What I
find missing in this rendering of Herbert Simon and perhaps in his text as well is that human intentions
and ideology may make all other constraints negotiable and therefore of no great consequence for the
determined design action by a community or a society in the long term perspective. For instance, with
the concern for "Global Warming", a truly wicked problem, we may have to set aside all other
considerations and focus on the innovations that can help us out of the mess that we are in today which
is a product of our conventional thinking and behaviour. Very little research has been addressed at this
aspect of design action. Ideology as a driver for design can set aside time, material and information
consequences by setting the agenda for science and research to find appropriate solutions in the long
term rather than in a time bound frame, and in many development situations the market forces are not

the prime drivers of design decision but this does bring much conflict intop the design process in a
political sense. Thank you for your thoughtful note.
With warm regards
010488 2007-07-31 20:30 Re: Out of step 2

Dear David
I understand your question partly perhaps and the huge implications that it has for the design journey. In
India, and at NID, we have been constantly in touch with hugely varied groups of people whom we would
consider users, particularly in a development setting and we have had numerous engagements in the
past with some very perplexing questions that have needed to be answered before we could justify any
solution that the design team would have to offer. The diversity is truly enormous since we have
linguistic variety, cultural variety, educational level variety, economic disparity as variety and belief
systems in religion, race and caste which may not be the case in many other parts of the world. In a
development communication situation dealing with information products the task is even more ominous
since we would have to try and discover many of these intangible attributes by actual field work and
numerous iterations before we can even claim that some degree of resolution has been achieved. I
recall many such projects that were done at NID dealing with economic, educational and health related
issues in particular regions of the country in the 70's and 80's that gave us an insight into the complexity
of the situation that we were dealing with but I cannot claim that we have an adequate body of research
that can be taken up and used elsewhere, unfortunately. One project that comes to mind is the book
which was finally produced at the end of a long design exercise, called "Learning from the Field" which
documented the work done by a team of faculty and students from the Graphic Design discipline at NID
when they had traveled to Rajasthan at the request of the Family Welfare department to look at
communication strategies for population management as well as women's health and reproductive
processes which is a very delicate subject in the tradition ridden society. The graphic innovations and
the processes of finding design approaches were a huge area of learning for those involved but other
than the book mentioned above there is very little discourse on the many many dimensions that were
studied and explored during the project which was quite a massive exercise. The book is still available
from the NID Publications and can be seen at this link below which is a amazing resource for anyone
who may be interested in these complex dimensions of health communication in India:
<http://nid.edu/research_pub_leningfield.htm> One of the authors, Laxmi Murthy, has done some
sustained work after this project and her work with the women of Southern Rajasthan can be seen at
these web links below: <http://www.vikalpdesign.com/> <http://www.vikalpdesign.com/home.html>

The other author of the book, Ashoke Chatterjee, was formerly the Executive Director of NID from 1975
to 1985 and he has been personally responsible for keeping NID and its graphic designers in particular
focussed on the social commmunication agenda for many years and through his sustained committment
brought in, UNIDO, UNESCO, the World Bank and many other international and national agencies to
NID, with design challanges to be handled in the area of social communication. Ashoke Chatterjee was
the recipient of the Sir Misha Black Award and he got it on behalf of NID for excellence in Design
Education and it was Prof Bruce Archer of RCA who came to India specifically with the task of conferring
the award on Ashoke Chatterjee who presently lives in Ahmedabad and is active in the field of crafts and
development as the President of the Crafts Council of India. There were literally hundreds of small and
large projects that were done in this space which have not been adequately documented or discoursed
about and this research work can still be done if someone is interested even today, albeit historically.
The role of crafts and economic development was another avenue that brought us (from industrial
design disciplines and textiles) into contact with very complex issues of both economic deprivation in our
villages as well as social and cultural continuity of local communities in the throes of massive change
while we were trying to use design as a means of creating change and this showed us that we needed to
build a sense of responsibility and accountability not only to the sponsoring agencies who were our
clients but also to the user groups who were the ultimate beneficiaries of the design action or I should
say who would be directly affected by the fallout of the design action and it taught us a whole lot about
humility in the field. This led me to look at the role of ideological positions in design education and in this
search we came to include value systems and attitudes as core offering as part of our very unique
educational culture at NID in the 70's and 80's when a lot of time and discussion centered around the
ideological foundations of design instruction and evaluation processes within education. While many
meetings and discussion sessions were conducted on this theme we have very little published material
to show for all this deliberation, unfortunately. Our student evaluation system that was innovated in those
days did not have a comparative grading system since the faculty and the founder administrators of the
school felt that students must be benchmarked against themselves and not against their colleague and
attitude and value system was always a part of the discussion which has changed in recent times in
order get the Institute more aligned with global and university systems of evaluation, and I believe that
we have lost something very precious through this shift. To get back to your question of how does one
know where one stands in the systems diagram of a complex situation, all I can say is that we will never
know for sure but if we are sensitised enough to be open to see feedback from the unstated traumas of
the user groups we will be able to correct our course (hopefully) just that little bit to make a real
difference. Sounds like magic, but design synthesis (when everything just falls in place) is a bit of magic
too, dont you think? This was about the time that we discovered the body of work in semiotics and
language and tried to bring it into design action particularly in the framework of social communications
and film making for development al documentaries at NID that was looking at many kinds of

communication problems in health, education and development issues. Systems thinking introduced our
teams to semiotics but I think that the issue that you are raising is one that deals with ideology as well
and this has not yet been resolved in any satisfactory manner since there have been many debates on
ethics as well as many postures and positions held by individuals that were not stated but acted upon in
very political ways, something which can be felt but not seen. We can recognise from this that design at
this level is a very political activity but to master it would need many new skills and frameworks for
understanding of its operation as a professional in the service of a client, many times the Government
itself, since these issues are not dealt by industry usually, but in recent times we see some from industry
leaning in this direction as well, as part of their corporate social responsibility, or may I say the guilt-
redresel funding routes or the carbon-credit buying route. Design is not value free.
With warm regards
010478 2007-07-29 23:05 Re: Out of step

Dear David
My two bits on the ecological and ethical approaches in design. About the time that Moholy-Nagy was
settling in the USA the field of systems thinking was taking root in Europe. Ludwig von Bertalanffy
defined General Systems Theory which had a great influence on anthropology, psychology and
linguistics besides its impact on systems dynamics and information theory and almost all other fields of
study. Ludwig von Bertalanffy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Bertalanffy> This is where
Margret Mead and Gregory Bateson come into the recent discussions on this list on the mythologies of
anthropology and design since their work had a great influence on design thinking in the 70's and 80's
when the ecological debate really surfaced. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory> While the
Bauhaus may be seen to be addressing the debates that came out of the Art & Crafts movement it was
the HfG Ulm that set the next level of discourse to include systems thinking at the heart of the design
thinking and action and much was published by the school and by its teachers when most other design
schools kept their focus on celebrating the object without engaging in any form of discourse in an sheer
absence of research and theory formation that seems very strange indeed. From ecological to
ideological was in my view a simple step when issues of responsibility and accountability were raised by
many thinkers within design and here I would particularly include Bucky Fuller and Victor Papanek, both
considered mavericks from within the profession in their day, but with a considerable degree of respect
particularly amongst the student community. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Papanek> In recent
times the work of John Chris Jones, Bruce Archer and Christopher Alexander, particularly his most
recent work on the Nature of Order, an amazing four volume offering, that proposes a new position for

design in providing intellectual and spiritual leadership for humanity in the days ahead, very far reaching
debate indeed. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christopher_Jones> <http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk/> Wiki
is a great source for instant information in a nutshell.
With warm regards
28 July 2007 at 11.00 pm IST
010474 2007-07-29 18:01 Re: [Fwd: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] SV: Mythologies of anthropology and design]
I have misunderstood your question. Sorry. You ask "...is whether the ultimate test of the validity of a
design is acceptance by users?" My simple answer to that question is that there is no ultimate validity or
truth that any design can have since each may have to be seen in the context of the intentions of the
designer and the socio-cultural and temporal context that it is intended to serve. However my earlier
answer was not about validity in the logical sense but about the measure of success of a design and this
is measured by its acceptance in the market or by society, as the case may be, although it can be
measured by other criteria as well, by groups of experts, by peers, by potential for the future etc.. Design
cannot be viewed independent of the context and an evaluation of the impact of any particular design
offering should be viewed within that particular context and in the particular form in which it is offered.
Design without a context is an object without meaning although each of us could give it new meaning in
our own readings of that object but the meaning then comes from our reading and is not from the object
itself. So the term "validity" corresponds to truth and design is not about truth but about reality. Science
is about finding truths which design is not. "Success" corresponds to achieving set goals and objectives
and here it would cover the intentions of the designer as well as the client groups that we are out to
serve. There are many levels of design action, and I have defined four levels of design action in a paper
listed below for a conference in Brazil in 1998. Each of these levels uses varying types of knowledge
and skills and these actions can be categorised from the tactical to the strategic. Some make small
incremental changes while other offer radical transformations. In my presentation at the IDSA
conference last year I shared a model of the expanding vortex of design where I have used the stone in
the pond metaphor again to show the expanding concerns of design that are moving from material and
structure, form and aesthetic, to economy and society and environment, to politics, law and ethics....all
of which can show us another larger circle of concern and substantially change the whole question of
validity at each expanded level of concern. I hope that I have addressed your question adequately this
time and i do look forward to your critique and comments. I am concerned with ethics and the
interpretation of responsibility and would like to hear your views on the matter.

With warm regards
Your question needs some reflection and I do look forward to your comments as well. Design for me is a
long journey and in a recent lecture for my students I had devised a model which I did mention on this
list a few weeks ago. You can see this model on my website at this link below and it is accompanied with
a voice file of my full description of the journey in case you are interested.
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html> The "Design
Journey" downloads are at the bottom of that page. However, I will give you a summary here since I
could not define design but I can try and explain it in the model of the journey. I speak of design using a
metaphor of casting a stone in the pond. The design intentions are to achieve a goal and the first
thoughts are in the form of a perception that simultaneously triggers off an imagination(s) which can only
be seen or felt by the person doing the imagining. At this stage it is internal to the person and we could
call this person a 'designer'. I call this internal process 'inploration' since it continues for quite some time
internally through images and feelings as well as sensory knowledge that is informed by touch, etc.
before it manifests itself as explorative offerings as sketches, models and field contacts, all explorations
in a meandering form of journey, and in the process we gather insights along the way. It is these insights
that give us the conviction to act and make more tangible models both to test as well as to prove the
concept in search of support and approval from those who can partner with making the design a reality,
a manifestation in the world, and if successful with a wider acceptance by the intended users as well.
However, at the stage when the design is launched to market the designer also looses control and the
effects are no longer managed by the designer alone since the other players take charge and multiple
forces start to act on the creation in the form in which it is manifested. However, the designer has to still
contend with the responsibility for their creations and it here that the ethical dilemma would definitely
exist and I would be keen to hear your interpretation of this dilemma. At the early stages we could call
the models offered as design concepts, not fully formed and manifested as yet, but at later stages the
specifications become more and more decided and the offering (object, message, event , infrastructure
or service as the case may be) gets more and more differentiated from other similar offerings or
alternatives and it would take on a character of its own. When such an offering is fully accepted by
society it shapes culture especially when it is absorbed into the fabric of that society and this is perhaps
what I have meant by the term "market" and also what was intended by Gui Bonsieppe, in his table in
the book, "Interface". Yes, in this sense, design needs to be manifested in reality and find acceptance

otherwise it will remain a "design concept" or an "award winning design" that was never produced or
accepted by consumers and users in the field. This tells me that peer approval alone does not guarantee
the success of a design but its acceptance by society does, even if acceptance may take many years
after offering is made. I look forward to your interpretation and commentary on this view of design. In my
note to Thomas Rasmussen this morning I had described briefly our explorations in the field study when
we undertook our research on bamboo in the Northeast of India. Now, many years later we have some
concrete expressions to show for all these explorations in the form of a series of design offerings that we
do believe will help local communities change their own lives and employment potentials using our
offerings of both form and strategy that are embedded in our design offering, some tangible and most of
it intangible. take a look at some of these products on show in Germany this month and I have given
links to all our projects on bamboo done over the past ten years or so on the recent post on my blog at
this link below: Our field research was done more than twenty years ago. <http://design-for-
india.blogspot.com/2007/07/ifa-exhibitions-in-stuttgart-and-berlin> So what I mean by market is not
just the commercial market place that are driven by corporate industry but also live spaces that are
occupied by society in the process of shaping culture and I do beileve that design helps shape culture in
its many manifestations, both at the small and the significant change making moves that is determined
by society and not by the designer at all. I hope that I have been able to convey my intended meaning
here and I am curious to hear your views. Thank you for your question.
With warm regards
Dear Thomas
I am thrilled to hear about your success in bringing serious design research into a design school and this
is indeed something that we have been trying to do with little success at NID although much discussion
and policy statements have been made about the need for such an activity on a sustained basis. I am
also in complete agreement with your that design needs to draw in methodologies and people from other
disciplines and trying to locate design studies in a non-design setting may not be as effective, but you
seem to have figured out the way to do this even if it is slow and painful at times. However, when we
started our discussion on this thread, the question was whether design needed to be seen as a separate
genre from science and the arts (and humanities, math and language). I still feel that there is this
difference that we may need to be taking into account, not to retain a discrete position for design but in
order to understand when the activity starts moving away from what Nigel Cross would call the
"Designerly Way" of doing research and if this could be different from the similar work being done by

scholars rooted in traditions that stem from other disciplines. My own experience in doing field work on
bamboo culture in India was that although we borrowed heavily from anthropology and ethnography for
methods and procedures we were doing something different and in the field we did meet many
anthropologists from the formal streams and they seemed to be driven by other concerns and the results
too were quite different. My note books and those of my two other designer colleagues on my team were
full of diagrams and sketches and these were punctuated with notes and recordings in words and
jottings in the field and I simply assumed this was a result of our training and the ease with which we
could use sketching and drawing with a degree of skill that came naturally to all three of us in the field.
We spent a year in the field and came back to NID with over 400 baskets which we analysed for
structure and form again using drawing as a primary means of analysis and this analysis revealed to us
a wealth of new information and insights about the material, about the people who made the products
and about the culture in which the activity was located, and for me this was design research, since we
were doing all this work not to generate new knowledge,. although it did give us a whole new angle on
the local culture but our intention was to understand hoiw this material could be used for future
development initiatives that could bring social and economic prosperity through the use of design and
local entrepreneurship using bamboo and the local skill sets as the basis for going forward where
financial capital was hard to come by easily. This resulted in our book, the "Bamboo and Cane Crafts of
Northeast India" and many people saw this as a mere documentation of the local traditions and could not
see the intentions and the embedded strategies till much later when the prototypes and demonstration
training programmes had commenced in the field. It is very difficult to communicate design intent and it
may be easier to just describe it as a creation of knowledge exercise if we are looking for funding
support, at least in India today. My comments were therefore based on these assumptions and
experiences. Design is very complex and it may need a whole new way to promote although deep down
we may all recognise it, our acceptance of its importance still falls far short of what is needed. How to do
this is the big question for me.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
Dear Francois-Xavier Nsenga
I have not quoted Gui Bonsiepe in my note but I had given an interpretation of what he had to say in the
table on comparision between technology, science and design innovation as I understood it. I did not
look at his book while making this statement since it was done from my memory of the past reading

since the book "Interface" (impressive and exciting) which (is tucked away in many piles of books and
papers in my quite chaotic office where I use pile management rather than the key word organising that I
can do for all my digital files, my digital desktop is caotic too but lends itself to boolean search...) is not
easily accessible each time I want to respond to a post on the list. However what I take away from
Bonsieppe is that he would distinguish between a design concept and a "design in the field" that is found
acceptance in a "market place" or in the hands of numerous users (market success), which is the
ultimate test of the validity of a design, acceptance by users. Here the distinction works for me since all
innovation of technical specifications and procedures can be tested repeatedly in a laboratory if the
stated procedure is followed explicitly but in the case of a "design" it can fail if any one condition in the
environment or context were to change and further since we are dealing with people they too can
change their mind in a fickle manner, which explains the shift of fashion, and it also makes that activity of
design reflexive since competition and other thinking persons in the environment can intervene, oppose
or otherwise hamper the smooth acceptance of the design which makes the activity very political indeed.
(sorry for the long scentance, just flowed from your provocation). Therefore patents work for technical
innovations but not for design, which has to depend on copyright and the design act. Science on the
other hand claims that it is in pursuit of truth, which it is but shall never find, since there is no such thing
as an absolute truth. Therefore the peerr review system is great since a theory can stand as long as it is
approved by informed and distinguished peers or by an authority, whichever may be the case, till it is
challenged and disproved by a new theory and a paradigm shift in the discipline, as Kuhn would have us
believe. That design is wicked is then explained by this classification that we can never know at anytime
if a particular design will work or not and only the unfolding future can show us the rsults, however I must
qualify this by saying that the risks can be reduced by rsearch and expert insight as well as power to
manage markets as it may be in the case of monopolies and in some other specific situations of control
and coercion.
With warm regards
010454 2007-07-27 00:01 Re: Mythologies of anthropology and design

Dear David
Well said. I do think that design needs some pretty bold moves, even poetic ones, good or bad, mature
or immature. In a recent message on my blog I made the following statement about two significant
moments of the human design journey. http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/ifa-exhibitions-
in-stuttgart-and-berlin.html Quote That these aspects of design are not tangible in the exhibits is both
a problem and a challenge for the design initiative and it would be appropriate for us to remember here

that Germany is the home of both the Bauhaus (1919 – 1936) and the Hfg Ulm (1950 – 1968), both
great design schools, nay great design movements, that showed the world the power and subtlety of
design, from shaping form to structure, and from the creation of meaning and beyond, at one level a play
of aesthetics and technology, at another economy and style and at yet another, politics and philosophy
and about the shaping and manifestations of a vision or intention, the shaping of culture itself. UnQuote
What you see in design exhibits and images is not the whole story and similarly what you read in poetry
is not the whole story either, the difference may lie in the intentions and not in the expresion. Your call to
the poets on the list could be extended to the designers as well, do you agree?
With warm regards
26 July 2007 at 11.55 pm IST
010452 2007-07-26 23:34 Fwd: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] SV: Mythologies of anthropology and design]
Dear Thomas
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. My suggestion that anthropology may be considered a New
Discipline of Design was really tounge-in-cheek, and stated as a provocation for Dori so I do not
disagree with you that design is a general discipline that is mighty hard to define, if not impossible. Yes,
design is a natural human activity and the politics of separate disciplines comes from the
professionalising of the discipline, its tools sets and knowledge resources and the need to differentiate
the services offered by different groups of profesionals and by university departments in need of
segregated funding as well as from industry interested to meet their vested interst for a particular kinds
of professionals for their immediate and near term needs. However we will still need "to bring design
into" all kinds of human activities and all of us will be asked to help explain, if not define, what we mean
by – bringing design into – all these human activities and suggest ways in which this can be achieved. In
India we have been struggling to get attention to design as a profession while most science and
technology activities are supported by a very substantial and serious system of supports and the same
kind of support is not yet forthcoming for the design sector, although this is changing slowly. Design is
easily equated to fashion and style due to greater media coverage to these aspects and the other
aspects tend to be overlooked or glossed over as we have experienced in the fairly low interest in
development related uses of design. Gui Bonsiepe has a table in his book "Interface" where he makes a
comparative positioning of technology innovation, science innovation and design innovation, all of which
need imagination and all the qualities that suggest the presence of vision and experimentation. However
the location where these are typically tested take place are the company workshop, the university
laboratory and market place respectively and the significant aspect is that while tech innovation can be
tested repeatedly by set procedures and science innovation needs to be peer approved to find

acceptance, in the case of design innovation its validity can only be tested by its acceptance in the
market place since it is context dependent and cannot be standardised. For me this is a good
representation of differences that can be grasped by most people who have little understanding of the
design way. I would like to hear more views on this issue before exploring it further with the list since we
are entering a space where it would be very difficult to make any definitive statement and I am sure that
there are many aspects that I have not considered in my earlier messages.
With warm regards
26 July 2007 at 11.15 pm IST

Dear Lily I stand corrected. I did leave out the humanities and language from my categorisation of
human knowledge under science and the arts. Klaus will not forgive me for not including language in
particular. ..(and math and philosophy as well...) Yes, design uses all of these and still stands apart,
which is why we are having such discussions about the nature of design since we are trying to explain it
in terms of all the other disciplines perhaps. Yesterday I was speaking to a group of young
communication design students from video and animation at NID and I shared with them the wonder of
dealing with intangibles in design and communication. many product designers that I know are puzzled
at the methods and ways of the communications designers and perhaps they do not factor in the
possibility that they are not dealing with material but with ideas using language and image and some in
time and motion and this may require a whole new set of skills which may not be offered in the basic
materials or composition courses of the traditional foundation programmes in design. I have watched
sopme of our communications design students mature in the field of television broadcast and advertising
and learn to use cultural cues and local metaphors to great effect in their work just as our product
designers learn engineering and marketing to realise exciting products for the marketplace. With warm
regards M P Ranjan from my office at NID 26 July 2007 at 11.50 am IST Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of
Design Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group
(DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off)
91 79 26623692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email: ranjanmp@nid.edu
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp web domain:

Dear Dori

Thank you for this wonderful and informative post with your reflections and thoughts on the field of
anthropology. Most stimuilating, thank you. I have been arguing that design is a class apart from both
science and art, although it uses both these in full measure at its best, and at many times falls between
these two stools in our interpretation and description of the field. Today it is being appropriated by
business and management under the strategy banner that the business magazines are harping about.
Soon economists will be substituting the word planning with design and the word will take on new hues
as we go forward and find that Apple is succeeding in the marketplace, they have returned stunning
financial numbers this quarter, by the way. While Anthropology is an exciting and vibrant field with many
facets, I still see it as a science that helps explain human relationships and the human condition in many
contexts. You say that anthropology helps in early stage design directions and I am in full agreement
with that notion and I do believe that design must use more of anthropology tools, techniques and
knowledge base in this and other stages of decision making and exploration as part of the design
process. However design is about the creation of the future – its artefacts, procedures, events and
infrastructure and policies – with the use of imagination and insights about the human condition and I do
not think that design is actually concerned about creating the frameworks for our undrstanding of the
human condition as a science would do, although I must hasten to add that most design activities do
throw up many such frameworks of understanding as well as new knowledge, but that is not its primary
objective. Here anthropology seems to be that science that can provide us with such knowledge
frameworks and explain to us the context and the relationships that operate as well as provide the
design teams (not just designers) the means to make the decisions that must be an act of faith if it is to
do with the future, which as Wolfgang Jonas says is essentially unknowable, and I agree with his
position. Design is speculative and opportunistic but it can be validated only in the field or the
marketplace and never in a laboratory since it is not just a concept but a situated object or event or
activity that has infinite connections and therefore complex and unknowable. If I treat anthropology as a
science then it is not design, since design is not science nor is it art, although it is confused with both. So
we will need to invent a NEW DESIGN DISCIPLINE and give it a name and start some new programmes
to teacgh it and that discipline would use anthroploogy as its core knowledge resource and it will then no
longer be anthropology (as a science) but become a field of design. tee hee. Wonderful. Lets discuss.
With warm regards
26 July 2007 at 10.35 am IST
010426 2007-07-25 15:32 Re: Origins of 'The Ecology of the Artificial'?

Dear Klaus

I would tend to agree with you on the Science of the Artificial. However one title that I would include to
the list of books dealing with objects and ecologies of objects is the following: Csikszentmihalyi, M., &
Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981). The meaning of things: Domestic symbols and the self. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Further, other sources that touched on the concept for me include:
Bateson's "Steps" was the first source for me that introduced the concept of "ecology" in human systems
although we had been discussing (as students at NID) Bucky Fullers works with John McHale,
particularly in the Design Science Decade volumes where World Resources and systems implications
are discussed in great detail. Stafford Beer' "Platform for Change" is another holistic perspective that
helped clarify concepts of systems and ecologies of relationships in the early 80's and late 70's. Eric
Jantsch, The self organizing universe, Scientific and Human Implication: of the Emerging Paradigm of
Evolution, New York: Pergamon. 1980 was another source of inspiration. I mention these sources since
we at NID were looking at product design in our local context and some of these sources helped greatly
in setting our own goals and directions in the early days. The discussions in the Hfg Ulm Journals was
definitely another influencial resource that comes to my mind. By the way some of our bamboo product
designs are on display at the IFA Gallery in Stuttgart, Germany for this month and in Berlin till October.
You can see more about these products in these links below and it may be significant in the context of
this discussion since we were looking at both biological aspects of systems and local ecology as well as
the material ecologies on the kind of objects that we would design in order to help local communities
help themselves as a development initiative in India. <http://cms.ifa.de/en/exhibitions/dt/past-
exhibitions/2007/in-site/bambus-initiative/> <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/ifa-
exhibitions-in-stuttgart-and-berlin.html>
With warm regards
010397 2007-07-17 21:38 Re: Design as Margaret Mead

Dear Dori (warning – a long reply)
Design and Anthropology: Strange Bedfellows? You have raised some very interesting issues about
design and anthropology, but I must both agree and disagree with you on some of the aspects of your
discourse. Firstly both anthropology and design can be seen at many levels of thought and action.
Margret Mead and Gregory Bateson represent the higher reaches of anthropology action and in Design
we could place Charles Eames and Christopher Alexander at an equivalent level of both thought and
action. These names are only intended as place holders for my statements and not a complete list in any
case, there are a great number of others that I would include on both sides, if I can take sides. I am from
the design side, having been trained as a designer in the CRAFT tradition and over the years I have

grown to respect and admire the various contributions to the numerous fields of design research and in
understanding people, particularly from anthropology, that I have perhaps transgressed into the
discipline, both by adopting the field techniques as well as using concepts and approaches established
by good research that originated in anthropology and ethnography. However my argument is that there
is a marked difference in the intentions of both fields, correct me if I am wrong. Anthropology, as a
science is about understanding people and culture and in the process revealing facets of the past and
the present by the conceptual construction of frameworks that can support this understanding. Design
on the other hand is about understanding people and contexts with the express intention of shaping the
future, both use tools and techniques from a number of fields and anthropology has a much longer
tradition of scholarship in the recording of these tools and processes while design has been more about
action and less about reflection and capture of knowledge which seems to be a recent area of interest
and a relatively new field of scholarship, design research. I have personally trespassed into the domain
of anthropology, with the intention of using my studies for future design applocation, when I traveled my
team in the villages of Northeast India from 1979 and in this we used many insights that were drawn
from the fields of ethnography and anthropology. Our work on bamboo crafts was not just intended to
document the people and their artifacts, which we did, collected over 400 unique baskets and analysed
them for our book, but the real and stated intention was to understand how this knowledge could be
used to bring development and change to the local communities and to bring prosperity with cultural
continuity and many other such intangible objectives. These experiences have given me the conviction
that we need to use these tools and concepts from a number of disciplines but we were not able to get
any of the specialists to work directly with us, unfortunately, perhaps it was our failure to adapt to the
rigor of the specialists since the nature of the design quest may have been different or for some other as
yet unexplained reason. Design is about synthesis and in this it is now evident that it would require that
use of many disciplines and knowledge pools and it also must use many sensibilities, some drawn from
the erafts and others for intellectual traditions, and the knowledge base at the strategic level of action is
an all inclusive frame in which every field of knowledge would be included, all providing opportunities in
as many as 230 sectors of our economy. I have more extensive arguements for this approach in papers
written over the years which are available on my website for download if anyone is interested. However I
have recently set up a blog to discuss some these very same issues in the Indian context, particularly
since design is so poorly understood here and we need to be able to convince both governments and
industry to use this discipline at the high level of policy at which it is truly effective and not just at the
level of craft or at the aesthetic level, although it is also an effective action at these levels for mature
industries to differentiate their brands and products alike. I have a visual model of the 230 sectors and
another for the Design Opportunities on my blog at this link below so do take a look at these to see my
point of view more clearly than I can posibly explain even in the longish post that I have made here. A
picture is worth a thou...... <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com> 230 Sectors model:

<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/230-sectors-of-economy-for-design.html> Fields of
Design Opportunity model: <http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/07/fields-of-design-and-
opportunities.html> I look forward to your thoughtful comments and some thoughts on anthrodesign as
other members of this forum see the emerging discipline called "AnthroDesign" that is in the cusp of both
Design and anthropology as it is taking shape in the days ahead. We may need to carry this discussion
to the AnthroDesign list as well, but that can be done at another time.
With warm regards
010367 2007-07-01 20:08 Re: looking for references on "problem solving" as aperspective on design
Dear Fil and Lars
Three books that I have obtained recently deal with these ideas at a very high level of clarity and
understanding. Brian Lawson (2004). What Designers Know, Elsevier Architectural Press, Oxford Peter
Downton (2003). Design Research, RMIT University Press, Melbourne Nigel Cross (2006). Designerly
Ways of Knowing, Springer- Verlag, London The second, unfortunately does not have an index but the
chapterisation and sub-headings are fairly good pointers for finding the core offerings in the book. All
three have an excellent bibliography with further pointers that would be of value for your research.
With warm regards
010080 2007-05-02 09:46 Re: Euclid, Homo Habilis, and the former Governor of Texas
Dear Jerry
Very well said indeed. I had been pondering about the question of the origin of design as a human
activity for many years now and recently when I was suddenly landed with the task of teaching a course
in the history of design to a group of Product Design students, I used the "human use of fire" as a
significant "design moment" in human evolution, when intentions for safety and security led to the use of
fire in front of camp sites across South Africa almost two million years ago, a date suggested by Richard
Dawkings. This is a uniquely human activity when fire is delibrately used, not for cooking or warmth, but
for security from predators and I am not aware of any animal that uses fire for any purpose. It would be
useful to follow this thread and locate the other significant turning points in the "human use of design"
since most of our history is about the growth of science and not writen from a design perspective, which

I believe will be a different one, from that of discovering facts and not of creating futures with intentional
thought and action, which is what I believe design is.
With warm regards
010079 2007-05-02 09:21 Re: needs, desires and problems

Dear Jerry
Very well said indeed. I had been pondering about the question of the origin of design as a human
activity for many years now and recently when I was suddenly landed with the task of teaching a course
in the history of design to a group of Product Design students, I used the "human use of fire" as a
significant "design moment" in human evolution, when intentions for safety and security led to the use of
fire in front of camp sites across South Africa almost two million years ago, a date suggested by Richard
Dawkings. This is a uniquely human activity when fire is delibrately used, not for cooking or warmth, but
for security from predators and I am not aware of any animal that uses fire for any purpose. It would be
useful to follow this thread and locate the other significant turning points in the "human use of design"
since most of our history is about the growth of science and not writen from a design perspective, which
I believe will be a different one, from that of discovering facts and not of creating futures with intentional
thought and action, which is what I believe design is.
With warm regards
010069 2007-05-01 10:16 [Fwd: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] Problem vs opportunity: DESIGN]

Dear Jerry
Thank you for pointing out the problem with my voice file. The technology problem is still to be solved
and I am awaiting the formal diagnosis from the local expert, perhaps some compression used in
quicktime or in the original WMA file from the Olympus recorder may be the cause. However I can send
the original WMA file directly to anyone who may wish to have a copy for which I need to get a request
by email. Sorry for the hasstle.
With warm regards
1 May 2007 at 10.10 pm IST

010052 2007-04-28 21:51 Re: Problem vs opportunity: DESIGN
Dear Jerry
We do have much in common by way of thinking about design. I downloaded your powerpoint
presentation about design intentions (designing.pps) and it is a very stimulating and expressive
presentation about how you see designing being located in a "rich soup' of human intentions,
explorations, expressions, offerings and evaluations, all happening in a fairly "rich" space, some call it
"wicked",..... and there is much debate going on on this list just now and it will I am sure continue for
many many years till we all get to understand and appreciate better what design really is after all. There
are so manty facets.... My own version about the convoluted process that we all have been discuissing
has been offered as a new model to my students this semester and I have placed this pdf file (tentatively
for discussion) and the associated voice file which describes this model in about 15 minutes in my
recorded lecture (using my new toy, a digi voice recorder - Olympus-WS320M) at my website at this link
below. I call it the "Design Journey 2007" and the file can be downloaded from my site if you wish to
hear my version of the Journey while looking at the sketch model in the associated pdf file also placed
on the site below. <http://tinyurl.com/f9sgs> Your paper that describes the intentional space and the
value propositions that are involved in the design process will need to be discussed and expanded,
perhaps into a whole chapter with many examples from experience and I am sure that many students
will look at design in a new light after understanding these insights that you share in your presentation
and your papers at your website. Thank you for the rich material. Your Designer PiE is already a hot
favorite amongst my students, particularly the ones who have purchased new Apple Mac laptops and we
can see many of these across the campus at NID since the wireless facility brings them all out into the
open.
Thank you and with warm regards
010023 2007-04-25 09:07 Re: Problem vs opportunity: DESIGN

Dear Ken
Many years ago I gave up describing design as a "Problem solving activity" within my design teaching
activities at NID and started calling it an "opportunity seeking and resolving" activity since I sensed that
this approach was more in line with what we actually did and these insights perhaps came from the large
number of professional and self initiated design projects that we had handled during those years at NID.
Insights from practice if you like, I did not have a firm theory to support this stand but a deep conviction
that seemed to grow by the day. Further I found that it brought out different attitudes towards the activity

of design itself and the "designers attitude" is an integral part of the whole activity of design from
understanding the issues and situations in which they are located with a sense of empathy and other
ideological undepinnings as well, particularly in the face of several critical developmnet perspectives that
came up in the kind of projects that we were asked to handle or those that our students chose to take on
from their reading of the need environment. I wonder if there is a body of published work dealing with
"ideological perspectives in design" which is by the way the title of a paper that I started working on in
early 90's but never completed, but it is still on my mind as a valid area of research. Further, design is a
reflexive activity where the action takes place (always) in a field of other thinking and acting individuals
and groups, a social space, which reacts, responds and acts on the situation as well as the designers
themselves, thereby changing the conditions and conterxts far beyond the control of any individual or
group, however resolute their intentions. Perhaps this is what makes design an activity that takes place
in a "wicked space", if I can appropriate Rittels words, in this manner. I would like to hear more from
Klaus, Chuck and Jerry (and others) about this interpretation in the days ahead. The model for
understanding the designer that I used with my students first started with a three pronged diagram
(influenced by Gregory Bateson's model in his "Steps to an Ecology of Mind") which had Knowledge,
Cognition and Skills: Knowing, Thinking and Doing. However someting was missing and some years
later (in 1991 at a conference on design education at the IDC, Mumbai), i presented a revised model
which included "Values" at the centre of the triad, Values, or Feeling and Attitude seemed to complete
the picture and for me the activity of design was no longer a systematic method that Archer had
described but had elements of intentions that went far outside the frame of science reserach and
information management. Your collective comments will be valued. These models can be seen at my
website links below: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Menu79.html> <
http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal78.html>
With warm regards
009956 2007-04-19 17:39 Re: Users

Dear Jerry
I too am in complete agreement with your views and experiences about the group processes that
influence design thought and action. Many a times official funding or the lack of it determines the scope
and directions of design action and rersearch even if groups of designers wish to act in a certain
direction, it may or may not be possible if support is not forthcoming from a variety of sources. We have
experienced this in our own work and as designers working with communities in areas of development
initiatives we see this even more starkly than in industry funded design research since the stakeholders

are many and the forces that act on the design process to enable and empower design are manifold and
complex. At times . as designers we have a clear conception of new and exciting opportunities but
without official financial support it is difficult and time consuming to take it forward to the next level of
action and the gestation time required for social and financial sanction is pretty long drawn and fraught
with many political discussions and 'flying under the radar" types of action where the design intent is not
visible for a long period of time. As design activists and development advocates, yes there is such a
space, in the areas of environmental, social & political change, we will need to foster many new kinds of
communication activities to sensitise the stakeholders before any meaningful action can take place and
this can be a long and frustrating journey indeed if the objectives are significantly large and the mission
is to achieve massive change which may indeed be needed. The "Flying under the Radar" is the title for
my new paper which has my reflections and critique on the new Indian National Design Policy and you
can see it at the "Design with India" website at this link below which was posted today. In case anyone is
interested in obtaining pdf files of the 1979 "Ahmedabad Declaration" from the UNIDO-ICSID conference
at NID as well as the "Major Recommendations" that I have mentioned in the paper, do write to me
directly so that I can forward it off list to your address directly.
<http://web.mac.com/udaydandavate/iWeb/Site/Ranjan_Paper.html> My comments will show how
difficult it has been to get the Government of India to accept design as a critical discipline for
development action in India although much work has been done here in India but these are yet to come
into the frame of acceptance by the political bosses as much as science and technology and
management disciplines have found such acceptance and drawn in the tax dollar for Govenmnent
funded action in India today. Our National Design Policy which can be seen at this website link below is
a beginning (much delayed) that we hope will bring in a better understanding of what design can do in a
complex social and economic landscape such as India, in the years ahead.
<http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=24647> I hope that members from this list will be able to
give some direction to the debates that are taking place in India, particularly about how we can muster
the support of diverse stakeholders in the country and through these we can hope to find a foothold at
the policy level for serious design use in the developing world as a whole.
With warm regards
009893 2007-04-12 19:59 Re: MP Ranjan: Re[PHD-Design]role of information

Dear Dr. Michal Popowsky
Thank you. I have pulled out my copy of Lacan's "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis"
and am browsing through it just now. I look forward to seeing your notes.

With warm regards
009892 2007-04-12 19:53 Re: Role of information in design activity (Was Defining Design (Re: Evidence and ethics))
Dear Friends
In addition to my post made yesterday I would recommend this amazing paper on Design and Design
Education by Prof. Bruce Archer, which was a Keynote address by Prof. Bruce Archer in 1991 titled "The
Nature of Research into Design and Design Education" which can be downloaded as a pdf file from this
link below: <http://idater.lboro.ac.uk/upload/AR_LP2_Bruce_Archer.pdf> or through this link below:
<http://idater.lboro.ac.uk/conferences/view_uploads.php? area=396&type=lp#>
With warm regards
009887 2007-04-12 11:42 Michal Popowsky: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] role of information in design activity-Ranjan
Dear Dr Michal Popowsky
Thank you for your comment. If you have any digital file of Jacqus Lacan's ideas that you have
mentioned below I would be very happy to obtain them. I have a couple of books by Lacan which I had
acquired many years ago when I was trying to get my grip on the whole field of semiotics as it would
apply to design but I cannot say that I have understood fully the thoughts and ideas and perhaps I need
to access some discussions about Lacan's concepts which would help me fathom these concepts more
deeply than I have at present. In case you have any of your papers dealing with this aspect you may
kindly send them to me or point me in the direction where I can obtain it for myself.
With warm regards
009880 2007-04-11 22:43 Re: Role of information in design activity (Was Defining Design (Re: Evidence and ethics))
Dear Klaus, Terry and Jerry This conversation about design and information is positively rivetting and I
just could not stay away for too long. Reflecting on my experience in designing industrial and crafts
products in India over the past thirty years, design management experiences across hundreds of
projects at NID and teaching design processes to graduate and post-graduate students I find that I am

agreeing to much that has been said by Klaus and Jerry about the nature of design and the role of
information. Terry, Graphic Design can indeed be very complex, particularly when you try
communicating matters of sex to orthodox communities in the context of HIV AIDS and its management
in a multi-cultural setting that we have in India, to give just one example that is far more complex than
any engineering problem that I know of. Klaus, firstly I would love to have a copy of your first draft of and
encyclopedia entry on information theory. Please do send it to me directly. I am half-way through your
book, and it is very stimulating indeed. But I just cannot rush through it, as I did the last chapter when I
first got it on hand from Amazon. My offering on the role of information is as follows. Information in
design is not as important as another variant of it which is in my view, "Insight". This is perhaps the
outcome of an information process but from my experience it seems that it is very different from the
information that is referred to in research literature. It is the product of both intellectual as well as
sensory explorations and the "insight" gained is not usually available in any form in the sources that
have been addressed but it is a product of the source and the sensing that the designer brings to the
situation. This insight is quite similar to the concept of "Design Opportunity" that i have explained some
time back on this forum. For me design opportunity is not visible to anyone but the designer since it is a
product of a "Perception" and an "Imagination" which is internal to the designer and therefor not visible
to any other partner until it is experssed in some external model or expression, verbal, visual or
dimensional. In some cases at an early stage it is not even visible to the designer since it is a tacit
concept if I can call it that and only after some number of iterations does it get recognised as a valid
concept and be moved to a more explicit level. This could sometimes take a few years to be recognised,
if at all. I have been talking to my students about this particular conversation on the PhD-Design list and
in my discourse which I called the design journey I had tried to explian the role of information and
insight, and called on them to be sensitive to insights that really neeeded to be harvested as in
agriculture, with care and nurture, which is at the very heart of design action. In December 2005, during
a lecture on design research to a group of new faculty at the NIFT Gandhinagar I had coined a term,
"Inploration" to describe the internal journey that the designer makes when he is armed with information
and insights, feelings and touch sensations etc., and these further modify the concepts that emerge in
the form of models and expressions and each are also strongly associated with feelings and convictions
that ususly grow as the proposals emerge in the designers mind and in the guts at the same time.
Explorations and Inplorations are used to process information into insights which are then harvested into
convictions and expressed as design opportunities and offerings which move gradually from the abstract
expressions to very concrete and particular variants that can meet the variety of expectations that the
situation seems to demand. This description of both 'Design Opportunity" as well as "Design Inploration "
are explained briefly on my website in case anyone is interested at the link below: Design Theory:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Menu79.html> Design Opportunity:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal76.html> Design Inploration:

<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal85.html> The design journey
is therefore a convoluted one in which numerous forays into situations and information sources lead to
the harvesting of "Insights" which are then processed into models and prototypes that are offered for
evaluation and market acceptance. I ha ve a diagram of the "Design Journey" which I had prepared for
my students in ball pen on white paper which I scanned and made into a pdf file which I circulated to my
class alomng with a voice file describing the model. However the voice file is too big to be sent by email
but I propose to make a transcript which I would share with the list at a later date (when it is done). I the
meantime
I look forward to a stimulating discussion on this matter and sign off with warm regards for now.
009595 2007-01-11 07:51 Re: An important research challenge

Dear Juris Mileston
Your note strikes a cord and it resonates with some thoughts that I have had over the years about
design education and who would be the ideal faculty group to deliver great design education. I am a
trained designer but have strayed intellectually and in my readings and writings well beyond what one
would normally recognise as a good design read. As a creative trespasser, to use the term suggested by
Arthur Koestler when he described himself in one of his books, I have wandered into many fields outside
the formal boundary of design as defined by traditional design schools and this was found very puzzling
for many design school administrators and this condition is thankfully changing across the world and not
a day too late, if I may say so. When I set about doing my research into bamboo in the late 70's and
early 80's I was steeped in Anthropology litrature dealing with concepts that then blew my mind and
these new ideas of structuralism, field-work methods and ethics of human interaction to name only a few
aspects gave me and my team of two colleagues a sense of mission and drive that we spent almost one
full year in the field in the Northeast of India in sleeping bags and in amazing days of new insights about
traditional ethnic communities and their fascinating discoveries and living material culrure that for us was
the encyclopedia for a bamboo culture qhich was at that time quite unknown to the design community
which recognised plastics, steel and wood and glass, ceramics and textiles etc as the primary materials
for industrial design and not the bamboos and grasses and leaves and mud which are the living
materials of everyday use in the regions that we set out to study. We collected over 400 unique baskets
and recorded thousands of examples of local products, houses and amazing structures in the field note
books using designer skills of fine drawings, photographs and notes, all of which formed the basis for
our years of analysis leading to the publication of my first book called the "Bamboo & Cane Crafts of
Northeast India" by M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer and Ghanshyam Pandya, that was released in 1986.

However in 1984 when my instutite got a massive grant from the UNDP and I was identified to take up
training in China under that programme my work was locally evaluated and unfortunately labelled as not
"Design" but some form of "Anthropology" and I was quite stubourn about my position and did not relent
leading to my travel plans being cancelled at tha time. However after my book was published and we as
a team were able to demonstrate the value of our depp look into the local culture in the products that
emerged we could see a slow but definite shift in perception about all such non-design activities at NID.
As luck would have it the UNDP sent me to China as their expert to study bamboo industries in 1999
and later in 2000 the Chinese Government invited me to advise them about sympodial bamboos in 2000
bringing the story to a full circle closure, very interesting indeed!! I have been an advocate for giving
non-design exprets from a number of fields including technology an increased influence in planning and
delivering educational content to design students but most of my designer colleagues would not easily
subscribe to this position and we still suffer form a serious lack of publications about our massive
experiences at NID as a result of the object oriented and product centric art based pedagogy of design
which is still prevalent in many schools around the world including at our schools in India. However this
is going through a major change. On seeing your plea for a greater involvement of research and science
disciplines into design education I cannot but agree fully with your position. I looked up some very fine
references on my computer that are reports and papers that I have been downloading over the past few
months as well as my own papers and presentations I have found one pdf file that is a remarkable report
prepared by the DEMOS website in the UK <http://www.demos.co.uk> a report titled "The Journey to
the Interface: How public service design can connect users to reform" which is an amazing study and
promotion of design as a tool for reforming service economy and not objects and communications as
has been the focus of much of design education from the Bauhaus and Ulm traditions that dominate
most schools of design today. This shift to business models and service design promises to open new
doors and positions for many experts from outside the material and communication dominated mindset
and we can use this focus to try and change design education and its very narrow interpretation by
design education administrators especially in universities and stand alone design schools across the
world. I am copying this note to two of my colleagues who are handling non-design portfolios at the NID
where I teach as well as the Srishti, Bangalore, both handle the respective programmes in science and
liberal arts which is still seen as a necessary but peripheral input to design students. Shilpa Das from
NID is coordinating our SLA programmes and she may be drawn in to discuss this matter with you and
the other colleague at a distance is Uma Chandru of Srishti who is a trained Anthropologist working
inside a design school full time. I do not know if they are members of the PhD-Design list but I do hope
that this note will draw them into this grpou and that they will find time to reflect on their experiences
here on this list so that we can collectively bring change to design education and research as it is
handled in the days and years ahead. I would love to get a pdf copy of your thesis and my papers and
reports cajn be downloaded from my website <http://homepage,mac.com/ranjanmp> and I will be

happy to send you my bamboo book which has now been reprinted in a paperback format in 2004,
almost 25 years after it was first written in the mid 80's. It took us all these years to add a claim to the
title of the book and the new version is now called "Traditional Wisdom: Bamboo and Cane Crafts of
Northeast India" suggesting that the study is not just a documentation but a deeper analysis of insights
from research in the field using anthro tools and processes. We have not changed anything in that book
except add the qualifier to the title and it makes sense in my opinion since we had originally included two
indexes at the back of our book, one a "Technical Index" and the second a "Subject Index". the technical
index includes insights about structure, form, material and process related insights that could not be
articulated in one book but they can be used by the reader to look into the math, technique, material
property, cultural expression etc, almost rearranging the content into ten different orientations which we
felt was necessary if the new material bamboo was to be understood and used by fellow designers
across the world in our search for sustainable approaches to material culture of the future. Do send me
your postal address offline and I will be happy to send you my books and CD ROMS about our work in
the field of bamboo and design. I hope that this thread develops fully to give us insights of many many
diverse experts on this list and just this outpouring may be strong enough to graft a massive change in
the way design is being introduced to schools across the world. Do not underestimate the power of such
sharing since last month the Time Magazine selected "You" as the "Person of the Year" on their cover
story which I believe is truly happening. For instance in India we have been able to strongly influence
National policy of late by active exchanges online on the DesignIndia forum on yahoogroups which
brought together as many as 990 designers and design researchers who are interested in Design in
India and we were able to launch a global initiative called 'Design with India" which is now moving on to
its second leg of influence through a strategic meet that is planned to be held in New York on the 5th
February 2007, next month and I am hoping to be there as a stakeholder representing the Design India
forum and my Institute, the National Institute of Design. What you have raised as an issue is central to
many stakeholders and planners and policy makers realising that design is changing and that the doors
and windows must be thrown open to invite and hole many many non-design experts within the design
education and design research fold if we are to make design the next big thing after science, technology
and management in the global scheme of things in the days ahead. For me now design today represents
a core human ability and thinking style that started 2 million years ago when the first pre-humans used
fire for just one function that of keeping predators away from their campsites. this definition of design
that I draw fro Harrold Nelson and Eric Stolterman, Human intentions that lead to value creation through
thought and action, is at heart of making design in the future a discipline that should be inclusive and not
the sole preserve of so called trained designers alone. Design is changing and we must recognise and
develop approaches that can fit this new understanding. The politics education and of of design
education in particular must now recognise these far reaching changes in our perception of design as a

world changing discipline that is yet to find its place in the sun. Sorry for the very long post but as I said
your note did touch a chord, thank you.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan fromm my Mac at home on the NID campus
Copies to Shilpa Das, Coordinator SLA at NID and Uma Chandru, Srishti, Bangalore with a request that
they join the list and contribute to this thread and stay connected in the days ahead.
009558 2007-01-04 10:55 Re: SV: Design Position and job requirements
Dear Chuck and Thomas
I tend to agree with Chuck here. We need to get research capability and expertise from a very large
number of disciplines to bear down on the whole area of design action in order to help refine both
methodologies as well as intentions itself. Design is a very powerful discipline that needs critical inputs
from all other spheres of human knowledge and the answer perhaps lies in getting those other
disciplines interested in dersign as a sphere of attention rather than making young designers capable in
all those areas individually. This does not mean that our design education must not change to include
some of the broader perspectives of research methods and ethics drawn from all these areas. This is an
urgent need and must go forward with a new vigour and a deep understanding of the roles of all these
disciplnes to the practice of design in the future. Wishing you all a very happy new year ahead.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my off ice at NID
009314 2006-11-16 13:00 Re: Wonderground Reflections

Dear Gordon Rowland
I would be interested. We are organising many conferences in India on design and this may be of use to
keep it focussed and interesting. This year a local list called designindia@yahoogroups.com is co-
sponsoring the 'Design with India" conference. I am leaving for Pune today to attend the Pune Design
Festival on 17th & 18th November and on 4th and 5th December we have the CII NID Design Summit
with the Theme "Design with India", all of which may need redesign and can be made interesting and
effective. <<http://www.ciionline.org/designwithindia/>> We are hoping to see many people from the
world design community at these meets, and we hope that some from this list too would join us, with
ideas for new formats and activities.
With warm regards

009313 2006-11-16 12:36 Re: Research request

Dear Ken
You can download it from this link below. I have a pdf file and can send it if needed. Gedenryd, H. (1998)
"How Designers Work - making sense of authentic cognitive activities" PhD thesis, Lund University,
Sweden <http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/ index.html>
With warm regards
009147 2006-09-28 15:35 Comments on the IDSA day 4 Panel-Ranjan

Dear Friends
I met Elizabeth (Dori) Turnstall at the IDSA conference. She is a Design Anthropologist teaching at the
UIC, Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago
as well as an Associate Director of the City Design Center. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from
Stanford University and did her undergraduate degree at Bryn Mawr College in Anthropology as well.
See link: <http://dori3.typepad.com/about.html> She has commented on the Panel that was
moderated by Uday Dandavate and in which I spoke and her comments are very flattering indeed.
However our feelings are mutual since I too was very impressed by her work on categorising world
design education schools and colleges using a three dimensional matrix across the following axis of x, y,
and z: This can be applied to departments within design schools since I can see that our school too has
many approaches within the 14 disciplines that we teach at NID. And things are changing fast and many
strengths of the past are being dramatically changed without necessarily taking stock of where we are
and where we need to go from here. This is good model to help schools and departments take a deep
look at themselves in order to build diagnostic frameworks for curricullum development and framing
teaching content.. X axis: Product & Artifact orientation to Design Process Orientation Y axis: Hands on
Skilled orientation to Hi-Tech & IT centered orientation Z axis: Applied Arts orientation to Business
Process orientation. According top her research all schools can be placed somewhere along these three
axis and we can then compare them for what they are and what they are offering. Very interesting, must
get her full report. You can see her comments of Day 4 of the IDSA Austin conference at the link below
on her Blog link below: <http://dori3.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/idsa_2006_final.html>
With warm regards

009142 2006-09-21 01:25 Friends in India and the list: IDSA Presentation panel Discussion "The Design Element":
Ranjan
Dear Friends We had a fairly significant presentation at the IDSA National conference in Austin Texas
earlier today which ended two hours ago before lunch at the Hilton Austin Hotel in downtown Austin.
Usay Dandavate was the moderator of the morning plenary session "Changing Design: The Design
Element" and the invited panelists were Klaus Krippendorf, Bruce Nusbaum, Loraine Justice, Doris
Wells Papanek and myself. Each of us were given ten minutes to speak with our presentations and then
the panel was thrown open to questions from the floor and from the moderator. Uday kicked off the
session with his interpretation of design andf his call was for co-creation with designers working as
facilitators and this was his new definition of design. I followed with my presentation which was titled
"Giving Design back to society: Towards a Post-mining Economy" and my presentation included my
definition of design and I proposed a series of frames of references that could be used to explain where
design needs to be taken if we are to be effective in the future. My presentation is now uploaded top my
website under the design theory sub-section and it can be downloaded from the site at this link below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/FileSharing83.html> go to the bottom
of the page and click download. My lecture was followed by Doris Wells Papanek who stressed on
learning and cognitive perspectives that came from her work in anthropology and was of the opinion that
design needed to heed to the field and draw on the tools and processes of anthropology going forward.
Loraine Justice followed by her insights on the changing perceptions in China and in the USA about
cross cultural opportunities for designers. Klaus Krippendorf was at his articulate best and he talked
about design being a language that was concerned with the productiion of meaning. Meaning is not
created by the designer but by the user and design was a means of facilitation of this process. Bruce
Nusbaum talked about his journey in trying to change perceptions in the business press and the industry
groups on the economic and business roles for design and called for more promotion and dissemination
which is a call from Krippendorf as well but with a focus on the need for published texts that captured the
processes and principles of design thinking. I am quoting below my note to Uday about my talk that I
had sent him as a preparation towards the conference presentation. The interest in India and China in
the USA is enormous and many people have said that they would be interested in attending the CII-NID
Cesign Summit in December 4th and 5th in New Delhi later this year. Uday has prepared a post-card
that was stacked up at all tables in the corridor and many people could be seen discussing the event
and asking about travel to India, great effort Uday, and Design India is listed as a partner and we may
see many requests for membership to the list going forward. The session and the event was very lively

and many new friends and potential teachers for the developing India design education story. With
warm regards M P Ranjan from my hotel room at Hilton Austin 20 September 2006 at 3.15 Texas local
time (Thu 1.35 am IST) I quote my mail to Uday about my presentation below: "Giving Design back to
Society: Towards a Post-mining Economy" M P Ranjan Faculty of Design National institute of Design,
Ahmedabad, India Outline of Panel discussion remarks to support the visual presentation at the IDSA
2006 Conference in Austin, Texas, USA. Session is moderated by Uday Dandavate, Principal Sonic
Rim, USA. Dear Uday I am working on the visual presentation for the IDSA Conference and as the
dates for travel grow near I must respond to your questions that have been on my mind all these days,
very puzzling and very stimulating at the same time. My presentation summary: My 10 minute
presentation is now called "Giving Design back to Society: Towards a Post-mining Economy". Sounds
pompous and unrealistic, but look at it this way. A few years ago the Supreme Court of India banned all
harvesting of timber from the forests of the Eastern Himalayas and instantly 400 odd local timber and
plywood based factories in Assam and the Northeast of India had to down shutters. Germany and many
Western nations introduced stringent laws banning the import of textiles with Azo dyes and the Indian
handloom industry was in a tizzy and had to seek Government help to re-train hundreds of thousands of
weavers and dyers involved in the age old craft in India, big change in a hurry. More recently the state
Government of Delhi had to ban all public transport busses, taxis and scooters using petrol and diesel
due to environmental action by local NGO's and soon with Court intervention and community action,
CNG or Compressed natural Gas was introduced as an alternate fuel for all public transport, the switch
was not painless, but it was done with positive effect. I sense these and other transformations as fore-
runners for a massive transformation when material interests will give way to social interests and
technology and science will respond to community needs and in this process bring design in as a
central capability that is used at many levels, far beyond the aesthetic and performance levels that we
are used to today. My own work in bamboo was influenced by both environmental as well as social
concerns. The need to find alternatives for cultivated resources to sustain a huge need for material
artefacts and an alternate industry as well as the social need to solve the immense problems of poverty
in rural India and other parts of the world. Working with and using bamboo one realises how amazing is
the the concept of fertile soil to make materials that are both strong and abundant. Another realisation is
that while Bucky Fuller talked about 'Space Ship Earth" , the Earth as a finite resource for all of us, we
realise that the soil layer on the Space Ship is a mere 10 to 20 feet deep. Imagine the Earth, an 8000
mile diameter planet with a 10 feet thick layer of fertile soil created by many layers of decayed plants
and bacterial matter we come to an image of the "Soap Bubble Earth", a fragile and vulnerable eco-
system, that can be easily undone just as a soap bubble can in its brief flight in the air. This places the
soil as one of the most significant resources that would need to be conserved along with air and water
and these will need to form the core knowledge of the future designers. The history of design for me did
not begin with the industrial revolution but it is perhaps the oldest ability of humans and it pre-dates both

science and art, in my definition. Design is human intentions and actions that create new value. With this
definition we can link the earliest human use of design, perhaps, to the very first use of fire to keep other
animals away, for security, as Richard Dawkins tells us in his "Ergasts tale", used some two million years
ago. The science of fire was still far away in the future, but humans used fire long before they knew how
to make fire or even understand its dynamics. Tool making, settled agriculture, mobility and technology
followed in ever increasing rapid evolution of thought and action. In rural India the crafts traditions are a
reminder of these integrated times when design was inseparable from many forms of human expression.
Human history and design history are intertwined inextricably till we discovered formal education and
then the whole story crumbles into specialisation and analysis over generalist and synthesis, design is
sacrificed at the alter of science. Formal education today, at least in India as we see it is devoid of any
emphasis on the abilities of converting materials with skills and dexterous abilities that were common
place in all our villages across India. While these still exist in numerous places where "development and
modern education" are still to arrive, we tend to look down at these places and people as uneducated
and illiterate. In this we fail to see their deep understanding of the local materials and the ability of their
culture to develop a deep grasp of traditional wisdom of the ages that had been passed on through the
generations. I was fortunate to experience this knowledge during our year long field study of the bamboo
culture of Northeast India conducted in the late seventies towards my book on bamboo crafts and
traditions of the region. Teaching design to undergraduate students from some of our best schools in
India helped me realise how restrictive is our education in transmitting abilities of making things, cooking
and in acquiring knowledge about the local wisdom. Something that every village child seemed to have
without going to school. We have distanced ourselves from the integrated use of design as an everyday
activity and made it a specialised task for a class of people called designers. We are increasingly
seeing the collapse of the single discipline task groups and we are learning to work with people in co-
creating solutions, a sort of return to the roots of making design an everyday task once again. The key
seems to lie in education, and we need to redesign education to bring the design agenda closer to
society. Give design back to society and it will be an ability sought after in the soon to be realised post-
mining economy with numerous regulations that will make the everyday task complex and challanging.
From material to dematerial is a direction that design will increasingly focus on as business models and
regulatory principles will determine what we may be permitted to do rather than what we can do with
technology at hand. Design is about what you can and would do with technology and materials as well
as about the spirit that drives such use. People matter and designing with people and for people is the
way forward which we will need to once again integrate into our everyday lives. We need to rediscover
our tools and abilities to use these skillfully. The sensory and motor homunculus shows us that the
hands and our craft abilities use huge brain resources and this should inform the education processes of
the future and bring skills back into our schooling and sensitivity back into our society at all levels. Now
the questions from my perspective in academia and in India: Will design education inform general

education in the early years of schooling in India? How can crafts and design be integrated into the
process of schooling to make society both skillful and thoughtful? From technology being the prime
driver of change will we learn to place human abilities and needs at the heart of national action? Will we
learn to place design before technology and let integrated design thought determine priorities and what
needs to be developed? Significant moments in my life: Could be the base for your questions? Being
born in a toy factory that was set up by my father and studying in some of the finest schools in Madras
gave me an insight into two distinct worlds, one of organised western education and the other of the
unorganised small industry sector in India. I joined NID as an experienced cabinetmaker and worked as
a design student to learn the language of design in the classical form, based on the Bauhaus and Ulm
traditions. However teaching design in India in the seventies changed my perception of what design
was, something far more than aesthetics that was the order of the day. This was a search for relevance
and it still continues today. Doing a year long field work in the anthropological tradition in the bamboo
culture of Northeast of India and in the many crafts sectors across India brought home the realities of the
Indian culture and its knowledge base for future directions in design. Experiencing the Internet at a
friends home for the first time on a T1 line in Sunnyvale, California during my visit to Apple in the mid-
nineties changed my perception of what Information Technology could do for many human activities. I
close now an wait for your response. I am here for another two days and then go to Mumbai for my US
Visa interview on the 14th September and will be leaving Ahmedabad on 16th morning very early for
Chicago and Austin. I am yet to hear from Leslie about my accommodation in Austin. I will follow up
tomorrow morning. See if you can call her and give her a gentle reminder. I look forward to hearing from
you and it will influence my final visual presentation that is being prepared over the next two days. With
warm regards M P Ranjan from my office at NID 12 September 2006 at 12.05 midnight IST Prof M P
Ranjan Faculty of Design Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) Chairman,
GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008) Faculty Member on Governing Council
(2003 - 2005) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext
1090 (changed in January 2006) Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email:
ranjanmp@nid.edu web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ web domain:
http://www.ranjanmp.in Unquote
009133 2006-09-11 21:49 Re: Identify unknown sketches of design issues

Dear Terry
I had the book in hand when I wrote to you. It was a mere descriction of what was in front of me.
However, when I downloaded the first image I recognised it immediately for what they were since we
had met Victor Papanek at NID in 1979 January when he had visited the Institute to attend the UNIDO-
ICSID Conference on Design for Development that was held back-to-back at NID, Ahmedabad and IDC,

IIT Mumbai. Papanek was already a celebrity at NID and we were highly the influenced young faculty
and students after reading the book and the images were immitated for all forms of expression and
system models and the other….
Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of Design Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID) Chairman,
GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008) Faculty Member on Governing Council
(2003 - 2005) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext
1090 (changed in January 2006)
009131 2006-09-11 17:37 Visit to USA: IDSA Conference-Ranjan

Dear Friends
There are now long spells of inactivity on the list, and everyone seems to be busy elsewhere. I am
traveling to Austin, Texas from 17th to 20th September 2006 and would be happy to meet any of the
PhD-Design list members who may be there for the IDSA National Conference.
<http://new.idsa.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=2369&z=138> On my return journey I
propose to spend a day on 22 September at the Institute of Design, IIT Chicago. I am free on 23rd
morning and could meet up with anyone interested in the Chicago area, before I leave for India by the
evening flight back home to many classes of my "Design Concepts and Concerns" course. This time the
theme is "Creative Industries of the Future". We could set up a meeting in Chicago for a mid day coffee
break, if you drop me a line. I did write to Terry about the diagrams that he posted, but offline and not to
the list.
With warm regards
008838 2006-03-19 23:52 Fwd: [PHD-DESIGN] Designer's Culture

I am reposting this message since it did not go through the first time.
Ranjan
Begin forwarded message:
> From: ranjanmp@nid.edu > Date: 10 March 2006 1:53:32 PM GMT+05:30 > To: "Dag Holmgren"
<dag.holmgren@ING.HJ.SE> > Cc: phd-design@jiscmail.ac.uk, ranjanmp@nid.edu > Subject: Re:
[PHD-DESIGN] Designer's Culture > > Dear Dag Holmgren > > Interesting question. "Will the world be a
better place if everything > is designed?" > > My short answer to this is that perhaps it would depend on
what your > definition of design is. > > In the Design Way, Harrold Nelson and Eric Stolterman have
articualted > an approach to design that is quite capable of delivering sustainable > results that are both

sensitive to nature and the human condition. My > own definition includes macro and micro conditions
using systems > thinking aand strategic design and this is a very broad based > definition of design that
includes many disciplines and capabilities > to be focussed on the design task and each design
intervention has far > reaching consequences and these would need to be managed with empathy, >
sensitivity and nurtured with care to realise the value that intention > brings to the task in the first place.
> > With warm regards
> > M P Ranjan
> from our NID Delhi Cell while on tour
> 10 March 2006 at 2.05 pm IST
008782 2006-03-01 10:31 Re: PHD-DESIGN Digest - 27 Feb 2006 to 28 Feb 2006 (#2006-54)
Dear Victor
You could include these technologies to your list. Bar Code systems RFID Tag systems Smart Cards
with embedded chip and all the above with their related data base. Although these are largely
associated with monitoring goods and services they are used for surveillance and monitoring of the
people who are involved in these transactions. You have not included the obvious, surveillance
cameras, web cams and digital imaging and archieving systems in your list below. Machine readable
Passports and Visa endorsements too may be included as well in a broader study. One fruitful area of
study may be to include a deep look at National and International Laws dealing with identity and its use
for monitoring populations for travel, taxation etc. These laws and policies have gone through their own
process evolution as a result of globalisation and increased awareness and use of terror by dissenting
groups. I believe that the laws and policies have a far greater influence on the hardware, software and
administrative systems of most product systems than they are generally credited by the design
community (I know such generalisations are dangerous) But I have not seen many papers that include
Supreme Court Judges and Law Makers as "Designers" and if you know of any I would be pleased to
get some references since I am currently looking at macro level influences on design thinking and action
in a variety of design disciplines particularly since there is a glaring gap in policy in India when it comes
to use of design for development. My institute is involved currently in a massive exercise of designing
the proposed National Identity Card for Indians but much of this work is confidential except what has
already appeared in the national print and TV media. In India we have had a history of attempts
(successful and botched) to bring about a National Identity system, several associated with the work of
the Election Commission of India (voter identity cards), The Income Tax Department (taxpayer
identification number - PIN) but we do not have a Social Security System, which is perhaps the intention
of the proposed National Identity Card activity. India has moved to a dematerialised stock and bonds
trading system in all its investments and trading systems and this is a massive surveillance system with

a regulatory framework which is already in place. We (my institute and faculty colleagues) were involved
in 1989 to design the Indian Electronic Voting Machine which was used after much political debate in
10% of the seats in 1999 and ijn the last election in 2004 it was used in 100& of the seats at the national
and local polls. The key design input and contribution that we made (i believe) was the semiotic analysis
that was conducted in 1988 by a graphic design faculty colleague, Neeta Verma, who took cardboard
models into the field to assess the positions of the symbols and buttons and our product design team (J
A Panchal & V M Parmar) worked on the industrial design, form and structure of the voter unit and the
control unit while the electronics was developed by the producing companies ECIL and BEL for the
Election Commission of India. A parallel team from the IDC in Mumbai was involved by the BEL in this
project. I was personally associated as an administrator since I headed the NID consulting division
between 1981 and 1991 and therefore had a ringside view of this project and many others like it in those
days. Unfortunately not many of these are properly documented so far. An opportunity for some design
researcher??
With warm regards
008741 2006-02-22 20:17 Re: A Spanner in the works

Dear Rosan
Our perceptions about design are undergoing a massive change and this has been touched upon by
many design thinkers and I do agree that the word design has as many meanings as there are people in
a room or even on this list. Yes there is a need for discourse to explicate some of these meanings and to
then take positions from a position of clarity that whether we are indeed talking about the same thing or
about different things, as different as apples and oranges, not too distant, but far apart to confuse the
discourse. I am not too sure that it is a West and East issue any more. Both China and India have
changed so much in recent times that their ancient histories (or wisdom) do not seem to inform current
practices any more. While on the other hand we have had Western thinkers sharing design wisdom that
rings true and I am sure will find application in the East as well as in the West. What are these issues
and perspectives? Do we have a master list of concepts (or even a working list of must do tasks for
design education and research), methods and concerns that design will need to resolve over the next
few years of sustained research? Can we do this together and set an agenda for our aspiring young
researchers to take forward, if the wish? Some of these questions have been on my mind for many
years now as a teacher of design who has been working in the midst of massive problems (in India) of
poverty, illiteracy and the urban rural divide, the have and have not divide, the religious fundamentalist
divide of all hues, economic, social and philosophical.......many questions that need to be dealt with

when we try to cope with the wicked problems in design from the real;world, pun intended. Design for
industry and economy versus design for society and community. There are no simple answers but I am
quite convinced (personally) that design as defined at the strategic and vision level could help find ways
of dealing with many of these in the days ahead if we use it and apply ourselves to these challenges.
This brings in an ideological layer to design, but this may have its own problems. My search for meaning
in design continues, and in this search I have written several papers dealing with the insights gained and
our attempts to deal with it at the professional and research levels in India. Some of these are on my
website but more needs to be said than and more discoveries are waiting in the wings as we engage
with this very complex subject of "what is the meaning of design and how do we mobilise it to create real
value?" See the links below for some of my papers (thoughts) on what is design. About Design
<http://tinyurl.com/ok4rl> Download papers <http://tinyurl.com/f9sgs>
With warm regards
008730 2006-02-21 20:20 Re: A Spanner in the works

Dear Rosan
I am sure that China will figure in any attempt to describe the evolution of human cultures, both ancient
and in the future. I have with me a two volume study by Joseph Needham as the "The Shorter Science
and Civilization in China" which is an amazing study by any standard. I have not had access to the
unabridged version. Design too can be traced back to many of these flash points that produced the
amazing discoveries in science and technology only to be lost again through the processes of history
and the flow of culture that is never in one uniform direction, unlike biological evolution, as Levi Strauss
would tell us in his reflections on history of race and culture in Structural Anthropology 2. I have missed
naming many great cultures under point 4 (and others) and these should not be overlooked if this project
is to go forward in all seriouisness, perhaps as another collaborative venture (online?) and under point 9
I do hope that design does gain some foothold in the general scheme of the progress of humankind and
that this is all over the world in a form that unifies all of us in a peaceful and sustainable manner.
With warm regards
008707 2006-02-21 01:25 A Spanner in the works

Dear Jonas ( and Ken, Rosan et all....)

Thank you for sharing the full text of the 10 questions from JCJ. The current debate on the scientific
nature of design is stimulating, to say the least. I am enthused to throw a "spanner in the works" and
here it is quoted below from my notes at a meeting at the IDC, Mumbai which I attended over the
weekend. I quote.... ....The favorite rant thing is true, and in fact I believe Rs 60,000 crores is spent on
science and technology in India each year (my figures) and only about 30 to 50 crores is spent on
design and we can see that it is getting us much progress with all the pollution and other fallouts that
seem possible to solve if we spend more on "better" science as one eminent scientist told me recently.
Any takers. However, my major submission at the IDC interaction was that the history of humankind may
need to be rewritten from the design perspective as oposed to the scientific perspective, and I proposed
the following ages of man (women included here) or better still, humankind, in the form of the revolutions
of design that have shaped us through the ages from pre-history to the present. These are indeed
"Design Revolutions", if we use the definition of "Design" to be "an intentional thought and action that
produces value". To be brief I am listing below my thumbnail notes from the meeting that I used to speak
(extempore) from (the master video or audio may have all the details and the ahems and the haws that I
used to pass from one point to the next). I would like a copy of the tapes if you can convert them to
digital form......and share...Ravi are you listening? Quote from my handwritten notes.... "Design
Revolutions of Humankind" or "Human Revolutions of Design" ( a possible title for a future book on the
history of design © 2006 M P Ranjan) (possible chapterization below). Pre-History 1. Hunter / Gatherer /
Caveman The Axe & Fire Revolution 2. Nomadic Culture to Settled Agriculture The Wheel Revolution -
Social Revolution 3. Stone Age to Bronze Age The Craft Tech Revolution (see) Levi Strauss (for the
trigger) (Structural Anthropology 2 - Race and History - last chapter in the book) Ancient to Recorded
History 4. Exploring the Intellect From the Greeks to (modern) Europe Egypt, India, Americas {Maya}
The Science Revolution (from the mystic to the rational thought and formal logic) 5. Technology &
Industry & Application of Science The Industrial and Technological Revolution Contermporary to the
Future (History) 6. Hi-Tech & Information Tech - Age of Computing The Information (age) / Revolution
(from Bits to Bytes) 7. Content and Databases - Search and Communication The Knowledge Revolution
8. Innovation Integration and Creativity The Creative Revolution (The Design Revolution ?) New
Economics - The Value of One (Future of History ??) 9. ?? One!!! ...... end of notes and end of quote
Perhaps humankind will rediscover Design in the near future and we will place it in the place of the "Red
dot" that Doxiodes had spoken about when I heard him in Bombay in the early Seventies at a lecture in
the Tata Auditorium when I accompanied Sudha Nadkarni and his students. The "Red Dots" (the
crazies) on his slides were surrounded by many "Blue Dots" (the normals) in his lectutre on social forms
of cities and when these grew many "Red Dots" from the villages combine to become cities many "Red
Dots" get together and start to change the "Blues" to shades of "Purple"....read about "Constantinos
Alexander Doxiadis's 'Ekistics' and search Google, I would love to rediscover the lecture....This
happened when I was a student trainee at Godrej and I used to escape to the IDC in the pretext of

making plaster models (of Cupboard Handles) that Godrej did not have handy (plaster of paris) at that
time.... Design is at the heart of innovation and human progress and it needs to be better funded in India
(and elsewhere?) !! What do you think?
With warm regards (sorry no abstracts included here)
(with reading from my notes by Aratrik Devvarman who was discussing Levi Strauss and Conrans new
book "Designers on Design" which I got from Mumbai Airport the day before, however it is a treatise on
"Design as Style" and no Indians are included there, thank heavens for that)
008587 2006-02-10 10:00 Re: Let's try again: Chris' call for research approach(Re: It's still a research question)
MSC Nelson (and Rosan)
Well said indeed. I believe that in India and at NID where I teach we have a lot of experience with the B
and C kinds of design, simply because our industry and government just did not use design through any
form of commission even when the ability was built up at our Institutions over the past forty five years or
so. The demand for design is however changing with more type A tasks appearing on the marketplace
for our students and the local design community. Many opportunities also now exist for foreign design
consultancies and many are setting up shop in India with the ongoing programme of liberalisation and
the pressures of globalisation as a powerful trend. However design research and investments in design
explorations, or should I say "design inplorations", are far too small IMHO when compared to
investments in science and technology as far as India is concerned. Today our National Ministry of
Human Resources has declared an investment plan of INR 800 crores (Rupees 8000 million
approximately USD 175 million) for new science education in the country and this does not include the
approximately Rs. 60,000 crores (one crore is 10 million) that is spent on science and technology
establishments in the public sector in India. Compare this with the (very shabby) Rs 100 crores (approx
USD 22 million) that would be spent over a five year period on design research and education in the
country if we look at the level of current spend on design in India. The perception that design can bring
fundamental benefits to society and nations is as yet not understood and I do believe that we are still far
from changing these perceptions in industry and government alike without some breakthrough
demonstrations coming from the use of type B and C design research that Rosan is talking about. The
approach and methods will vary in these as in my experience with company funded projects the design
teans are usually dealing with a small part of the total task while in self initiated design tasks ot the meta
level of system the design team is compelled to include issues and develop solutions for many levels of
the system from material, process and policy all at the same time. Serious research into these
approaches will bring home the real power of design when such integrated efforts show great results

and some of us in India have been teaching design with the assumption that many of the opportunities
for design use are in society and not only in industry as it is defined now. Some of these efforts are
shared on my website throegh the documentation of my course titled "Design Concepts and Concerns"
and my ongoing work on Bamboo as a sustainable material for the Post-mining economy that we
anticipate in India in the years ahead. See <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> and follow the links
for documents, papers and presentations on the above. The research question is then "is there a new or
different genre of design for society" that requires new methodologies and new attitudes and new
knowledge etc. You may wish to see a recent paper on Indian design on Core77.com by Niti Bhan.
<http://www.core77.com/reactor/02.06_desi.asp>
With warm regards
10 February 2006 at 9,50 am IST
008310 2005-12-23 21:07 Re: Capturing design information - coined a new word-Ranjan
Dear Tiiu Poldma (Long Post) and Fil and the list
Your note and discussion on "capturing design information" quoted below set off a line of thought that I
felt would be worth sharing at the closing stages of this very eventful year. I was invited to speak (this
week) to a large contingent of faculty recruits to the National Institute of Fashion Technology which has
seven campuses across India and is expanding rapidly their design presence in the textile and fashion
domains in India over the past three years or so. I was invited to speak on the topic of Design
Philosophy and about issues and perspectives in Design Research in an academic setting for 86 young
(new) faculty at NIFT. NIFT is soon to be deemed an Institute of National Excellence in India by an act of
Parliament, the Bill is being tabled in New Delhi in the current session. In preparing for my lectures I
reviewed a lot of material on this list and many of the active participants are listed in my pdf slide show,
snippets of which I am quoting below for immediate reference. Unfortunately the two and half hour
lecture was not recorded but I do hope to write it up in full when time permits. Your comments on maps
and models have been on the top of my mind for many years now as being at the core of design thinking
and action. While reflecting on these roles of cognitive processes and external visualisations, particularly
in the early stages of defining the design directions, it dawned on me that design opportunity is an
insight that is very different from many forms of insights and perceptions that other disciplines may use
in the process of innovation or discovery. I have quoted below my description of what is a design
opportunity. In this process I think I have coined a new word that captures the process and helps us
describe the act of imagination and exploration that is at the heart of design thinking and action. I call
this word "INPLORATION". For me it is the antonym of exploration. My definition of the word is quoted
below: Quote “Inploration” *is the act of introspection or inward journey for the purpose of

design,Definition: Inploration: “A design act of intentional thoughts, feelings & actions with the use of
images, words, materials and ideas (concepts), through mental operations such as juxtaposition,
blending, modification, etc., all impacted by memory and sense experiences that interplay with the
purpose of creating a new synthesis. The outcome, if captured externally, results in interesting
configurations or useful compositions in the process of design” *© 2005 M P Ranjan Antonym:
“Exploration” is the act of searching or traveling for the purpose of discovery, e.g. of unknown regions,
including space (space exploration), or oil, gas, coal, ores, water (also known as prospecting), or
information. (Wikipedia) UnQuote I am quoting a few snippets from my slides on Design Philosophy
below and the full pdf file can be downloaded from my website at this link below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/ FileSharing83.html> file names
"NIFT_Design Philosophy.pdf" (589 KB) and "NIFT_Research_Insights2005.pdf" (4.9 MB) located at the
bottom of the page. Quote again: from my slides and talking points... Dominant Ideologies Aesthetics &
Style: .......looks can kill, it does Form & Structure: ....the inseparable twins ........(the tangible & the
intangible) Substance & Message: ....content is king Language & Semiotics: ....meanings in context
Feeling & Emotion: ....motivation & engagement Need & Greed: ...functionalists & consumerism
Emerging Ideologies Ethics & Spirit: ....taking the high road Economics & Power: .....trade, exchange &
diplomacy Politics & Law: ......art of the possible & the desirable The Design Process (The Design Way)
Intentions Explorations Compositions Judgements Innovation Promotion Implementation Nurturing
Design Opportunity * When human vision interacts with the context, it produces imaginations that can be
termed as “design opportunity”, or insight. This leads to further design “inploration” which brings
conviction and then design action that follows is driven by deep conviction. So the term opportunity is not
about something that you can find by chance, but it is a product of intentionality and imagination, which
explains why it is so difficult to explain an emerging design opportunity till some concrete expression is
achieved in the form of abstract models or at a later stage more concrete representations (maps, models
and feasibility statements). The Systems Thinkers Bucky Fuller (1895 - 1983) USA Raymond Loewy
(1893 - 1986) USA, M K Gandhi, (1869 - 1948), India Stafford Beer, (1926 - 2002), UK, Charles & Ray
Eames, (1907/1912-1978/1988), USA Frei Otto, (1925 -), Germany, Some Software Providers
(Thinkers) Teilhard de Chardin, Gregory Bateson, Claude Levi Straus, Jean Piaget, Ivan Illich, Arthur
Koestler ..... Design Visionaries: Sensing & Research Bruce Archer, John Chris Jones, Charles & Ray
Eames, Christopher Alexander, Marshall McLuhan, Victor Papanek, Nigel Whitely, Herbert Simon
Contemporary Design Thinkers (1) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - ethical foundations of happiness Klaus
Krippendorff - Semantics, semiotics and meaning in culture and language Victor Margolin - Social role of
design: Politics of the Artificial Richard Buchanan - Meaning production with design Ken Friedman -
Scientific and systematic rigor in design research Wolfgang Jonas - Systems Thinking and the design
marshland ..the unknowable Contemporary Design Thinkers (2) Charles Burnette - psychology of
excellence through design (iDesignthinking.com) Carma Gorman - History of Industrial Design and

significant landmarks John Thackara - new approaches to design for society, the service economy
(Dott07.com) G K VanPatter - design as leadership (NextD.org) Uffe Elbaek - management education as
design (Kaospilot.dk) Harrold Nelson & Eric Stolterman - The Design Way The Ulm School, Germany
Gui Bonsiepe, Tomas Maldonado, Abraham Moles....... The Emerging Heros George Soros, Amartya
Sen .......... UnQuote I wish you all a merry holiday season and very happy and productive new year
ahead. Greetings and good tidings from NID Ahmedabad.
With warm regards
23 December 2005 at 9.05 pm IST
008259 2005-12-07 20:42 Cut Here: New Journal on Design and Media from India
Dear Friends
Film making is serious business in India and I believe that more films are made in India than in any other
country in the world today. NID has an active film and video department and a NID Film Club which has
produced a journal called "Cut Here", and issue no.4 is available for download from our website at this
link below: (pdf file format 2.94 mb in size) <http://www.nid.edu/download/cuthere4nov05.pdf > I
have contributed a speculative paper (pp 19 -21) exploring the emerging opportunities and
convergences with the media turning digital and broadband. I have quoted below some details about the
journal from a note by its editor. This is a rare product from a design school in India and I feel that such
efforts need to be encouraged. I would invite you to download the free copy from the website and look
forward to your comments and suggestions directly to my mail ID <ranjanmp@nid.edu>. If some of you
wish to contribute to the future volumes on research issues pertaining to media and design, the editorial
team would be happy to hear from you. You may write directly to my colleague Arun Gupta
<guptarun@nid.edu>, editor of the journal, if you wish. I hope that this will help make this journal a
sustainable and valuable offering from an Indian design school in the days ahead.
With warm regards

Quote ................................................ the fourth (November 2005) issue of the NID Film Club print
magazine CUT HERE (on cinema and related matters) is now put up (as a downloadable PDF file / 2.94
MB) on the NID website http://www.nid.edu The link is -
http://www.nid.edu/download/cuthere4nov05.pdf This 'Cut Here' is, to my mind, one of the best we
have attempted so far. From remembering the horrors and lessons of Hiroshima, to paying a richly
deserved tribute to one of the stalwarts of new Indian Cinema - Adoor Gopalakrishnan, this issue

traverses stimulating territory. The importance of sound and its careful design, especially in the indolent
camcorder times that we live in, is brought in through thought provoking pieces by well-known industry
experts. The captivating story of a musical rediscovery in the Caribbean adds to this aural celebration.
Portrayal of women in films is an issue which concerns a set of contributions, while the ill effects of
globalisation and outsourcing on national cinemas concerns another. Yet another contributor talks about
the salubrious consequences of international exposure. A group of articles celebrate the spread and
spirit of Indian mass-market cinema and claim its legitimate space in the sun, while some others look
humorously at its conspicuous inadequacies. The brave new frontiers of Moving Image, in the hi-tech
convergent world of today, is the subject matter of few well-informed reflections. Happy reading! Do
revert back with your feedback. Arun Gupta Faculty, Film & Video, Chairman, NID Film Club and Editor,
Cut Here National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off) 91 79 26639692 ext
1090
008245 2005-12-06 07:58 Re: Philosophy of Design - theories, Klaus, and Chuck
Dear Chuck
This exchange brings a whole lot of clarity to the what is design debate.
Klaus's statement sets design apart from the core mission of science of going fromthe particular
observations to the general and even the universal, in a grand statement of truth.
Chuck calls the approach taken by the designer to "particularise", which captures the core ethic that
drives design, to resolve all variables at the particular location and in context. I agree that this makes a
great deal of sense. Many years ago one of my students coined the phrase "tangibalise" to explain the
work of a product designer. There may be other interesting "designerly" terms lurking in our lexicon.
Anotherterm that is fondly mentioned by designer colleagues from NID is "cornature", which stands for,
the application of a radius to a corner of a cuboid as opposed to its edges in a radii manipulation
exercise in basic design. Klaus may hav! e a comment or two on such linguistic innovations in design.
I have described the term design opportunity earlier and my model that explains this is on my website at
this link below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal76.html>
The gradual process of transforming a vague insight into a concrete manifestation in the real world is the
essence of design effort (with many twists and turns) and this is not easy to be appreciated from a purely
scientific standpoint. Many times it looks like bad science but is indeed very good and effective design. I
wonder if others on the list have come across this dilema and can share specific examples or cases that
reveal this dicotomy. This would be useful in building bridges with the strongly entrenched science
community who tend to view "the design way" with a degree of suspicion although there is always

admiration for the results of design when it is ! well done. The methods are however suspect and there is
a clamour for validation by using "scientific methods".
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from a cybercafe in Mumbai Airport
6 Decdember 2005 at 8.05
008217 2005-12-01 21:06 Re: Philosophy of Design -- Spotlight or Tool

Dear Erik
This is a very good way to put it. In the first position, the theory is like a "Spotlight" that illuminates to
contours and features of design as an activity that may be located in a particular context. In the second,
it is like a "Tool" that enables or supports design action in any context being a facilitating explanation or
procedure. So a theory has two faces at least, Janus like, as Arthur Koestler would have us believe
(Ghost in the Machine - Mind), and this is a property of a system as well, so are all theory a form of
system that can be seen from what is within and from what is without?? Any comments.
008178 2005-11-29 09:41 [Fwd: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] Philosophy of Design -- [Was: Re: The Design Way ... ]
Response to Rosan]
Dear Erik
Thank you for your post and the call for "high level abstract ideas" about design, towards a philosophy of
design. It gives me courage to continue on my reflections on design practice and education in search for
meaning and direction in the very complex arena of design thinking. I happened coordinate Prof Bruce
Archers visit to India in the 80's and asa result stayed close to him during his stay at NID and on his visit
to IDC, Mumbai. His call to practicing designers and design teachers still rings in my ear and he
repeated his statements and conviction about the need for design research and he was not restricting
this to some field or laboratory studies nor was it to do with abstract speculations about the nature of
knowledge. As I understood his call it was for a "deep reflection about design practice" to be done by
both designers and other scholars leading to a better understanding of the nature of design itself. He
said "..experience alone does not create knowledge, but it is the reflection about experience that does
so". This is perhaps the foundation of philosophical thought, a search for connections and "patterns that

connect" (Bateson) and a production of knowledge from the descriptive level (documentary level) to the
highly rarified and abstract philosophical level of codified knowledge.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at home on NID campus
008085 2005-11-22 17:24 Fwd: [PHD-DESIGN] Design research circles

Dear List I find that several of my intended posts have not reached the list, as Ken has just pointed it out
to me, there seems to be some problem with my reply-to settings. I am therefore forwarding those (few)
from the past few days to keep our discussions coherent. Sorry for the confusion, this is a mail that was
sent to Rosan (on 19 November 2005 at 10.10 pm IST) (and the list) but Rosan replied but my mail did
not get on the list, very confusing, sorry. Therefore I am forwarding it to set the record straight. With
warm regards M P Ranjan 22 November 2005 at 5.20 pm IST Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of Design Head,
NID Centre for Bamboo Applications Faculty Member on Governing Council (2003 - 2005) National
Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off) 91 79 26639692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79
26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email: ranjanmp@nid.edu web site:
http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ Begin forwarded message: > From: M P Ranjan
<ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Date: 19 November 2005 10:15:35 PM GMT+05:30 > To: Rosan Chow
<rosan_chow@ARCOR.DE> > Cc: M P Ranjan <ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Subject: Re: [PHD-DESIGN]
Design research circles > > Dear Rosan > > I tend to agree with you on this matter that there is a field of
> knowledge particular to Design and Art (or Art and Design studies) > that can be a sub-set of a much
larger area of knowledge, and it is in > this region that designers, artists and design researchers would >
generally apply their critical reviews and study efforts. However, > designers, and artsits, (unlike design
researchers or art & design > critics) are not usually interested in these theoretical pursuits, > since they
seem to be caught up in their own efforts of making a > complex or complicated thing work for
themselves by using intuition > and whatever knowledge that they can get their hand on at the moment
> of need. This is however not a systematic way forward and many > researchers have tried to bring
order to this seemingly chaotic > method, but have all but failed to make a real mark, as yet?. I am >
sure this discussion will bring us closer to an understanding of > design (in all its complexity) and show
us what it is and how it > works, or it may not? ...and what it could be in the future? > > I have put up
three new pages (and one more as yet incomplete) on my > website based on this discussion, since my
models can be easily seen > there and not just the verbal descriptions of it. > > Do take a look at these
pages at the links provided below: > What is Design? >
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal75.html> > > What is a
Design Opportunity? >

<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal76.html> > > What is Design
Knowledge? > <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal77.html> > >
What is the Designer Profile? >
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/About_Design_Theory/Personal78.html> > > I look forward
to comments and critique of the models and the > arguements that I have offered here on the list. > >
With warm regards > > M P Ranjan > from my office at NID > 19 November 2005 at 10.10 pm IST > >
Prof M P Ranjan > Faculty of Design > Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Applications > Faculty Member on
Governing Council (2003 - 2005) > National Institute of Design > Paldi > Ahmedabad 380 007 India > >
Tel: (off) 91 79 26639692 ext 1090 > Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 > Fax: 91 79 26605242 > > email:
ranjanmp@nid.edu > web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ > > On 19-Nov-05, at 9:27 PM,
Rosan Chow wrote: > >> Dear Ken and others >> >> My circle is very small but big enough for me. I am
mostly >> interested in issues >> related to Art and Design. >> >> I would like to see research grows in
Art and Design and one of the >> problems that >> I have detected is what I said in the last post,
namely, Design >> Researchers refer >> much more often to works from outside of Art and Design
(Ranjan just >> gave an >> explanation...and i could understand why...because formal Design >>
Research is >> relatively new, and we have less to refer to)...but now there are >> much more, might >>
I say, scholarship coming from the Art and Design circle, I would >> like to see that >> we engage (not
exclusively but more often) in examining our own >> works...without >> this step, it is very difficult to
grow. >> >> Now, (sorry to drag Harold and Erik into this), do Harold and Erik >> identify >> themselves
as researchers from the Art and Design tradition, that I >> am not sure. >> But in "The Design Way",
they speak of a 'design tradition' being >> different from >> the science and art traditions. For that and
for that alone, I feel >> that they are >> refering to the tradition that I come from...which is Art and >>
Design/Architecture. >> (Perhaps I am wrong, and Harold and Erik can tell me right here). I >> am sure
Harold >> and Erik are active in other circles, but the fact that they are on >> this list and >> attend
conferences and give lectures and presentations in Art and >> Design >> environment, I have (in my
heart) counted them as people in, if not >> from, Art and >> Design. To me they belong to the circle of
researchers whose works I >> am familiar >> with and ought to be familiar with... and saying that doesn't
imply >> that they >> don't research/write for a wider circle of researchers....but that's >> not my >>
concern. >> >> Ken, if you see Aristotle as a design thinker, I think you are >> imposing/projecting your
own ideas of design on this Greek >> Philosopher. Like many >> others who draw upon resources
outside of Art and Design to >> find/establish the >> meanings of design, this search is nothing but a
reflection of their >> own >> fundamental assumption of design which they would like to fashion >> with
new words. >> >> I appreciate Clive Dilnot's insistence on calling Herbert Simon as >> someone outside
>> of design. I think Clive is right and sets a good example for us to >> follow. >> >> Rosan >> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Ken Friedman wrote: >> >>> Dear All, >>> >>> In my view, it makes little
sense to separate a "design research" >>> circle from other >>> circles of inquiry. >>> >>> When we

speak of design research, Terry notes -- as I do -- that >>> design research >>> embraces something
on the order of 640 fields and subfields, >>> disciplines and sub- >>> disciplines involving the process of
design or studying the process >>> of design. (Design is a verb in this sense. Some special subfields
>>> also study different aspects >>> of designed artifacts.) >>> >>> One of the challenges of the notion
of a "design research circle" is >>> that we here on >>> PhD-Design constitute a relatively small sub-set
of design research, >>> mostly >>> clustered around art and design schools. In contrast, Harold comes
>>> out of systems >>> thinking as well as architecture and Erik works in informatics and >>> HCI. (For
that matter, I also design organizations and information >>> services of different kinds.) >>> >>> Harold
and Erik write their book with a rich grasp of many areas -- >>> philosophy, >>> engineering, systems,
interaction. I can't speak for them, but I can >>> say that their >>> book does not limit the view of design
thinking or the design way to >>> any specific >>> circles. They are open to a rich range processes
crossing many >>> fields. >>> >>> We often argue that design is a key issue for the twenty-first >>>
century because the >>> design process offers important ways to conceptualize, develop, shape >>>
and manage >>> the key issues that affect us as human beings in a large planetary >>> environment.
>>> >>> If this is so -- and I believe it is -- it is so because design >>> covers many areas of >>> inquiry
and professional practice. These are not limited to "design" >>> circles or >>> "design research circles."
This is not the same thing as saying >>> "everything is >>> design," and it is not the argument that
everything follows from >>> design. Rather, >>> it is because design process encompasses a wide
range of many >>> different but >>> related forms of professional process and professional practice --
>>> at least 640 >>> of them in the growing count that Terry and I are developing. >>> >>> In speaking
of design process ("designing"), therefore, we speak of >>> many more >>> fields of professional design
activity, design thinking, and design >>> process than >>> we see represented on this list. In saying this,
therefore, I have no >>> problem with >>> the idea that we may discuss design thinking from fields that
we do >>> not typically >>> identify as design research. >>> >>> Aristotle was a design thinker in at
least some of his work, and so, >>> for that matter, >>> was Peter Drucker. W. Edwards Deming worked
on nearly nothing else. >>> Bucky >>> Fuller, often overlooked here, and dozens more qualify. >>> >>>
I see no reason to limit ourselves to some predetermined group of >>> thinkers, >>> certainly not to a
list of 1200 or so subscribers who fields >>> encompass only a >>> fraction of the 640. >>> >>> I can't
see that Terry or anyone else here is asking us to draw on >>> "other" resources. >>> These are OUR
resources from the perspective of different approaches >>> to our >>> field. >>> >>> Yours, >>> >>>
Ken >>> >>> On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:23:32 +0100, Rosan Chow <rosan_chow@ARCOR.DE> >>>
wrote: >>> >>>> Dear Terry >>>> >>>> I agree with you with a qualification. How about reading critically
>>>> works coming out from the Design Research circle, first and outmost? >>>> I suspect some might
feel that I am again trying to build a cozy >>>> bubble. But I find it too disproportional that Design
Researchers >>>> refer so much more often to other rescources than to engage >>>> ourselves in
reading/examining one another's works. Others have >>>> mentioned this problem before. >>>> >>>>

Ranjan mentioned "The Design Way". I have read the book and mixed >>>> reviews on the book,
including yours. How about you taking us into a >>>> discussion session? ...especially since Harold and
Erik are right >>>> here and a good number of people have read the book too, i am sure. >>>> >>>>
Rosan >>>> >>> >>> Terence Love wrote: >>> >>> "The idea of 'situation' then presents much the
same epistemological >>> characteristics as 'system' (a concept, has bounds, has properties in >>>
different arenas - physical, mental, conceptual, emotional etc, has >>> relationships with concepts that
represent sub-situations within it >>> and situations in which it is subsumed ). There are well established
>>> philosophical and theory literatures on this topic in the area of >>> systems theory. Floods work,
Mingers', Sterman - many others. Similar >>> well established discussions are in the AI literature. Its
something >>> we don't have to reinvent the theory - simply read more widely about >>> work that
others have already done and dusted.." >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Ken Friedman >>> Professor of Leadership
and Strategic Design >>> Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language >>> Norwegian School of
Management >>> >>> Design Research Center >>> Denmark's Design School >>> >>> email:
ken.friedman@bi.no >> >
008087 2005-11-22 17:05 Fwd: [PHD-DESIGN] Black Hats, White Hats, Taxonomy
Resending my mail to Jeffrey to the list (thanks Ken for pointing it out) M P Ranjan 22 November 2005 at
5.05 pm Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of Design Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Applications Faculty Member
on Governing Council (2003 - 2005) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel:
(off) 91 79 26639692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email:
ranjanmp@nid.edu web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ Begin forwarded message: >
From: M P Ranjan <ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Date: 22 November 2005 4:13:56 PM GMT+05:30 > To:
"khchanjeffrey (sent by Nabble.com)" <lists@NABBLE.COM> > Cc: M P Ranjan <ranjanmp@nid.edu>,
Ken Friedman <ken.friedman@BI.NO> > Subject: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] Black Hats, White Hats,
Taxonomy > > Dear Jeffrey > > I had sent my list of sectors for design action in India to Ken > Friedman,
off list, since he had requested me for a copy of the same. > > We had developed this list (with my
students) as part of my > undergraduate foundation class at NID in a course called "Design > Concepts
and Concerns" in 1999 and 2000. Since then we have been > revisiting this assignment in many
different forms since it gives our > students a fairly deep understanding of the emerging fields of design
> opportunity in India and this does help them in making career choices > as the go forward with their
education in design. > > To share with you and with the list, the full background and rationale > for this
effort, I am reproducing below my mail message to Ken where I > have detailed out the context in which
this design sectors list was > prepared in 2000 and I had also attached a paper that I had prepared > in
2002 about the outcomes of that particular course experience. My > attachments included images of
maps and models made by my students > which I have now placed on my web archive in a folder titled >

"230_India Design Sectors" and all the enclosures are contained > therein: 1. paper titled "Avalanche
Effect...", 2. list of sectors > .xls file, 3. five jpeg images of models made by students of the > design
sectors in the Indian economy, in all about 2 mb in total size. > These can be downloaded from my web
archive at > <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> click on "MPR's Archives" link > and then look
inside the folder "230_India Design Sectors" and > download. > > The rest is explained in my mail to
Ken quoted below. I trust that > this will give you a handle on what we have been talking about on the >
list. > > With warm regards > > M P Ranjan > from my office at NID > 22 November 2005 at 4.10 pm IST
> > Quote, my mail to Ken.. > > "Dear Ken >> >> I do not have a full paper as yet on the 230 sectors of
design for >> the Indian economy that is published. However, I do have a list that >> was put together
some time ago for use at NID and with my students. >> This is a mixed bag of industry types and service
sectors where >> design is being used in India and these fall under several ministries >> of the
Government of India. >> >> I have been giving an assignment to my students in the "Design >>
Concepts and Concerns" course since 1999 at NID that requires them to >> brainstorm and build a
model of the Indian economy from the point of >> view of design opportunities that are embedded in our
economy. The >> very fact that they address these broad perspectives in their >> foundation
programme we feel that it would influence their career >> choices as the go forward in their education at
NID and in their >> professional lives. >> >> I am attaching the list that is longer than 230 in number but
the >> figure is not an absolute one. However when we had built models of >> the sector in the
classroom, one of the groups had a logic for 230 by >> virtue of their categorisation effort and this figure
has stuck in >> all my references so far. I am attaching diagrams in low resolution >> for you to
appreciate how we did this exercise and arrived at the >> list of categories of the Indian economy. I had
included this in an >> invited paper that I had prepared for publication in Design Issues >> (the special
issue of India that has just been released) but it was >> turned down for lack of space in 2002. My paper
was titled "Avalanche >> Effect.." (October 2002) based on my course at NID and I had >> immediately
released it on the PhD list and you will find it there. >> The illustrations that I used included the Sectors
of the Economy >> models by my students and I enclose these for your reference as well. >> I think the
logic was as follows: two kinds of outputs - Products and >> Services: multiplied by five types -
hardware, software, >> infrastructure, organisation and policy, business models: across 23 >> broad
sectors or ministries gives us 230 classes of sectors that >> could use design for development. >> >> I
do intent to take this further and make a full paper (when time >> permits) with a projection of the kinds
of institutions that we will >> need to build in order to service this enormous task in India (and >>
elsewhere) in the years ahead. I have already been involved in the >> design and establishment of three
schools of "design" that address >> different sectors of the economy and this way we can find funding
>> from different ministries to make this happen as we go forward. We >> still need to find the core of
design capabilities that need to be at >> the centre of these plans. I have reports on these initiatives that
>> were prepared with my involvement over the past ten years or more and >> I will be happy to share

these with you. >> >> Please see the list and the models and give your reactions. We could >> discuss
this further as design still needs to be understood in the >> context of all this complexity in that days to
come. As you will see >> , it is not a fully developed theory as yet but something that we can >> work
with towards a better understanding of design at this level to >> see its impact at the macro-economic
level. >> >> With warm regards >> >> M P Ranjan >> from my office at NID >> 21 November 2005 at
12.40 am IST >> >> <Avalanche Effect01.doc> >> <DCC_230Sector_List_Mstr.xls> >> >>
<DCC_Min_of_Des_BW_DSC03903.JPG> >> <DCC_SectorWheel_BW_DSC04017.JPG> >>
<mid_Sector Study Gr2_DSC04017.JPG> >> <mid_Sector Study Gr4_DSC04014.JPG> >>
<mid_Sector Study Gr5_DSC04016.JPG> > > Unquote. > > Prof M P Ranjan > Faculty of Design >
Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Applications > Faculty Member on Governing Council (2003 - 2005) >
National Institute of Design > Paldi > Ahmedabad 380 007 India > > Tel: (off) 91 79 26639692 ext 1090
> Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 > Fax: 91 79 26605242 > > email: ranjanmp@nid.edu > web site:
http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ > > On 22-Nov-05, at 7:56 AM, khchanjeffrey (sent by
Nabble.com) wrote: > >> Dear Ken, Terry, Ranjan and list, >> >> I have heard about the mapping task
from previous posts. Would it be >> possible to initiate a newcomer on what this project entails a little >>
more? Is it possible to catch a glimpse of it? >> >> I am interested, >> >> Jeffrey >> Sent from the PhD
Design forum at Nabble.com.
008062 2005-11-21 19:23 Re: DESIGN

Dear Rosan and list
Yes, indeed, design is changing fast and and it is being reinvented as we speak here to be something
other that what we have held it to be so far. So it is a discipline and a filed of the future. We are also
contributing to this change as we debate this issue here on the list as we develop a different
understanding of what it can be in the future, as a meta-discipline with numerous sub-disciplines, greatly
varied from one another as are the trees and plants in a particular forest eco-system, if I may use a non-
agricultural metaphor, an ecological and symbiotic perspective if you like (thank you Bateson). An
interesting article in the RSA e-journal of August 2005 discusses just such a change and speculates and
informs us of the steps being taken in the design world to cope with these changed perceptions. See the
link "Better by Design" <http://www.thersa.org/journal/article.asp?articleID=575> which tells us of
emerging scenarios and attempts by designers to amalgamate design with a wide range of fields to bring
substantial improvements to the areas being addressed, and many of these are not conventionally seen
as being within the ambit of traditional design, or for that matter art & design. They include design for
public institutions, design for health, for the judicial system, the political democracy, design for taxation
and the like. The references quoted at the end of the article are: — In the Bubble: Designing in a
Complex World (John Thackara) 2005 — Designing for Humans (Jan Noyes) 2001 — Design for Society

(Nigel Whiteley) 1993 My references, Bateson Gregory Bateson [1973]. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
Paladin Books. Gregory Bateson [1980]. Mind and Nature - A Necessary Unity. Bantam Books.
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Applications
Faculty Member on Governing Council (2003 - 2005)
National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India
Tel: (off) 91 79 26639692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242
email: ranjanmp@nid.edu
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ On 21-Nov-05, at 6:20 PM,
Rosan Chow wrote: > Dear All > > It is a habit of some to suggest that Art and Design is a > sub-
(field,discipline,tradition-you pick the word/concept you like) of > DESIGN. This overarching
(field,discipline, tradition) DESIGN, I > believe, has never existed, but is under >
construction...retrospectively...from our present point of view. > > am i right or am i wrong? > > Rosan >
008037 2005-11-20 22:30 Re: Distinguishing [design] from [art-and-design] (Was: Design research circles)
Dear Clive
I agree with your statement (quoted below) about the fields of art and design avoiding any substantive
issues through "an extra-ordinary capacity to avoid major issues". Further your speak of a second
tradition that tries to be more rigorous but which fails on another count as well, through "..slipping into
mere operational-ism". Design is changing and our definitions of what it is has also changed
substantially over the past forty years or so. From a focus on the industrial production of objects and
communications and from one off models of hi-fashion and boutique objects for small volume serial
production, we have now included software, a variety of systems, infrastructure, organisational and
business models in our definition of what is included in the ambit of legitimate design action. Design
schools too have over the years redefined their roles as the market has evolved and included many
layers of knowledge and skill sets from other disciplines into the curriculum for design education at both
the undergraduate and at the post-graduate levels. My own definition of the arena for design action now
includes as many as 230 different sectors of the India economy that can and are in one way or the other
using design to survive intense competition, convergence of IT and media, globalisation pressures and a
host of other trends that are sweeping our economies today. The arena for design action has become
exciting and complex, perhaps as a result of designers themselves redefining their roles and in learning
new skill sets and abilities to cope with the massive changes in their marketplace. New disciplines have

emerged in the cusp of old and established ones, each with new skills, knowledge and attitudes as well.
This reminds me of the exquisite model proposed by Charles Eames' "design diagram of 1969" , as
Eames Demitrios writes in his book "An Eames Primer", Thames & Hudson, London, 2001 (pp. 175,
166-67 and 177), .."..the diagram shows the overlap of concerns among three different entities: the area
of interest of the designer, the area of interest of the client, and the area of interest to society as a whole.
Charles and Ray's point was that, in the area where all three overlap, the designer can work with
enthusiasm and conviction." Do we need top re-vist the Eames diagram today and redefine what society
wants of design and the designer, what clients want of them and what designers too want of themselves,
I would believe so, in a greatly changed world and in an evolving view of what is included in design. This
is also an outcome of the failure of science and technology and current management systems in
avoiding major problems in almost every solution that is offered through massive investments being
made on the promise of a better future, but pollution, negative fall-outs and systemic failure all point
towards a reexamination of the way we build and implement solutions for complex needs of our society.
Perhaps design can find a way forward, and many are looking at this as a real possibility today. So what
will be the profile of the designer tomorrow? What will society, clients and we ourselves, expect from the
use of design at this complex level? Can we reexamine society's expectation from the design profession
and from new approaches to design using teams rather than a single individual as the "imagineer" and
visualiser or modeller? What are the issues in design education and practice that need to be resolved in
the light of these changed expectations? If this is so, we may need to look at more than just two threads
of design action and research but a much more complex set of attributes that will overlap in some areas
of knowledge and skills used and be differentiated in other areas. ( we perhaps need a new Eames
diagram to show this new understanding) What then is the common core (if any) that we can
categorically call the heart of design thinking and action? Is there a core or is design destined to be a
diffuse entity that can never be reconciled as a discipline and will be always dictated by the particular
circumstance or situation that is being addressed? What then will the profile of emerging designer of the
future be and what will design researchers study in the days to come?
With warm regards

Prof M P Ranjan Faculty of Design Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Applications Faculty Member on
Governing Council (2003 - 2005) National Institute of Design Paldi Ahmedabad 380 007 India Tel: (off)
91 79 26639692 ext 1090 Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054 Fax: 91 79 26605242 email: ranjanmp@nid.edu
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/ On 20-Nov-05, at 8:25 PM, Clive Dilnot wrote: > Art-
and-design continues to be problematic for design thinking. It is > the field I work in, and like many who

work in this area, I am > continually intrigued by its potentiality, meaning its critical > potential. Against
this, it must be said that 'art-and-design' is an > intellectually vacuous field. The disciplines within art-
and-design > have > an extra-ordinary capacity to avoid major issues. > SNIP SNIP > If art-and-design
suffers from > intellectual emptiness, design in the second sense suffers from a > continual danger of
slipping into mere operational-ism. It is > interesting, always, how although this second tradition likes to
> present itself as more rigorous than the former in fact (as the > design-research conferences show) a
similar evasion of core issues also > happens. In no other field would major conferences so continually >
organize themselves around excluding serious intellectual debate. > > By implication, there is a major
publishing and intellectual project > contained in these last posts, I wonder if the field can rise to the >
challenge? SNIP SNIP
008015 2005-11-18 09:51 Re: context and design

Dear Jerry and Chuck
The questions about design, design opportunity, design context and design situation in this ongoing
discussion about the design situation is something that I have been grappling with for some time now.
Recently, during this month, I have had the opportunity to speak at two very different conferences about
the role of design in each of these different situations. The first was at the conference in Shillong on 12th
& 13th November "CII-NID Design Conclave" which focussed on development issues and the role of
design in the Northeastern Region of India. The second conference was at NID, Ahmedabad on 15th &
16th November on "GeoVisualisation and Design for development". In both these presentations I tried to
describe wat is a "Design Opportunity" and "What is Design" for a largely administrative audience in
Shillong and a scientific and technical team of experets in Geographical modelling and IT applications at
the NID, Ahmedabad meet. I used the term "Design Opportunity" to describe the manner in which our
perceptions of any potential design situation immediately creates some cognitive or emotional sense or
intention which gets informed by exploration and interaction leading to design action. I have modelled
this phenomenon in a diagram which looks like a ying-yang symbol with the swirls separated by a circle
on the middle. Each of the swirls is labelled "problem perception" and "solution insight" respectively,
while the inner circle is called design opportunity. This "eye like set of symbols is bounded by a larger
circle in dotted line containing the words "Vision" (at the top) and "Context" at the bottom. Human vision
interacts with the context, with imagination, to create a "design opportunity" leading to design thought
(based on growing conviction) and then design action that is driven by conviction as well. So the term
opportunity is not about something that you can find by chance, but it is a product of intentionality and
imagination, which explains why it is so difficult to explain an emerging design opportunity till some
concrete expression is achieved in the form of abstract models or at a later stage more concrete
erpresentations. This verbal description of my visual models may not be the best way to describe what I

have to say here. However both these presentations can be downloaded from my web archive at my
web site link below <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> The file names are The Shillong
presentation file: CII-NID Shillong_Show2005.pdf (6.3 MB) The NID GeoVisualisation presentation file
<GeoVisualisation_2005_Lres.pdf> (3.4 MB) I like the emphasis on the terms design situation and
transformation situation but I continue to use the term context since, although we work in a specific
situation the actions are informed by a much larger context (global concerns) and it is indeed influenced
by history and by future possibility as imagined by the designer. Further there is competition in any
design situation and politics of community or official decisions that adds complexity to the whole activity.
You will see in my presentations that I have also been using the terminology offered by Nelson and
Stolterman in their book "The Design Way" since it is a very accesible text that brings great clarity in a
space that is still underpopulated by good books on the subject. The terminology used is a sequence to
describe the design way from – Intentions, Explorations, Compositions, Judgements, Action, Promotion
and Nurture, as the key stages of design thought and action. I look forward to your reactions and
comments.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my Mac at home on the NID Campus
007752 2005-09-18 08:24 Re: Language or pictures in design thinking? Physical evidence -From Chuck
Dear Terry
You said.. Quote I'm also aware that some of us don't use visual representations in design thinking,
particualrly when designing things that don't have form or where the form is secondary. This suggests
that understanding and meaning issues aren't that central to understanding design thinking. Thoughts?
Best wishes, Terry UnQuote I do not understand how you can think of anything without "FORM". Every
word evokes some form (however vague) and an associated network of semantic structure. For me
structure, form and meaning are inseparable, perhaps only in language, but not in understanding, as in
knowing and feeling. Even abstract structures have form and so do fuzzy structures they have fuzzy
form and incomplete meaning or a vague sense of meaning. Could you explain your position? For me
"Geometry" is at the very root of thinking and here Form, Structure, Meaning (composition) and
Performance (behaviour) are strongly interconnected.
18 September 2005 at 8.20 am IST
007749 2005-09-17 13:29 Re: Information Request -- Recent Books and Articles on Museums and Galleries

Dear Ken (long post and some reminiscing)
At NID we have been teaching Exhibition and Museum design for as far back as I can remember, even
before I joined in 1969 as a student. NID has also been an active player in the creation of Museums and
Exhibitions for a variety of clients. Your note is very crisp and the call for resources will be of great use to
us as well and I am therefore forwarding your note to my faculty colleagues off list to see if they can
contribute to your effort directly. I will get back to the list and to you if some substantial resources are
recommended by them. Besides those on our faculty at present I can think of some former colleagues
(who have retired or moved on to consulting) who are considered experts in the subject and I particularly
refer to the husband and wife team of Vikas and Suranjana Satwalekar, now design consultants in the
field, who have been responsible for the shaping of the NID's exhibition design and museum design
activities over the past twenty years or more. They will respond to you directly. NID's major Exhibit
design experience started with the great "Nehru Exhibition" that was designed at NID Ahmedabad for
the Government of India by Charles and Ray Eames from September to December 1964 and it was first
exhibited at the 10,000 square feet space in the Union Carbide Building, on Park Avenue on 49th Street
in New York. It then travelled to Washington, Los Angeles, London and Paris. Thereafter another copy
was prepared and fabricated for Japan and Australia. It was this copy that came to Chile in 1973 and the
NID team headed by Prof Dashrath Patel, which included me as a young designer and faculty colleague,
to help set up and hand over the exhibit to the Ambassador of India in Chile in January 1973. It was here
that I met the President of Chile, Salvadore Allende, on the 26th of January 1973, and later connected
with the great work done by him as reported in the book by Stafford Beer, "Platform for Change", and it
changed my perception of design for ever. After this "Magnum Opus" the NID faculty were involved in no
less than 100 (or more) major exhibition projects, temporary and permanant, and in recent years in
some very high tech offerings are still in the making. Recently inaugurated Museum for Numismatics, by
the Reserve Bank of India in Mumbai had security features and display standards that are globally
acknowledged. Two ongoing projects include the re-design of the Victoria Memorial Museum in Kolkatta
and the enormous "Khalsa Heritage Museum, in Punjab for the Government of Punjab to be located in a
major architectural complex that has been designed by the Isreali architect Moshe Safdie. I am reflecting
on this enormous body of work and sharing this note with my faculty colleagues since very little of this
vast experience is still available in print and the experience resides in the many individuals who have
worked on these several hundred projects of very high quality. I hope that this will excite some design
researchers to take NID as a topic of study and collate all the documentations into a format that can
reveal the lessons from these experiences. I wrote a paper on exhibition and museum design as a
reflection on the lessons from the NID experience for a Conference on Crafts Museums in 1986 and we
have come a long way since then. Recently (last year) NID teams designed and executed "The Great
Arc Exhibition" for the Surveyor General of India, an office that was celebrating the two hundredth year
of the mapping of India and the Great Arc Survey, the first in the world, and the exhibit opened in the UK

and is now back and ready to travel across India. I hope that my call to my faculty colleagues will give us
more insights from real experience of design and execution of all the projects that we have collectively
experienced in the unique NID pattern of the co-existance of education and design practice across many
disciplines under one roof. The story is yet to be told. Any takers? I am quoting below my paper on
exhibit and museum design from 1986 and those not interested can skip the last bit.
With warm regards
007705 2005-08-19 19:59 Re: Problem, solution, opportunity and design

Dear Chuck,
Yes, the task of "perceptual categorisation" as you say seems to be central to design thinking and
ofcourse "reflection" on experience followed by atriculation (visual & verbal), and here I must stress that
models and proximity and affinity maps or diagrams are a great help in making "visible" many of the
contributing elements and the "relationships", even in a fuzzy manner at first through brainstorming, and
it is this kind of inquiery and expression that permits the other partners and stake holders to "see" the
critical components and therefore identify the seeds of some design opportunity that can be addressed
in depth as the task progresses. Usually there are many opportunities, located at many levels in the
systems model that emerges, several of these may be details, while others may deal with the meta
themes that need to be addressed, but the macro - micro switch is facilitated by such a flexible visual
representation, a doodle at an early stage and a well developed scenario at an advanced stage. The
early task would be to discover the structure of the situation and the components of the system and in
the process the critical parameters are defined (tentatively at first) and with deeper conviction as the
model evolves and is concretised as the work progresses ("tangibalised" as our product designers call it
at NID). Here understanding the models and tools to deal with each class of opportunity is of great value
and in many cases new tools need to be experimentally tried out for garnering insights from the field,
from a very particular location and context, sometimes these cannot be generalised, nor are there any
general approaches available in any classified manner, since the context may be far too specific or
localised to find prior work that answers the questions that come up in the designers or design teams
mind/s. I have recently (March 2005) described our method of teaching this approach to students in our
foundation programme in some detail in my paper for the EAD06 conference in Bremen titled "Creating
the Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education" and this paper can be downloaded from the
conference web site link below: <http://www.verhaag.net/ead06/05_pub_read_full.php?id=103> The
visual presentation that I used is placed as an online slide show at the web link at my site shown below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/Learn_Design_Think/PhotoAlbum37.html> and a pdf file of

the same at full resolution is available for download at my web archive (4 mb size) (file name :
EAD06_2005_Show_MPRs.pdf) < http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/12/wo/
0STBa4oCaFnrpCtB.1/3.2.1.2.26.29.2.1.1.2.3? user=ranjanmp&fpath=&templatefn=FileSharing1.html>
or from this Tny Url Link given below: <http://tinyurl.com/d5a4a>
With warm regards
007694 2005-08-19 01:20 Problem, solution, opportunity and design

MPR on PhD-Design_2005_08_19_02
> From: M P Ranjan <ranjanmp@nid.edu> >
Date: 19 August 2005 1:18:16 AM GMT+05:30 >
To: Jerome Diethelm <diethelm@DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU> > Cc: M P Ranjan
<ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Subject: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] I|d like a copy -- Re: a specific proposal > that fits?
> > Dear Jerry > > Your description of the Bucky experience is no exaggeration, at least > from what I
remember of my own experience from his visit to NID in the > late seventies (? - need to check my
dates), he conserved his strength > through the day, looking sharply with his eyes (and mind) at the >
Institute and the city, did not utter a word in casual conversation, > but in the evening lecture in
Ahmedabad went on and on for many hours > non stop, taking the audience of Ahmedabad on a mind
blowing journey > through the exciting perspectives that he brought to design thinking > and philosophy.
Some of us at NID, faculty and student got together > and built domes for many months after his visit,
with much discussion > and reading, late into the night..... > > About the "problem - solution" debate, I
have the following thoughts > to offer, may be theoretically unsound but here it is anyway. > > I have
given up, many years ago trying to define design in terms of > "problem solving", many other professions
do that too, and it is not > necessarily very beneficial in describing and in communicating exactly > what
designers do, either to design students or the industry and > government clients who know very little
about design at all its levels > of manifestation, especially at the systems level. I have found it far > more
effective and fruitful to talk about locating opportunities and > in mapping and modeling the contours of
these situations without > really using the word "problem" in the discourse, identify the gaps > and
possibilities. The word "problem", somehow has a very negative > connotation especially to young
students who are literally sent out of > the Institute campus in search of new assignments to handle in
their > classroom and/or diploma projects, and invariably they used to come > back with a clutch of very
morbid perceptions from the field, (we have > plenty of problems in India if anyone wants to know about
these) and > the enormity of some of these sometimes discourages the student s (and > faculty) from
even attempting to enter that discourse, very > disheartening, for a novice and even for the hardened
professional. > However if you ask them to list opportunities for improving what they > see around them

in the city roads, hospitals, schools, shops, malls > and hotels, and homes, to name a few typical places
that they fan out > to at the beginning of an assignment in design, they come back from > field
observation and brainstorming and discussions, with each other > and with faculty, with a very long list
of possible directions, a germ > of an idea which they believe is do-able, which in my view is a great >
way to start building "intentions' and then "convictions' to make some > of these "opportunities" a part of
their own career goals, very deep > commitments indeed, some life-long. > > While yes the 'Problems'
are there to be 'Solved', we may need to look > at these from the corner of our sights rather than head-
on and then > feel dejected by the enormity of the perceived task, and not take it > on at all as a result.
Many of our 'problems" are in this category, > but all these desperately need design, (230 sectors in
India in my > count - Ken and Terry have a longer list) not just the science and > technology and even
marketing spends that are today being funneled > towards these "problems" in India, particularly when
compared to very > meager design spends which in my view needs to be hugely enhanced > soon. But
that is a long story, for another day. > > With warm regards > > M P Ranjan > from my office at NID > 19
August 2005 at 01.05 am IST > > PS: I checked the dates of Bucky's visit to Ahmedabad > > Quote from
<http://www.amaindia.org/act_popular.html> > Series on Human in Universe by Dr. R. Buckminster
Fuller, the > well-known geometer, architect, philosopher, and inventor (December > 15-16, 1978) >
UnQuote > > ___________________________________________________________________
> > Prof M P Ranjan > Faculty of Design > Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives > Faculty Member
on NID Governing Council (2003 -2005) > National Institute of Design > Paldi > Ahmedabad 380 007
INDIA > > Tel: 91+79+26610054 (Res) > Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 1090 (Off) > Tel: 91+79+26639692
ext 4095 (Off) > Fax: 91+79+26605242 > > email: <ranjanmp@nid.edu > web archive:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/> >
007655 2005-08-16 14:06 Re: a specific proposal that fits?

Dear Jerry
I agree with this line of thinking entirely. This is why I changed the
name of my course from "Design Methods (Theory and Practice) to "Design Concepts and Concerns",
the intention of the designer and (their client and stake holders) the belief system that informs them and
their openness to feedback is central to effective design. Design itself is a meandering process,
impossible to predict (unknowable - thank you Jonas) and satisfying when it succeeds, in each particular
instance. Design is also a "reflexive process" since it is effected in a populated space that affects others
(other humans, competition, other beliefs or dogma of truths held by history etc.) who will in turn respond
to any offering with their own response in both time and space, which makes it all the more complex and
at times controversial, especially in projects of public good and macro-economic ventures that include
social change, like using public transport instead of private cars. Design advocacy may include systems

offerings that are not products but suggested behavior change in the users, which make it political as
well. Making new laws is a great design act by this line of thinking, and our Supreme Court has been
very effective in this area where our democratic legislative processes seem to have failed, for example
ban on felling forests to stop the destruction of bio-diversity in the Himalayan region of India. My own
work on bamboo as an economic driver for development in India touches on some of these economic
and socio-political aspects and they are an integral part of our frame of reference. Thank you for the link
to your website and your tool (see link below) "Designer PiE2K: Ways of Thinking About Design" which
is quite fascinating and deep. I have downloaded the application to my Mac at home and office, but do
you have a windows version (or a pdf file that I can recommend), most of my students use windows at
our school..... <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~diethelm/next3.html>
With warm regards
007632 2005-08-13 14:41 Fwd: Problem with Long URLs

Begin forwarded message: > From: M P Ranjan <ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Date: 13 August 2005 2:40:35
PM GMT+05:30 > To: David Sless <d.sless@COMMUNICATION.ORG.AU> > Cc: M P Ranjan
<ranjanmp@nid.edu> > Subject: Problem with Long URLs > > Dear Professor Sless and list > > The
problem with long URLs can now be solved another way. Use this > link below to create a "tiny URL",
however long the original one is, > some url's can run into several lines of text. > <http://tinyurl.com/> >
> for instance your link to your paper reads as below >
<http://www.communication.org.au/cria_publications/ > publication_id_95_1338098140.html> > and
it is represented as the link below by TinyUrl.com > <http://tinyurl.com/ch9mm> > > It is easy to use if
you have two windows open on your web browser, > one with the desired address visible in the address
line, from which > you can copy the URL (drag across and copy the full URL or use "select > all" and
then copy to be sure that you have not missed any character > in the URL) and paste into the data box
at the tinyurl.com site, and > click "the make URL" button, you instantly get a small url that you > can
copy and paste into your mail. > > Thank you for the link, I have your paper(s), and it is my intention > to
read it fully and try to comprehend its contents. By the way I am > repeating a new course that we
created last year for a new programme > in "Information and Digital Design" at NID( started two years
ago). > The course is called "Data Visualisation: Meaningful Images", and you > can see a brief
description of the assignments and the part of results > at this link below: > <http://tinyurl.com/cx8b3>
> This course is being offered again this year and we are planning to > focus on dynamic visualisations
for "financial markets" and "medical > imaging" and your site is a very useful reference resource or our >
students (and ourselves). Thank you. > > This particular course comes under another hat that used to I

wear > more often in the past, my "IT applications design" hat and it has > been an area of interest for
many years, ever since I headed our > computer activities from the late eighties till about four years ago,
> through which we opened up many new areas of design exploration in the > domain of digital
applications and aspects of usability of web and > softwares and electronic products. > > We would be
happy to hear from the list, of any other such valuable > resource that can be referred by our students in
the context of this > new course at NID. > > With warm regards > > M P Ranjan > from my office at NID
> 13 August 2005 at 2.40 pm IST > >
007625 2005-08-12 23:56 Re: Design : Intention v/s specifications

Dear Chuck (and Klaus , Harold, the List and Jasti) Short post with a very long tale... I like the idea of a
"Dynamic reasoning agent" in the context that has been used to justify the term "intention" as a point of
origin for the design process, I find myself nodding in agreement. I would like to qualify this as being a
process of "informed and reasoned intention", eventually leading to "deep conviction" and not just a
"flash of inspiration kind" although it could well start from here as well. Just as Harold has told us about
his use of the term to signify a sort of "taking aim" it is indeed a direction setting and goal seeking
exercise, a goal that is not yet clear but will be increasingly clear as the "designerly efforts progress"
through a number of iterations, sometimes meandering and seemingly pointless, at times intuitive, and
at other times well documented and argued with stats and facts to support the current direction, subject
to change of direction, if new facts warrant such a change. This is why we think the a designer or
someone using design as a process needs to be flexible in their attitude and to be able to cope with the
ambiguity of the process as it unfolds. If at this stage the "specifications are too stringent the innovative
solution is impossible or untenable, since it is outlawed by the very "proposal" that is to be met in the first
place. Corporate designers usually get a well structured brief from management, where the task begins,
but some of us who are working outside this domain (for a large part but not entirely) in the field and in
development contexts, where the rules of engagement for a designer are far from clear, have to struggle
for many years to get a handle on what needs to be done and then we can set about doing what indeed
needs to be done or can be done within the stringent constraints of the particular complex situation at
hand. As a result of my lecture on "Appreciating Design: Intentions, Values & Judgment" to the batch of
Strategic Design Management students that I spoke about in my previous post, one of my students has
submitted an email summary, in her own words of what she took away from my lecture, as part of her
assignment, and I am quoting her submission and my response to her for the list below. Design intention
starts with an insight or sense of a gap or an opportunity, and in my mind like a drop of a pebble in a
pond, (intentional or accidental) but as the design process unfolds it tends to encompass the growing
rings of the ripples and the resonating interactions giving the designers (teams) a sense of direction and
a deeper understanding of the contours of the task at hand, usually of great complexity, (otherwise it is

not design). My response to her (Jasti Pooja Cornelius) assignment submission and her description of
the discussion are quoted below as a further elaboration of our position of "Intention" as a goal setting
design action in the early stages and as the task progresses, a more "conviction filled pursuit" of both
the elusive understanding of the whole context, as well as an "apprehension of the possible scenarios"
that can provide a comfortable fit in the "real" gaps that are discovered or realised through this process
of search and articulation, usually using models in the widest usage of this term, as suggested by Klaus
in his recent post, takes place. The result is a "composition" that is up for discussion debate and
decision. With warm regards M P Ranjan from my office at NID 12 August 2005 at 11.45 pm IST PS: the
long...tale......... is quoted below. SNIP SNIP On 12-Aug-05, at 10:09 PM, Charles Burnette wrote: > I
view intention as a "dynamic reasoning agent" (to use your > language). > Plans, proposals
specifications, artifacts, etc are "content" or > "formal > states" that express an intention at some point in
time when one seeks > to > apprehend, express or communicate it. I think your use of "intention" >
confounds "operation" and "state". You need other terms for the state > that > you use to capture and
objectify an otherwise unresolved process. > > Best regards, > > Chuck > > Quote Dear Jasti Pooja
Your paper is among one of the finest that I have recieved for some time now as a design teacher,
wonderful. Thank you for the insightful sharing of your "tsunami experience" in Pondicherry and for
connecting it to the pond and pebble metaphor that I used to introduce design concepts from the "Design
Way" and the "NID Way" to your class. Design at the "strategic level" can in my view be compared to an
earthquake driven tsunami, and not just a ripple in a smallpond, which is perhaps more suitable as a
metaphor for the "tactical level of design", or "page 3 design" as I now call it, or in other words, design
that is seen all over in our society pages, it drives busines and industry no doubt, but this not my area of
emphasis, I believe design is far bigger that what industry can do for making profits, although this is an
important application as well, and an area of vast employment for many of our students. But design at
the strategic level is a whole new ballgame waiting to be discovered by.....humanity? Values is at the
heart of our definition of design. A few years ago I was invited by an editor of "Design Issues" to
contribute a paper to a proposed special issue on "Indian Design" and my contribution was called "The
Avalanchhe Effect". After a two year wait, I got a message rejecting my paper since there was an
overwhelming response to the call for papers and my paper was not to be one amongst the chosen
ones. Perhaps the claim that I made sounded too incredulous in those days and lacked credibility to be
carried in the highly respected Journal which I respect greatly for its quality and substance. I promptly
"published" the same paper on the discussion list, PhD-Design and got several wonderful responses and
comments from the numerous participamnts on the list. This gave me the confidence to follow my
conviction and more recently, in March 2005 (earlier this year), submitted two papers at two back-to-
back conferences, one at NID, Ahmedabad and the other at Bremen, Germany. The NID conference
was on Design Education and my paper looked at the Foundation programmes of Bauhaus, Ulm and
NID as a line of development of design education. My Bremen paper for the EAD06, a conference on

Design Theory, and it was the first time (after the Avalanche Effect) that I prepared a detailed paper on
the "Design Concepts and Concerns" course that I have developed at NID over the past twenty years,
which is the basis of my claim to the unique "NID Way" which I shared with you in class. Do check out
these papers at my web archives from this link <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp>
With warm regards

M P Ranjan from my Mac at Home
007613 2005-08-11 10:36 Fwd: [PHD-DESIGN] Design ... design process + design sensibility
Dear List and Klaus, Charles and Harold,
It was my "Intention" to post to the list my message quoted below but it seems that my reply to Tracee
Wolf was only to her address through an oversight in my mail settings. So here is my post as a
forwarded message with additions, a copy of what I had sent Tracee Wolf last night. It seems that I failed
to understand the send "Specifications" in my Mail software on my Mac or in the auto-reply settings, or
some such thing. I now have the benefit of having read the posts from Harrold Nelson, Klaus
Krippendorff and Charles Burnette on the topic of "Intention vs Specification" and now we have the term
"Proposal" to deal with as well. My take on this is as follows. We came from different spheres of learning
having followed different reading and learning routes and therefore exhibit a particular preference for
terminology for which each of us has a slightly different meaning and it may not be possible to reduce
the gap entirely in this matter. I remember having posted on this matter some time ago when I
commented on the missing names in Fritjof Capra's bibliography in his book "The Hidden Connections"
where Bucky Fuller, Christopher Alexander, Stafford Beer and Teilhard de Chardin (to name only a few
_ I would include Claude Levi Strauss and others to this long list of missing thinkers who have helped
shape my thoughts on science and design) are missing amongst his thought leaders while I would not
think of excluding them from any such venture that his book deals with. Obviously we come from very
different knowledge spheres, science and design, and we therefore hold a different vocabulary for the
very same areas of concern and concept, perhaps processed through different secondary and tertiary
routes of delivery. I access economics from popular writing and cannot access the originals since they
sound "Greek" or even "Gobble de Gook" to me, my shortcomings, not the sources. Today a news item
in our local Times of India tells us that the Oxford English Dictionary has included a few nasty India
words and some horrible American words to their lexicon, the citadel is tumbling, therefore I suggest that
we can accommodate different meanings and still get along very well together if we have tolerence for
each others definition and take care as all three of our members have done to explain their position in
crisp and clear articulation, still not necessarily agreeing to each other, wise, we agree to disagree. But

can we let it rest there? The show must go on, one asks for "certainty" the other for "possibility", science
and design will coexist, can we collaborate?
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan from my office at NID
Begin forwarded message:

From: M P Ranjan
Date: 10 August 2005 11:59:35 PM GMT+05:30
To: Tracee Wolf
Cc: M P Ranjan
Subject: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] Design ... design process + design sensibility
Dear Tracee Wolf
I missed the coffee break, but thank you for a very sensible and stimulating post. My experience in
designing and in design education corresponds with what you have shared here but I missed the picture
that you shared with the list since this list does not permit these it seems. Could you send me the paper
cutting image off-list as an attachment. Thanks Design assignments (basic design ones in particular are
non-prescriptive) and they have a quality of their own. The other day I was walking through our wood
studio and saw a group of foundation students cutting identical pieces of wood in into identical
configurations provided by the instructors in order to inset another piece to obtain a perfect fit, to learn
precision, I was told. I spoke to the instructors (by drawing them aside) and tried to understand their
logic. The answer was – learning to understand specifications and quality, how "un-designerly".
I spoke to them about another way to instill a sense quality, that elusive ability, that designers have to
learn in the foundation programmes at the undergraduate level and I recalled the masterful theses on
workmanship, design and quality from David Pye in his books "The Nature of Design", Studio Vista,
1964; "The Nature and Art of Workmanship", Studio Vista, 1968; and "The Nature and Aesthetics of
Design", The Herbert Press, 1978, all of which deal with this elusive art of understanding with our
senses rather than our intellect alone, a "designerly way" I think. I suggested another assignment that
could be non-prescriptive but challenging, take a predetermined piece of wood for all students and one
simple instruction, carefully and soulfully remove 50 percent of the material using a set of tools provided,
and when the 50 percent reduction is arrived the result must be "interesting", "pleasing", "satisfying" or
any such qualifying state. The learning is enormous and life-long in depth and understanding. Try it it
works wonders to the spirit, and this is "The Design Way". The word specification to me evokes the cold
logic of our test-based science-driven approaches followed by the 500 year (or older) scientific traditions
which I am not very sure works for design thinking, which is why so few seem to understand what we are
talking about and it somehow misses the aesthetic experience, almost spiritual (irrational?) sense that

that you get when the "Composition" is right, it is balanced and tranquil, and "un-measurable" quality in
my view.
Today I spoke, (delivered a rambling sort of lecture, 10 am to 1 pm) to our new batch of students in the
"Strategic Design Management" course (a new PG programme started this year) and I chose to use
"The Design Way" (Nelson and Stalterman, 2003) as a peg to build my talk to the students, a sort of
book review and it was followed by sharing my presentation at the EAD06 conference at Bremen in
March 2005, which is about my course in "Design Concepts and Concerns" as it has developed at NID
over the past twenty years or so. The terminology in my lecture, which I called "Appreciating Design:
Intentions, Values & Judgment", was a review lecture that introduced the book and our own approaches
at NID, which have striking similarities, and now this discussion thread has once again touched a chord
on the whole and elusive question of "What is Design?" I spoke from notes and jottings on one page,
and used a pdf file with a few "word maps" to support my talk.
This file is posted to my web archive today and is called "The Design Way_Review Lecture.pdf" in case
anyone is interested to download the same. <http://tinyurl.com/78247> This is not a paper but a "visual
prop" that I used to support my lecture and discussion today. "Intention, Composition, Judgment, Action
and Caring" are key terms used by Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman to explain the flow of design
thought and action in one of the finest pieces of design writing that I have come across in recent times.
The difference between science, religion and design are also articulated, as "True, Ideal and Real", very
appropriate, science deals with finding "Truths" and as far as I know, and it is corroborated by "The
Design Way" that designers and (others using design as a way – pun intended) are not so concerned
with "truth' as much as they are with "the fit with the real world", nor are they concerned with the "ideal"
since it must work in the real world......wonderful. Do read the book. most of my students are, we now
have 5 copies in or Library, nay the KMC ( the new-fangled name coined by our present administration
which stands for Knowledge Management Centre), and I understand it is in great demand.
With warm regards
10 August 2005 at 11.50 pm (looks like I've missed dinner as well!!)
007548 2005-08-02 22:50 Re: Types of design

Dear Fil and Gunnar,
This is a very interesting question about design. It is difficult to find an activity or discipline with so many
dimensions across all the verticals. It is so because it is so many things to all of us, but not at the same
time. Let me try to explain. It is an attitude that one brings to both analysis and synthesis. It is an ability,
or a collections of abilities that one brings to shaping, giving form and structure to our environment and
our future. It is a language that we use to bridge disciplines. It is all of these and more. It is about feeling

and empathy. It is about analysis as in science and math and about synthesis in one whole conception
and manifestation, a particular expression from a vast array of possibilities, but this one fits like a glove
and it is about expression as in art and language and it makes meaning....with feeling and all this
creates value for the time being, at least. I hope this adds some value to the thread. The other discipline
that cuts through all others is perhaps Philosophy. Design is however a discipline that can be transmitted
through education and I believe that we are getting better at it with practice.
With warm regards

007498 2005-07-27 19:00 Re: PhD-Design Subscriber Statistics

Dear Ken and David
I am curious to know the status of India on this list. 1125 are accounted for in the first 15 countries listed
by you. The 99 remaining subscribers come from 32 countries (if we ignore the concealed countries and
subscribers.) I just assumed that there were many more from India. Could you send me the full list.
With warm regards
007208 2005-05-21 22:04 Re: theory as a car: theory and theorist and their contexts
Dear friends
The list has been very stimulating on the issue of theory formation and meaning for quite some time now
and this particular thread has been very rich as well.
I want to share a source that I still consider very valuable although I had read it way back in the
seventies and again in the eighties. Aurther Koestler in his book "The Sleepwalkers" gives a vivid
description of the process of theory formation in cosmology and in particular the twists and turns that the
mind has to cope with in formulating a new mental model and the difficulty that older baggage of existing
belief systems have on the conceptual breakthroughs that the scientist is trying to effect. His description
of the journey by Kepler is particularly fascinating and informative in the Watershed chapter.
By the way we are in the middle of our very hot summer vacation here in Ahmedabad, 45 degrees
centigrade today so dont envy us, but it gives me time to update my website and add many pages to my
bamboo pages and I have also posted the EAD06 paper and visual presentation in case anyone is
interested. The heat by the way is easier to bear than the cold biting winds of Bremen, but the whole

experience was very intellectually stimulating. See <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> and follow the
site map links which is my new homepage structure.
with warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my home computer at NID
21 may 2005 at 10.00 pm
007133 2005-05-07 22:04 Re: Printed Project Issue 4

I do not. and perhaps never will. but should I continue?
M P Ranjan from my home comp at NID
7 May 2005 at 11.15 am IST
007132 2005-05-07 11:29 Re: Quiet Crisis / Slow to Rise -- question and comments
Message resent due to failure due to wrong setting on my home comp. sorry.
Dear GK, Hari-Hans, Rosan, Ken and others on this thread

I must agree with Hari-Hans that the facts stated in the article are perhaps correct but the judgement is
flawed as stated by Hari-Hans in his post below. We have just about surfaced from a massive Dot-Com
Bust when most investors "lost their shirts" in believing that the internet would change forever the rules
of business exchange. They were correct in their interpretation of the facts on the ground but their timing
and their choice of companies was mostly wrong and then the rest pannicked as is bound to happen in
the speculative investment space of the stock markets of the world where the rules of exchange are not
driven by facts alone but on sentiments of the market since it is an inherently reflexive activity for all its
players. The flat world metaphor is indedeed correct since we already have a working example of it on
this very list with 1200 "design emthusiasts" or should I say "Design theory enthusiasts" beat both time
and distance in sharing ideas and thoughts across time zones and across continents and in the process
are building new equations and offering new competition to traditional means of publishing that is
effectively quite closed and controled by the establishment in most cases. I have noticed this lack of
synchronisation with known facts amongst disciplines and each of them draw their resources from
different sources when dealing with the same issues. Economists quote their sources which are mutualy
exclusive while scientists use their own sources and so do designers and now interestingly many are
begining to use the common sources due to an openinhg up of the suply chain of information or a
flattening up of the information space itself. The same facts are recycled through so many sources and
the real origins of these ideas are lost to the disciplines that use them and history cannot catch up since

we are indeed moving too fast in the production of these info nuggets and insights, and it will get more
complex and not less as we go foreward from here.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan touching base after some long journeys to Bremen, South Africa and now Shillong in NE
India.
from home at NID 7 May 2005 at 11.00 am IST
006900 2005-03-09 18:52 Re: New website

Dear Chuck
Your new website is an absolute treat for all of us in the design education business and I speak from the
India perspective where design is yet to take deep roots in the domain of formal education and national
policy. In India we spend billions of dollars on science and technology education and promotion and a
very small and quite insignificant fraction on design education. I used your site yesterday and today as
my lead screen for the class that started on Monday week with the current batch of Foundation students
at NID and we explored your site together on the big screen with sixty students and four teachers
discussing your site. The average age of our undergraduate student is about twenty years and the site is
structured and in a language that suits their needs eminently. I took them back to my lengthy reaction on
PhD-Design to your crisp paragraph stating the seven stages or modes of design action which way back
in September 2003 and now we have your more detailed and expressive representation that has been
so generously shared for all to see and use. The theme for this years DCC (Design Concepts and
Concerns) course is the National Design Policy: New Schools and Contexts in India. I will share the
outcomes as usual on my website after this five week course is completed and we are able to reflect and
garner the outcomes in pictures and models that my students generate in our class. These macro-
economic perspectives gives them a birds' eye view of the Indian economy and opens up in my view
many new possibilities for career orientation in design which are well outside the traditional disciplines
that are currently offered by our design schools including at NID. Your website and others like this are
going to be quite significant for design in India as it will be for viewers in other countries. I am looking at
India in particular since we are in the midst of a massive phase of investments into design and there is
much confusion about what is design and what should be included in design curricula across the new
schools that would be set up across the country at the undergraduate and the post graduate levels and it
seems at break-neck speed. The Secretary of the National Planning Commission, Government of India,
in his Keynote speech at NID during the just concluded DETM Conference told us that they (Govt of
India) were considering the setting up of five new NID's across India as well as many initiatives within
Universities and IIT's and technological and engineering colleges across India. NID was set up in 1961
and to suddenly have it multiplied by five is significant news. The National Design Policy too is being

debated in the country and it will be adopted soon and the wave of investments that follow its wake will
need to be guided by structured understanding of design expressed in simple language that can be
understood by and adopted by non-design professionals, which this website can and will provide
direction to. Thank you. Many new initiatives are on across the world and design education and action is
reaching and opening up new avenues. I was refferred to the new d.school at Stanford
<http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/index.html> and we also have the
<http://www.nextd.org/> and <http://www.kaospilot.dk/> and others that are all showing new and
interesting directions for design in the current space of education and design action. I do look forward to
the additions and to your book in the near future.
With warm regards
006895 2005-03-08 22:55 Re: Embodied mind

Dear Ken The discussion about the "Hand and Mind in design education" is something that has been
raging for many decades with echoes as far back as in the Bauhaus, the Ulm and now on the PhD-
Design forum as well. Last week at the DETM conference at NID I presented a paper and an
impassioned plea that Post Graduate education in design must pay heed to the Masters of Design
Education from the almost continuous tradition of Basic Design or Foundation education that stems from
the teachings of Johanas Itten in the Bauhaus and on through Ulm to the NID as it is offered today.
Teachers following this tradition do believe that hand skills and sensitisation of the mental faculties
through touch and feel are as important as in knowing through theory about a phenomena. Design
knowing is different from science knowing since the designer is eager and interested in applying this
knowledge almost immediately top very specific applications and contexts quite unlike his science
counterpart who sees the finding as an end in itself, a discovery of a truth, so to speak. I am quoting
below the full paper that I presented at the DETM conference at Ahmedabad (2nd to 4th March 2005)
and we did have a good deal of debate about the issues of hands and minds in Design education at the
Post Graduate level and the debate continues unabated. Those interested in the formatted paper in MS
word and the PDF presentation may check out my website archive for the paper and the presentation.
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp> The conference was very well attended by delegates from 27
countries and some 99 papers were presented between 2nd and 4th March 2005, all very exciting. See
the NID website for information about the forthcoming publication on the proceedings and to top it all the
conference ended with a draft Ahmedabad Declaration on Design Education, more later. With warm
regards M P Ranjan from my office at NID 8 March 2005 at 10.45 pm IST

Quote: paper from DETM 2005 Lessons from Bauhaus, Ulm and NID: Role of Basic Design in PG
Education
M P Ranjan Faculty of Design National Institute of Design
Paper submitted for the DETM Conference at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in March
2005.
Abstract: Basic Design within Design Education has come a long way since its origins at Bauhaus and
its evolution at Ulm. At NID it has found a place in the Foundation programme offered to the
Undergraduate programme students but is not yet seen as either critical in the Post Graduate streams.
The assumptions seem to be that the mature students who enter these disciplines can pick up the
concepts of design due to their qualifications or backgrounds. The other concern that surfaces with the
widespread use of computers is the notion the traditional skills need not be offered since design too has
become a knowledge driven discipline thereby obviating the need for basic skill training. The author
argues that basic design as it is offered in the Foundation Programme has evolved from a need that was
originally perceived and dealt with at Bauhaus and Ulm as a critical orientation to design thinking and
action and this need has not changed in the information age. We therefore need to revisit the traditions
of design learning and try to understand the role played by basic design and see how it should be woven
into the process of inducting new entrants into the realm of design thinking and action. Design is also
taking on new meaning and it is increasingly being separated from the skillful base that it was originally
married to due to the tools and traditional processes that are a fallback of various historical stages of
evolution in a large number of disciplines. Design is being recognized finally as being distinct from both
art and science and the search for educational processes that are distinctly designerly may not be a
misplaced pursuit. Key words: Basic Design, Foundation Programme, Design Fundamentals, Design
Education, Design History Background Modern design education had its roots in the Industrial revolution
when changing modes of production displaced existing crafts traditions and apprenticeship processes
through which design used to be transmitted to new incumbents within guilds, work spaces and
educational settings which echoed the situations that existed in the realms of practice. The Bauhaus in
Germany was the first school to formally create a series of assignments within a curriculum to prepare
new students to enter a journey of design learning. Set up in 1919 after the end of the First World War,
the Bauhaus was a center of creative expression that housed some of the greatest design thinkers of
our times. The educational experiments of the school still find an echo in all design education across the
globe. What the founders of the Bauhaus tradition formulated is of value since they were looking at
those qualities that needed to be nurtured in the art and design student, both in the form of skills and
sensibilities as well in their conceptual abilities and attitudes when dealing with materials and the real
world of design action. Thankfully for us the Bauhaus pedagogic experiments were published by the

teachers as 14 remarkable monographs that were edited by the founders Walter Gropius and Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy. The work that was started in the Bauhaus continued unabated after the teachers were
dispersed to new locations by the upheavals in Europe that led to its closure. The Bauhaus Way The
foundation programme was however credited to Johannes Itten was a master at the Bauhaus from 1919
to 1923 when he left due to disagreements with Walter Gropius. His book “Design & Form: The Basic
Design Course at the Bauhaus” was published much later in 1963 but the seeds sown at the Bauhaus
were durable and it spread to most design schools across the globe. The focus of the Bauhaus
Foundation was spelt out quite clearly by Itten and the core objectives and the teaching strategies
employed are listed below. Objectives: Liberate creative forces Open artistic talents Train own
experiences and perceptions Create “genuine work” Remove deadwood of convictions Develop courage
to create own convictions Help make career choices Expose to variety of materials and media types
Help discover comfort levels in materials and media Understand creative composition principles Explore
laws of colour and form Develop ability to handle subjective and objective problems of colour and form
Explore permutations of the interplay, build a vocabulary Teaching Strategy Evoke individual responses
from students Encourage variety of talents and temperaments Create an atmosphere conducive for
original work Encourage the “Genuine” Help student acquire natural self-confidence Help students
discover the self and their talents Explore student strengths in the elements of design Categorise and
diagnose student leanings and qualities Help students open these discovered talents or leanings
Develop individual potential by directing teaching of media explorations Basic Premises: Imagination and
creative abilities to be liberated Strengthen Imagination and expression Build on these capabilities and
set technical and practical goals later In the early years when it was implemented at the Bauhaus the
various workshops were yet to be fully established. Several other masters, all painters and sculptors,
from the Weimer days were involved in the instruction of theory and method, were called ‘masters of
form’, while the craftsmen heading the workshops were ‘workshop masters’ were involved in technical
instruction. The preliminary course called ‘Vorkurs’ was initiated by Itten and made compulsory a year
later. Other masters contributed to its strengthening and in developing the core meaning that it held for
the curriculum as a whole. What is significant about the Bauhaus Foundation course is the close
interplay of theory and skill. The sensitive hand and the experience of doing structured assignments are
used to raise awareness and to raise critical issues that lead to the development of convictions and
conceptual understanding. The production and understanding of theory is therefore a direct outcome of
numerous practical engagements within well-defined constraints of structured assignments that are
mediated by the masters who use their diagnostic skills to advise and direct the learners to help discover
creative potentials in themselves. The sequence of learning therefore went through the following stages:
experience, perception, practical ability, intellectual explanation, comprehension and finally realization.
The assignments for the foundation courses explored three basic directions: 1. Experience with the
senses: Sensory stimulation and training the senses 2. Objectivising these at an Intellectual level:

Development of logic and understanding concepts 3. Realising these through synthetic means: Ability to
produce or execute with quality This three stage process is iterated numerous times with various design
parameters such as contrasts, form, colour, texture etc till the learner develops his critical faculties and
is able to make his or her own judgments. The arguments that came up within the masters veered
between theory and practice. Masters of form focused on theory and its application while the masters of
workshops dealt with the practical. But in the early stages of the Bauhaus a lot of theory was perforce
discussed in great detail at the Bauhaus perhaps since the workshops were still to be formally set up as
the school was extremely short of funds. This set an unusual trend for design schools where theory
played a lesser role with most teachers were practitioners who wrote very little. The masters of form at
the Bauhaus were an exception to this rule. After the departure of Itten the foundation programme at
Bauhaus was influenced by Albers, Klee, Moholy-Nagy, and Kandinsky. Further development of the
foundation programme took place in the United States by the masters, each at their chosen centers of
learning. The Ulm Experiment One of the Bauhaus students, Max Bill went back to Germany to become
the first Director of the new design school at Ulm, the Hoschule fur Gestaltung, that was to continue the
work begun at the Bauhaus on the basic design courses under his active guidance. Max Bill managed to
bring back some of the Bauhaus masters and their teachings to Ulm and he set up a course similar to
the foundation course at the Bauhaus incorporating the advances made by Albers at Yale and
Peterhans at the Institute of Technology in USA. The Ulm school design pedagogy went through many
critical stages of transformation under successive leaders who came after Max Bill. Otl Aicher, Thomas
Maldonado, Hans Gugelot, Herbert Ohl, Herbert Lindinger and Gui Bonsiepe made major contributions
to the design pedagogy and in particular to the evolution of the foundation programme at Ulm. The Ulm
too shared the results of teaching systematically with the world at large through the publication of the
Ulm Journals, which represents one of the greatest contributions that was made to design education in
the fifties and sixties. While Max Bill stood for an aesthetic tradition it was Thomas Maldonado who drew
attention to the need for scientific temper in design education and its associated set of theory inputs.
Maldonado understood that design needed to draw fro many other disciplines and the sciences and he
talked about an almost feverish and insatiable curiosity towards some disciplines that appeared on the
time horizon in the late fifties. Cybernetics, theory of information, systems theory, semiotics, ergonomics
and disciplines such as philosophical theory of science and mathematical logic were explored to bring a
solid methodological foundation to design thinking and action for the first time. The focus on science and
methodology was a Pandora’s box that literally swallowed design thinking and sensibilities at Ulm for
quite some time and it took great effort from the inner group of designers Maldonado, Aicher and
Gugelot to reassert the supremacy of design at Ulm. The third and final phase of the Ulm pedagogy
experiments brought in the use of the social sciences with Abraham A. Moles playing a critical role. The
foundation course or “Grundlehre” focused on non-object-oriented design and the training of the hand
and the eye and a number of assignments were innovated b y the teachers. While Albers came back to

teach colour at Ulm with a hand on approach, Itten who came later intellectually opposed Albers. Further
the teaching of colour theory by Helene Nonne-Schmidt upset Albers who withdrew from teaching at
Ulm. Maldonado took over the foundation programme and brought in simplicity and precision to the core
of the assignments. Drawing too was modified to focus on reflective visualisation. In a way Maldonado
carried out a purification of the Bauhaus way in the teaching of the foundation programme, he made it
interdisciplinary and brought in theory of symmetry, topology and Gestalt. None of the Ulm foundation
assignments had a practical basis and they were all abstract and non-object oriented in nature. The
focus then could be on the understanding of principles and not on immediate application of the concepts.
It was here that the basic design course got elaborated and evolved further to have a discipline focus,
the assignments were developed to meet the needs of different disciplines such as graphic design and
that of product design, industrialized building and information design. Maldonado stressed on the need
for continued non-objective studies even in the senior years when students were dealing with real life
design problems however with gradually reduced time allocated for such studies in the curriculum. The
non-objective assignments provided the students with critical abilities in the judgment of form when
applied to real design situations. In the search for new capabilities a number of three-dimensional
assignments were innovated to suit the needs of product design students and nature studies and bionics
got integrated into the search for science principles that permitted new explorations. This took the Ulm
contributions well beyond the areas of explorations conducted at the Bauhaus since these were
restricted to the application in small objects of low complexity and the Ulm designers were venturing out
into the world of complex products and looking for means to deal with this complexity at the structural
and formal levels. The Ulm teachers raised the understanding of design to a new level through their
practical demonstrations in the fields of household products, electrical and electronic products,
automobile and transportation systems and in industrialized building while establishing unchallenged
leadership in the field of Graphic Design. Taken together, the live demonstrations of design success
across disciplines and a systematic documentation of their design pedagogy helped create the Ulm
influence across the globe and spread it to many centers of design education Otl Aichers' models for
design education explorations at Ulm does throw some light on the difference in lecture based
conventional education and the hands on experiential education seen in the basic design courses
developed at Ulm and now in many design schools. I also see that while "Design Research" may be
about the creation of "design knowledge" the use of this knowledge in "Design Action" would be in the
form of an exercise of contextual judgment in design synthesis when numerous threads of factors from
multiple knowledge streams get embedded into a particular solution. Design education needs such
critical-ability forming processes and not just knowledge gathering skills and processes. Transfer of
pedagogy to NID At NID too we have been keenly interested in the design pedagogy of Ulm right
through the seventies and later. We were fortunate to have had faculty members who spent a good deal
of time at Ulm in the sixties and therefore our programmes too got a strong dose of the Ulm flavor in the

early years. Prof Sudha Nadkarni was a student at Ulm and Prof H Kumar Vyas was deputed to spend
10 months at Ulm before commencing our first Product Design programme in 1966. Our library also had
the full set of Ulm Journals and these were a great source of inspiration. We have since been active in
following the Ulm people having had contact with several of them over the years. Gui Bonsiepe and
Kohei Suguira being the most prominent of these. Herbert Lindinger was a consultant to NID for the
Product Design programme as well and his book is also in the library. The Ulm story never fails to
inspire, since the achievements have been so stupendous. The Ulm will have great significance for the
international design community for many decades to come since so much was done by way of path
breaking thinking and much of it was documented in real time and now we have such a fantastic
resource created by Rene Spitz that it opens up the material for further contemplation by a wider
audience. My brief account (above) of the influence of Ulm on NID is far from complete and much new
information will emerge if design historians subject it to serious research in the years ahead. Hans
Gugelot from hfg Ulm was responsible for drafting the curriculum and then commencing the Product
Design programme at NID. He visited NID in the early stage and he passed away soon after his return
from India. He was followed by E. Reichl (Director, Institut fur Produktuntwicklung, Neu Ulm) who was
recommended by Gugelot and later Herbert Lindinger came from Frankfurt ( Institut fur
Umweltgestaltung ) to evaluate the Product Design course and to help formulate the proposed
undergraduate programme that commenced in 1970 which included the NID foundation programme
across all disciplines for the first time. The other prominent teacher to visit NID was Prof Herbert Ohl. In
the Visual Communications stream we had Christian Staub, Hfg Ulm, who set up our Photography
Department and commenced the education programmes in Photography. We also had a strong German
presence ( from outside Ulm) in Ceramic Design ((Zettler Lutz), Furniture Design ( Arno Vottler,
Braunschweig and his students Rolf Misol 69-70 and Max Janisch 70-72) and in Exhibition Design (Frei
Otto). There were perhaps others who are not mentioned in the available texts since the NID’s
documentation and publication record is indeed very poor. Prof. Sudha Nadkarni’s name is not
mentioned in the list of faculty of Product Design in our 1969 documentation titled "National Institute of
Design: Documentation 1964-69", NID Ahmedabad. I am surprised at this omission since I was
personally interviewed by him and Prof H Kumar Vyas along with the consultant and teacher Rolf Misol
when I first joined NID as a student in 1969 April-May. He left NID soon thereafter and set up the
Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at the IIT in Bombay in 1969. He retired a few years ago and was then
given the task of setting up yet another school, this time in the IIT Guwahati which is now the first
undergraduate programme in design under the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) fold. So three schools
in India were directly influenced by the Ulm doctrine and many friends of Ulm have connected with these
schools in the years that followed which has not been documented as yet properly. The NID library had
the only set of Ulm journals in India and I made a xerox copy of the full set (piracy admitted) for the IDC
library at the request of Prof Kirti Trivedi faculty IDC and a few years later he re-published some of the

papers in a collected volume called "Readings from Ulm" which was used at a seminar on the influence
of Ulm on Indian and world design. The NID experiment: NID’s own foundation The NID Foundation
Programme started with the first batch of undergraduate students joining NID in June 1970. The
teachers were drawn from the various existing disciplines at the Post Graduate level and at first the
programme was an amalgamation of inputs from primarily Product Design and Graphic Design
programmes. Freehand Drawing, Composition and Colour came from the Graphic Design stable and
drew heavily on the Swiss graphic traditions implanted at NID by Armin Hofmann from Basel. The other
courses of Geometry, Elements of Form and Space, and Basic Materials drew on the Bauhaus and Ulm
models for assignments and pedagogy. Basic materials too faced pressure from downstream disciplines
and the Textile faculty introduced linear materials as an input in addition to the traditional wood and
metal workshop assignments. Colour quickly moved to the Textile design teachers but a Product Design
faculty always offered colour theory. The foundation programme was of three semester duration across
one and a half years. The third semester was used for basic courses offered by the disciplines and these
included Typography, Photography, Film Appreciation and Music Appreciation to provide media skills to
all students and technical drawing and inputs in science, mathematics and liberal arts were offered as
lecture modules. Design Methods was the final course at the end of the programme. The teachers freely
experimented with basic design assignments and there was much discussion on the effectiveness of
particular courses as feedback from the disciplines to the foundation teachers. Individual teachers had
access to a very rich library from the Bauhaus, Ulm and several other schools which had linkages with
NID. Mohan Bhandari was deputed to Germany to work with Herbert Lindinger for a year and on his
return he was asked to coordinate the foundation programme. In 1975 he was given the task of
reviewing the foundation programme with the teachers and the management consultant advising on
Inter-personal relations, Professor Pulin K Garg from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Through numerous meetings all the foundation inputs were reviewed and discussed with a view to
integrate these into a cohesive unit rather than as a collection of disparate inputs from the specialised
disciplines. This process continued well into the late seventies beginning with a revised programme that
was created and offered to the batch of 1976. This was the first time that the NID foundation had a new
look and an environmental focus that transcended the traditional inputs from the Bauhaus, Ulm and the
Swiss and French schools of design. The Design Methods course was then called Design Process as
the problem solving process in design and inputs in sociology, psychology and field exposure were
offered as a preparatory set of inputs. The approach in Space Form and Structure too had an
environmental bias and this had extended to Geometry as well. I recall that both G Upadhyaya and I had
severely critisised the geometry course with excessive environmental bias during the first faculty forum
meeting in 1976 and thereafter we were asked to develop the course and conduct the same, which we
did for many years thereafter. By the end of the decade Mohan Bhandari set out to capture the revised
NID foundation programme as a manuscript for publication. However he left the Institute in 1982 and

unfortunately the book was never printed. It was a great loss for the spread of design knowledge. At NID
there was a discussion on teaching maths to designers at design schools. In 1976 I created a new
course aimed at teaching math concepts to design students at NID. The course was called "Geometrical
construction" at that time and in later years "Geometry and Morphology" where we introduced design
students to many exciting practical drawing and model building assignments including recreational
maths puzzles. While I cannot claim that it is a complete substitute for formal instruction in mathematics,
however it provides students from non-math backgrounds sufficient conceptual tools to deal with
complex structural and formal math and logic problems. We discovered that the domain of visuality is
under valued in most areas of formal education at the school level while the emphasis is greatly on
textuality and numeracy and we set out to correct this imbalance. The Space Form and Structure
modules exposed the students to concepts of semiotics and Gestalt theory of figure and ground
relationships. A number of exploratory assignments are given and the results are discussed to help build
an attitude of exploration and experimentation with visual language. The Environmental Perception and
Environmental Exposure modules got the students out of their studios in an attempt to connect with
society at large both to bring the real world concerns into the classroom as well as to help prepare
students in the early stages of the Design Process. The design process course went through a number
of cycles of development under different teachers. In the first cycle the problems had a distinctly
scientific basis, and all introductory assignments had low technical complexity, usually very simple
products were chosen and these were redesigned using ergonomic and functional explorations. In the
second cycle more complex problems from the environment were identified and these required more
elaborate processes of information collection and analysis. The third cycle that began in the mid eighties
took on a more systems focus and design tasks were treated as a process of understanding complex
situations through which many potential solutions were explored. Today this course is called “Design
Concepts and Concerns” and it is offered to students from all post graduate disciplines at NID in addition
to the module offered at the undergraduate level. This systems model of design that some of teachers
adopted for building courses and to conduct research and client interventions had over the years given
us the conviction that design in India is quite different from that which is practiced in the West.
Notwithstanding the difficulty of defining a subject as complex as design, we were convinced of the need
to use the power of this discipline to further the real needs of a huge population desperately seeking
solutions to many vexing problems in a very constrained economic climate. It is our belief that design at
the strategic level can be used as a catalytic tool to mobilise innovations and policies that can indeed
transform the country in more ways than one. This ideological bearing has informed many initiatives of
design action at NID and it was reinforced at several critical stages by confirmation of our methods and
goals by the work of other visionaries. The UNIDO-ICSID conference on “Design for Development” that
was held at NID in 1979 and the work of Victor Papanek, Nigel Whitely and Gui Bonsiepe, all of whom
came to NID for brief or longer periods, left a mark on the thinking of the design teachers at NID. Design

in India was being discovered as a whole new genre of action through the application of design
principles through research and development to new areas such as the development of crafts, health
communications, strategies for small industry, and in areas of social and economic development while
working at the community level. Today we have an even broader definition of design, that is design as a
vehicle for leadership as articulated in the “Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World”
by Harold G. Nelson and Eric Stolterman, who approach design as a form of leadership from two
assertions quoted below. To this new dimension and goal for design education we can add the impact of
new tools that take us into the digital realm of performance in many disciplines. This raises many
questions and many assumptions are made about the nature of design education in today’s world. It is
widely assumed by many that Post Graduate students need less intensive inputs and resources to make
them into “designers” and “design thinkers” when compared to the under-graduate group. The second
category of “design thinkers” are seen as a real need today and as an alternative to “designers” in a
knowledge driven world. It is particularly worrisome that it is assumed that design thinkers can be trained
without the burden of learning skills through the adoption of digital tools and abilities. My reading of the
basic design pedagogy of Bauhaus and Ulm show that analog capabilities of “learning by doing” has
been the historic vehicle for design education so far. We know that design thinking and design
sensibilities are earned through hard practice and through a process of systematic induction training and
these are distinctly different from the development of science based knowledge and attitudes offered
through the university system of education. The methods of teaching adopted at the Bauhaus, Ulm and
now in the NID experience have all generated huge success stories in the creation of the thinking and
sensitive designer who is able to make critical judgments on complex issues and perspectives and then
they are also able to act in ways that help solve these problems using creative scenarios and
alternatives which reflect their deep understanding and empathy with the milieu in which the opportunity
is located. This capability of effective design action is unique to designers who by virtue of their training
are able to act on the real world and create future scenarios that can be embedded in the real world as
analog solutions even if these were mediated by digital means. This brings me to a series of linked
statements by the founder of Ulm, Otl Aicher, in his book “analogous and digital” where he says ”…. the
culture of thinking requires the culture of the hand as a subtle, sensitive organ.” He goes on to say “…we
are rediscovering the domain of making as a prerequisite of thought.” Many modern innovations have
been produced outside the domains of large and organized industry, in garages and shacks outside
industry with small teams of motivated individuals. “… human ability to make anything, his ability to
design anything is atrophying…we have become children of a thought culture that has disconnected
thinking from making…..the more we know the less we can do” and this is not the design way. There is
much wisdom in the search for processes by which basic design evolved at Bauhaus, then Ulm and later
at NID and these lessons must not be lost because we throw away the baby with the bath-water when
we replace wholesale the analog processes of design education with digital tools sets that we see all

around us. I am concerned that many of the new disciplines at NID that attempt to teach design as a
narrow specialization at the post graduate level are not equipped to handle analog design processes,
that is to use the hand as a sensitive route to the inner recesses of the mind. We now know that in order
to create the deep understanding that is the hallmark of basic design education the masters had
invented assignments that has been proven and tested by time. Let us pay heed to the masters of
design thinking who have created an alternative to science education and learn those lessons which we
will need to take forward with new experimentation and testing based on new frameworks of theory that
would inform the design educational processes in our changing times. ~
References:
1. Royal College of Art, The Anatomy of Design: A series of Inaugural Lectures by Professors of the
Royal College of Art, the Royal College of Art, London, 1951
2. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1953, 1962
3. Charles and Ray Eames, The India Report, Government of India, New Delhi, 1958, reprint, National
Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1958, 1997
4. Jurg Spiller (Ed.), Paul Klee: the thinking eye: The notebooks of Paul Klee, Lund Humphires, London,
1961
5. David Pye, The Nature of Design, Studio-Vista, London, 1964
6. Armin Hofmann, Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company,
New York, 1965
7. David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, Studio-Vista, London 1968 1971
8. National Institute of Design, National Institute of Design: Documentation 1964-69, National Institute of
Design, Ahmedabad, 1970
9. Johannes Itten, Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus, Thames & Hudson, London,
1963, 1975
10. Thomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Renate Kietzmann et al., eds, “Ulm (1 to 21): Journal of the
Hoschule fur Gestaltung”, Hoschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958 to 1968
11. Maurice de Sausmarez, Basic Design: the dynamics of visual form, Studio Vista, London, 1964 1968
12. Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimer, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1969
13. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 1972
14. Stafford Beer, Platform for Change, John Wiley & Sons, London, 1975
15. Mohan Bhandari, Course abstract papers and handouts: Environmental Exposure, Elements of Form
and Design Process (collected), National Institute of Design, 1977
16. M P Ranjan & G. Upadhayaya, Geometrical Construction, National Institute of Design, 1977 (course
abstract paper handout)

17. M P Ranjan (Editor), Syllabus and Information Bulletin: National Institute of Design, NID Ahmedabad
1981
18. Mohan Bhandari, Foundation Programme at NID: An Approach, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad, 1982 (unpublished manuscript)
19. Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, Thames & Hudson, London, 1984
20. Gui Bonsiepe, Estrutura e Estetica do Produto, Centro de Aperfeicoamento de Docentes de
Desenho Industrial, Brasilia, 1986
21. Herbert Lindinger, Hoschule fur Gestaltung - Ulm, Die Moral der Gegenstande, Berlin, 1987
22. Kirti Trivedi ed., Readings from Ulm, Industrial Design Centre, Bombay, 1989
23. M P Ranjan, Jatin Bhatt et al, Accessory Design Curriculum, National Institute of Fashion
Technology, New Delhi 1991 (unpublished report)
24. John Chris Jones, Designing Designing, Architecture Design and Technology Press, London, 1991
25. Otl Aicher, the world as design, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, 1991
26. Nigel Whiteley, Design for Society, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1993
27. S Balaram, M P Ranjan, Suranjana Satwalekar & Dhimant Panchal, Curriculum Review and
Development: Volume I, National Institute of Design, 1993 (unpublished report)
28. Ellen lupton and J. Abbot Miller (Eds.), the abc’s of the Bauhaus and design theory, Thames &
Hudson, New York, 1993 2001
29. J A Panchal and M P Ranjan, “Institute of Crafts: Feasibility Report and Proposal for the Rajasthan
Small Industries Corporation”, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 1994
30. M P Ranjan, “Design Education at the Turn of the Century: Its Futures and Options”, a paper
presented at ‘Design Odyssey 2010’ design symposium, Industrial Design Centre, Bombay 1994
31. Otl Aicher, analogous and digital, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, 1994
32. M P Ranjan, Jatin Bhatt et al, Curriculum, Indian Institute of Crafts & Design, Jaipur 1995
(unpublished report)
33. M P Ranjan, “The Levels of Design Intervention in a Complex Global Scenario”, Paper prepared for
presentation at the Graphica 98 - II International Congress of Graphics Engineering in Arts and Design
and the 13th National Symposium on Descriptive Geometry and Technical Design, Feira de Santana,
Bahia, Brazil, September 1998.
34. S Balaram, Thinking Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1998
35. Gui Bonsiepe, Interface: An approach to Design, Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, 1999
36. M P Ranjan, “Design Before Technology: The Emerging Imperative”, Paper presented at the Asia
Pacific Design Conference ‘99 in Osaka, Japan Design Foundation and Japan External Trade
Organisation, Osaka, 1999
37. Ashoke Chatterjee, R K Banerjee & Neera Sethi, 40 Years of NID, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad, 1999 (unpublished manuscript)

38. Martin Downie, Barry Hepton, Matthew Hopper & Sabine Kazich, Thinking About Me & Design: A
design primer for ‘A’ level school education, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, 1999
39. M P Ranjan, “Cactus Flowers Bloom in the Desert”, paper presented at the National Design Summit,
Bangalore, 2001
40. Martin Krampen & Gunther Hormann, The Ulm School of Design – Beginnings of a Project of
Unyielding Modernity, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, 2003
41. Uffe Elbaek, “Kaospilot A-Z: International School of New Business Design and Social Innovation”,
KaosCommunication, Aarhus, 2003
42. Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman, The Design Way: Foundations and Fundamentals of Design
Competence, Educational Technology Publications, New Jersey, 2003
43. M P Ranjan, “The Avalanche Effect: Institutional frameworks and design as a development resource
in India”, paper written in 2002 for the proposed India issue of Design Issues Journal but subsequently
posted on PhD-Design discussion list in 2004, National Institute of Design, 2004 44. Wolfgang Jonas
and Jan Meyer-Veden, “Mind the gap! on knowing and not-knowing in design”, H.M Hauschild GmbH,
Bremen, 2004
45. Richard J. Boland Jr., and Fred Collopy, Managing as Designing, Stanford Business Books, Stanford
University Press, Stanford, 2004
46. Ashoke Chatterjee, The DNA of Design for Development, Convocation Address, Indus Valley School
of Art & Design, Karachi, 2005
47. M P Ranjan, “Prof. M P Ranjan: Archive of Papers”, Web archive of papers, presentations and
pictures, http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/, M P Ranjan, Ahmedabad 2005 ~
About the Author: Professor M P Ranjan has been involved as a faculty at India’s National Institute of
Design (NID), Ahmedabad for over thirty years and as a design professional advising government and
industry on strategies for the use of design services in a number of sectors of the economy. He was
responsible for visualising the feasibility reports for the setting up of two new institutes of design, the
Indian Institute of Crafts and Design (IICD), Jaipur and the Bamboo and Cane Development Institute
(BCDI), Agartala, each focused on the needs of the crafts sector and the bamboo sector respectively.
The work done by the author for the new curricula in the national design institutions NID and NIFT and
the institution building experiences gleaned through setting up of the IICD and the BCDI provide a
backdrop for this paper in the context of the need for fresh thinking in new design institutions and
disciplines with particular reference to India at the turn of the century.
Contact Address: Email: ranjanmp@nid.edu Telephone (Residence): 91+79+6610054 Telephone

(Office): 91+79+6639692 ext 1090 Fax: 91+79+6605242 Web:
http://www.homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/

Affiliation and Address: Prof. M P Ranjan Designer and Member of Faculty of Design and Head, NID
Centre for Bamboo Initiatives Faculty Member on the NID Governing Council (2003 to 2004) continuing
to date National Institute of Design Paldi, Ahmedabad 380007 INDIA. ~ UnQuote (M P Ranjan)
006540 2005-01-11 12:29 Re: specification Re: Design and intention

Dear Klaus
Thank you for the clarification. I have been using a broader term to describe the outcome of a design
action since we have started looking at design as a comllex activity with many outcomes (usually an
object plus instructions or rules of exchange plus unintended consequences...etc) and design as a
process that is larger than the limited tasks traditionally done by a designer alone. The analogy that I
used earlier of water and ripples needs to be taken into account in my model of design action. It includes
intention and the results of the action as well as many unintended consequences. Today these
unintended consequences are being taken more seriously when design appropriateness is being
evaluated particularly with reference to ecological and social consequences of that particular design
action, thus making design decisions even political at one level. New regulatory mechanisms and laws
are being put in place to manage these unintended consequences. While the designer may offer a
framework with details for implementation the seeds of the consequences are part and parcel of the
proposal as you call it and we could use another term here to describe these consequences, the "effect"
of design action or even design thought which can be visualised as scenarios which anticipate the short
and long term consequences of that particular course of action. I have been using the metaphor of "Fire"
to describe the systems nature of design. In this model material is transformed (technology) in a hearth
(context) and the and the process of combustion draws in air and oxygen (environment) all working
together as a complex system to produce (an outcome) light, heat or smoke from the resulting flame.
The "effect" is considered the outcome of the design action, which in this metaphor cannot be easily
separated into discrete components since it is a process and not an object. It is with this model in mind
that I have chosen the words, "outcome", "effect" and "affordances" in addition to "specifications", all of
which help describe design as a system rather than an object.
With warm regards
11 January 2005 at 12.25 pm IST
006535 2005-01-11 09:57 Re: specification Re: Design and intention

Dear Rosan

I have been reading this thread with interest but with little time to add my comments. Your take on
specifications limits the results of design to the confines of a product or the boundary of the system that
was taken up for designing in the first place. However design does much more since it places a lot more
that what was intended in the first place since it could add pollution and a number of unintend residue
and further it can and always does leave much room for interpretation bt the user and any observer who
could draw their inferences from their own perceptions and these could be unanticipated in the
specifications of the origional design. The word "specification" therefore fails to adequately describe the
outcome of a design task and we need to look for another term that can be used in conjunction with or in
addition to the term specification. "Affordances" is one such term, there may be others since design
outcomes tend to be open ended like the ripples that move back and forth when a pebble strikes a pond.
This term says more about the design with not just "what it is" but as to "what you can do with it", which
is usually what matters to most users of the design. If I cannot use it, it is not of much use anyway. Five
years ago when I was setting up our Web Usabiliy & Research Lab (W-URL^(TM)) (pun intended) at NID
I wrote a series of papers to help our students understand design in the context of the emerging
opportunities on the web for new structures and services. These papers can be accessed from my web
archive from a folder titled "MPR Papers on InfoTech". The papers pertaining to the above arguement
are "Affordances&Design_WURL02.doc" and "What is Usability_WURL01.doc". My web archive is at
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>
With warm regards and wishing all on PhD-Design a very happy new year.
006323 2004-12-20 18:39 Re: a brief reflection on Malaysian Design Industry

Dear Christopher Kueh
I presented a paper last May at a workshop on Design Support that was organised by the Design
Council Wales at Cardiff (May 2004). The paper examines the nature of the design industry in India and
offers a status check. You can download the file from my web archive at
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/FileSharing1.htm> The filename for the paper in MS Word
format is "Design Infrastructure_India.doc" and the related presentation, a PDF file also online, is
"Design Support_2004_pics.pdf" which is located inside the "MPR Papers on Design" folder.
With warm regards
006173 2004-11-25 22:09 PHD-DESIGN: Web Archives of Papers & Pictures by M P Ranjan

Dear Friends on PhD-Design
I have been busy this Diwali ( the Indian Festival of Lights) vacation putting together a web archive of my
papers and pictures on the various topics of my interest: Design Theory and Education, Bamboo
Utilisation, Crafts and Development and current teaching at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad
India. The pages are being added as time permits and an FTP site for downloading full papers is found
at this link: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/FileSharing1.html> The home site and
introduction is at <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/> There is not much material available on
Design in India by way of publications and I hope that this is only a beginning and we will see many of
my colleagues from NID and other Indian design schools sharing their thoughts and work although I
know many of them are lurking on this list. I look forward to sharing more of my papers and design
education initiatives in the days ahead. Today we completed our two day Faculty Council Meeting at
NID and we start our next semester on Monday morning with 27 elective classes being offered to our
students and it will be a busy time at NID with many visiting faculty on campus, many from overseas,
and do keep in mind that every year we invite visiting designers and experts to offer electives to our
students for a two week period each year. The weather is great and the campus is charged with new
purpose, a great time to be here. I do hope to see some of you on our campus in the years ahead. Do
keep in touch.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my office at NID 25 November 2004 at 9.30 pm IST
006114 2004-10-25 22:45 Re: Reflexive design

Dear Rosan, Ken, Cindy and Jason Foster
Rosans note is beautiful and full of compassion. Ken (and Cindy) with the disclosure have opened
themselves to critisism that could have been dodged but this demonstrates courage and who are we to
judge the rights and wrongs of such acts. Jason has leveraged the opportunity to raise some very
important reseach questionswhich may not have come up in the normal course of interactions. To be
very brief. Character design is a core subject in many design fields including animation, exhibition,
advertising and digital game play etc., where we build many personas and many worlds and scenarios of
action. In other fields we decide complex issues based on our intuition, imagination and sense of
rightness on behalf of numerous others, many unknown and unknowable. We take the liberty to decide
without knowing their full implications. Jason raises these in his questions quoted below: Quote Can a
designer remove all (or the vast majority) of "themselves" from their designs?
Should this be a goals of design (and designers)? If the first answer is "no", then are designed objects
therefore imbued with a morality and an ethic that is independent of their use? Am I "evll" for seeing

Cindy (or any person) as a design artifact? Just some thoughts from an engineer who has been taught
that engineering designers should be as interchangeable as their designs. UnQuote His comment
about the education of engineering designers assumes a value free operation of decision making if such
a thing is ever possible, that is being totally objective in ones decisions. In my "Design Concepts and
Concerns" class (at NID for the Foundation class in UG and PG programmes) the first assignment is a
disclosure of the self in an image of the self in the form of a composite image or map that can tell and
reveal an individuals life experiences and their inner belief systems which have been gathered through
their life and upbringing. The assignment was designed to help introspection before a journey into
design learning. Thereafter they are put into groups to explore and build models on their way to
understanding design, design thinking and design action as we see it now at NID. Our world view and
belief systems influences all our decisions and we need to be aware of this influence when we advocate
roles for design as a vehicle for change and it may be worth exploring the role of ideology in design
action as a subject for serious research. I wonder if such studies have been conducted? I would love to
have access to references on these studies. When we look at these student images we see many
loaded personas, some created by parents, by religion, by college education, by (stiffling school
education- full of words and numbers and an absence of skills), by life experiences and by their own
sense of what they are at that moment of time and rarely do we see full disclosures....the nakedness
that Rosan refers to in her note below, ....we all live many lives and who is the real me???
With warm regards
25 October 2004 at 10.10 pm IST
PS: BTW I just discovered two interesting coincidences about my birthday. (Disclosure self-image) I was
born on the 9th November 1950. According to Rene Spitz, Hfg Ulm, page 81, I quote "...and as of 9
November 1950 the baby was given a new name: Hoschule fur Gestaltung (School of Design)"
UnQuote. If you inverse the month day sequence you get the ominous date of 9/11, that is the 9th of
September, the day of the WTC in 2001 and in 1973 the very same day of President Salvador Alende's
assanitation in Santiago in Chile. I happened to meet President Alende in person on the 26th of January
1973 since he inaugurated the Charles Eames designed exhibition on Nehru that was created at NID
and travelled the world and I was a member of the NID team in Chile that day. President Alende was
responsible for Stafford Beer being in Chile and his subsequent book, "Platform for Change" as well as
for bringing Prof Gui Bonsiepe of Ulm to Chile (perhaps indirectly). The plot thickens and design is the
connection here. Question: Am I the same person after making these connections or have I changed for
ever. Do I need to keep this in mind when I design? What knowledge and what belief system does
design need? What self image does a designer carry? Wolfgang Jonas gives us two recent attempts to
define design, one his own and the other by Gui Bonsiepe, in his paper "A Scenario for Design" in

Design Issues (Vol 17 No. 2, Spring 2001). To this I add my own line in the context of our discussion of
self and our persona. "Design is a reflexive activity which changes the world and it changes ourselves
having acted on the world." (We have to live with the consequences of our actions). Cheers. Rosan,
Ken, Cindy and Jason. M P Ranjan signing off on a philosophical note at 10.45 pm IST
006015 2004-10-12 22:33 Re: How to get constructive critique (was Re: Specificity and ...)
Dear Rosan
I have been far too busy with my classes and projects for the past several weeks to respond to any of
the interesting posts that started pouring in since you happened to trigger the flood after a long silence of
the summer vacations. But hearing your cry for co-travellers on your imaginative train of lifelong
learning I am making a limited entry and will get back with more substantial contributions at a later date.
Your description of education reminds me of Otl Aichers' models for design education explorations at
Ulm that are beautifully modelledand represented in Rene Spitz,s book "hfg Ulm: The view behind the
Foreground", page 86 where he compares conventional education model of the situated lecture (model
1) with the teacher in a dominent position holding the students in an array in front and holding forth with
his lecture from a position of authority as compared to an alternate model where the student group is
divided into sub-groups in a networked structure (model 2) with the teacher playing a facilitating role and
the text caption accompanying both these image representations is quoted below for your reference.
Since I cannot show the image you will need to refer the book or imagine the two diagrams from the
caption below. Quote Model 1: Pedagogical principles Organisation Lecture Authority of teacher and of
the material Mass processing Examinations Supervisions Certificates of class attendance Rigid syllabus
and scheduling From theory to practiced Knowledge Model 2: Pedagogical principles Free community
Free form of instruction Discussion Teachers only in auxilary capacity From practice to theory Working
independently Personal interest Incentive Enjoying the work Going deeper Unfolding of personal talents
Experimental learning instead of dead facts Teaching framework in lieu of syllabus Independent critical
judgement Unquote So this does throw some light on the difference in lecture based conventional
education and the hands on experential education seen in the basic design courses at Ulm and now in
many design schools. I also see that while "Design Research" may be about the creation of "design
knowledge" the use of this knowledge in "Design Action" would be in the form of an exercise of
contextual judgement in the design synthesis when numerous threads of factors from multiple
knowledge streams get embedded into a particular solution. On some other thread a while ago there
was a discussion on teaching maths to designers at design schools. Here too there is a difference in
both content and style of delivery for design students. In 1976 I was involved in the creation of a new
course aimed at teaching maths to design students at NID in our foundation programme. The course
was called "Geometrical construction" at that time and in later years "Geometry and Morphology" where

we introduced design students to a vast array of math concepts through many exciting practical drawing
and model building assignments including recreational maths puzzles while relating these tasks to the
body of numerical expressions and algebric expressions using visual analogies. While I cannot claim
that it is a complete substitute for formal instruction in mathematics, however it provides students from
non-math backgrounds sufficient conceptual tools to deal with complex structural and formal math and
logic problems. I helped teach this course for many years before handing it over to my younger
colleagues who happened to be my students in the early days. The domain of visuality is under valued in
most areas of formal education while the emphasis is greatly on textuality and numeracy. But this is a
long story and I will get back to it at a later date.
With warm regards
Prof. M P Ranjan from my office at NID
005559 2004-07-08 11:03 DETM 2005: Call for papers: Design Education; Tradition and Modernity
Dear List
The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India is organising a conference on Design Education on
02 to 04 March 2005 titled “Design Education; Tradition and Modernity, (DETM)”. The call for papers
was posted recently at our website <http://nid.edu> and the pdf version can be downloaded from this
link < http://nid.edu/download/CALL_FOR_PAPERS-_DETM_Workshop.pdf>. The full text of the
announcement is quoted below in plain text for your immediate review. The organisers are two of our
faculty and their contact details are provided below: Mr. Vijai Singh Katiyar, Tel: 0091 79 2663 9692
(Extn.2016) or Mr. Shashank Mehta, Tel: 0091 79 2663 9692 (Extn.3012) National Institute of design
Paldi, Ahmedabad – 380 007 Gujarat, INDIA Fax: 0091 79 2662 1167 Email: <detm2005@nid.edu> I
do look forward to an active participation from list members and to be able to see some of you face to
face in India next year at the event on our lovely campus in Ahmedabad, India. I was in Cardiff, Wales
this May for a Conference on Design Support and was able to meet five list members including the
indefatigable Ken Friedman, it was wonderful to connect.
With warm wishes
005507 2004-06-08 21:39 Re: basic level aesthetics - language - experiments

Dear Daniela,

I am not an expert of cognitive psychology nor of the field of aesthetic perceptions (although I have read
much in both fields from my interest in their value for design and design education) but I shall dare to
give you a reply to your question below. I do believe that any set of parameters can be tested if these
can be isolated through the design of experiment or by the use of appropriate filters, software hardware
conceptual etc., however the key question is whether you have a hypothesis which is to be tested and if
such an isolation will deliver new insights which can be put to test your hypothesis. In the area of visual
perception, it is indeed difficult to isolate parameters, but it has been done in the past through some
wonderful and brilliant experiments in cognitive psychology, although in order to build a valid experiment
you are "scientifically" required to be able to replicate the situation and the finding through independent
action. The use of tachistoscopes to time the exposure of images, using paired images on cards to
compare sets of images etc., are some examples that have delivered remarkable insights into cognition
and perception. Cognitive ergonomists do delelop experiments and methods of analysis, quite regularly,
that can give reasonable and reliable data on a variety of visual cognition issues in the fields of digital
interfaces and in product usability situations. All these are focussed on finding out performance of
particular subjects for particular applications and if it works the concept is incorporated into the particular
design, and it is a great design since it works. However this may not explain why it works. So, what is
your hypothesis or the meta-mission in your research? Do you want to find general laws and guidelines
or are you asking particular questions? I am reading (a new book which I recieved a few days ago from
the author, thank you) "Mind the Gap: On knowing and not knowing in Design" by Wolfgang Jonas and
Jan Meyer-Veden, Hochschule fur Kunste Bremen, Bremen 2004. Much the same issues of what is
possible or not possible is explored in the application of research and knowledge and in the pursuit of
what is knowable in design. I quote Wolfgang Jonas in his appendix: Expose for the "Basic Paradox"..
Quote .... The sciences construct the universal, the global, the de-contextualised, and the eternal.
Design creates the exemplary, the local, the contextual, and the temporal. UnQuote. So the question
that comes to my mind is is your research "science" or "design" driven? What do you hope to establish,
what are the boundaries of your research question, the answer to your question seems to me that it is
do-able, within limits. Where issues get enmessed across many fields of knowledge you will be required
to create filters that are appropriate to handle the varied concepts (and test if they do work), for instance
visual perception could be determined by many conditions, physical, medical-biological, cultural,
linguistic, prior knowledge etc, each of which is covered by a whole different field of study such as
physics, medicine, sociology or anthropology, linguistics, aesthetics, philosophy etc.....so approprite
filters must take each of these fields into account, if isolation of a particular effects is to be made
possible at all, that too within limits, but limits can be pushed by innovation and invention, creative
experiment design, which you will follow through on based on your conviction and faith developed by
your research so far. Do let us know what you find and I am sure that it will help all of us understand this
very complex phenomenon a little better.

With warm regards
005487 2004-06-07 15:41 Re: basic level aesthetics - language

Dear Cheryl, Chuck, Klaus and Eduardo
The way that we have had a smooth transition from Rosan's "Design Cognition" to Cheryl's "Basic Level
Aesthetics" is very interesting. Both involve emotive and cognitive processes that are significant to the
understanding of design decision making and problem solving. I tend to agree with Klaus that we may
need to look well beyond biological responses alone to include progressive learning through experience
and also on cultural and generational factors that govern both these issues in a major way. If we look at
basic level senses and feelings they already include a number of pre-linguistic sensations _ tactual,
auditory, visual, bodily, including emotions, fear, moods, sensual feelings, to name a few. From here we
may move up to language and math mediated experiences and expressions that lead to the "Ah-Ha"
effect of discovery, both through language and poetry as well as through pure image appreciation and
their judgement which may form the very basis of our aesthetic experience. I agree with Chuck that it is
not only linguistic although the linguistic medium dominates our explorations. Prof John Chris Jones has
reiterated in his recent "Daffodil 31" a link to his website that suggests that thinking does not need
words, by quoting a mail from his friend, Cedric Wisbey
<http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk/2.2/digital_diary_04.05.14.html> and I tend to agree with this
view from my own experience. Cheryl seems to be suggesting the existence of a universal basic level
of aesthetic which I am not sure if we can isolate these, and even if we do as to how useful these would
be for design appreciation and design research. Eduardo's suggestion of Math induced aesthetic
experience supported by his example of bridges does show that intellectual appreciation need not be
linguistic alone but it could be aided by geometric appreciation (visual mathematical) as well and as
designers we have believed this to be true for a very long time. Further the validity and performance of
structures can be felt in the GUT by a coming together of prior knowledge of physics, materials and
configuration and an appreciation of the particular example at hand. Many forms of aesthetic
appreciations have been modelled after the specifically selected math proportioning systems, particularly
the Golden Section in the appreciation of Western Art and Architecture. However in my view our
cognitive abilities and aesthetic sensibilities are dictated by our past experiences, learning, and our
cultural upbringing and our maturation within a given culture through education in etiquette and in
reflection and practise. While this goes well beyond the "Basic Level Aesthetic" that is being suggested
by Cheryl, I think that we may have to look at this level very critically when we are in search of the
universal in aesthetic sensibilities. Taste buds are governed by culture, my pickles, my food, my likes

and dislikes...... leading to the common expression taken literally..... "one man's food is another's
poison".....in music we have so many classes, the classical, genteel, hi-brow, to the common everyday
lullaby which is conventional to each culture and the popular and experimental, each of which evokes
different responses from the initiated and the novice. Chinese classical, Indian classical and Western
classical can perhaps be in one class of music that is institutionalised by each respective culture but are
very different from each other in terms of the aesthetic sensibilities that are needed for its true
appreciation. Similarly stylised, individualised and personalised forms exist in art and in music and in
other cultural manifestations of cultural expression such as drawing, dance, thought, language and form.
So where does the basic level (purely biological?) end and the cultural and tutored levels (semantic and
semiotic culturally mediated?) begin?
With warm regards
005436 2004-05-29 14:41 Re: definitions ? Re: design cognition

Dear Don and Rosan
Firstly it is good to have the Don Norman on board the PhD-Design list and disscussing cognition and
design. I have commented on design cognition earlier on the list and I have a hunch that design
processes do use a particular style or class of cognitive capabilities that are not normally used in
"everyday lives" (I remember fondly the "design of everyday things"). Many of our thoughts and actions
are almost automatic when we act in the real world but in design there seems to be a deliberate effort to
explore the unexplored and in doing so perhaps it calls for a new classification. This is a layman users
view, perhaps I am wrong, but it does correspond to a view that I have held for a number of years and I
will be happy to hear an alternate view that makes new sense, like the metaphors for the human lungs
that I wrote about earlier. Welcome on board Don and I do look forward to your expert comments on
"design cognition", although you claim not to have heard about it.... I am in the Interaction Design
department at the Royal College of Art in London with a few students discussing these very same
comments, and the debate is raging here and they too will be looking out for new insights that could take
us all forward from here. Anab Jain who was part of the Apple Design Project from NID in 1996 is here
as a student, just to put these comments in perspective.
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan travelling out of NID, Ahmedabad and writing from from the RCA in London
29 May 2004 at 2.35 pm GMT
005369 2004-05-19 21:34 Re: generic design cognition Re: some questions on design cognition

Dear Rosan
I am groping for a direction to place some of your questions in my context and I will try to reflect on some
observations that come to my mind, nothing definitive as yet, but I can sense a direction. Yes, there can
be a general field of design and one which can be discerned at this general level without any real conflict
with activities that may vary when applied to some specific domains and very particular kinds of
opportunities. For instance design deals with manipulating materials to create new and interesting
configurations using techniques, tools and procedures, some considered traditional and others
considered to be novel. At a general level we can have a theory of material manipulation and articulate
these without getting into particular descriptions. The nature of materials can vary in their states, their
form, their degree of refinement or pre-process, the nature of tools could range from historically primitive
to modern and sophisticated and so on. A domain specific expert would perhaps approach the material
manipulation task from the vantage of his knowledge and experience while a novice may go about the
task in a very different manner, due to his ignorance. From a design perspective the expert is not really
carrying an advantage or handicap (as in golf) since the design task may be better served by an
unconventional approach, even by an informed and motivated novice. So it is design that can not be put
into a bottle. Design, by its very definition breaks out of pre-set boundaries in the early stages of
divergence before the solutions tend to converge on the particular. This journey from the particular to the
general and back to the particular is a hallmark of the design journey. This leads me to your question
number two. You seem to assume that the more knowledgeable a person, he will deliver a more
effective solution, I wish it were true. In design it seems it is not as important what pre-existing
knowledge you hold in your repertoire but on how effectively you are able to combine what you do know
and how you manage find what you dont know, sometimes by asking the right question of the person
who does know, an expert of sorts, at the moment at least. Information is important, but the combination
of that information and the unique combinations in which these are explored and validated seems to be
even more important. Such exploratory play (the is no better explanation for this combinatory game) is
central to the area of design cognition which is goal seeking and goal driven at the same time. There are
however many tasks where domain knowledge and skills can cut design time and deliver superior
results. But these may be more routine tasks that are performed by remote control rather than by active
imagination and innovation. The interplay of tacit and explicit knowledge in design situations would be an
area of research study that could pay rich dividends. Cognition is part of so many stages of the process
of design, almost all stages and at each one a different mode of exploration and expression are being
effected, we are uncrital and totally flexible at some stages of exploration and equally judgemental at
another stage of evaluation. Perhaps we will need to define some of the key stages when cognition
plays a significant role in the outcome of the design effort. For example when I look at the sketches
prepared by architect Louis I Kahn of the Indian Institute of Management campus project (that were in

the archives at NID, Ahmedabad) since we were the local partners on that project, the back of the
envelope sketches of the early visualisations capture the features and proportions of the buildings and
many of its attributes although they seem to be very fuzzy representations that are indeed extremely
deliberate ad effective in communicating intention, first to himself and then to the others with whom he
interfaced, with a definite element of exploration and decision cycles captured as mute witness of a mind
in action. One of his sketches shows that he had rotated the whole campus "inside his head" and the
sign on the piece of paper is a revision of the North marker for the site. It is quite clear from these
drawings and on examining the progressive drawings that came after these early visualisations, that his
mental model had a great deal more information than what we can possibly see in the sketch, and the
subsequent drawings. Long before the buildings were built he was wandering through the corridors and
experiencing the light and wind through the massive circular openings built in brick, he had a birds eye
view of the whole campus and a detailed view that of a worm for all the nooks and crevices in the
brickwork, all held to a plan that he had devised inside his head, with the aid of these external
manifestations and the sample brick arches that still stand s prototypes at the campus today. BY giving
the example of drawing I do mean to exclude other forms of visualisation or external modelling that
would be used by a designer to inform and refine his mental models of what is being designed. It is safe
to assume that the specifications of both the both the mental model and that of the external model keep
increasing as the design task progresses while the variety of possibilities continue to get reduced, finally
to one particular manifestation, the particular solution (as described by Prof Bruce Archers model of
intersecting cones of specifications and possible outcomes). Interestingly the specifications become
infinite when the possibility is reduced to unity and the opposite holds true when specifications are near
zero the possibilities are infinite. This works at a general level. Design cognition would then be a subset
of general cognition, and just as in all forms of classification it is only good if it is of use to someone. I
have groped more than I intended to, but that is the power of an interesting question.. The dialogue rolls
on, but where have we arrived? I have worked in a multi-material and multi-disciplinary design
environment and observed at close quarters how material manipulation explorations take place in many
discilines at NID, by watching my students and colleagues in action over the years. The initial stages of
learning have much in common and so do the later stages of elaborations and fluency that is exhibited
at an advanced stage of skill and ability development. While the materials and tasks are al different,
there seems to be a pattern in the learning curve, and the ability to then confidently apply this learning to
a specific task, at a very high level of quality. So does this answer the general to particular question that
you raised...? Perhaps this would be one area for "research through design" watching designers work
and discerning patterns that can be replicated and in the process discover the inner workings of thought,
emotions (Terry I agree) motivations, ideology, memory, perceptions, feelings, the endrocrinal, electrical,
muscular and all the other bodily fluids that get used up when the break through is achieved or when a

"wicked problem" frustrates all efforts at finding a solution. Understanding some of these processes and
building god and effective processes could be a valid agenda for design research.
with warm regards
19 May 2004 at 9.35 pm IST
005331 2004-05-14 23:55 Re: some questions on design cognition

Dear Terry
The name is Ranjan. MP is my family name, short for Mundon Pandan, which is on my Passport, but
rarely used , if at all, although I do have some students who do fondly call me MP, so the choice is
yours. I would love to see your paper explaining the biological and physiological aspects of cognition.
Our understanding of the phenomenon is being driven by work in at least two major fields. The first in
the area of experimental Cognitive Psychology and the second by new insights and break-through in the
field of Neuro Sciences and brain research. Steps to an Ecology of Mind (thank you Bateson) or a
journey to The Universe Within (thank you Morton Hunt) are but facets of a search that has brought us
so far, and the journey has just begun. While we all know that our bodies are made up of more than 90
percent water and a number of trace elements including a large dose of Carbon we are still interested in
that elusive quality called the fluff of "Life" which cannot be explained fully by any amount of research
on water or chemical compositions, although this would give us useful data to shift our paradigms of
what we believe, or try to unlearn what we thought was the gospel truth, since it had worked for us all
our lives. As children we were told that the human lung is like a baloon and it expands when you inhale
and shrinks when you exhale, it works for us and we believe it to be true. Many teachers and doctors still
believe this to be true, since it works for them with that pesky little kid who asks difficult questions.
(Rosan are you listening). Many of these teachers and doctors have not yet heard of the concept of
fractals made popular by Mendelbrot using computer based models to make fantastic images of
recursive structures. Now with a fractal description of the lung we could use the metaphor of an upside-
down tree to model the lung, with multiple branchings leading to a maze of very minute tubes at the the
tips of its branches. Now if you visualise both these models, the first accomodates any gross violation
like smoking very easily since there seems to be pleanty of space for smoke and impurities as long as
we do not puncture the baloon it seems all right, however with the second model it becomes very clear
that there is very little space for the exchange of oxygen to the blood if smoke particles and tar clog up
the lower branches, shocking new insights become very clear. The long and short of the story is that all
of us live with our incomplete models of the real worlds and it works for us till we are shocked into new
paradigms, by new concepts. Human cognition and in particular Design Cognition is one such space that
now needs new paradigms and this may not just come from the bilogical and physiological space of

research but also from the little kids asking pesky questions when they are trying to understand the
phenomenon called Design, which is not scientific by any streatch of imagination, and this fact does
confuse and delight, due to its complexity and difficulty in understanding the phenomenon, but also the
ease with it is practised.
With warm regards
14 May 2004 at 11.45 pm IST
005322 2004-05-14 17:34 Re: some questions on design cognition

Dear Rosan
Some immediate responses to Q1 to Q3. Design could be seen as an activity that is conducted quite
independent of the person formally called designer (professional). It can therefore be universally applied
whenever that activity is engaged in towards achieving a design task or goal and it could be performed
by individuals or by groups, working collectively or serially, and this group need not include a person
called designer. Therefore design cognition need not be about how a community of designers think but
about the cognitive proceses that are involved in designing, whether done individualy or as a group.
Cognition is a complex process that involves imagination and visualisation. Imagination includes the
internal constructs in "cognitive space" such as maps, diagrams, forms, models etc., held in the mind,
that can combine with memory and existing knowledge and it is aided and reinforced by the external
manifestation in the form of external models, visualisations and numerous forms of external
representations that are created during the process of design development, as iterations that inform the
growing and transforming progressive internal model. At each iteration some decisions are tested and
the resulting synthesis is examined as a whole and in its details in a process of "Informed Synthesis".
Groups can participate in this process due to the effectiveness of the external models that help bring
coherence and congruence to the various cognitive models held by the individuals in the group.
Cognition can be influenced by culture and thinking styles as well. So we will perhaps need to look at
both these levels to understand Design Cognition.
With warm regards
14 May 2004 at 5.30 pm IST
005301 2004-05-12 22:19 Re: design cognition Re: Design Research (Victor's proposal)
Sorry a small correction t my previous post see link for full copy of How Designers Think at
<http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/index.html> It should read

see link for full copy of How Designers Work at
<http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/index.html>
12 May 2004 at 10.20 pm IST
005300 2004-05-12 22:05 Re: design cognition Re: Design Research (Victor's proposal)
Dear Rosan
I will not be able to answer all your questions just now because I do not have the time since I am
working on a presentation that I have to deliver in Cardiff on 25th May 2004 and secondly that I do not
have all the answers to your questions which are very good indeed. I do however have a hunch that
there is much to be discovered that will make sense as we go along this path. Let me explain briefly now
and come back later with a fuller account. I have done a few sorties at reading the Peter Gardenfor's
book "Conceptual Spaces" using the Rabbit style (as Prof John Chris Jones says in his introduction to
his book "Internet and Everyone", that is, hopping from one chapter to the next and back unlike the
sheep or goat with its own style of reading...) and the same with his other book "how Homo became
sapiens". From what I gather the new theory that he offers differs from the two dominant threads in
cognitive psychology, namely the symbolic and connectionist modes of representation, while his theory
proposes a geometric mode of representation that he calls Conceptual Spaces. This is exciting. The
symbolic (numerical) mode and logic of computation, the connectionist mode of associative networks of
neurones, and the third and new theory of conceptual spaces that uses geometric representations
(images and visual structures in a topological manner) seems to be a very designerly mode which calls
for further investigation. Looking back at Prof Gui Bonsiepe' division of knowledge into three modes of
Numeracy, Literacy and Visuality - the third one that has been largely ignored by formal theory
production systems - perhaps will get a new leg to stand on - and with this many of the questions that we
are unable to answer using the traditional tools may lend themselves to a new kind of understanding. I
hope this makes sense. On reading further ( in much the same hurried way) the book by Henrik
Gedenryd, "How Designers Work" the author writes about the possibility of using the external world
"directly" instead of its surrogate representation, which he calls interactive cognition....reminds me of the
arguments that my colleague at NID, Krishnesh Mehta has been making, about the benefits of the
situated project mode (even if hypothetical) followed in deign education over the case methods followed
in many management schools, as a source of deep learning of problem solving and design cognition...I
am jumping many steps....but all these threads seem to come together with Bucky Fuller's claim that his
Synergetics is the Geometry of Thought. see link for full copy of How Designers Think at
<http://www.lucs.lu.se/People/Henrik.Gedenryd/HowDesignersWork/index.html> I have, for some
time now, been defining Design as a continuing act of "Informed Synthesis" where the rapid iterations of

action in the real world and the growing and changing models of our cognitive representations lead to
the resolution of a huge number of variables that make up a complex design task using a variety of tools
and procedures including scenarios, multi-disciplinary group processes and deep individual
investigations and rigorous research. I will elaborate some of these ideas and in the meantime I do look
forward to suggestions and critique from the list to take this line of thought forward...to its logical
conclusion, I hope.
With warm regards
12 May 2004 at 9.50 pm IST
005254 2004-05-07 22:55 Re: Design Research (Victor's proposal)

Dear Rosan
You asked > should phd students be thinking about these things? or am i the silly one? > You are
indeed on to defining a very significant area of future research which would in all probability be called
"research through design" and be found perfectly legitimate as a field of "scientific" inquiry. (my hunch as
well) Design is an area of human activity that is not yet understood in all its manifestations and
implications in spite of the heroic efforts of design theorists that dates back to the design methods
movement of the sixties or we could look even further into its origins as a profession. Today I got the
monthly mail from John Chris Jones in the form of his public writing experiments "Daffodil 30" where he
reflects on his recent meeting with Prof. Bruce Archer. We have come a long way in our understanding
of design but we have much ground to cover. Victor Margolin has opened up a wonderful thread of
discussions that have given us many new insights and I am sure that this line of reasoning will get us to
some concrete (or should I say) philosophical directions for future research. I will get back to the list with
my own thoughts on the subject of Design Research. My current preoccupation includes "research" as a
dessign teacher into cognition and visualisation processes and their role in design action. Thanks to a
pointer from the list recently (Chris Rust - thanks) I found the work of Henrik Gedenryd "How Designers
work", Lund University Cognitive Studies, 1998 which represents a rare study into human cognitive
processes and visualisation as applied to the design process. On searching the Lund University website
I came across the published works of Prof Peter Gardenfors and thanks to Amazon.com I have these
books at hand, each with a wealth of information and insights that are pertinent to the area under
discussion. Peter Gardenfors, in his book Conceptual Spaces (MIT Press, 2004) offers a new theory of
Cognition that explains design thinking (to me) like never before. But this is still like ‘information thrown
over the wall’ and in design research we will look forward to focussed research into perhaps the differing
styles of cognition and representation that perhaps exists in design thinking and action which we are still
to understand fully. This would also perhaps give us the key differentiators between design innovation

and other forms of innovation in science, technology and management. Would someone on the list care
to offer a complete reading list on design cognition and representation, modelling and visualisation ?
Cindy Jackson has done an admirable job on design philosophy....and design philosophers? but her list
still does not include Bucky Fuller, Stafford Beer and .... we get into fuzzy areas...the task is enormous.
With warm regards
References: Peter Gardenfors, "How Homo became sapiens: on the evolution of thinking", Oxford
University Press, New York, 2003 Peter Gardenfors, "Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought",
The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004 Hirotaka Takeuchi & Ikujiro Nonaka, "Hitotubashi on Knowledge
management", John Wiley & Sons (Asia), Singapore, 2004 Henrik Gedenryd "How Designers work",
Lund University Cognitive Studies, 1998
005146 2004-04-26 18:39 Re: Fwd: Re: List subject header?

Dear list members I agree with Ken and Kari-Hans below. I too have set up filters for all mail containing
[PHD-DESIGN] in my mailbox and similar filters for my class/educational interactions with students and
for other projects. Most email clients and services permit the setting up of such filters and this may be
the most convenient way forward for all of us.
Warm regards
005120 2004-04-25 20:51 Re: Freire, oppression and design (was: real social structure and design)
(Very long post, laced with ideology and advocacy, not for the light-hearted, politics and design and
other issues - Ranjan)
Dear Kari-Hans Kommonen, Alan, Rosan et al
Design action has its political dimension. Many of us have been involved in making decisions and in
decision processes that included "What and Why" and not just "How and Why", and I am referring to
decisions at the macro level of a systems approach to design that determines several political
dimensions of a design situation and having taken a bearing at that level and having been informed by
appropriate research and the resulting insights formed by this macro discourse, we would continue to
address the many micro parameters of making that particular design work. Many of these decisions
involved the discovery and articulation of parameters that form oppressive conditions for the players in
that development situation, usually craftsmen and local village entrepreneurs who needed design and

design diversification strategy to ensure sustainable development and the creation of new or increased
employment opportunities without falling into an exploitative frame that is all too easy in places where
there is inequity that is induced by power equations stemming from a host of influencing factors. Let me
explain. We (designers, teachers and students at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India)
have been working in many development situations in India dealing with employment generation
strategies at the village and micro and small enterprise level using design a a powerful tool for mobilising
positive social and economic action at the ground level. Our experiences date back to the early
seventies when we started consciously using arguments for determining "what" should be introduced to
village communities as part of our design intervention that would ensure the sustainable development of
the local players without developing an undesirable dependence on the intervening design teams. Many
methodologies have been tested and applied in numerous (hundreds) of such interventions that cover
the creation of crafts products and small industry responses to issues of sustainable development all
over the country. The results have been astonishing, and this work continues with new examples coming
up every day. I will relate a couple of specific examples and try to state the general through these so
that list members can share their insights to the body of theory that will be of interest to this group, one
that relates to oppression and the issues of politics of design in general. In the mid seventies NID got
involved in a major development initiative with the IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad)
led by the former Director of the IIMA, Prof Ravi J Matthai, dealing with a group of villages in the State of
Rajasthan. The villages in the Jawaja block were selected due to their perennial state of poverty and the
support then available from the State administration. While looking at the various possible options
available at the macro level design intervention through the creation of new products to use local
traditional skills was considered and NID designers were invited to participate. This became a long
duration project and to cut a long story short, the teams of managers and designers proposed strategies
for product innovation keeping in mind local exploitation of money lenders and the oppressive supply
chain that kept the local incumbents in a state of perennial poverty, barely able to pay back debts for
materials and other inputs including scarce finances, and the illiterate weavers and leather workers
could not get out of what we could call a "debt trap" which could be compared to the "selling of ones soul
to the company store" in the early period of industrialisation in the west. Design was used to create
alternate scenarios and to discover product categories and strategies and at the micro level of product
detailing that could bring a larger degree of independence from the existing exploitative linkages by the
creation of alternate linkages that could be managed by the community of the oppressed. This kind of
design strategy building is part of our education programme particularly at the systems design level that
is handled by senior students across many disciplines at NID. Many of these deal with traditional crafts
being faced with extinction due to the forces of globalization and change in materials and even local
pressures from changed perceptions and aspirations of local markets to the traditional ware that is on
offer. Design when applied to such situations has very strong political overtones and needs a good

understanding of macroeconomics parameters as they would apply to the local situation, which the
craftsmen or local entrepreneur may not be able to fathom without knowledge and assistance from
trained designers who are able to empathise wit the local condition as well as bring new market
knowledge to the situation in the form of product or process changes that are central to the new
directions being proposed by the design team who need to work closely, in many cases, as trainers and
mentors to the local crafts persons who are being addressed by the particular intervention. In the
Jawaja case of leather workers, they were moved from making water lifting bags and animal harnesses
which were being rapidly replaced by plastic products to the production of bags and accessories that
could be marketed to nearby towns and cities. The details employed in these bags in the early days
avoided the use of any alien material that they had to procure from the local supply chain and all details
were developed in leather with the use of appropriate construction that used only leather that the
craftsmen had direct control off since they belonged to a community of leather workers. This
disassociation of the community from a traditional supply chain created some local social pressure
points, but in the longer run the community was able to renew their trade and forty years on it is still a
thriving business that keeps them active in their villages at a considerably higher level of income than
they were used to in the past. This kind of design intervention creates new hope for the oppressed
communities and an ability in them to cope with massive change that is taking place in their environment
while enabling then to help themselves to a very great extent. Some rules for avoiding local exploitation
in the face of global competition seems to be emerging from all this experience which is ripe for the
development of a theory of sorts that could place design action in such situations at a new level in the
chain of governance of local economies. Innovation changes the equation in economics that is not
predicted by any other parameter that is usually considered in economic modelling and projection.
Design is one such innovation provider although there are other disciplines that can create a positive
discontinuity in the flow of economic growth and change. One such rule that I can think of, based on our
experiences, is that in order to encourage start-up entrepreneur ship we would need to find product
solutions that are less oppressive for the entrepreneur in which he has a greater degree of control in the
supply chain and in which he can initiate and operate in a low capital, low tech complexity and low
market complexity environment so that he can cope with his almost impossible situation and grow out of
this with his own effort aid and official doles in the form of poverty grants that are soul and spirit sapping
measures that are usually employed by self-serving politics and bureaucracy in many developing
countries. In many craft situations that decision of "what to make" needs to be seriously examined to
ensure that the individual or community that is being assisted is able to cope with the category and I use
a categorisation assignment as part of my "Systems Thinking and Design" class for senior students of
Industrial Design at NID. This is called the "Universe of Products" assignment when the students are
required to arrange all possible products, that can be made in a particular technology or material that is
being studied, on a comparative visual matrix from simple to complex across various selected attributes,

and these attributes can vary from group to group, but a meaningful set is taken up bringing home the
fact that in most situations there are multiple options each of which has numerous trade-offs which need
to be examined at the stage of design that determines what rather than how which always comes later.
My current work on bamboo too uses these arguments to convince our government at the State and
National level as well as local functionaries in remote regions of India that a locally grown raw material
that is perennial in nature combined with design strategies for local action as well as export markets can
create a massive economic change without the need for the mobilisation of impossible amount of
finances that a capital starved economy can ill afford. Further these measures can reverse the flow of
human capital away from our villages to the nearby towns and cities that are becoming cess-pools of
poverty rather than help realising the dreams of great achievements that seem to hold the minds of the
young in our villages. Prof Christopher Alexander studied the typical Indian village as a model for his
thesis on urban design and the evolution of human habitat in the early sixties (Notes on Synthesis of
Form) and very little has changed in these villages over several thousand years, but now, change is
every where, and the models for alternative futures are few and far between. There is a role for a new
kind of design in these situations and we need to understand the lessons from Pulo Freire's "Pedagogy
of the Oppressed" and craft design strategies that can be used in numerous development situations
across the world.
With warm regards
005091 2004-04-23 21:58 GK VanPatter: Conflict resolution and team dynamics-Ranjan

Dear Dr GK VanPatter
You have asked the list if anyone is interested in the dynamics of exchange and ideas for intervention.
Yes, I am very interested and I think you have something usefull to offer in this connection. (I have
included a lengthy quote from your post below) I tried to defuse an emerging situation by posting a
mechanical translation of Rosan's German text but we certainly need to go much further than that. The
football anecdotes certainly did help, and the encouraging comments from other list members but I am
sure that there are many ways that we all will need to learn about the dynamics of exchanges and adult
behaviour if we are to do this competently all the time at a very high level of creative exchange. I looked
back at the archieves and came up with what follows: (Very interesting and I would certainly like to know
more about the current level of understanding about team dynamics and potential skills and tools etc
and I agree that it is and will be important in the future of innovation and design.) QUOTE "I often find
the forum's dynamics unfriendly and even intimidating." SNIP SNIP Matthew Soar, PhD, Mon, 11 Aug
2003 13:02:11 -0400 UNQUOTE QUOTE SNIP "Do such notes make list dynamics unfriendly and

intimidating? Do subscribers want me to stop posting the kinds of notes that Matt labels erudite but
unwieldy?" SNIP Ken Friedman Tue, 12 Aug 2003 15:48:44 -0700 UNQUOTE QUOTE SNIP I was
interested to see the comments that were posted earlier regarding what was referred to as the style and
dynamics of the list as well as the later suggestion prescribing courage. For those who might be
interested, below are a few observations that are based in practice. It is no secret that dynamics of
conversation can, over time, and through repetition, impact participation, ideation and ultimately entire
cultures. We see this often in our innovation and understanding work with large organizations. The
reality is that this terrain is of huge importance to many companies today, especially those who find
themselves in the position of having few ideas in their pipelines. I will quickly point out that this is just
one example of how the issues on the list are not always isolated to that community but are often
representational of issues found in the business world where clients exist. It is not likely possible to over
state the importance of this realization as in our problems can be found many opportunities for design to
serve and help others. Surfacing issues around dialogue dynamics in the real world of business is
tricky. In our practice we are sometimes asked to work this terrain. We do this by decoding and mapping
such dynamics as visual architectures. Consciously or unconsciously the list (community) has a
dynamic, the origins of which, despite the technology, could likely be traced back to the time of Socrates.
It is a dynamic that is deeply embedded in the academic community and also appears in western
business culture. At the heart of the dynamic is the idea of adding value through criticism and judgment.
Unfortunately they knew little about innovation dynamics in Ancient Greece. I do encourage graduate
design students on this list to think, think, think about what this means if you haven't already. Think
about how you are learning to add value to conversations yourself. Think about how others are learning
to do so. Some of the others may become your clients soon. Think about what this means in terms of
problems and opportunities for the future of design. There are many avenues worthy of design research
there. I propose today that we be adventuresome. Why not invite a brave graduate student or group of
students to take on the challenge of mapping the architecture of the conversations on this list, or at least
a representative sample. Suspended in time, they can conveniently be found in the archives. Such
research would likely surface substantial insights. Based on our experiments and experience in practice
I am guessing that what you will likely find is a considerable disconnect between the stated or implied
intentions of the list and the actual conversation dynamics that spring from deeply embedded behaviors.
I am guessing that this list likely has a judgments to ideas ratio in the 100 to 1 range. It would be very
interesting to see what the numbers actually are. In our consulting practice we have undertaken this
kind of exploration by filming the interaction occurring between client employees in sample problem
solving meetings and then deconstructing the dialogue. To do this we use, what we call a Dialogue
Architecture Framework that we have had in development for some time. When the visual
deconstruction and analysis is presented, the participants are often very surprised by what they see.
Most people have the best of intentions in what they do, but conversation dynamics spring from the level

of learned behaviors rather than intents. When doing this kind of work it becomes important to
understand the close interconnections between purpose and process. If the purpose is to create a
debating society then the default Socrates-like model might be perfect. If the purpose is to create a
sustainable innovative capability or culture where ideas must be grown from seeds, then an organization
may have to substantially rethink much of what it is doing conversationally. It therefore becomes
important not to mix the purpose from one model with the process from another. Changing such
dynamics in organizations typically involves a significant unlearning curve as those default behaviors are
deeply rooted in many adults who consider themselves to be among the best and the brightest. There in
lies very difficult news for some organizations but also huge opportunity for design as the future unfolds,
if we can better understand our own behaviors. In traditional design practice you will not find the tools
and models to address such challenges but we believe this to be rich terrain for future design leaders.
Hope this helps. Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:24:36 -0400 From: GK VanPatter
<gvanpatter@UNDERSTANDINGLAB.COM> Subject: Re: list meta-discourse UNQUOTE This is
fascinating stuff. Has anyone on the list done this kind of study into conversations or have references to
such studies and come up with enabling processes and tools, procedures, understanding of the
underlying dynamics etc.? I agree with Dr GK VanPatter that this will be a critcal area for design
research, particularly if design (and I believe it is) is headed into the domain of "team centered
performance" and away from the classical "individual centric models" of super hero performancees that
seems to be championed by our "Star Designer Syndrome" that we follow for much of design promotion
and design awards across the world. I would like to hear more about this and to learn from list members
on this matter. If NextD has some new insights to share it would be wonderful.
With warm regards
005038 2004-04-21 17:29 Re: Apology to Fil and others

Dear Rosan
I entered your German text on Ontology into the Google translation site and got the following result in
English. <http://translate.google.com/> How good is the translation quality? English Translation:
Ontologie (of griech.on, being ', and logos, teachings) in like-test senses the science of its and/or
Seiendem as such. The name "O" emerges only in 17 Jh., but after the thing one finds ontologische
considerations since beginning of philosophy history. Already Parmenides speaks of the one, eternal
and constant its and places thereby its into the center of the philosophical interest.... Epistemologie
(griech. science teachings) - theory of knowledge German text: Ontologie (vom griech.on, seiend', und
logos, Lehre) im wietesten Sinne die Lehre vom Sein bzw. Seiendem als solchen. Der Name "O" taucht

zwar erst im 17 Jh. auf, doch der Sache nach findet man ontologische Überlegungen seit Anbeginn der
Philosophiegeschichte. Schon Parmenides spricht von dem einen, ewigen und unveränderlichen Sein
und stellt damit das Sein in den Mittelpunkt des philosophischen Interesses. .... Epistemologie (griech.
Wissenschaftslehre) - Erkenntnistheorie
With warm regards
004984 2004-04-19 17:24 Re: Pre Research , Research and post research (Postponed Research !)
Dear Pradeep
Tomorrow we go to the polls in India, in all, 650 million of us will be involved in redefining the worlds
largest democracy. A few hours after the last polling station closes down, and the electronic voting
machines will be carried, ferried or donkeyed down from remote locations and from cities to the nearest
counting station that is connected to the rest of networked India, all of us will know who won and who
lost, who our next government will be. We would have saved in this process approximately 10,000
tonnes of paper that would otherwise have been used for such a large electorate, established the
reliability of a near one hundred percent which is unheard of in any other part of the world, developed or
otherwise, and reiterated our firm belief that the system is fair and free and transparent, besides many
other positive values that have been realised in the past sixteen years since the electronic voting
machine was designed and first tested in 1988 on semi-literate and illliterate people in experiments
conducted in parts of Western India and then in tentative steps across the length and breadth of India.
Is this great Science? is this great Technology? is this great Management? is this great Design? What
does this innovation, that has enabled us to achieve so much, so effectively, owe its success to? We
need to ponder his question for some length of time, deeply if we are to discover the relative roles of all
the contributions that have gone into the making of this success story. There are many lessons here and
we would benefit from drawing these out for the benefit of all of us interested in design and research,
and disciplines and professions. It is my view and I am sure of many of us that it is all of the above.
Science has provided us with the tools and concepts that has permitted us to move from the technology
of paper counting to counting bits embedded in micro circuits, the technology innovation has helped
standardise the delivery of reliable hardware and sofware, the logistics of managing a massive election
owes its success to our learning and adhereing to laws and processes established from knowledge
garnered from previous mistakes and to Design that has helped build a great useable interface and user
protocol that brings total reliability and provides and effective synthesis of all the parameters that go into
making of the product that now symbolises fairness and equity of access to such a diverse population
that is represented by the Indian electorate. At present count, about one million such voting machnes

are to be used across India and the fact is that these are accepted and covered by a strong belief
amongst all the participants, political parties and voters alike, that it is trustworthy and reliable. I have
used the question of "percieved reliability" of objects and systems in many of my classes by asking my
students to rate a number of similar products in a category, such as electronic goods, consumer goods,
packaged food etc, and the visual rating exercise has always resulted in lively discussions on where
does the "percieved reliability" of a particular object lie. s it in the brand, in the colour, in some minor
feature or line or mark, or does it lie in the mind of the observer, in their own background or preference
etc? This is the stuff of design discourse and of marketing and I am sure a valid subject for a scientific
investigation if we wish to measure the effect with a fine-tooth comb in an objectve manner and at what
cost or effort the is considered reasonable etc. Having said that, I wish to return to the question of the
differences between science, technology, management and design innovations. The best arguement
that I have seen on this matter is the one raised and explained by Gui Bonsiepe in his book "Interface:
......." where he places science, technology and design innovations in their respective contexts and
outlines the expected outcomes of each in clear and convincing terms that I agree with quite whole-
heartedly, and therefore my comments can be seen as an outcome of that acceptance. I will "cast my
vote" tomorrow, or should I say "punch my vote" because I will be depressing a button large enough for
an adult thumb, (was it designed so that the thumb could also be used although most will use their index
finger) however our population of illiterates are used to using their thumb impressions to identify
themselves just as the rest of us are used to using a distinctive signature to gain access to bank
accounts and for transfer of our property, and then we will hear a distinct beep as the required feedback
that our vote has indeed been cast and this will coincide with the glow of a lamp located at the top of the
voting unit.........some of these features seem irrational if one were to include the form of the mouldings
the size of theradius, the draft angle of the moulded side and surface texture of the voting unit etc....but
they work and work well under that most severe conditions.......and there are hundreds of such micro
details that have all fallen in place, some how, in some grand synthesis....and it works.....and I hope that
it gives us good governance...we can only hope!!!! Is this good science? Is this good technology? Is this
good management? Is it art!!! or is it good design?? Or is it just good luck that we can all ascribe to the
correct placement of the planets in the cosmos that is based on the blessings of some benevelant Hindu
deity, or is there more that lies beyond what the eyes can see, our ears can hear, our hands can touch,
and our minds can fathom......I offer this to the list to ponder and respond? A bit of western rationality
and eastern mysticism, all in the press of a button. What indeed is Design and what is Research, what
then is Design Research???
With warm regards

004949 2004-04-15 18:02 Re: Beer drinking and pre-research?
Dear Ken and Rosan
This is very entertaining and educating. Let me add a note from our city of Ahmedabad where we
manage to do a lot of research and design without the benefit of beer!! Ahmedabad being located in the
Western State of Gujarat is perhaps the only State in India that is still under the State Prohibition Act,
therefore no BEER!! However our International guests need not worry since a small quota is provided to
them if they wish to apply for such a quota. We have a local joke about a dealer in a nearby town who
won the award for the highest distribution of beer in the country, that year, and yes that town is also
under the State Prohibition Act, so much for prohibition....and beer. They must have had a great number
of International guests to account for their massive success, however noone is counting or doing deep
research!! I agree with Ken that design, now and in the future will need to depend on robust resarch
from a whole host of disciplines that contribute to and helps sustain good practice and offer great theory
that all of us can use to make sense of our world and the behaviour of the people in it. But I also like the
way Rosan provokes us, flipantly or otherwise, and it brings out the best in Ken. Very educating in the
end. About pre and post design some comments. Design is on one hand a responsible and exacting
profession now differentiated into hundreds of disciplines and capabilities that have been documented
and listed earlier. So we can not speak about design as if it is one kind of activity at all. In fact it is a very
large variety of activities, each of which could have many forms and therefore research needs. And on
the other hand Design is a very human activity that could be engaged in by all human beings and there
is a value in drawing the attention of policy makers to this larger role for design in the making of a
creative and sensitive society of the future. The comments on research are to do with the former role,
that of the professional. Here too we need to look at the various circumstances and roles that a designer
can or is permitted to play within Industry, government and in society, all of whom need design services
at the highest level of quality, but many of them may still not know it as yet. Legitimising design is a task
that all of us have been asked to play in a science and management dominated world and the language
of science and the discipline of good management are instantly recognised. Designers have used
research for the purpose of justifying their choises and decisions as well as for obtaining approval for
their work which is usually divided into quite distinct phases for the sake of good management.
Designers have also been using a variety of research to define a goal or direction for design action. This
is defintely pre-design , in the professional sense of what designers are supposed to be doing. Many
years ago I was steeped in Anthropology and Ethnography research methods and readings when my
friends and the not so friendly ones thought that I was wandering far from design, the then accepted
path, of good form and good profit. This was when we had embarked on our research on bamboo by
studying the traditional uses of that material in the remote Northeastern region of India, to document and
extract what we now call traditional wisdom, from the first hand observations and recordings of a design

survey team. Now we are able to return with new knowledge that informs our design directions that
would not have been possible without that experience and work. Post design research on the other
hand is once again an issue of establishing accountability for the design action and in many
development oriented situations such research sheds light on the succes or failure of particular
strategies and helps in formulating corrective actions or guides further inputs going forward. Research
within design is needed as well and much learning is needed here about how individual and groups of
designers carry out their work in various industries and in design situations. We have many interesting
opportunities and case (studies) in India, many which are not documented, and many more that need to
be done but are still not recognised and adequately funded. The preoccupation seems to be on funding
the setting of standards while little effort is made to promote innovation through design. I wonder how
can we shift the emphasis from being focussed on analytic research to a form of synthesis research that
could be called designerly research in the true sense of the word design.
With warm regards
004904 2004-04-09 17:45 Re: Design Methodologies

Some more reflections on emerging design methodologies - M P Ranjan
In February 2004 Eunkyong Baek had asked the list for information on methods relating to naratives of
meetings and design sessions in industry and I had responded to this off-list with a couple of personal
examples that may be useful in the context of the current discussion on design methodologies. I am
therefore quoting part of that message below for views and reactions from the list. quote: You ask for
examples of narratives used by designers for presentations and design review meetings and it is an
interesting question. The discussion thread has however covered much ground to include processes for
observation and recording of all meetings (on design) and their analysis and extraction of appropriate
findings which are also interesting from the point of design research. I would share with you a couple of
personal examples that cover both the above questions. I use the term "scenarios" for the visual
depiction of a complex image based representation (in many styles) that captures the essence and the
flow of a design proposal which could be pretty abstract at an early stage of development and far more
detailed and explicit at a more advanced stage of evolution of that representation. These images are
supported by texts that forms the narrative part of the discourse and I find it particularly effective and
useful when dealing with design tasks at a strategic level. To cut a long story short I will quote one
particular example. In 1998 I was invited by the UNDP in Delhi to conduct a survey and propose a
course of action for the development of the Bamboo sector in India. This invitation was based on my
previous published work on the bamboo crafts of the Northeastern region of India done in the 80's. My

report to the UNDP submitted in February 1999 formed the basis of the three year National development
project that has just been concluded. My report titled "From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a
Sustainable Human Development Resource for India" uses six "scenarios" to outline the framework for a
multi-tiered multi-sectoral project of integrated development. Each "scenario" captures the key concepts
and directions needed in a particular sector and these diagrams were used repeatedly to brief partners
and officials and these are easy to grasp and accept for further action. I will be happy to send a pdf
copy of the report if requested off the list. Two versions are available a 72 dpi version is 500kb and a
300dpi version is 1.4MB in size. I teach scenario thinking (which I used above) in two courses at NID,
one at the Foundation Level course titled "Design Concepts and Concerns" and the other at the senior
level titled "Systems Thinking & Design". Here I conduct the courses in camera and document all the
assignments and presentations made by all the students using a digital still camera to record the work
and the typical moods and interactions amongst groups of students working in teams to develop a
deeper understanding of some complex subject that has been assigned to them for study and
subsequent representation in visually rich presentations to the plenary session of all groups. This form of
"contemporaneous documentation" provides us with a rich visual resource that can be revisited later to
refresh ones understanding of the presentations as an aid to deep learning in an academic setting. I
have been using this medium for four years for all my classes and as a result have a massive collection
of digital images which I use in numerous ways to effect education and to conduct research. The idea of
using such contemporaneous documentation was suggested by Prof. Bruce Archer of RCA during his
visit to NID in early 80's but we could only fully implement the concept once the digital means was
practically available. It is a very powerful medium and I am able to give my students one CD-ROM with
reduced versions (800 x 600 pixel at 150 dpi) of all the images from each course, which is an aide
memoir and a new pedagogic tool for design education since we are constantly dealing in visual
discourses that tend to get lost due to shortage of storage space. I use an Apple Mac and very simple
sharewares to catalogue and retrieve over 250,000 images that are part of my archive today. I would be
eager to see the progress of your research into the use of narratives and I do believe that this will be
increasingly used by designers and "industry" who are using design at a strategic level. unquote I
would be eager to know about other visually rich methodologies that are being used by list members and
others in industry for design or design research tasks which could put in context the opportunities
represented by new digital tools that are now available in IT enabled design processs and in people
related observation and research at an affordable cost.
With warm regards
004903 2004-04-09 17:03 Re: Design Methodologies

I find Prof John Broadbent's taxonomy of design methodologies interesting and useful in mapping the
directions that new research can take in this area. (in his post dated 9th April 2004). I have some
reflections and comments on this subject below. I have found one remarkable difference between
(practicing and student) designers using particular methodologies and in design researchers discussing
these methodologies and that is : - designers do not seem to be too concerned about the exact form or
structure that is prescribed for any method as long as some usefull result is obtained on the way to
finding a fit in their search for a solution to their problem or opportunity. As soon as a suitable fit is
discovered the method is all but abandoned and the task of refining the solution begins in real earnest.
From the point of view of a design researcher it could be seen as a great missed opportunity to define a
direction or add a new case to a body of knowledge surrounding that particular method, almost negligent
disregard for the potential knowledge that is at hand in every instance of design effort. I do not know if I
said that clearly enough. But designers usually are more concrned about getting the job done rather than
on defining the proper method and articulating the same, which is rarely done. Designers use many
methods at different stages of their work and these have evolved as design research has helped
articulate new and more complex (or nested) methodologies as the fields have become more
sophisticated in their use of these systematic procedures. Design being an action field dealing with the
synthesis of many threads of influences, many of which are unknown (some even unknowable as
Wolfgang Jonas would suggest as I gather from his recent conference announcement, and I agree with
him) we would need methodologies that are holistic in nature although we can use a break-down of
tasks into numerous protocols and try and aggregate them together after some insights or defining rules
are generated on individual or sets of influencing parameters. The solution however will only emerge in
the act of synthesis which is quite independent of the numerous and tortuous range of explorations and
analysis that may have preceeded the bringing together of the articulation or visualisation of a particular
solution. Evaluation of these solutions may use methodologies of a different class from those used to
generate them in the first place, and this may not be done by designers at all. The group processes that
are gaining ground in successful design consultancies such as IDEO and the people centered design
research reresented by SONICRIM as well as the understanding lab proceses mentioned by NextD, all
seem to fall into this new class that is placing informed synthesis at the centre of the design process. In
this connection I recall an old book, "How Designers Think" by Brian Lawson (sorry I do not have the full
reference handy just now, but will post it if anyone is interested) where there is a reference to different
thinking styles in problem solving between a group of enginers and another group of architects, as
applied to solving a puzzle. While the engineers searched for rules to make the pieces fit the architects
played to fit the patterns first and looked for the rules later. I wonder if more work of this nature has been
done in the area of cognitive psychology in recent years and I would be very happy to have these
references for my own education. Design thinking is constantly in flux between the general and the

particular and this understanding places in context the interest that we have had on the list about
"wholes and parts" in recent weeks ( I was unfortunately too busy in the aftermath of our Bamboo
Initiatives and the World Bamboo Congress at New Delhi to get involved in that very interesting
discussion). When we are grappling with our search for a design solution the mental (imaginative -
internal cogntive) and visualisation (external modelling) processes always swing between the general to
the particular and back at a higher level of understanding and expression, to continue to oscilate
between these extremes, almost a simultaneous use of the birds eye- view and the worms eye-view,
distant and close up, in a cyclic manner. Particular details are sketched or built and these are evaluated
against numerous externalities (as in economics) to test for a fit and this insight is brought back to
refining the detail in particular or in finding an alternate route to a solution. The methodologies therefore
need to be integrated into this part-whole swing that is a natural mode for design thinking and this is
perhaps one of the key differences between those methodologies that are described as reductionist
methods. I wonder if the concepts are clear, as I am still trying to set out my understanding in plain
language (without my diagrams or models or doodles which is my habit when thinking through any idea)
which is sometimes very limiting, particularly when talking about design. I would be happy to hear more
views from the list and for suggestions on further reading that could shed light on these ideas.
With warm regards
004887 2004-04-02 17:50 Re: Images of Chinese Culture, Design and manufacturing
Dear Rob
I travelled to China as part of my research on bamboo in 1998 and 2000. I had also been to Hong Kong
on both occasions as well and I have recorded many pictures of modern China as represented by views
of Beijing and Shanghai, parts of Hangzhou and the western city of Kunming. On the Industrial design
front I have a few pictures of the Kong Kong Poly School of Design. I also have some pictures of the
remarkable new infrastructure, high-rise buildings, the highways and the airports, all new, representing
an enormous investment from the west. In addition I have a large number of bamboo pictures and views
of rural China from Anji county, the southern state and the western state where I had visited in 2000 as
part of a Chinese-GTZ team of bamboo experts. I will need a weekend to sort out some of these and I
will be happy to put together a thumbnail gallery of selected pics for your review and eventual selection.
All of these are digital images, the 1998 set is 1.8 megapixel and the 2000 ones are 3 megapixel
resolution.
With warm regards

004615 2004-02-12 21:09 Re: How Strategic Designers work?

Dear Sukanta Biswas
Several years ago I had tried to differentiate the various level of design interventions based on our own
experiences at NID, India. I developed a four pronged model (diagram not included) to define these as
Tactical level, Elaborative level, Creative level and Strategic level. Without taking to much time to
respond to all your questions, all of which are important to the changing role of design that we are
seeing for ourselves I shall share a paper that I prepared in 1998 for a Conference in Brazil and was
published in the proceedings. The issues raised and discussed are of interest to the list as well so I am
quoting the text below for your reference and use.
With warm regards
Quote:
The Levels of Design Intervention in a Complex Global Scenario
M P Ranjan Faculty of Industrial Design National Institute of Design Paldi, Ahmedabad 380 007 INDIA
Paper prepared for presentation at the Graphica 98 - II International Congress of Graphics Engineering
in Arts and Design and the 13th National Symposium on Descriptive Geometry and Technical Design,
Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil from 13 to 18 September 1998.
Abstract
Design is a complex activity that is influenced by a large number of factors that may be financial,
technological, socio-cultural and historical and most of all by the changing perceptions and needs of
human user groups and their social actions. This complexity is modelled by the systems metaphor of
design analogous to the process of fire in a symbolic hearth. The design activity is further being
redefined to articulate the four specific levels at which this discipline can be used by industry and
society, namely, the Strategic level, the Creative level, the Elaborative level and the Tactical level. The
author believes that all these levels are inherent in each and every design task but are not normally
perceived as such and in many cases there is a misconception that these levels can be isolated and
managed effectively. It is proposed that the Profile of the Emerging Designer therefore needs to change
to include a Value base at the core of a set that encompass the Knowledge base , the Skill base and the
Cognitive base that define the capabilities of this new genre of designers. The central contribution of
design is limited here to providing tangible scenarios for decision making and evaluation of solutions in
the context of the inherent complexity of the design situation although some tasks may involve the
designer in the further stages of implementation as well. For this it is important to understand the

Processes of Visualisation and the emerging tools for team-based participation of experts from different
domains and for the involvement of user groups in the design process. Design is therefore being
transformed by change in perceptions and needs emerging from the competitive forces of an
interconnected world. Developments in Global Economic Liberalisation, Information Technology,
Environmental Consciousness and Consumer Rights are key factors that are driving this change. ~
We will begin by defining three premises that are central to the main thesis of this paper. The three
models that precede the main topic have been discussed elsewhere and are summarised below to
provide a backdrop for the topic under discussion. The first is about the nature of the activity of design
that is modelled by the metaphor of fire. The second is about the nature and capabilities of the designer
that is modelled by the profile of the emerging designer. The third premise is the central role played by
the process of design visualisation in the creation and evaluation of tangible scenarios that facilitate
design decision making by teams of experts and user groups working in tandem. These premises lead
us to the main focus of this paper that is to discuss the four levels of design intervention proposed here
and the submission that the three preceding propositions are a necessary condition for realising this
complex understanding of design that must be practised in the next millennium for design to remain a
relevant and responsible profession. Fig 1: Systems Metaphor for Design Let us start with our new
definition of design since the word has acquired so many meanings over the years. I have used the
metaphor of fire to define design using a model that was developed with my students. When we look at
fire we see that it has various components — Fire (Agni) is a process of transformation—a material is
transformed by organic exchanges with the environment and an effect is the product of this exchange.
The process is always situated in a particular context and this context is represented by the ground. The
process of burning and the products of light, heat and smoke are all in close interplay with the
environment and design too is an activity that can happen only with reference to its own context. This
fire therefore represents the kind of complex transaction that I consider an adequate expression for the
systems metaphor for design. This means that we see design as a complex activity. There is not a
single product that we can call a simple product. Take for example the simplest of products that you can
think of and explore its possible effects. If you look at it only as a product of technology, that is, as some
material transformed into a functional shape, then it would seem to be simple. Take for example a wire
safety pin. You will say that it is a very simple manipulation of material in a clever way to provide some
functional features. But look at the ways in which a pin is used and when you bring the user domain into
your examination and also the potential hazards that the pin represents into your purview, the complexity
becomes visible. This little pin in the hands of an unsupervised infant child can have disastrous
consequences. So there are a whole lot of other issues that are connected with even the simplest of
products and these issues also have to be kept in the mind of the designer while he is working on that
very product. So it is becoming increasingly evident that design has to look beyond the object itself as a
mere artifact, as produced by technology, to the effects that these objects have on a complex set of

user-related parameters and finally the effects of these objects on the environment at various stages of
their life cycle. This leads us to re-evaluate the role of design and to anticipate the shape of the design
activity in the years to come. This is particularly important because this is not the way that design has
been necessarily thought of in the past. We are beginning to understand the complex nature of design
which means that you also need a fairly complex method of dealing with it. Design methodologies need
to be reevaluated and innovated to cope with this complexity. We usually tend to simplify everything to
basic steps in order to administratively cope with them with a degree of ease, but we are beginning to
discover that this method of management is not the answer to the problems at hand. A lot of
technological development in recent years has created negative results, some with catastrophic
consequences. We are certain that the exploitation of technology without the use of design processes
that take cognizance of the long term needs of users and environments will lead to disaster. However
our governments are yet to understand this lacuna in the manner in which they manage and fund
science and technology initiatives in a fragmented manner. Hence, in the model fire as a metaphor for
design, there are a set of ideas that are being stated as desirable states when you look at the
environment. Some of these ideas have been derived not from the models of the hard systems analysts;
rather it has been derived from the principles of ecology. When you are talking of ecosystems they are
actually soft systems. There are no hard boundaries for these systems which can be modelled and
reduced to very simple and straightforward network diagrams. They have very fuzzy boundaries and
they are extremely complex in their structure. The inter-relationships are very deep. Hence I think that
this kind of understanding is required when you look into any phenomenon or event. If you are designing
a house, there are so many layers of meaning associated with the house. Eventually the synthesis of a
form and the appropriateness of that form is followed by the acceptance of that form by the community
with which you are working, only if you are able to understand all those layers and map them adequately
into the solution. Now, in order to do this you need to develop some kind of holistic model that can
manage this complexity. It cannot be fragmented. Eventually for the purpose of analysis you will have to
break things down into components and subsystems but you will have to develop a method of synthesis
to be able to put it all together as a coherent whole. The understanding of a technology or an object
resides at the interface of the various layers of the system and this understanding should ideally be
available to the user at each level of that interface. When you see a chair you should be able to know
that it is a chair. So how is this kind of information built into that object? How is it embedded in the
language that the user understands? Similarly, when you normally see a traditional house, you know
which is the front of the house, there are some markings on it and in some particular way it identifies the
entrance and these are the elements that architects know very well with which to compose spaces so
that you feel at ease in some areas and you create tension in other areas deliberately because that is
the information that is fed by the very nature of the configuration that is presented. Technology as all of
us know is also important because you need to know the techniques, the materials and processes that

go into building and making products and systems. Similarly there are certain properties which are
always present. One of those properties of a system is complexity as opposed to being complicated.
Being complicated is not a desirable property; it is not what we want. Complexity, however, is desirable
because complexity means that it resolves many interactions and smoothly permits the transmission of
information within and outside the system. Like a living tree, it is an extremely complex system, but it is
not complicated to comprehend. Now let us turn to the designer. In the past we had great designers and
great artists, all held in awe by the general population. They used to be labelled the “Great Designer”
and we put them on a pedestal and our Design and Art museums are full of such examples. We have
had this phenomenon in architecture as well, we have it in industrial design, we have it in the realm of
fashion design. A lot of this hero cult or the star designer cult has been an accepted way of life for
designers. I do not believe that this will be the direction of the future. The future will be determined by
collaborative work of many disciplines because design is a multi-disciplinary activity and in design action
teamwork can and will be a necessary condition for designing the simplest of products effectively and
responsibly. Unless we are able to work in teams with the designer providing certain critical
competencies and the other disciplines from sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics and
technology providing the rest of the inputs, we will not be able to meet the complex needs of our society
in the years to come. We will need to identify all the disciplines that are required depending on the scope
and nature of each task and we must find ways to bring in those sets of capabilities together to carry out
that design task. Fig.2 Profile of the Emerging Designer The designer will therefore need to be
equipped to learn new skills and areas of knowledge to be able to work with a diverse set of other
professionals and also be directed by his acquired value base that is rooted in good practices and on
empathy for the user who is the eventual client. Design education will need to equip the designer with
knowledge, skill and cognitive capabilities as well as a degree of motivation to make choices that satisfy
the self and the task. Giving meaning to the design effort will be one of the guiding principles that will
then temper design action. The tools of the designer are also undergoing a dramatic change with the
mediation of digital tools at all stages of the design process. While subject competence and knowledge
of particular industry practices and norms will be desirable for working with that industry we will
increasingly be called upon to address new and complex design tasks that are being perceived or
enabled in an era of global awareness and information access. The climate for design action will also
need to take into account social responsibilities and emerging issues that will hold the designer
accountable as never before. Some of these can be expected to be codified into the legal framework just
as we have seen in the impact that the consumer acts and the environmental acts have had in recent
years on various forms of economic and industrial activities. The dominant ideology for design would be
increasingly user-centred and the forces of global competition will add their own levels of complexity that
the designer must learn to cope with. Fig 3: Visualisation in Design This brings us to the key
capabilities that a designer will be expected to bring to the efforts of the team. This is the visualisation of

tangible scenarios, progressing from the abstract to the concrete, enabling decision making by those
who may have commissioned or caused the design task to be executed. The designer is expected to be
sensitive and creative in the process of synthesis that which lies at the heart of the design process.
Perception of challenges and opportunities and the subsequent translation into viable concepts and
solutions are shrouded in myth that needs to be de-mystified. Understanding this process of visualisation
will need the efforts of serious design research groups and this will help mobilise the extensive use of
design by government and industry to address real life problems and business opportunities alike.
Designers too will need to contribute to this understanding by the sharing of case studies far more than
has been the practice in the past. The focus in these case studies will need to be on the process rather
than on the end results alone as is the familiar practice in most design journals. That we are able to
develop tools for visualisation that will enable the designer to share the process and the products of the
intermediate stages of the design process are critical to the realisation of the larger objectives of
effective design practices in the face of mounting complexity. We can now focus on the core theme of
this presentation: the spectrum of design interventions in a complex global scenario. I propose four
levels at which the design profession can work, each dealing with its own sets of tools, capabilities and
influencing factors. However, I believe that these levels are inherent in each and every design task, but
these may be addressed either sequentially or simultaneously, that is, by different individuals within an
extended design team or that these may be the key areas of focus at different stages of the design
process. Therefore, these levels could occur either in a sequential manner with the design task
progressing from one level to another in time or they could be parts of a distributed set of tasks being
simultaneously handled by different groups on a large design team. Clients do not necessarily see value
in all these levels of potential contribution and could consequently treat the design interventions in a
fragmented manner due to varying perceptions of the design activity. This reduces the effectiveness of
the design contribution and restricts the designer to a very limited frame of reference in many such
instances. Particular design projects may be largely dealing with only one of the levels proposed in the
model and some specific industries may have a greater emphasis on a particular level due to the
perceptions of the role of design in their particular circumstance. Design is being increasingly perceived
as a key capability that can be used by industry and governments to create solutions to complex
problems and communication needs of a highly information mediated society. Design is recognised as
an effective tool, in Europe, America and in parts of Asia, for introducing new products into our lives and
to give companies an edge over their competitors. This is not the case in India and in several other
developing economies. Here there is a great deal of emphasis on the role of science and technology and
on the use of management as a means of generating innovation and strategy, and these efforts are
bound to fail if the integrating nature of the design discipline is ignored by industry and the government.
It seems that industry recognises the role of advertising, at least in the use of advertising, going by the
investments made in this sector. The use of industrial design has languished due to a lack of

understanding of the various dimensions of the design process and from an inability to place the young
profession within the flow of development tasks that are critically needed. In some cases there is a lack
of self-confidence that an indigenous team can create world class products and services and this
prevents investments being made in this capability unless the competitive forces compel the industry in
question to taste the fruits of such innovations. When I complain that design is not used adequately I
mean that in the context of our experience of the past thirty-five years at NID of trying to introduce this
discipline into the country and to extend its use into all sectors of our economy. The role of design is
largely perceived as a tactical one dealing with the improvement in the quality and the performance of
products and services through the process when the easily recognised skills of the designer are
employed to improve looks, finishes or other aesthetic characteristics of the product or system. But this
recognition fails to address the three other levels at which the design discipline can be effectively
employed and this realisation leads us to the fourth model, the topic of this paper. One of the reasons
for the low spread of design use in the Indian economy in the years after Independence was its highly
regulated nature that gave no incentives for innovation and competition. It was rarely in the marketplace
but focused on the collection of government licences and permits that regulated the economy. All this
has thankfully changed to a great extent in the past few years and design is being aggressively pursued
by a few leading industries that have felt the heat of international competition impact their sector of the
economy. The garment export trade and the jewellery trade in India which are major export oriented
sectors of the economy have made major investments in design that are paying rich dividends to those
who have made them. In the intervening years, the use of Industrial design, in particular had lagged far
behind that of other design disciplines such as graphic design and textile design by the bulk of the Indian
industry and by the government sponsored investments for development oriented tasks. This was
because of a lack of understanding of the design discipline and misconception that design deals largely
with cosmetic details that are not that critical to a developing economy. This perception must change
and the use of design must spread to all sectors of our economy if the real benefits of this discipline are
to be enjoyed by our peoples. Design is a critical capability in the generation of the wealth of nations and
in the creation of usable products, technologies and services that are accepted and used by its
population. The tactical level is generally recognised by industry and is therefore used more widely but it
is only one of the effective ways to use design and the other levels of intervention address higher
degrees of risk reduction but the returns too are proportionately greater. We will examine each of these
levels of design intervention with the help of a few illustrative examples. Fig 4: Spectrum of Design
Interventions In the ten years, between 1981 and 1991, that I headed the NID’s consultancy division
called the Design Office I had the opportunity to meet some of the countrys’ leading industrialists and to
administratively supervise several hundred design projects that were commissioned by Indian industry
and the government development sector. These projects were carried out by the Institute’s faculty and
these projects set standards of excellence and explored several unexplored facets of design service that

only a teaching Institution that was research oriented could possibly have undertaken in those days.
These project experiences gave me a ring-side view of the design processes and strategies employed
by my colleagues on the faculty at NID due to the design management function that I had to play on their
behalf. My own teaching and professional design commitments helped develop deep convictions on the
various levels of design interventions that were possible. A large number of these projects dealt with the
tactical level of design intervention that designers contributed to by virtue of their special skills and
sensitivities in form, colour, detail, and ornamentation, to name only a few. These dealt with a wide
range of industries and subject areas such as symbol design, trophies, the organisation of visual
elements in electronic and machine tool products, print media products, woven and printed textiles and
on packaging and branded consumer products. These projects were seen as the ‘bread and butter’ of
design tasks. Several alternatives were generated by the designers at the concept presentation stage,
each based on an approach that gave some specific advantages over the others that were explored.
The client and their representatives participated in the process of deciding the particular concept that
would be carried forward to the next stages of development. In some cases the designers choice was
not considered for some reason or the other, sometimes because it was considered too far ahead in
time or that the market was not ready for it. While such practical know-how was being transmitted to the
captains of Indian industry our classrooms were teeming with experimental projects that students and
faculty defined based on their perceptions of the design opportunities in a vast and complex country like
India which supports such a great variety of people and geographic terrains and climates. Some of these
had the support of industry or government funding and in recent years it has become a routine feature to
get project sponsorship from industry, which was not the case in the early years. Many of these
exploratory projects dealt with the generation of design collections. Several of these were in the craft
sector or the small-scale industry sector where there was a greater degree of flexibility in making
investments in new product collections since the level of investment need for tooling was minimal or
affordable even in small batches. Several collections of furniture, toys and textiles were developed for
varying client groups, many self-financed by the Institute as part of its awareness building efforts. Such
collections were directed by perceptions of markets and of the need in some industry categories to
provide variety and product differentiation and for market segmentation. One such prominent example
has been the variety offered by the branded moulded and soft luggage industry in India. Several of our
design graduates were employed by the leading manufacturers and this sector has of late started
challenging leading world producers for market share in highly competitive export markets. Similarly, the
leading Indian watch and jewellery maker launched a veritable barrage of design variations and market
presentation and image building strategies to subdue, in the local market, competition from a very
established player in the public sector that had dominated the Indian scene for many years. The
company has extended their presence into the European market, particularly in Switzerland, only to
attract protectionist pressures sponsored by the local industry. Both these companies used designers

trained at the Institute to carry out their design objectives with a fair degree of success. These are
examples of market led design in action. Variety and style, product differentiation and market
segmentation are the guiding principles for the generation of the requisite variety. This is supported at
many points in the marketing chain by the design of products, point of sale displays and the shops
themselves to name only a few of the elements that are to be co-ordinated for good effect, the heat, the
light and the cosiness of the symbolic fire mentioned above. The Indian textile industry is another
example for the extensive use of the elaborative level of design intervention where one basic product is
offered to the marketplace in a vast range of options. In India, the next level of design intervention is
retarded by the absence of a strong intellectual property rights protection regimen and the unwillingness
of industry and government to invest in design at that level. In spite of this there have been several
examples of product innovations and patents that have resulted in remarkable products that have
shaken up the competition in the respective product segments. India has over the years invested very
heavily in research laboratories and science establishments without a corresponding investment in
design. This has effectively retarded the creation and delivery of breakthrough products although a large
number of innovative basic technologies have been developed by the science and technology initiatives.
It is only in the defence sector that have we seen the large-scale conversion of these basic technologies
into product systems to be introduced into active service. This too has only happened because the
developed nations were reluctant to part with their know-how in these areas compelling the Indian
defence administrators to make the necessary investments in product level design and development.
Design can be a very powerful tool to convert these innovations in materials and processes into products
and systems that are usable and acceptable to the user. Corresponding investments must be made in
design to realise the full benefits of the investments that have been made into science and technology
over the years. With India joining the World Trade Organisation this too is likely to change especially
since the economy has been rapidly opened up to international competition. Design opportunities will
snowball in a number of industry sectors just as we have seen massive investments being made by the
pharmaceuticals sector in recent years due to the heat of intense competition in that sector. A large
number of concepts have been developed in the classroom assignments that await industry support to
carry forward to their logical conclusion. We are now beginning to see design investments being made in
sectors such as the automobile sector, the electronics sector and the consumer durables sectors.
However the dominant approach in Indian industry is still the importation of design and technology as an
undifferentiated package that will in the long run retard the country’s capacity to compete in a fast
changing world. Investments in design at the innovative level will also generate long-term strengths that
will be critical for the profitability of several industrial segments in our economy. It is gratifying to note
that the software sector in our country is beginning to make such investments in end product
development and in the creation and delivery of branded products and services after having offered cost
based services all these years. This move up the value chain has seen several companies deriving

enormous benefit and in the near future we can expect to see global level players emerging from the
Indian subcontinent in this sector that uses design as the principle tool of competitive advantage.
Interface design of user-friendly software products, development of durable brands, and the creation of
computer-based training and education systems are directions that are indicated for rapid growth. Some
of our companies are particularly well placed to exploit the Internet for e-commerce initiatives if the
supportive infrastructure can be provided at a reasonable cost. The next level of design intervention
creates whole new industries and new markets. At the strategic level it is the vision of the design thinker,
be it the designer or the entrepreneur, that maps new opportunities and visualises strategic initiatives
that open up whole new markets. I must point out here that it is not sufficient to have a bright vision of
some future product or system but the design teams must be able to mobilise the supports and the
energy needed to realise the vision through a long and complex process of exploration and realisation
that invariably involves considerable work at all the other levels of design intervention as well. An
infrastructure for venture finance is critical for the success of such an initiative. We have seen that a
burning desire to create something different or useful is normally associated with most of these efforts
and in many cases the driving forces are ideological convictions. The search by design students for
meaningful projects in the Indian economy has resulted in the development of a large number of very
interesting concepts that promise to make life easier for the user groups that were addressed by these
projects. One project initiative that stands out is the Jawaja initiative of Prof. Ravi J Matthai where
designers from NID and managers from the Indian Institute of Management went to the villages of
Rajasthan to test their skills at the creation of viable and durable options for communities of village
craftspersons. This strategy echoes the one initiated by Mahatma Gandhi by creating the Khadi
movement (self-reliance through handspun and hand-woven fabrics) across the country when leading up
to the struggle for India’s independence from British rule. The processes and tools of Industrial Design
can work at various levels of industrialisation, from the handcrafts sector all the way to the capital
intensive processes of automated production and across a wide range of materials and processes.
Companies, countries and local communities can use these design processes to envision new scenarios
for their future selves in the complex and changing world order. We are looking at the possibility of the
new genre of designers assisting the crafts sector of our country to face the global challenges through
the setting up of a new design school in Jaipur that will focus on the needs of the crafts sector and other
design initiatives that are led by industry vision hope to create the human resources that are needed by
their industry sectors in the years to come. The focus of design is on the users and their aspirations.
New areas of emphasis are the concern for the environment and on the social responsibility of the
designer that will be increasingly discussed in the years to come. Two recent projects done by our
students under my guidance as part of the invited Apple Student Design Competitions in 1995 and 1996
subsequently won the Du Pont award at the Human Village Congress of the International Council of
Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) in August 1997. These projects, INFARM – an agricultural pest

monitoring system for the illiterate Indian farmer anticipates the use of sophisticated technology in an
extremely user friendly manner and uses available technology to address real needs of the people, and
the other project, MANDALA – creates and visualises a new product system that gives new meaning to
retired middle class urbanites who are trying to cope with the problems of aging. Both these represent
the design opportunities presented by the rich fabric of our society and the need for design at
unconventional levels of intervention. The investments needed are substantial to take these concepts to
the field level implementation but the results can be very sweet indeed. Any takers? ~ References
Manish Chandra, Nipa Doshi and Samit Roychoudhury (students) M P Ranjan (teacher), A Systems
Approach to Design, an educational document (unpublished), National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad,
1992 Stafford Beer, Platform for Change, John Wiley & Sons, London 1975 M P Ranjan, Design
Education at the Turn of the Century: Its Futures and Options, a paper presented at ‘Design Odyssey
2010’ design symposium, Industrial Design Centre, Bombay 1994 National Institute of Design, 35 years
of Design Service: Highlights – A greeting card cum poster, NID, Ahmedabad, 1998 J A Panchal and M
P Ranjan, Institute of Crafts: Feasibility Report and Proposal for the Rajasthan Small Industries
Corporation, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 1994 Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World:
Human Ecology and Social Change, Second Edition, Themes and Hudson, London 1984 Victor
Papanek, The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture, Thames and Hudson,
London 1995 John Thackara, European Design Prize Winners: How Today’s Successful Companies
Innovate by Design, BIS Uitgeverij, Amsterdam 1997 Esther Dyson, Release 2.0: A design for living in
the Digital Age, Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth 1997 Priya Prakash, Rajib Ghosh, Vijay Indalkar
and Satvinder Channey, Project INFARM – Apple Design Project ’95, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad 1995 Divya, Samrat Nawle and Anab Jain, MANDALA – Apple Design Project ’96, National
Institute of Design, Ahmedabad 1996 ~ Unquote: Regards M P Ranjan 12 February 2004
004558 2004-02-05 21:18 Re: Recognizing excellence + conference structure-Ranjan

Dear Rosan
I have a comment about the open review mechanism that you have suggested and it makes a good deal
of sense since it can bring in transparancy and help maintain high standards both on the side of the
authors and the reviewers. It is only a very recent phenomena that we have the Internet based archieves
to make such a system work. In earlier times such an archieves of all submisions including, drafts, full
papers and formatted presentations could not be made available to all members or to the public at large
even if we wished to operate at such an open level. There has been some attempt to develop and use
such a system for a design conference that I know of in the recent past and this was the DyD02
(Development by Design 2002 at Bangalore) organised by MIT's Media Lab Asia in collaboration with a
number of sponsors including the Srishti School of Art and Design in Bangalore. The full reference for

the conference is: 2nd International Conference on Open Collaborative Design for Suatainable
Innovation, Bangalore, India December 1-2, 2002. This Open collaborative initiative required the use of
web based technologies and systems design which was provided by doctoral students at the MIT
through an open source initiative called ThinkCycle. <http://www.thinkcycle.org> Poonam Bir Kasturi
coordinated the Bangalore end of the conference as an active faculty at Srishti and being a graduate of
Product Design from NID she involved many of us in this initiative. I am sure that we will see more such
open collaborative ventures in the future as web based screening and participation methods develop
amd mature. Your idea of developing such a mechanism or model will help refine these systems from a
human perspective and bring in the necessary filters that do not intimidate or frighten away novice
authors who may have some very valuable contributions to make in any case.
With warm regards
05 February 2004
004538 2004-02-02 18:36 Design and Cultural Attributes: Some experiences

Design & Cultural Attributes: Issues for cross cultural design research and application: Prof. M P Ranjan,
NID, Ahmedabad
The recent discussions on PhD-Design have raised many issues and questions about the various
dimensions of the representation of culture in design research and practise and on the tools and
processes within design that could help cope with research into the impact of cultural differences on the
delivery of design research and design applications. While the range of issues at the global level would
be huge and of great significance for future research I would try and share some experiences that we
have had in the past few years in India in trying to cope with such cultural and linguistic differences in
our own application of design principles to several tasks that recognised and required the resolution of
such critical parameters in our own design work. Unfortunately very little is published about this work
although we have some internal documentation in the archives of the Institute upon which some of my
comments and insights are based. Many of these projects are done by teams of designers on the faculty
and in many cases student designers have been active participants. NID was called upon to design the
electronic voting machine (EVM) in 1988-89 by the Election Commission of India. At that time I
happened to Head the NID Design Office, which managed all design tasks of the Institute, and our
design team consisting of Product Designers J A Panchal and V M Parmar were entrusted this particular
design task. The electronics for the voting machine had already been developed by the Hyderabad
based Electronic Corporation of India but it was clear that the Industrial Design inputs were needed to
bring coherence to the form and representation of the EVM so that it would be acceptable to all stake
holders involved as a reliable and effective interface that could work across the vast range of linguistic

and cultural diversity that covers the India voter population. The complexity that the team encountered
was not a technological one and it was apparent that we would need some critical user studies to be
undertaken before we could offer a credible solution to the design task. We called upon our Graphic
Design colleague on the faculty to undertake such a study. Neeta Verma, an NID graduate and then
faculty of Graphic Design, took up the challenge and devised numerous experimental mock-ups in
cardboard with graphic representations that simulated the look and feel of the voting machine and took it
to the field. The idea was to use these mock-ups with a variety of user groups in order to evaluate their
feedback and it was based on such interactions that the final solutions were evolved. This voting
machine works across the country with a huge variety of people and cultures and linguistic differences
and many of who are totally illiterate. Today it is used in every single election and we believe that the
semiotic analysis that was conducted as part of the design process helped a great deal in embedding
the reliability and credibility that the machine has in the electoral process in India. This was perhaps the
first time that such semiotic analysis was conducted for defining the critical characteristic of a product
that we developed at our Institute. In 1994 Apple Computers, USA entered the Indian market for the first
time in a big way and were looking for partners in the higher education sector in India across design,
technology and management institutions to showcase their Macintosh computers for the education
market. NID was chosen as their active partner Institute for design and I was deeply involved as Head,
Information Technology and Apple Academy at NID. Apple initiated our involvement in the Apple Design
Projects in 1995 and 1996 when our students were invited to be part of Apple’s global initiative of
involving design schools in the development of new forward looking IT applications and interfaces that
could solve critical local problems. Many students took part in the Apple Design Projects and these
required them to do considerable field studies to locate challenging design tasks and then to develop
concepts using a highly interactive process that had the users at the centre of the whole design process.
Two outstanding projects were selected in each year out of a crop of several significant proposals
submitted by the competing design teams at NID. INFARM (1995) and MANDALA (1996) were
presented at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino along with similar offerings from many leading design
schools in Europe, Australia and the USA. INFARM was a solution that helped illiterate Indian farmers
use technology to test their field for pests and obtain rapid recommendations for suitable action from
experts using shared public telecom resources available at that time. MANDALA on the other hand was
a hand held personal device designed to give retired and elderly people in our society a means to stay
connected through an interface that was evolved by an active process of learning from the user so that
their cognitive and physical abilities informed the design decisions and not just the aesthetic sensibilities
of the design team. Both these projects were awarded the DuPont Canada, Student Design Award of
Excellence in 1997 at the ICSID Congress in Toronto, Canada. The lesson that we learnt through all
these projects about the effectiveness of user centered design and about the associated design
processes that we had to innovate with the help of a vast variety of users has by now been assimilated

into our way of thinking and acting in the areas of design research and practise. This more than anything
else gave us the conviction that design is more about culture that it is about technology and business
although it is about these as well. http://www.meadev.nic.in/photogallery/perspec/dec2001.pdf
During this period another significant project was carried out by a team of professional developers and
designers from Apple on which one of our students, Amitabh Pande, was involved as a member to help
the team with local contacts and an interpreter of the local culture as part of his diploma project in
Graphic Design. The task was the design of a health management system for villages in Rajasthan
called the Apple Healthcare Project using the handheld Apple Newton and a new local language
interface and software that were developed by the Apple team. This project was an experimental venture
that Apple had initiated through their Advanced Technology Group that was being led at that time by
none other than Prof. Don Norman, the Guru of usability in software interfaces and products. This
project is better documented and some information is available on the web.
http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigchi/chi97/proceedings/briefing/mg.htm
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/documents/sn37160/Chapter02.pdf http://www.thinkcycle.org/tc-
filesystem/download/development_by_design_2001/
unfamiliar_ground:_designing_technology_to_support_rural_healthcare_workers_
in_india/IndiaHealthcarePDA.pdf More recently in 2000 – 2001 I helped set up the Web Usability
Research Lab (W-URL™) at NID with support from an Indian software company in Bangalore so that we
could carry out a sustained programme of investigations into issues of usability of software and web
based resources across many domains. The question of differences in culture and the varied abilities of
user groups across the globe were very much in our list of research objectives. We conducted many
explorations using this facility but the full impact of our research could not be achieved since at that time
we had not managed to get a broadband connection that was at the very basis of our enquiry. Many
usability issues on the web are also determined by the speed of connection available. However with the
limited facility available then we conducted many research and mapping exercises with a group of
volunteer students on experience of several selected websites and news portals. We also set up an
ongoing and distributed volunteer group that reported on interesting websites from a design and usability
perspective which we called the “Taxonomy of the Web Project” and this continued for a period of two
years till the lab was wound up for lack of funding, the dot-com bust!! The other projects of significance
worth mentioning here in the context of design and culture that we are discussing here are two recent
ones explained below. An international camera and photo company seeking to enter the Indian market
with a range of digital photographic products commissioned NID design teams to conduct research into
Indian preferences in shape, colour and features in a whole class of electronic and digital products. The
NID team led by Gaurang Shah and Dr S Ghosal included students of product design who designed the
research to cover numerous regions and ethnic groups across India and many economic profiles as well.
This project was shrouded in secrecy due the confidential nature of the contract but now I hope that the

procedures and the findings will be published more broadly in the context of the growing need that is
perceived in such areas of research in design and culture and the tools and processes that work. The
second project is one being currently being carried out by an NID graduate who has been working in the
Non-Governmental Organisational (NGO) sector in issues of communication of critical health and social
development type information with disadvantaged and illiterate groups in parts of India. Lakshmi Murthy,
has an ongoing project where she has been exploring visual communications strategies for transmitting
critical health and personal hygiene knowledge to village women in Southern Rajasthan. Her work is
briefly documented on the web at her Vikalp Design website http://www.vikalpdesign.com/
commconc.html She was previously associated with the NID as an associate of Prof Ashoke Chatterjee
and Prof Vikas Satwalekar who had conducted extensive research work on social communication in the
area of health and family planning which are very touchy and taboo subjects in traditional societies of
Rajasthan. This work has been published as a book by NID. Lakshmi Murthy, Amita Kagal & Ashoke
Chatterjee, “Learning from the Field: Experiences In Communication”, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad 1998. All these initiatives and project experiences, and many others done at faculty and
student level at NID over the years are perhaps examples of the critical interplay of cultural forces on the
design initiatives and on designers groping for pathways into an undocumented and unexplored areas of
social design action with all the complexities of culture, politics and the softer attributes where the
classical principles of industrial design do not quite seem to add up and hence call for a reappraisal of
our values and aspirations in building a better profession and a cadre of design professionals who can
find their way through this maze of undefined contradictions that is “Design in the Real World” if I may
borrow Papanek’s famous title and modify it as well. Yes there is much that we do not know about
culture and design while there are many examples of designer attempts to bridge these spaces and
these need to be revisited by our research community to make sense and discover principles through
reflection. Design research will have a big agenda ahead and there is much to be done, which may be
quite “unscientific”, but meaningful, which perhaps only design and its associated sensibilities can
provide. The discussion on the list has been rich and full of exciting directions for the future.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan From my office at NID
004464 2004-01-19 20:52 Re: Analyzing exhibition design

Response to Hanna on exhibition design from the designers perspective- Prof M P Ranjan
NID has over the years handled many professional exhibition design projects ever since it was set up in
1961. The very first major project was the Nehru Exhibition on the life and work of Jawaharlal Nehru,
India's first Prime Minister, designed by Charles and Ray Eames and executed by NID faculty, staff and

students using inhouse facilities of our workshops and photography labs. This set the quality benchmark
for the exhibitions that followed in the later years and there was much learning and internal debate about
treatment, effectiveness and ofcourse about costs and delivery schedules. Nehru exhibition was
designed to travel all over the world and it did just that. Each time an NID team of faculty and staff
travelled to the location and set it up in the usual impossible deadline but without sacrificing quality
standards set up by the Eamses. The exhibit was built three times after the existing copies started
showing signs of wear and tear from the extensive travels overseas. In 1972 a fresh copy was prepared
at NID for installation at the World Fair in New Delhi in November and I was fortunate to be on the
design and execution team and in the process understand the detailing and content of the exhibit
through very close involvement. I was therefore invited to be part of the three member team that
travelled to Chile in January 1973 to help renovate and set up an earlier copy that had previously
travelled to Japan, Australia and was then shipped to Chile. The task had to be accomplished in two
weeks since the exhibition was scheduled to be inaugurated by President Salvadore Alende on the 26th
of January 1973. Meeting the President after the ceremony was memorable and the shock impact of his
assassination on 11 September 1973 has had a lasting impression on me since we discovered the work
of Stafford Beer in Chile and of Gui Bonsiepe’s work as well soon after the turn of these events.
Understanding the role of multiple disciplines that collaborate to deliver complex and competent
exhibitions and the systems nature of all design tasks came hand in hand with the learning about design
in a developing country. Since this particular experience NID has undertaken many major exhibitions
that drew on the expertise available inhouse and on the large network of specialist consultants and
contractors who worked with the Institute. The expertise included professional photographers,
typographers, graphic designers, copy writers and editors, model makers and special effects experts to
name only a few. As these experiences were being accumulated by the NID teams some of us also
expressed our dissatisfaction about the absence of an articulated sharing of these experiences but very
little was recorded or disseminated by way of knowledge sharing or documentation. The end results
were always very well photographed and the panels captured as facsimile pictures but the process and
excitement of solving complex communications in the form of compelling exhibits remained as folklore
that was discussed by the players involved and new students who came into one of our fresh projects
that needed to draw on previous knowledge at the Institute. This was not unique to exhibition design but
extended to all design disciplines uniformally in a complete neglect of publication about the experience
of designing with very few exceptions. The many major projects done at NID included the World is My
Family 1970, the Texrtile Pavillion 1972, Our India Pavillion 1972, Agri-Expo 77, Manipur Pavillion
1981, Energy Pavillion 1983, My Land My People 1986, Discovery of India 1992, the Rta- Rtu Exhibition
1996 and the ongoing Khalsa Heritage Museum project which is the biggest permanent exhibit
undertaken by the Institute to date. There was a major professional effort made in 1978 to study and
measure the impact of the massive Agri – Expo experience in the form of user and viewer and audience

studies which was conducted by external teams of market survey professionals who used
methodologies for evaluating recall of Indian advertising in the media to the exhibition that was designed
and set up in Delhi. This data is available in our library but I am not sure if this was really useful to the
designers in either their strategy for subsequent exhibitions and in determining and particular
approaches to design of these exhibitions. The knowledge otherwise remained in the folklore that was
retold many times at meetings when individual experiences were shared through presentations and
discussions and the sparse documentation that was left behind by all these projects. However the
discipline of exhibition design was re-established after a break of several years and it has been an active
and much sought after discipline as far as the students were concerned. Pictorial documents of all the
major exhibitions are available at the NID library along with the full text of all the panels used in the
exhibition. Process notes and letter based communications must be available in the office records that
are maintained in the archieves of the Institute. So the very big question is how can all this experience
be converted into knowledge resources that can inform future projects and build knowledge resources
that can be used for education and development initiatives at the Institute? How can this kind of
research be applied to all the work at the Institute in a sustained manner? In 1986 the Crafts Council of
India organised an International workshop on the Role of Crafts Museums and the participants included
curators, art historians, art collectors, specialists in museum display, marketing experts, sociologists,
craftsmen and designers. I used this opportunity to try and articulate the NID experience and offered to
present a paper that was accepted . This paper was published in the proceedings of the workshop titled
“Crafts India ’86: Workshop on Crafts Museums” conducted at New Delhi. I am quoting the text of the
paper below for immediate reference since it will not be available from any source now. I look forward to
comments and suggestions about how designers and design professionals can sustain the much
needed documentation and articulation on which the profession applications can be based on
established good practices leading to high quality implementation of all domain specific projects and
activity
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan From my office at NID
Quote
Cost Effective Displays – The NID Experience
M P Ranjan Faculty of Industrial Design National Institute of Design Ahmedabad, India
Paper prepared and presented at Crafts India ’86, a workshop on Crafts Museums, New Delhi, October
1986 and subsequently published in “Crafts India ’86: Papers Presented at the Workshop on Crafts
Museums”, Crafts Council of India, New Delhi, 1986 - pp 125 - 129

My presentation on design and display techniques for museums is based entirely on the considerable
body of knowledge built up at the National Institute of Design (NID) in the area of exhibition design. Over
the past 25 years, designers at NID have had the opportunity to work on a large number of exhibition
projects, both as professional consultancy assignments as well as student-level projects. These
exhibitions include temporary and permanent ones covering thematic, scientific, and cultural and trade
topics. I am convinced that much of this experience would be applicable to the design of craft and other
museums, especially in the context of the changing role of museums in our times. NID is a design
school composed of two major faculties: the Faculty of Industrial Design and the Faculty of Visual
Communication. In many design schools these disciplines are kept apart. However, we found that
exhibition projects offered the possibility of building cross-disciplinary bridges, as the design of any
exhibition is essentially a multi-disciplinary task. Putting together an exhibition requires teamwork
involving many disciplines, many of which are drawn from outside the Institute as circumstances
warrant. This premise that design of exhibitions and the design of museums is a multi-disciplinary task is
an important one for curators and museum administrators to keep in mind when planning new exhibits or
museums. Sometimes experts in subjects attempt to put together exhibitions themselves, some may be
able to do so effectively. I am of the view that the involvement of professional designers working in close
collaboration with the subject experts is far more desirable although it may seem expensive initially.
Demands made on museums and the public's perception of its role have undergone dramatic changes.
Traditionally, museums were seen as a repository of rare and exquisite cultural, natural and historical
artifacts primarily concerned with conservation, classification and research tasks. However most people
would agree that today's museums should go beyond that role in becoming a vehicle for communication
and dissemination of information in an interactive manner. Hence the added responsibility that the
contemporary view holds for a museum includes education, entertainment and community service.
Entertainment is important because it means involving the viewers and educating them through a mode
of interaction. Without this element of interest it is impossible to communicate with viewers. Education
too implies something more than transmission of knowledge. It means raising questions in the minds of
viewers rather than providing all the answers in an absolute manner. Having established the premises
on which we design exhibitions let me go on to individual principles, devices and techniques used to
make an exhibition participatory and interesting to the viewer. These would of course have to be used in
an imaginative and creative manner, appropriate to the task at hand, to be effective. Here I have
attempted to abstract the principles from the variety of exhibits and displays incorporated in a number of
NID exhibitions so that these could be used consciously to enhance the viewers experience. Interactive
exhibits: Each key exhibit could be designed to induce the visitor to participate in some way other than
just looking at or reading about the object or display. The visitors may be required to do something with
their hands or even feet in order to activate another dimension of the display. A map of India displayed
at the India Exhibit in the Commonwealth Institute, London, required the visitors to press a set of

electronic switches in order to compare distances between Indian cities to cities in Europe. This helped
the British audience to appreciate the vast distances in the Indian sub-continent when compared with
familiar distances between capitals of European nations. Another such ,device is a display of rare and
exotic musical instruments the sounds of which can be heard by activating a tape recorder. It is not
necessary that technologically sophisticated displays be used, as simple devices could be equally
effective while being easier to maintain. Spaces for interaction: Spaces around displays need to be
planned in such a way as to permit the museum and its displays to be used in a variety of ways. It is
particularly important to consider the activities that take place when groups of visitors come in to use the
museum as a teaching resource. Both the Energy Exhibition a science museum at the Pragati Maidan in
New Delhi and the India Exhibit in London are used as classrooms by teachers who want to use its
resources. Hence fairly large spaces need to be provided around exhibits along with strategically placed
benches which encourage the use of these spaces. Display structures: Hardware used to display
objects and information such as photographs and text must be designed to suit specific needs. In many
cases it might be possible to use readily available hardware systems that are versatile and
inconspicuous. In other cases it may be necessary to design hardware that would show up the object in
the most favorable manner. Sringar, which was a traveling exhibition of Indian costumes required display
cases and props that could be quickly dismantled and packaged in minimum volume of transportation.
Similarly strong, light-weight and flexible panel structures were required to permit the exhibition to be set
up in a variety of existing buildings, while still retaining its identity and quality. Graphic layouts: Some
exhibits require the presentation of a considerable amount of supplementary and explanatory
information especially if these are to be used as an educational aid. Here the graphic treatment of
panels and surfaces presenting the information demands both visual coherence of all its components
and the stimulation of the viewer to absorb the essentials in the limited time available. This has to be
achieved with an effective and economic use of words and images. Invariably the same space has to
serve both the casual visitor as well as the serious learner. This necessitates the presentation to be
"readable" at several levels simultaneously. The first level is a predominantly visual one that can be
appreciated instantly at a distance while subsequent levels elaborate appropriate details. Hence the
components need to be structured in a hierarchical manner both in terms of their information content and
their size in the layout. The components of such informative displays would include lead-visuals in the
form of photographs, illustrations, charts or diagrams as well as supporting visuals in an appropriate
media. Text matter that compliments the visuals needs to be carefully structured into evocative headings
or titles, lead-text, sub- text and captions which an experienced copy-writer can make concise and
interesting. Typography used in a sensitive and creative manner can be visually stimulating. A versatile
grid is an effective tool in generating interesting layouts while maintaining visual continuity between a
series of panels throughout the exhibition. It would permit the use of a large variety of sizes and
proportions of visuals and text helping these to hang together. While a grid aids in the exploration of

layouts the final layout would need to transcend a mechanical interpretation to avoid a sterile
presentation. History walls: When a progression of events or developments through time are to be
depicted history walls are the most effective means of modeling such patterns in time. Since this
technique was first employed and refined by Charles Eames, the great American designer, numerous
variations have been developed for a variety of themes. In principle a history wall, as the name
suggests, is an expanse of wall that is graphically treated to depict the flow of time in the horizontal axis.
The vertical axis is divided into bands, each of which traces one subject through time. For example, in
the Nehru Exhibition, while one band deals with Nehru's life the other bands cover national and
international political events, developments in science and technology, developments in fine and applied
arts etc. Hence while the horizontal bands represent transition the vertical columns represent
simultaneous events. While typography is used to highlight decades or centuries depending on the span
of time depicted the treatment is predominantly visual. A great deal of visual research is a necessary
prerequisite for the preparation of an effective history wall. Illustrations and Charts: Information
translated into illustrations, diagrams and charts has far greater effectiveness than a great deal of text.
There are a variety of styles and techniques to choose from, each with its potentials and limitations.
Statistical data could be presented in the form of graphs, bar charts or pie charts to make it visually
interesting and easily appreciated. Complex relationships could be modeled with flow- charts, diagrams
or even electronically operated charts. Drawings and illustrations can be used effectively to highlight
aspects that would be impossible to depict photographically such as the working principle of a tool or
machine or the cross-section of an anthill. Choice of technique is determined by the resources, time and
information available. Some elaborate techniques can be both expensive and time- consuming while
others could be effective, yet inexpensive and simple to execute. Scale modes and principle models:
Both children and adults enjoy examining detailed three-dimensional models and replicas. Specially
constructed models have the advantage of being able to highlight specific features through the selective
treatment of such features. Communication of a working principle or structural feature is effectively
conveyed through appropriate types of models. A variety of model types could be employed depending
on the theme or subject to be communicated. These could include block-models, cut-away models, see-
through models, and realistic scale-models, working principle models, replicas and casts. These models
could be executed in a variety of materials depending on the resources, skills and information available.
Just as a carefully detailed and executed model can be breathtaking, shoddy one can have disastrous
consequences. Hence if models are to be used they must be carefully designed and ski11fully executed.
Treatment of surfaces and spaces: The mood of an exhibit is considerably enhanced by the manner in
which the ambient surfaces and spaces are treated. One fairly inexpensive way to enliven surfaces and
spaces is through the use of textiles. Plain or patterned fabrics stretched over panels or suspended from
high ceilings add colour and vitality to the exhibition space and help set-off the exhibits. Careful choice of
colour and texture helps in creating the desired effect. Both the Nehru Exhibition and the Manipur

Pavilion used this technique extensively each in its own way. Another type of surface treatment
explored was the simulation of mud walls seen in village houses. The Agri-Expo theme pavilion used this
technique extensively to re-create village spaces in full scale so that the audience could experience
these-spaces, which were intended to heighten their perception of rural artifacts and motifs.
Photographic blow-ups are yet another means of creating an illusion of space and detail. A series of
related blow-ups is a powerful means of simulating spaces while providing a great deal of detail. These
help to establish the context of scale within the space available inside exhibition halls. Dioramas: These
form a special class of three-dimensional models. Dioramas are an effective means of creating an
illusion or reality especially in depicting spaces with the use of very limited exhibition space. This is
achieved by the exaggerated use of perspective distortion, which deceives the eye. Combined with
photographic backdrops and controlled lighting the effect is a stunning recreation of reality. The interior
of a village hut or an underground coalmine can be a realistic experience for an audience. Sound effects
emanating from strategically placed speakers help enhance this effect. Dioramas are of two basic types:
open-dioramas and peephole type dioramas. Open-dioramas created with the aid of foreground props
and a photographic backdrop were used as settings for live craft demonstrations in the Manipur Pavilion
at the trade fair in New Delhi. Illumination and mood lighting: The use of light in exhibition spaces is
both functional and aesthetic. The functional aspects relate to ease of visibility by establishing suitable
levels of illumination, avoiding distracting reflections and glare. Circulation spaces and information
surfaces generally require a functional treatment. An altogether different dimension in the use of light is
the creation of a certain mood or effect that is possible through sensitive and controlled use. Here
professionals from theatre and cinema are by far the most competent. Such specialized lighting when
used inside dioramas increases the illusion of reality manifold. Audio and Audio-visual: Sound effects
and specially prepared sound tracks can be effective means of enhancing one's experience of specific
exhibits. Sound is difficult to control unless confined to soundproof spaces or delivered through proximity
speakers. Specially designed handsets or earphones located near key exhibits could be used to provide
a sound track, a running commentary or discourse on that subject. The interest of an audience is
generally aroused when such devices are made available result1ng in a heightening of awareness and a
corresponding openness to receiving information. Audio-visual media which include changing still
pictures, motion pictures and video images are powerful communication devices. A multi-screen audio-
visual programme can transmit an enormous amount of information in a short duration. Such
programmes are technically complex and expensive to execute and maintain. However no other media
can replicate their effectiveness with reference to viewing time. Feedback from visitors: In a permanent
exhibition or museum any attempt to obtain the views of visitors on what interested them and which
exhibits held their attention will certainly provide indicators for improvement of exhibits. Over a period of
time a great deal of improvement can be made in the quality and effectiveness of exhibits as well as in
the selection of display techniques to be used. Viewer feedback could be obtained both through

questionnaires as well as through discrete observation of viewers as they move from exhibit to exhibit.
The Design Process: The design and development of a new exhibition can be handled as a fairly
systematic task. As I have stated earlier, this is essentially a multi-disciplinary exercise. The process
begins with research and information collection on the subject matter of the exhibition. Once a fair
degree of clarity emerges, the theme of the exhibition is articulated in the form of a preliminary concept
for the whole exhibition. This is usually visually represented in a skeleton concept model, which would
be arrived at through an exploration of alternative treatments. Such explorations are carried out for
various levels of detail such as overall layout, detailing of sections, individual displays and panels. Final
concept is frozen at this stage while individual exhibits are worked out to very fine levels of detail.
Expensive or complex exhibits are tested through specially built mock-ups before major investments are
made in their execution. Detailed plans, layouts and technical specifications are drawn up for each
exhibit so that they could either is executed in-house or through contractors. These numerous iterations
from experiment to specification are the central features of the design process. It is this systematic
procedure that proves to be cost-effective in the long run. Note: Mr. Ranjan used slides to illustrate his
talk. ~ Unquote
004359 2003-12-16 22:44 Re: Session 5: Closing remarks …part 2- M P Ranjan

Session 5: Closing remarks and some…part 1- M P Ranjan
As the online conference winds to its close I choose to look back at all the submissions and add a few
notes to the comments and issues that touch me the most as a designer, a design teacher and finally a
design researcher with the privilege of having a last word in this (session) at this august gathering of
over 1200 design scholars. When Ken introduced the online conference on “Design in the University” on
the 14th of November with his welcome post I realised that Design had come of age, at least having got
past the toddlers stage when compared to the well-established disciplines of the languages and that of
the sciences. We had a group of visionary scholars looking at the future of design and it felt good to be
part of this process. While reading his review of the School of Design proposal a thought crossed my
mind that I did not post immediately. This thought was that perhaps Universities need Design in more
ways than one for the integration of knowledge and for building bridges of SYNTHESIS between the vast
array of specialisations and bodies of expertise that have been developed over the centuries of
existence of these Universities. This was a reflection of the trend in so many disciplines to specialise and
subdivide particularly in the research traditions of Universities notwithstanding the various attempts to do
cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary approaches to solve the need for integration of
knowledge that was available to us. Further down in his review his comment on the four specialisations
to be offered at the UCI Irvine left me puzzled about the lack of Graphic and Communications as one of
the core disciplines at the school. There has been much debate on this matter through numerous posts

in the conference and I still feel that this may be an area for review and resolution in the days ahead.
Professor Richard Taylor in his opening post raised the issue of ownership of design and offered a
suggestion that we search for bridge building materials in “boundary people” and “boundary objects” and
this is a wonderful concept to search for in a world that seems to value subject experts with deep and
penetrating knowledge in a small area rather than such boundary people who could bring together
various threads of knowledge to solve vexing problems that seem to defy solution. However his mention
of “The Science of Design” had my guard up immediately with a reaction that “Design is not a Science”.
This is another matter that will need to be resolved at a future date. The issue is not whether it is one or
the other, but in my mind these are different classes of activities, all of which are needed and cannot be
substituted one for the other. Design borrows heavily from all known disciplines as the context emerges
and this to me is the very nature of design and therefore it takes on the hues and forms of the activity
from which it borrows, for a brief moment but then we must move on to resolve the problem at hand as
demanded by the context, the deadlines and the exigencies of the situation. Thomas Rasmussen in his
post (15 November) makes a comment on the nature of research in design schools and on why design
seems to resist research so adamantly for so many years since the idea of research in design was first
mooted in he seventies. This is an important question to answer in the context of the school of design
debate. Perhaps the answer would lie in our search for designers who have dared to wander beyond
design, in the boundary sense offered by Professor Taylor above and to try and build the school that can
indeed facilitate such a wandering. In my view the answer may not lie as much in the import of research
into design, although I may be wrong here. However his comment that trying to build basic research
solely on industry funding would be highly risky points to the fact that we will need to locate other forms
of funding for design research if it is to take root within the University system. The other major debate
that had my attention was the one on the need for sketching and drawing and model making in an era of
CAD and Rapid Prototyping as core skills in the future of design education. Much has been discussed
on these topics so I will not go over ground covered already by others. However I do submit that the
promise of CAD is far from evolved to substitute some of the early visualisations that are critical for
design synthesis and false promises from the IT industry may skew the curriculum in an undesirable way
which needs to be avoided. In my view the kind of drawing and sketching that may stand the test of time
may well be a different kind of activity and ability from the kind taught at schools of art and
communication. John Feland shares his views on the history of engineering from his Stanford
perspective and rightly calls for caution in moving design away from practise into an “Ivory Tower”
situation. I would suggest that we can look at another model for design and this I choose to call” Relaxed
and Thoughtful Practise” which is possible within a University setting to deal with design tasks that are
way ahead of the needs of current industry and their perceptions of priority. This would mean that
funding must come from sources other than industry, from social sources or from the tax collections by
government. This would give the school the freedom to choose its priorities of action, autonomy to model

and experiment new areas and provide a platform for advocacy and a platform for direct action in a
demonstrative sense with a great deal of risk reduction for the individual practitioner. This is to follow the
spirit in which Russel Nelson calls for new models and to avoid the imitation of science or any other
discipline for that matter. I have run out of time just now but will get back with part two of my closing
submission late tonight. Ken, I hope this is all right with you?
With warm regards
004348 2003-12-16 10:58 Re: Session 5: Closing remarks and some…part 1- M P Ranjan
Session 5: Closing remarks …part 2- M P Ranjan
Continuing with my submission this morning, I pass over much of what was discussed between the 16th
and 21st of November and I come across many valuable ‘Treats” or “Goodies” in the form of comments
and notes that enriched the discussion. Among them are a couple of submissions by Ken that I will
name. The detailed note on Einstein (21st November) is one of them where in the end he says “
Einstein’s gift to design was the science that paved the way for some of the most useful products in
today’s world.” Two ideas that are argued strongly here are the need for rigour in research and the need
for testing in both science and design. I agree that these disciplines, science, technology (engineering)
and design are not to be treated as adversaries but as one path, along a continuum, one leading to the
other with a lot of interdependencies between them. This note drew a comment from Cheryl Akner-Koler
(21st November) who referred to the visual imagination of Einstein as his strongest point. This is a very
designerly ability and it may well be a creative ability and one required for a scientist as well. The
question here is how do we encourage visual imagination and visual expression without undermining
rigour and systematic testing of those visions as part of our attempt to take design to a higher plane as
an acceptable discipline at the University. The second note (Treat 2) is Ken’s post on the history and
etymology of the word “design”. On numerous occasions I have witnessed states of utter confusion
when the word “design “ is referred to in a historical context. Thank you Ken for taking the trouble to
clarify facts in a usable format. Dino Karabeg (24th November) calls for a new social role for design
which is a very appealing thought and I wonder if the School of Design at the University would take up
this call in addition to the market oriented directions that are already planned. A similar line of reasoning
is taken up by Ricardo (25th November) and I do agree that there are limits to how far a marketing
based approach can be pushed for design to remain relevant. Ken (25th November) in his response to
Rosan’s three questions clarifies many of the issues raised about the nature of the School and the
position that the authors took while drafting the report. It is clear that there are no easy answers when it
comes to design and that is at the root of the very nature of design as an activity and a discipline. I do

hope that the School of Design at UC Irvene finds the support and required funding to realise the vision
that has been so carefully crafted and so widely discussed over the past few weeks. I take this
opportunity to thank the organisers and in particular Ken for inviting me to be part of this very exciting
event. I am signing off from the online conference having made many new friends in distant places who
are active in seeking answers to the very same questions that have held my interest over the many
years of design education and practise in India. I do look forward to hearing from some of you offline on
any questions about India or our ongoing activities here at the National Institute of Design in
Ahmedabad. Our website that is evolving may be a source of current information about the Institute if
you need to look it up <http://nid.edu>
Good bye and with warm regards
004310 2003-12-12 17:14 Michael Clark: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] UCI School of Design Proposal-Ranjan
Michael Clark: [PHD-DESIGN] UCI School of Design Proposal-Comments by M P Ranjan
Dear Dr Michael Clark

Coming from a non-designer background your discourse on the virtues of design as a future university
discipline clearly show that design is and can be appreciated by those who come into close contact with
it, and in this case your involvement in the School of Design proposal, seems to have strengthened your
own convictions that design will have a role within the University and that it will play an important role in
providing the binding within the interstices of the numerous disciplines that find a home at the University,
as an academic discipline in it own right. I do believe that design will need to find many champions
outside the community of designers who value the activity and its potential offerings if we are to see
design taking an important and necessary position as an academic discipline that can produce new and
vital knowledge for the future of humanity as a whole. Here I would draw your attention to the claims
made by a fellow Californian, Prof. Christopher Alexander, in his many writings, including his most
recent book that design is the discipline of the future that would help provide us with a means to develop
our future world-view just as science had enabled humanity to form new understanding of the world
which still holds sway over all of us.
Before I add my comments to your paper I would like to thank Ken and the UC Irvine team for inviting
me to be involved more closely with the deliberations at this online conference and let me tell you in no
uncertain terms that it has been an extremely stimulating and satisfying intellectual experience for me
and I believe that this event will send its ripples down the design academia to return with renewed vigour

the call for deep change and deeper reflection in design practise, which only a place located within a
University (perhaps) can provide. The scale of your thinking dwarfs anything that I have been involved
in over the past thirty odd years of design education, having taught at a very small Institute (60 faculty
and at most 350 students [now 500 students]) while the UC Irvine is dreaming of a place, including all
disciplines, of upward of 1500 faculty and 30,000 students when it reaches mature proportions!! Design
activity that is located within such an active setting with close proximity and with a structured
collaboration with the other disciplines of the University will certainly create a platform from which much
value can be derived by all those who are engaged in these activities, both designers and non-
designers. The new role of design as an integrating dicipline will need to find a bigger space for non-
designers and encourage the massive cross-linking of expertise that will be locally available in new and
meaningfull ways to further the research agenda of the University as a whole. Design can and will
provide the glue that can bind such research and much value can be derived if this scheme proceeds as
planned. Design as you aptly call it, is indeed a "syncretic discipline". Design has its body of knowledge
that needs to be articulated through sustained reflection on the practise of design in many domains of
need from which a body of robust theory will indeed emerge.
You have said, I quote "The integrative power of design as a conceptual process should be an object of
knowledge in itself and would certainly be a primary topic of study for faculty in Design Studies." -
Unquote. The role that the practise and study of design processes and transactions have in the building
of future knowledge is only (just about) being discovered and appreciated by those outside the
community of designers and the location of the proposed School of Design within the University at Irvine
will give an impetus to the articulation of this role in greater detail. In a recent course that I conducted for
a group of furniture design students dealing with systems thinking, I got these students to build a model
to represent human knowledge in a visual form which could show both the location of each discipline as
well as the sequential emergence of each along an extended timeline. Their model was very interesting
and I will take a few moments to describe this (in the absence of the picture) model that was
collaboratively built by the team after much debate and discussions with local experts and with
numerous references for our Knowledge Management Centre (as our library is now called). The time line
works like the ripples in a pond when a stone or pebble is cast into the centre. The point of contact is the
centre of the circle and the timeline extends outward from the beginning of time to the current day using
a sort of geometrical progression for the scale. The con-centric rings, each of one centimetre, represent
a period of time that becomes smaller as it reaches the outer perimeter. Over this was superimposed a
radial diagram with Philosophy at the centre, language, mathematics and "Visuality" in the next circle,
and all the disciplines falling outside these areas while being radially aligned to each of the inner
concepts mentioned above. For instance, the sciences sat in the space above mathematics, while the
disciplines of sociology and psychology sat above language while art and design was located above

"visuality" by using the meaning offered by Prof Gui Bonsiepe as the framework for this model. In the
outer space the names of key contributors (Thinkers) were distributed along the ripple timeline, each
aligned to the discipline mentioned in the overlapped radial diagram. This assignment gave the students
an opportunity to research "all of human knowledge" at least what was available in the history of science
and language and art, and to try and organise the findings into a representation that had an agreed
structure after discussions with numerous experts (many outside the NID campus). Further, using this
diagram, we were able to locate disciplines that could contribute to some difficult design situations and
needs the tools and processes that traditional design lacked or did not use in an active manner as yet. I
learned a lot through this experience and the students too came out of this three week long assignment
with a feeling of having achieved a better grasp of the huge field of knowledge that they would need to
interact with in a selective manner, with discrimination and judgement, in their understanding of
complexity and in their choice of appropriate design strategies that reflected the context that they are
being asked to serve. This is a very convoluted description of a fairly simple diagram, but I can send a
jpeg picture to anyone who is interested in seeing the model developed by the students if they ask for it
offline. Our understanding of how human knowledge is interconnected is still very sketchy but with
design getting an active place in the University one of the key benefits will be in the emergence of clarity
of the way these special disciplines can work together in a mode of "Synthesis" rather that the mode
usual of "Analysis." This is what people like Leornado da Vinci, William Blake and Frank Gehry have
perhaps been able to bring to their work through intuitive means and individual brilliance which we now
seek to bring in a systematic manner to all design tasks.
With warm regards
004294 2003-12-10 23:38 Rosan Chow: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] people (staffing) + kindness: response to Michael,
Carma, Kari-Hans & Sanjoy-Ranjan
Rosan Chow: On Kindness - Comments by M P Ranjan
Dear Rosan
Once you accept that values and attitudes form a basis for the performance of a design and in particular
the good performance from a design teacher, we can see the need for all kinds of softer attributes
including kindness to and absence of selfishness in terms of their willingness to share 'IPR' to come into
play in all their interactions with their students and their user groups in the performance of their design
tasks. In my model of the "Emerging Designer" that I have been using for many years in my class to
develop an understanding of the profile of a designer (a new kind of designer) in my students' mind, I

have a model based on a tetrahedron as seen in plan view – as a triangle with three nodes at the base
and the node seen inside, that is the top/apex node, which is the apex of the tetrahedron. (difficult to put
in words that which is so simple as a diagram, however I shall try to make it clear) (see Bucky Fuller.. for
tetrahedrons in many orientations) The three base nodes represent "Knowledge" i.e.. the ability to find
and know, the second is "Thinking" i.e.. the ability to process concepts and images as in imagination and
cognitive modelling, and the third is "Action" i.e. the ability to act and do or make which includes skills
and negotiation and transactional abilities with materials and with other people and the fourth node is
"Values" i.e. to do with feeling and sensing and discriminating with empathy, and in my view the word
empathy has a very significant role in design feeling, taking another’s point of view with tolerance etc.
The node in the centre is perhaps the most important one for education but I do not know how many
curricula state this as its key objective. In a world heading towards a greater need for ecological
sustainability and social equity in a globalised arena, these qualities may be the only ones that would
perhaps inform and help discriminate (even intuitively) those extremely complex issues that we will be
faced with as designers and design teachers. So your search for kindness is not misplaced and I do
agree that we will need to look deeply into these qualities over and above the ones that help us maintain
a practical domain of action in economic and social and functional terms. This model was developed to
help my students understand themselves in terms of these four key attributes and as a basis for a group
assignment when from a class of 30 students (now 60 students) we were able to make six or eight
groups who would go out into the city of Ahmedabad and interview local designers, each group meeting
designers from one discipline and they were required to represent their findings on these four attributes
in a composite model about the chosen discipline, usually richly illustrated with images typical of the
tools and materials used in each respective discipline. Such an exposure we found brought a sense of
humility and understanding of their own interest or highlighted their dislikes, and it helped them form an
idea of a role model for their own future career orientation. We have tried this out with our students for
more that ten years now and each time we sense that the students come back enriched with a sense of
conviction about the discipline of design and of their own place in that space. I have explained this
model at length since I see a similarity to the notion of kindness that needs to be at the heart of every
effective teacher and I would like to offer the term "empathy" as another way of looking at the same or
similar quality that you perhaps have in mind.
with warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
004259 2003-12-08 00:20 Re: Session 4: Alladi Venkatesh, Christena Nippert-Eng and GK VanPatter: Comments by
M P Ranjan

Session 4: Alladi Venkatesh, Christena Nippert-Eng and GK VanPatter:
Comments by M P Ranjan
Alladi Venkatesh has opened the session 4 with his "DESIGN AS A STATE-OF-MIND" paper. He states
that: Quote - "the market-oriented approach (of industry) – is becoming an obsolete design ideology
and looking for an alternate model (or models). "design as a state-of-mind" " - Unquote. The examples
that he uses to illustrate his thesis "Swatch, Alessi and Nokia" and "Starbuck Coffee and The Body
Shop" and " Apple (iMac etc.)" and I could add " Muji " to the above list, all of which show the use of
design at a very high level of sophistication in terms of marketing and in obtaining and retaining a very
rich mind-share of their very devoted customers. However the idea that he has introduced to the
discussion that in my view needs deeper exploration is that of "ideology of design", from the perspective
of the designer, teacher and design student, which I see as being quite distinct from the earlier
questions about "the Philosophy of Design" raised earlier on the list by many others. The school of
design Irvine would need to try and articulate this dimension, not to restruct or control any ideological
perspective in particular, but to recognise that in design and in designing, there are a number of
ideological perspectives that motivate and inform design action and design thought and design
perception itself. Christena Nippert-Eng has raised the ante by her gently worded comment on Alladi
Venkatesh's thesis and in her closing question to the list: Quote - "And now, I wonder if there is anyone
else out there who wants to talk about the kinds of people it make take to make this thing really happen
– create the kind of mentality you would like to see in the future designers of the world?" Unquote. This
statement implies a value position for design education that is not usually seen or expressed in normal
design curriculla. At NID, we have had much debate about ideological positions in design and education
over many years but we kept hearing,(from government and industry representatives from whom we get
our funds) that industry calls the shots and there is no place for "ideology" in industry, although of late
the positions seem to be going through some softening, what with environment and social equity once
again becoming fashionable in management circles within industry as a result of globalisation.
Christena's question about this is central in both curriculum planning as well as in the attributes of faculty
and staff. I quote - "In fact, if we really want to think about the kinds of individuals who would be
absolutely necessary to make such a school really succeed, what should our list of
adjectives/categories/classifications look like? What kind of a designerly mentality should underlie the
hiring decisions for this school?" Unquote. If we are able to articulate the qualities and abilities of the
design teacher at the SoD Irvine, a great contribution would be made to the field by raising awareness
about the need for such attitudes and abilities in design education in general. This is particularly true
since we are indeed looking at a new form of design that is being invented as we speak, that will need to
have humility and behaviourial attributes in the designer that can enable team think and team work, quite
unlike the design of the old order where individual brilliance was celeberated by museum exhibits of

objects as works of art or by design journals showcasing individual designers as super-stars! This
possible direction is highlighted by GK VanPatter's long and detailed post on the NextD methodology
and the emphasis is on team behaviour in solving or attempting to solve very complex design tasks
using their "B4Design opportunity space", if I try to cut through the jargon, to recognise the essential
qualities of cooperation and collaboration between multiple disciplines working across a complex set of
levels and tasks. This brings me back to the question, "What design (designer) attitudes and ideologies
should the School of Design Irvine foster, if at all, and how should the various stages of its development
be informed by such matters?"
with warm regards
004258 2003-12-08 00:09 Re: Contact Dr. Nicola Morelli-Ranjan

M P Ranjan wrote:
> Message for Dr. Nicola Morelli > >
Sorry for the post online. There has been a failure of my mail to Dr. > Nicola Morelli mail ID <not
disclosed> with the message being returned > on two attempts in my reply to sender ID. Please send
me an alternate > mail ID to respond to. > > This message is for > > Dr. Nicola Morelli > > Associate
Professor > > School of Architecture and Design > > Aalborg University, Denmark > > The list may
kindly ignore this post. Thanks. > >
M P Ranjan >
from my office at NID >
004177 2003-12-01 23:32 Re: Session3: on systems thinking (very long post)-Ranjan
Session 3: on systems thinking (very long post – with brief intro) – Ranjan
Brief Introduction: Systems thinking as applied to design education: Some background to the design
scene in India and a case study of one course conducted at NID in 2001 that incorporates the lessons
and processes of systems design as introduced to Foundation students at NID by the author are
included in the long post below. This submission is triggered by the excellent (and awesome) exposition
by Dr Wolfgang Jonas on his understanding of how systems modelling & thinking can / and is applied to
design action and design theory. From his paper it is evident to me that while there are several shared
perspectives in design we may have many differences in our interpretations of the field as well. (For
instance I am not particularly familiar with the mathematical and logic tools used in dynamic systems

modelling but I continue to use the concepts in design education and practice). In his references
however, I miss one from Stafford Beer, “Platform for Change: a message from Stafford Beer”, John
Wiley & Sons, London 1975 which for me (personally) was the single most influential source of systems
application to the design and planning of complex systems on a National scale, in this case Chile in the
era of President Dr. Salvador Allende, between 1971 to 1973. I am sharing a recent (unpublished) paper
that I have prepared for a design journal which may give the list an insight into the perspectives for
design in India (not generally available) and some of the processes that we have followed in our own
education programmes at NID as well as my own interpretation of systems thinking as it could be
applied to complex and non-traditional design tasks, that is other than the design of artefacts,
communications, software and spaces. In this case study reproduced below, the design tasks that were
assigned to Foundation students at NID dealt with the conception and articulation of new institutional
frameworks for design, each focussed on one selected sector of the Indian economy in critical need of
design action (in our opinion – there was no client). The intention is to show that application of design at
the strategic level can be a very powerful tool for the solving of very complex problems, involving many
disciplines and spheres of knowledge, that goes well beyond the usual scope of design tasks as
traditionally defined and taught in design curricula. Perhaps, speculatively attempting to articulate a kind
of design for future generations of designers in India. The rest of this post is the full paper titled “The
Avalanche Effect: …. ” reproduced for the list as a case study on the application of systems thinking
concepts to design education at NID.
The Avalanche Effect: Institutional frameworks and systems design as a development resource in India.
Prof. M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design and Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives National Institute of Design Paldi,
Ahmedabad 380007 INDIA
Background
In India the term “Beautification” is alluded to be the process of making beautiful that which is not usually
so and this is grossly achieved by some superficial application of a coat of colour and some impromptu
decorations or by a general clean up operation, just in time, before the visit of a political big-wig or
dignitary and it is usually executed in quite bad taste. The traditions of Indian culture on the other hand
are beautiful and enduring but their urban and modern interpretations have been devoid of the exquisite
qualities that the Eames’s saw in the “Lota” that symbolised for them the elegance of Indian design as it
had evolved over the ages. This serious absence of the use of Design as a critical discipline that
supports the development agenda of a nation struggling to find a foothold in a global marketplace is truly
appalling. I propose the term “Designification” as a counterpoint, and call for a serious use of design as a
tool and a strategy for the development of all sectors of the Indian economy particularly since it is so

sorely missing from the nations policy frameworks in almost all of these sectors of the economy, quite
unlike the prominent position given to the fields of Science, Technology, Management and to some
limited extent, the field of Art. There is a pressing need for the “Designification” of our economy through
a rapidly expanded use of design in almost 230 sectors of the Indian economy. The means to achieve
this is limited by the current framework of Institutions that can provide the human resources, the
research initiatives and the sustained knowledge resources that are needed to support this massive but
achievable task. Design in India is sorely under invested in and much change is needed to mobilise the
power of design for the development of so many sectors in need. The current levels of investments in
design are at appallingly low levels when compared to the investments being made in science,
technology and management institutions in the past and as a continuing activity today. It is argued that
the such investments made in the past have failed to solve the critical need of creating the required
innovations and while a number of technological innovations have resulted from these investments very
little of this has been translated into useable products and services primarily because there has been a
corresponding lack of investments in design
Defining Design for Development
I must fall back on some of my previous writings to create a framework of definitions and ideas that can
put in context the views that I have expressed above and to build the foundation for the strategies that I
propose in this paper for the development of a design initiative for the country as a whole. Last year I
used the opportunity of addressing the first National Design Summit in Bangalore to touch upon some of
these issues and to take a long look at the last forty years or so of design education and practise in India
in a paper titled “Cactus Flowers Bloom in a Dessert” (Ranjan 2001) that tried to capture the struggle
that the design community in India have put up over the years in the face of extreme deprivation of
resources and support from Industry and Government alike. The paper built upon some of the
arguments that I had proposed in previous papers on the role of design in the Indian economy with
specific reference to the lopsided manner in which investments had been made in India with reference to
design and technology education and research. In my paper titled “Design Before Technology” (Ranjan
1999) I had argued that India was losing out in its search for sustainable development by ignoring the
investment needs of the design sector and although massive investments had been made in the science
and technology sectors we were acutely short of innovative products and services that could only be
achieved through the use of design as a layer over the investments made so far. In an even earlier
paper titled “Levels of Design Interventions” (Ranjan 1998) I had outlined four levels at which design
action and research could be perceived in the context of a complex global scenario. While design at the
‘Tactical level’ used the fairly well recognised skills and sensitivities of a designer the other levels were
ignored to a large extent in India that in fact needed these levels more than the first which usually
resulted in aesthetic and functional solutions. The three other levels that I had proposed in my model
were the ‘Elaborative’, the ‘Creative’ and the ‘Strategic’ levels, each that addressed the needs of market

complexity, innovation and intellectual property issues and the third the application of vision and
anticipatory strategies that the highest level of design affords, respectively. At this level design uses
scenarios and maps opportunities to create visionary scenarios that can foster completely new industries
and these approaches need the collaboration of teams drawn from many disciplines to build solutions
and frameworks that can transform the country in many fundamental ways from a resource poor
perspective to one of abundance from the mobilisation of integrated resources that work in synergetic
ways due to the efforts of such multi-disciplinary design teams. Design at the strategic level also sets the
agenda for many forms of research to be done by a large number of disciplines based on a shared
vision of the future that is desirable and can find administrative, political and entrepreneurial supports.
The systems model of design that some of teachers adopted at the National Institute of Design (NID),
Ahmedabad, for building courses and to conduct our research and client interventions had over the
years given us the conviction that design in India is quite different from that which is practised in the
West. Design for development has been discussed at many platforms for discourse on design, many a
time leading utter confusion with the debate being clouded by as many differing definitions of design as
there are people in the room. Notwithstanding this difficulty with the subject as complex as design we
need to use the power of this discipline to further the real needs of a huge population desperately
seeking solutions to many vexing problems in a very tight economic climate. It is our belief that design at
the strategic level can be used as a catalytic tool to mobilise innovations and policies that can indeed
transform the country in more ways than one that provides the substance for the title of this paper ‘The
Avalanche Effect’ since a relatively small investment in design can indeed produce incredible change in
each of the sectors that have been identified by us through a process of investigation on the state of the
national economy from a design perspective over the years. We have seen glimpses of this effect
wherever policy and action have embraced design in even small ways in the past and the results shown
have been dramatic. The two areas that I have personal experience in are the Crafts sector and the
Bamboo sector, both of which have made the moves needed to create Institutions and investments to
use design along with an integrated mobilisation of investments in related projects and research
initiatives at our behest. Design Education: Perspectives in India In 1991 as part of a committee set up
to prepare a curriculum for the proposed Accessory Design programme in Delhi, I had the opportunity to
create a structure for perhaps the first of the sector specific programmes in Design offered outside the
NID at Ahmedabad. The Garment and Accessory Sectors were growing rapidly in India driven by
massive exports and the low wage regime that prevailed at that time. The Ministry of Textiles had
developed a substantial cash reserve from the cess on these export earnings that it was obliged to use
for the development initiatives in that sector. The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New
Delhi, had been set up using this initiative as an integrated Institution for the creation of human
resources to provide quality service to this booming industry. The structure of the curriculum that was
conceived for the NIFT programme followed inputs and assignments in four broad domains of focus,

each with its own special knowledge and skill sets, to be offered to students as lectures, assignments
and practical projects and field exposure modules respectively. While the domain of design covered core
design sensibilities through courses in basic design, and action capabilities being strengthened with
design management and design methodologies, the domain of the subject introduced knowledge
specific to the areas of product categories that came under its mandate such as jewellery, footwear,
bags and travel artefacts, and belts and items of clothing, toys, gifts and other such areas each of which
needed specific knowledge to be handled with competence. The domain of Industry was identified to
provide students with the tools and concepts of the trade since each industry segment had its own
norms and practises and lastly the domain of the user or the consumer was introduced to understand
needs and processes in the marketplace. This four-pronged structure was developed further while I was
involved in the curriculum review exercise at the NID in 1992 – ‘94. All the courses offered at that time,
over 250 of them across almost nine disciplines, were reviewed by our committee with very detailed
presentations from the teachers who were responsible to conduct each one of these. The four-pronged
structure of the domains of Design, the Subject, the Industry and the User/Consumer were used to
locate each of the courses and to determine the methodology to be followed by way of assignments and
theory. This brought a lot of clarity to the exercise and helped the committee make a number of
corrective recommendations that shaped the texture of these courses and their content and delivery
structure. After many years of following borrowed curricula from the west we were examining our
teaching resources and methods in a great detail with reference to the complex context that were being
perceived in India. This was review process was the culmination of a number of initiatives and
discussions that had taken place at the NID campus, none of which were unfortunately published, since
all of these discussions, held behind closed doors, in the NID’s Faculty Forum were labelled as
confidential and made available only to its faculty and the Governing Council as abridged notes and
references. However the course information structure improved considerably with the introduction of the
course abstract paper that was made mandatory for each course conducted at NID and the review
process saw the articulation and assembly of all the course abstracts into a multi-volume set that was
placed in the NID Resource Centre as the Master Abstracts Set. The fact that NID had only published
its Syllabus and detailed course descriptions only twice in the past thirty years (1970 and 1982) made
these course abstracts all the more valuable. The information about the relationship between courses
was contained in a tabular flow chart that shows the sequence of the courses and the time duration for
each while the time table that was prepared and released each semester showed the timings, dates and
the names of teachers responsible for each course. This stark absence of publications about the fields of
application of design from NID (and other design schools in India) was a subject of much debate at NID
Faculty Forum but the action taken left much to be desired and is perhaps singly responsible for the poor
acceptance of design services in the sectors that need it the most even though so many successful
forays had been made into these difficult and complex domains by the Institute, its faculty and students

over the years. However, the students and faculty who were in the midst of the great happenings,
explorations and debates did benefit from this significant exposure to both quality and content of these
debates and in these years the NID product, its students and alumni, form the spearhead of the design
initiative in India, albeit in small numbers but still sufficient to make an impact in some sectors through a
sustained body of work generated over the years The other design schools in the country too had their
share of successes in various fields and these were facilitated by their location or by their affiliation to a
different Ministry from which they drew their funds. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai
(1970), Delhi (1985) and Guwahati (1996) started programmes in Industrial design while the NIFT
expanded its reach by setting up centres in Mumbai. Calcutta, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Bangalore and
Chennai in rapid succession in the late nineties. In the private sector two new schools were set up in
Delhi and Bangalore as the pressure for admissions to the existing schools and the demand for the
design professionals was rising in the country. Most of these schools used NID trained designers as
their teaching resource either as full time teachers or as a visiting faculty resource. Design Initiatives:
New Institutions In 1991 I was involved in an assignment aimed at the articulation of a feasibility report
for a school of crafts studies in Jaipur. The result was the setting up of the Indian Institute of Crafts and
Design (IICD), Jaipur, by the State Government of Rajasthan on the premise that design as defined by
us in that report was a critical tool for the development of the crafts sector as a whole and a national
mandate was given to the new Institute. The model that was proposed in that report projected the crafts
in India as an economic and social activity that could liberate a very large number of decentralised and
self-sustaining activities that required a very low capital base to initiate and to grow. The domain of craft
was studied in most design Institutes in India by then as a means of sensitising Indian designers to the
complexities of rural industries and to explore the need for alternate frameworks for action in India
outside the organised industrial sector that seemed least interested in the efforts of the design
community here. However this was the first time that a dedicated Institution was set up to address the
needs of the crafts sector that was already contributing a substantial amount of employment and foreign
exchange from the export activities that were growing year on year since the country became an
independent nation. The need for design to lead the initiatives of this sector was by now established by
numerous success stories of design interventions in this particular sector. NID was at the forefront of
these interventions in the crafts sector through its craft documentation exercises that had mapped the
cultural resources of the country in very detailed studies conducted over the years. These too remained
unpublished to a large extent but were available for limited review to students and faculty in the
Resource Centre. The IICD, Jaipur will be sending out its first batch of students this year and it is well on
its way to building a focused body of knowledge that can assist design initiatives in the crafts sector.
The next major demand in Institution building for design education and research came from the Bamboo
sector that had started looking up after a series of initiatives in recent years. The Bamboo and Cane
Development Institute that existed at Agartala for many years as a training section for young craftsmen

was restructured last year at the request of the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts (DC-H),
Government of India as part of their National Bamboo development initiative being supported by the
United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) in India. NID’s extensive study of the Bamboo Crafts
of the Northeast India and the numerous papers and design projects that projected the use of bamboo
as a sustainable resource brought us into a strategic relationship with the Government of India and
UNDP in initiatives that gave us the opportunity to demonstrate the power design action at a strategic
level. At the request of the UNDP I was involved in articulating the vision report for the National Bamboo
Initiative that resulted in a report titled “From the Land to the People: Bamboo as a sustainable Human
Development Resource” (Ranjan 1999). This report was built around six scenarios that were design
visualisations that placed a sequence of inputs, events and innovations that could spearhead a veritable
bamboo revolution if implemented in form and spirit. In the months that followed, a number of intensive
design explorations have created a climate of sustained investments into this sector from as many as
ten State Governments and numerous national and non-governmental agencies. The DC-H increased its
allocation to the bamboo initiatives and asked for an improved infrastructure for training and design
development. Once again the feasibility report that we developed called for an integrated approach with
design at the core of the Institution and the activities covering four clear subject domains. The revamped
Institution would focus on Plantation studies since bamboo is a natural material suitable for agricultural
development, Product Innovation, Technology Innovation and Market Research studies to sustain a
creative design climate that would inform all the activities and set the agenda for research and action in
all areas of bamboo related knowledge. While the major national Institutes for design that were set up
over the years continue to perform their tasks of design education and research, the massive need
anticipated from all 230 sectors of our economy in need of design resources and sector specific
knowledge is still largely un-addressed. The two new sectoral Institutes that we helped set up, the IICD
and the BCDI were relatively easier to fund and create since the message to the stake holders was more
focussed and the funding agencies saw value in each offering since the results could be funnelled
directly into their ongoing activities and thus justified in internal communications and through the
complicated sanctioning process of Government. It is also easier for industries from within the sector to
see direct benefits and to align themselves to such Institutes and – while design is a general discipline –
a great deal of domain specific competence is also needed by the industries and promotional agencies
alike. It was this premise that I brought to my class last year when I asked the group of Foundation
students at NID to look at the Indian economy and to try and build macro-economic models for design
action in India. The development of this course at NID is also a very significant aspect of this discourse.
Over the years the definition of design has shifted in many directions, each pulled along a different
vector by a vocal advocate of an inherent quality of design. Leaders of design thinking that influenced
NID education were many early international visitors to the Institute such as Charles and Ray Eames,
Armin Hofman, Louis Khan, Frei Otto and others and authors of some critical books made available to

the faculty and students of the Institute by its presence in the Resource Centre which was always well
stocked and protected, and in the context of design theory the works of Christopher Alexander, John
Chris Jones and Bruce Archer and the publications from the Bauhaus, the hfg Ulm, and the Basel
school of graphic design come to the top of my mind. Many of these books were subjects of great
debate on the campus and they provided the intellectual stimulus to some of us who were interested in
such discussions. Design Theory: New Frameworks The Design Methods course provided the limited
framework for discourse on design theory at NID and in the mid seventies the course went through its
first metamorphosis with the appearance of the environmental agenda into the Foundation Programme
being introduced by the then coordinator and teacher Mohan Bhandari and this layer has persisted over
the years. I started teaching this course in 1982 soon after Mohan Bhandari left NID and by then I had
started bringing in my own convictions to this course in some tentative way at first and later with a more
definite value orientation that is reflected in my own engagement with design research and practise over
these years in the crafts, bamboo and small industry perspectives and later in the domain of digital
design all informed by the context that is India. The case material and the concepts being developed
caused me to change the name of this course to Design Concepts and Concerns (DCC) in the mid
nineties. In this period we also embraced systems design philosophies that came to be accepted at the
senior years of the industrial design programmes at NID and its intellectual bearings came from the
works of Stafford Beer and Gui Bonsiepe besides Buckminister Fuler and Victor Papanek. Bonsiepe’s
books and documentations of the work in Argentina and Brazil continued the thought processes started
at the hfg Ulm and brought a new perspective that of the difference between design in the West and that
of the Periphery and its associated social and economic implications. For me the Design Concepts and
Concerns course became a platform to revisit the domain of theory each year after several fresh and
new experiences in research and practise during that year since all NID faculty are expected to teach,
research and practise within the Institutional studio and professional practise framework. Design
Concepts and Concerns is about Finding, Knowing, Doing and Feeling, the last word of the quartet being
the most important in my opinion. Which is why the name of my course was changed from Design
Methodology that was used in the sixties to suggest that design was a scientific discipline and later on it
was called Design Process to suggest that it was steeped in good management but now we understand
that t is neither Science nor management and it certainly is not Art. I changed the name of my course
without official sanction several years ago since NID gave a great deal of latitude to its teachers to
experiment and evolve their courses as they too developed a better understanding of their subject. I am
grateful for this liberty as a teacher but bemoan the fact that many colleagues do not read enough and
pursue an intellectual debate to argue these positions nor do they understand these ideas fully nor
support these views from a form of apathy that seems to permeate our intellectual landscape. My model
for the “Profile of the Emerging Designer” that I use in my class to sensitise design students to the range
of possible professional profiles was first published in 1994 at a seminar on design education at the IDC

in Mumbai provided a framework to look at all design professions from this tetrahedral view of the skills
and knowledge base of a design professional. (Ranjan 1994) No one is comfortable when we talk about
ourselves as designers in India and the role that we should, could, or would play as a designer in the
Indian context. It is the context that gives us the shakes. We get perplexed at the sheer size and
complexity and cannot see where to begin or we see the opportunities for our special skills at the
comfortable and special end of the economy where about two percent of our population lives and push
away our sense of guilt when someone asks us about the other 98 percent and our contribution to these
people or even the middle 60 percent of India. However all our students know that design as we are
discussing it in the DCC class is about looking, knowing and doing what needs to be done, however
uncomfortable. Doing it thoughtfully, skilfully and with a great degree of empathy for the user. The value
orientation in this class is deliberate and the model of the designer as a tetrahedron of vertices with
Finding, Knowing and Doing as its base and the most important quadrant, in my view is the apex, which
is that of Feeling. This is what we bring to our students each year and throughout their stay at NID.
Strategic Design and New Education Last year with the Foundation class of 2001 we were compelled to
innovate our teaching strategy because our city of Ahmedbad was seriously affected by the continuous
bouts of rioting that prevented the usual movement of students into the field for user centered studies.
Therefore we decided to look at macro economic issues as our point of reference for this particular
course in design thinking. The results wee startling to say the least. The “Concept Mela”, a sort of
concept sharing exposition, which the students put up at the end of the course shared visualisations and
explorations that the seven groups of students had created and each was the proposed framework for a
sector specific initiative for design action in India. These explorations were informed by a series of brain
storming sessions and the usual lectures and coupled group assignments that followed the structure that
this course has been known for at the NID. This time however the young students were in the process of
transforming India from a resource poor country to a self confident and successful economy that it can
be since nobody told them that this was not possible, the sceptics were missing. They were told to
research the various macro parameters and use the NID faculty and senior students as their immediate
source of expert consultants. The groups formed went through a progression of assignments at building
models of the economy with a view to discover structural relationships and functional proximities
between related industries and economic sectors. Five groups looked at the same issues and discussed
these with great enthusiasm and captured the major attributes of these sectors and their
interrelationships by a process of brainstorming and discussion. The thus identified parameters were
arranged using Post-it stickers into intermediate structures and based on a consensus within the team
and amongst the consultants that they chose to involve. The resultant structures were represented the
form of presentation posters, each using a suitable metaphor for organising the elements. The five
groups had five different models but several aspects of these overlapped and some models were more
amenable to further manipulations than the others. However at this stage all the students were highly

motivated and demonstrated a very high degree of clarity about these macro economic parameters and
their impact on the National economy and its related issues and contexts. One group proposed a
Ministry of Design and divided the economy into basic producers (primary), processors (secondary) and
services. The representation was in the form of a city road map with a downtown circle that had the
three forks, one for each category, which got further divided into a branching diagram that
accommodated all the individual sectors identified by the group. (Fig not included). Another group
selected to depict the economy as a Venn diagram with here major areas of economy, ecology and
society with the interstices of these accommodating the critical sectors that needed inputs across these
areas. (Fig not included) Yet another interesting strategy was to look at the interrelationships between a
few key-driving parameters and this was represented as an interactive wheel where the outer circle
defined the individual sectors where design could and should play a critical role, and these numbered
230 in all. (Fig not included) Design Initiatives: Sector Specific Strategies The efforts of the students and
the resultant flow of ideas was further supplemented by a series of lectures by the author on the
institutional frameworks that were needed to make this initiative a reality in India. I shared the work done
for the two institutes dealing with crafts sector and the bamboo sector with the students and asked them
to identify specific opportunities that they could locate for immediate action in the Indian context. The
teams were further divided into seven and this time the students were permitted to join teams that they
could align themselves with on a personal interest and ideology basis. The result was startling and the
motivation levels kept these students active in groups on an almost round the clock basis in a seemingly
inextinguishable flow of energy and creativity. Each group created panels that described the issues
visually and built models to share their vision of the proposed framework for action, each in a small
panel based exhibit that could be taken to the public. This time we invited the public into our campus,
and over two days of intense interactions, the students got a great deal of feedback and critique from a
large number of visitors. Seven sectors were selected from a larger list of possible choices and the
Institutional frameworks developed to address these are as follows: 1. Badal (Monsoon Clouds)
Proposed as a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), the metaphor of the monsoon clouds is used to
describe a process for strengthening micro-enterprises through the use of research, assimilation,
refinement and delivery of know how to the micro-entrepreneurs just as the clouds perform a function of
delivering rain to the people. This is way of understanding self-employment strategies of some
successful people in one part of India and to be able to share these with the others in need. 2. Udaan
(Flight of the Spirit) A strategy for the empowerment, modernisation and for Information Technology
enabling of rural India with a deep understanding of the needs of this particular community or groups of
such communities distributed all over the country, each in their own environment and unique cultural and
linguistic space. 3 Aavriti (A Platform for Change) The child and its activities are the focus of this
initiative. The design opportunities area of toys, games and active education are addressed in this
framework. India does not have a single agency that is capable of embracing the design needs of

children although they form almost 60 percent of the total population. 4. EDD (Education Design
Developments) The proposed network of designers would work towards improving the quality of
education in India. The design needs of the education sector are both complex and fund starved at the
same time. The use of the web and face to face strategies form the basis of this design scenario that
could build a network of designers with teachers, students and other interested specialist contributors.
5. SEEDS (School of Ecological Design Studies) This organisation fosters a holistic approach to issues
of environment through education, research and action strategies that are unique to the problems of
India. The belief system embedded in this proposal assumes progress through a two way learning
process in building contemporary design solutions and in learning from the traditional wisdom of an
established society. 6. Green Dots (Design Organisation for Sustainable Transport Systems)
Transportation strategies that do not damage that environment need to be innovated and made
acceptable to our society if the quality of life in our cities and villages is to improve. This strategy
includes the use of novel solutions and sustained information campaigns to build acceptable models with
the involvement of people. 7. IID (Institute of Interface Design) To supplement India’s software
engineering strengths there is a need for the capacity to make products that are usable and appropriate
for a wide section of indigenous users and for export needs. The proposed framework and associated
scenarios fill a real need for value added approaches to enhance the interface design capabilities of our
existing software industry. This effort gave us a glimpse of concepts that were both necessary and
achievable. The next stage in this course led to the development of scenarios by each student of one
sub-opportunity that they individually felt could help precipitate the necessary investments or action in
the sector of their choice. The fact that these explorations reached concrete action plans with well-
defined objectives and a visual expression of the possible scenarios made it easy for visitors, senior
students and faculty to engage in a deep discussion on the merits and risks of each specific approach.
This is the hallmark of design thinking and action that is rooted in the domain of the visual scenario that
can locate the discourse at the macro level and at the micro level simultaneously. The future of design
too lies somewhere along this path and we can and must find new roles for design in the production of
images that can inform decision processes, some of which are so complex that they need many
iterations and political mediations to resolve in an amicable manner. Most importantly these design
processes need the involvement and partnership of a multitude of stakeholders and such visualisations
make the concepts, decisions and issues available for visual review in a transparent and understandable
manner that fosters long term partnership needed to achieve the lofty results. Design at this level has
the ingredients to create the avalanche effect, a great positive mobilisation, an overwhelming quantity of
something hopefully new and beneficial, with a very small designerly effort. References: 1. Charles and
Ray Eames, The India Report, Government of India, New Delhi, 1958, reprint, National Institute of
Design, Ahmedabad, 1997 2. Richard Buckminister Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A spontaneous
autobiographical disclosure, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1963 3. Thomas Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe,

Renate Kietzmann et al., eds, “Ulm (1 to 21): Journal of the Hoschule fur Gestaltung”, Hoschule fur
Gestaltung, Ulm, 1958 to 1968 4. Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimer, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago,
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969 5. Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Thames &
Hudson Ltd., London, 1972 6. Stafford Beer, Platform for Change, John Wiley & Sons, London, 1975 7.
M P Ranjan, Nilam Iyer & Ghanshyam Pandya, Bamboo and Cane Crafts of Northeast India,
Development Commissioner of Handicrafts, New Delhi, 1986 8. Herbert Lindinger, Hoschule fur
Gestaltung - Ulm, Die Moral der Gegenstande, Berlin, 1987 9. Kirti Trivedi ed., Readings from Ulm,
Industrial Design Centre, Bombay, 1989 10. J A Panchal and M P Ranjan, “Institute of Crafts: Feasibility
Report and Proposal for the Rajasthan Small Industries Corporation”, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad 1994 11. M P Ranjan, “Design Education at the Turn of the Century: Its Futures and
Options”, a paper presented at ‘Design Odyssey 2010’ design symposium, Industrial Design Centre,
Bombay 1994 12. National Institute of Design, “35 years of Design Service: Highlights – A greeting card
cum poster”, NID, Ahmedabad, 1998 13. M P Ranjan, “The Levels of Design Intervention in a Complex
Global Scenario”, Paper prepared for presentation at the Graphica 98 - II International Congress of
Graphics Engineering in Arts and Design and the 13th National Symposium on Descriptive Geometry
and Technical Design, Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil, September 1998. 14. S Balaram, Thinking
Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1998 15. Gui Bonsiepe, Interface: An approach to
Design, Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, 1999 16. M P Ranjan, “Design Before Technology: The
Emerging Imperative”, Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Design Conference ‘99 in Osaka, Japan
Design Foundation and Japan External Trade Organisation, Osaka, 1999 17. M P Ranjan, “From the
Land to the People: Bamboo as a sustainable human development resource”, A development initiative of
the UNDP and Government of India, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 1999 18. M P Ranjan,
“Rethinking Bamboo in 2000 AD”, a GTZ-INBAR conference paper reprint, National Institute of Design,
Ahmedabad, 2000 19. M P Ranjan, “Cactus Flowers Bloom in the Desert”, paper presented at the
National Design Summit, Bangalore, 2001 20. John Chris Jones, “The Internet and Everyone”, Ellipses,
London, 2000 and website http://www.softopia.demon.co.uk 21. M P Ranjan, Yrjo Weiherheimo,
Yanta H Lam, Haruhiko Ito & G Upadhayaya, “Bamboo Boards and Beyond: Bamboo as the sustainable,
eco-friendly industrial material of the future”, (CD-ROM) UNDP-APCTT, New Delhi and National Institute
of Design, Ahmedabad, 2001 22. M P Ranjan, Bamboo and Cane Development Institute, Feasibility
report for the proposed National Institute to be set up by the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts,
Government of India, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, 2001
004150 2003-11-30 13:31 Re: Sanjoy Mazumdar: Re: Session 3: response to Nsenga, Ranjan, Chow
Sanjoy Mazumdar: From M P Ranjan
Dear Sanjoy

I like your Lasagne model. I love models that are visually rich and that capture the flavour and texture of
the subject and its context, which yours does. It has taste as well!! Sometime ago, I used a "Hamburger
model" to describe the design processes that I used in a class that I teach at NID called "Design
Concepts and Concerns", description of which was posted to the list in October. Here I have Scenario
Visualisation and Concept Development sandwiched between User Needs and Business Models. The
Lasagne model on the other hand helps capture the complexity of the design activity. While there is talk
about the need for a "Core" for design (Pradeep Yammiyavar, Rosan Chow and others) I believe that the
core for any design activity is the "underlying philosophy" that guides and informs the various actions
and intentions of the designer and their clientelle. Design has been defined in many ways but at its core
are the "creation of value" and this is informed by the prevailing "value systems of a culture" in a "mode
of synthesis" while "addressing complexity" with all the "relevent tools and processes" available to the
design team. It is here that I feel we will need to look beyond the designer to experts and people from
other fields who can use the University based School of Design to enter the domain of design and
assimilate design thinking into their own line of inquiery. When the focus is on "design" and not the
"designer" the issues of education in a School of Design at the University will have a very different
connotation. Several years ago in a class called "Systems Thinking & Design" with a group of furniture
design students we used the metaphor of "Fire" to describe and capture in a memorable visual model
the systems nature of design. Fire in a hearth (context/ situation) uses or consumes materials (material
culture and processes of manipulation)through an active interaction with the environment (open system
and complexity) to produce an effect (heat, light- positive or smoke and destruction-negative ), giving a
glimse of the systems nature of design as well as the disasterous consequences of bad design. This
model places an enormous responsibility on the designer and has many implications for ethical practise
of design as a professional discipline. I am sure that your commitee examined many alternatives and
directions before settling on the final report as it stands today. However I chose to draw attention to the
difference in emphasis when one shifts ones focus from the education of the designer to the spread of
design use in the many fields that can support the activity with concepts and tools by facilitating a much
broader involvement of these professions and disciplines into design and design thinking.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my office at NID Ahmedabad
004107 2003-11-27 07:24 Session 2: Response to Ken Friedman: Re: Thoughts on three questions ...
Response to Ken Friedman: Thoughts on three questions: by Prof M P Ranjan, National Institute of
Design, Ahmedabad, India
Dear Ken,

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this wonderful but exhausting intellectual experience. (My
scheduled entry is in Session 5 as an invited commentator)
A brief intro, I teach and practise design at the National Institute of Design. I have been asssociated with
the Institute for over 35 years having joined as a student in 1969 and then as faculty since 1976. I teach
many subjects and have an active practice and research in many fields of design including Industrial
Design, HCI and Interface Design, Crafts and in bamboo where I now head the NID Centre for Bamboo
Initiatives. I have been involved in setting up two new sectoral design schools in India and in advising on
curriculum planning and design on two other schools including my own Institute. I have been in the field
for the past fifiteen days at the remote city of Agartala where I could access the web to download the
daily digests from the list and read it offline each night. I could not find the time to make any
contributions till now. We are setting up a new school to catalyse rapid development of the bamboo
sector in India and this is what brings me to Agartala quite frequently.
My brief response to Ken's comments on the three questions are as follows: Rosan Chow has raised
some very fundamental questions about the premises on which the School of Design report was
concieved. Ken has argued that the economic yardstick is a practical route through which all other
issues have been addressed quite adequately by the committee. My reading of the report and the
comments confirms this view. If I understand the response correctly. However these questions will not
go away. As designers we are used to asking the question "What if", and in the "What if" mode we build
alternate scenarios. My question is therefore to the list - "What if - Design is accepted by the California
public and the local and federal governments and all the other stake holders in academia and industry
as one of the most critical resources for the future of humanity on planet earth - Would the report and its
recommendations have come out different in terms of scale, priority, emphasis and focus? I will come
back later with my own views when I get back to Ahmedabad tomorrow. It has been an exciting
conference and I enjoyed every late evening read so far. Thanks.
With warm regards
Prof M P Ranjan on tour writing from the Bamboo & Cane Development Institute, Agartala
003850 2003-10-31 04:51 Re: Design in Developing Countries

Design in Developing Countries: Comments by M P Ranjan in response to Dr James WR Fathers note
quoted below.
The National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad was set up in 1961 and from a very early agenda set up
through the articulation of the India Report by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958 started looking at all
aspects of design for development as it applied to issues and needs in the very large and economically
deprived areas on the country. This experience is enormous and unfortunately very little is published of

our efforts over the years but this represents a great opportunity for this distinguished community at
PhD- Design to explore possible projects to study and share the wisdom that has been gleaned through
these years of experience. NID continues to be interested and involved in multi-sectoral design
research and development initiatives that are too numerous to list just now but I will be happy to point to
the few available published resources if anyone is interested. I will make a more detailed submission
when I have a little more time in the days ahead since it will help us as well in articulating some of the
enormous work that has indeed been done in this area at the Institute over the past fifty odd years.
Design education too has benefited through some remarkable innovations in the Foundation Programme
developed at the Institute as well as numerous assignments that take students of our fifteen disciplines
to real life research and design projects in the field all over India. We do have some interesting
publications from the institute and I will be happy to send a list of these to anyone who is interested off
the list.
With warm regards
003820 2003-10-25 12:52 Re: Beyond False Consciousness, etc.

Beyond False Consciousness: Comments by M P Ranjan
Dr GK VanPatter has raised many issues about the role and efficacy of the conventional western
research method in the light of new approaches being tried out in design circles and in corporate
innovation efforts across the globe. First let me state that the entire discussion on the subject of False
Consciousness has been for me a very educative and thought provoking experience and at first it led to
my looking for threads of connections in the understanding of the self in Indian and Asian thought and
mythology. There are many interesting references but I am not an expert on these issues to be able to
interpret these in the context of the current discussion. The discussion itself is of value since the effort
that I see is genuine in trying to establish whether or not an individual designer can plumb his or her own
consciousness for valid and credible research data that can be used to establish a new framework of
theory that would be a sufficient basis for the award of a degree or the acceptance of the same as
scientific fact. In this I must admit that just as observation of the world and particular events can be
reported as fact, the inner reflection of a designer during explorations and decision making too can be
reported and should be acceptable as primary data that can be processed further in many ways. Our
perceptions of the world around us are coloured by many of our sensory abilities, both physical and
cognitive and our current state of knowledge, and similarly our ability to truthfully reflect on our own
thought processes must be influenced by numerous factors including upbringing, moral and ethical
positions, cultural and psychological attributes as well as the levels of motivation, state of mind and

cognitive abilities and current knowledge etc. The field of optical illusions and the study sensory
ambiguities has contributed to many basic design assignments used to teach designers to deal with
thought and media in the foundation programmes around the world. We may need to device similar
assignments to raise the ability of design researchers to deal with the ambiguous area of false
consciousness while dealing with the complexities of self-enquiry and the search for inner truth. Dr GK
Van Patter has raised many other issues that pertain to design in general and the future of the discipline
in particular. The NextD initiative is indeed fascinating and an action for which the time is ripe, since the
air is rich with thoughts of the power of design when seen in the broadest sense and in search of the
best ways in which this power can be used by all of us to make a better world through collective and
collaborative actions. I say that the air is thick with these ideas because so many disciplines are looking
at ways of using the converging of technologies and knowledge domains that have remained separate
during the whole period of industrialisation. Prof. John Chris Jones in his recent issue of Daffodil 23
writes of his explorations towards “a 'field theory' of industrial living” and he has outlined the essence of
it in the nine points that he detailed out in the issue of Daffodil 23. (Public writings on the web http://
www.softopia.demon.co.uk/2.2/daffodils.html by Prof. John Chris Jones) Some of these ideas have been
touched upon in his book “Internet and Everyone”. (John Chris Jones, The Internet and Everyone,
Ellipsis, London 2000) Christopher Alexander in his new book “The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon
of Life (Book One) and his much awaited companion volumes, Books Two to Four, writes of a mega
synthesis through design which promises to totally change our world-view in the near future just as
science theory and discovery had changed it in the mid Nineteenth century. Gui Bonsiepe in his book
“Interface” speaks of the differences between science innovation and that of design innovation by
placing these into different spheres of action and into different modes of resolution. His matrix of
innovation places science, technology and design innovation on a common thread of action showing the
mutual interdependencies while his matrix of design development reaches maturity when an
organisation or country is able to involve multi- disciplinary teams at a strategic level of thought and
action. (Gui Bonsiepe, Interface: An Approach to Design, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, 1999)
These represent the state of the search for a grand synthesis that I perceive when I say that the air is
thick with ideas of a great convergence of ideas from a whole host of fields and we do believe that
design will play a role in facilitating this form of synthesis, even if designers may to be left behind, as the
NextD website warns us. The science thinkers too are in search of a grand synthesis of the many field
theories that are with us today. However each field is unfortunately insulated from the ideas and
thoughts of the other due to the extreme degree of specialisation that is practised and I have come
across some striking examples of such exclusion in recent publications attempting to look at he entire
gamut of human thought in search of the grand synthesis so to speak. Fritjof Capra, in The Hidden
Connections, chronicles the evolution of scientific break-through of recent times in a declared aim “not
only to offer a unified view of life, mind and society, but also to develop a coherent, systematic approach

to some of the critical issues of our time.” However when I look at Capra’s bibliography I find a large
number of thinkers whom I would have included as major contributors of human thought missing from
his list. This shows the great divide that disciplines have built amongst themselves that isolates each
form the ideas and concepts of the others, and it is in this space that design of the future will need to
operate. Another recent book on the history of human ideas, “A Terrible Beauty: A History of the People
and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind” by Peter Watson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000,
explores in a lucid manner the key players in the history of thought but once again my set of champions
are missing from the list of references!! The missing players included Alexander, Jones and Bonsiepe
mentioned above. Also missing were Bucky Fuller, Stafford Beer and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, all of
whom have helped shape my ideas on design and the world at various stages of my intellectual life. In
spite of all the convergence in media and all the globalisation forces acting on all of us the huge chasm
of specialist- induced myopia continues to thrive and exist and influence the way we work and think.
This brings me back to the third major idea that Dr. GK VanPatter had introduced into his note that has
triggered off this response, the idea of creating new tools and models of understanding that could help
design deal with the complexity and scale of design opportunities at an unprecedented level. At NID
(National Institute of Design, India) where I teach, we have been fortunate to have cherished a multi-
disciplinary climate for many decades now and combined with an open door policy that has tacitly
encouraged creative trespassing, some of us have had the great opportunity to interact with the worlds’
best designers from a large number of fields and in turn this has helped shape our own ideas abut
design and design education. In a paper that I wrote in 1998 for a conference in Brazil titled “ Levels of
Design in a Complex Global Scenario’ I had proposed a four level model for design action, each level
dealing with more and more complex layers that design is having to cope with as our understanding of
the discipline ad its abilities develops. (pdf of 200kb file available on request off the list) The four levels
were named The Tactical Level, driven by the skills and sensibilities of a designer, The Elaborative level,
driven by market forces and market knowledge, The Creative Level, driven by Intellectual break-through
and IRP laws and the fourth level being The Strategic Level, driven by design and entrepreneurial vision
and opportunity maps that helps create new industries and systems usually not part of a formal brief
from outside. Today I would re-designate these levels as Sense Driven Design, Context Driven Deign,
Intellect Driven Design and Vision Driven Design. Further in the course that I teach at NID, titled Design
Concepts and Concerns, we have innovated a number of assignments and processes that help our
students cope with multi-disciplinary processes through a structured programme of learning in a highly
collaborative mode with students drawn from many specialist disciplines in the same class. In a recently
concluded class we chose the theme of “Khadi” based on the philosophy of Gandhi, to explore all
aspects of design thinking ad action as applied to a broad spectrum of needs in the Indian society and
towards a sustainable future for our society and our economy. The assignments had the students
growing through five stages of understanding, the Self, the Group or Team, the Subject, the Context and

the Future, each through a series of structured investigations and assignments that required them to
research, reflect and express their findings in a visual and expressive format, working in groups in all but
the first and last stage of the course. This course module has been innovated and applied at NID for the
past fifteen years or so, with constant improvements each year from past experiences, and it has given
our students a distinct advantage in the professional and research activities that are becoming visible
today through their work in India and elsewhere. I have shared this teaching experiment in a paper
presented at the National Design Summit in Bangalore in 2001 titled “Cactus Flowers Bloom in the
Desert: Reflections on Design and Innovation in India” (pdf file 125 kb available on request off list) Here I
have expanded on the four stage systems design model that we teach our students through the five
stages of understanding that makes it the “NID way”, a very powerful design tool indeed. The four stage
model can be visualised as a ham burger with two very generous fillings, the top bread is that of User &
Need Research, to be constantly tuned-in to real needs and to sense these long before the user
themselves are necessarily aware of these needs, the bottom bread is of Business Models, tools and
avenues to reach the innovation to market, while the middle layers are Scenario Visualisation and
Concept Development, each layer is iteratively explored through the five stages of understanding and
articulation usually in teams to get fantastic results every time. User& Need Research requires Empathy,
with observation and interaction skills, Scenario Visualisation needs Imagination, articulation (visually)
and should be driven by convictions, Concept Development needs abilities of Form Giving, Detailing and
sustained development while the Business Model Building needs traits of Entrepreneurship, Diplomacy
and a deep commitment almost bordering on religion or ideology. The five stages of understanding
brings us back to the starting point of this note which is the role of self in design thinking and research.
In our recent course we got our students to explore these levels and to share each stage with the whole
class in a presentation mode using rich visuals and specially devised models to communicate the
findings. The assignment on Self required the student to plumb their own self-conscious image and to
share what they could or would with the rest of the class. The team assignment required a group of
students to explore a given topic, a Subject, in this case, “Khadi” and they were required to map out all
that the group in collaboration could articulate about the subject from their past knowledge without
necessarily carrying out any external research, The third stage of understanding had the students
scouring the city of Ahmedabad for sources of information about “Khadi” and all other sources that are
published or on the Internet. Al findings are then organised and represented in a visually appreciable
model and some even performed a part of the presentation for greater effect in communication. The next
stage of understanding was to grasp the Context, to look outward from the vantage of the subject
knowledge to the world at large for trends and threads of change that are sweeping across our
landscape. They are permitted and encouraged to meet as many experts, people and informants in a
structured manner, each with a number of iterations built into the research to benefit from current
knowledge and new discoveries. Finally they were required to map out design opportunities for the

future through a series of group sessions following which they took one specific opportunity of their
choice for Scenario Visualisation and presentation at a concept exhibition that was scheduled at the
Kochrab Gandhi Ashram (the very firs Ashram set up by Gandhi on his return to India from South
Africa), the setting was selected to create a platform for sharing student design concepts with the city of
Ahmedabad, which we thought would be a source of great motivation to the students to build a credible
scenario, worthy of public presentation in a significant and historic location. The experience was indeed
wonderful, and the convictions that design ca indeed deliver wonderful new solutions is further
reinforced by the experience. I would like to thank the list participants for such an active exchange of
ideas on False Consciousness and so many related issues that it is a fascinating intellectual journey for
all of us.
With warm regards
Wish you all a very happy Diwali (A festival of lights in India today)
003681 2003-09-20 13:15 Creativity vs. Visualisation

Creativity vs Design Visualisation: Looking Inside vs. Looking Outside Prof. M P Ranjan - 20 September
2003 (A very long post: Not for the light- hearted)) Creativity for me has been a very ambiguous target
and much of the published references having raised more questions than helped provide answers to
many pressing questions that come to ones mind. However there is such a large body of literature on
the subject and it is interesting to see that there are as many sceptics as there are the believers in
search of the final truth in this matter. I have all but stopped using the term “creativity” because of the
numerous myths that surround the term in the domains of art, music and literature and nowadays in a
large section of management writings and in science break- through as well. However I am as yet
unable to find a simple, compelling and fitting explanation of the phenomenon of creativity that is not
prescriptive or aimed at the uninitiated others in search of that “elusive leap of imagination” or “flight of
fantasy” that I can use with my students effectively. From a design education perspective I have found it
to be far more fruitful to focus on the external models created by a profession, particularly in those
tangible traces of external manifestations that are used by designers when grappling with a solution for a
complex design problem, at the macro level of the total system or at the micro level of part detailing, that
are being attempted in the process of design synthesis. For me It has been more interesting to try and
watch the process of design synthesis through these external manifestations and to try and discover the
very fuzzy initial processes through the evidence provided by the external traces of early models
(external) that led to the comprehension of some major new pattern or breakthrough in the course of the
design exploration and iteration. This may be a more fruitful course of investigation in the understanding

of the phenomenon of innovation and creativity and perhaps the field of Cognitive Psychology will
provide some of the answers that we seek in the years ahead. Several years ago I therefore abandoned
the search for a description of creativity processes while dealing with my students in the design
methodology class (now called “Design Concepts and Concerns”) and I shifted my attention to the series
of external models that are generated by various professionals from a number of fields of art and design.
To make my views on the subject available to my students I offered a set of class notes and created a
lecture with supporting visuals from the works of great architects and artists. Unfortunately pre-cognitive
images are not easily available for the works of designers and if such references are available I would
certainly like to know of these. We had with us a remarkable set of original drawings and pre-
visualisation sketches created by the architect Louis I. Kahn who worked with my Institute (NID) as the
local architects to design and execute the campus for the Indian Institute of Management. These are
now published in the book “Complete Works of Louis I. Kahn” (* see reference below). I used these and
other available pre-visualisation images of progressive external models to argue against the single great
moment of break-through and in favour of this progressive external manifestation that facilitated the right
and left-brain interaction in the process of design synthesis. My paper that was created as class notes in
1997 to support a visual lecture is quoted below. (Since it has not been published outside NID so far, I
reproduce it here to facilitate this discussion).
QUOTE: Class Notes and Lecture on Drawing for Visualisation AEP Bridge Semester National Institute
of Design Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380 007. 16 October 1997
Design Visualisation
M P Ranjan
Design is a responsible and creative activity that aims to understand human needs and aspirations in
order to generate effective alternate solutions that can resolve these needs. By its very nature the
process of design deals with extremely complex interrelationships of issues and concerns of the user,
the environment and the well being of society in social, technological and economic realms. The
designer is therefore in the arena of generating scenarios and specifications and offering these for
selection and decision within the framework of professional contributions offered to a wide variety of
clients. The nature and complexity of different design tasks may vary to a great extent. Some tasks are
technologically complex but most design tasks deal with other realms of complexity in the social,
economic or psychological dimensions of users and the community that supports the conduct and
performance of the task. Design has therefore moved from being an individual enterprise to that of
being a team effort with a variety of members being drawn from a large number of diverse disciplines,
the selection depending on the nature of the task and our current understanding of the same.

Professional design has the further complexity of being conducted in an extremely competitive business
and economic landscape where the demands of time and quality are stringent and is accompanied by a
very high degree of risk. These pressures have mandated a number of critical changes in the processes
that designers and their collaborators employ in the conduct of the design programme. Design has
borrowed work strategies from all formal disciplines where effective approaches and methodologies
have been innovated and developed through experience and research. The morphology of the design
task has therefore become a complex set of iterations that revisit the stages of defining and redefining
the task leading to improved understanding of the task itself. In this process several alternate scenarios
are developed and examined critically and this may lead to restatement of the very problem itself.
Design thinking is distinctly different from scientific and management thinking styles in that the designer
and the design team are willing to cope with a great deal of ambiguity while the boundaries of the design
opportunity are gradually brought into sharp focus. The process of refining the understanding of the
design task and that of generating alternate solutions or scenarios follow one another in fairly quick
cycles and are mediated by interactions with real users in many cases. The user centered ideology
adopted by designers in recent years has necessitated the creation of several new stages in the design
process. Early concepts and prototypes are shared with users with the use of preliminary visualisations
that are specially conceived to permit user participation or facilitate user observation to develop insights
into potential problems that are not perceptible in the normal course of concept development. It is the
attitude of the designer that is put to critical test in such cases where it is very easy to slip into the mode
that the "designer knows best" which is in the final analysis counter productive. The designers
visualisation skills and cognitive capabilities are needed to create new and unique solutions, but the
evaluation of each of these is done through user mediated processes that have proved to be most
effective. The designer is then called upon to innovate appropriate representations of the design
concept in whole or in part so that individual or groups of users can interact with these representations
and provide fresh insights into both the nature of the problem and the suitability of the solution. Here the
challenge is to discover and use appropriate tools and media that are best suited to the process of
visualisation and the process of evaluation. The tools and media need to be selected with care so as to
afford fluent representation of complex relationships or geometries, form and content, structure and
context that is required by the particular design task. Traditionally the use of a variety of types of
drawings were the preferred modes of visualisation used by sculptors, artists, architects and designers.
However in recent times many examples of direct modelling in soft materials have been explored where
drawing would limit or inhibit the perception of new and unique possibilities. Preferred styles of
visualisation of individual designers may also emerge from their professional habits, degree of skill with
the tools of their trade and the cognitive modelling capabilities of the individual. Each design discipline or
design school may advocate certain standards for the design students or practitioners from their group.
Trade practices in particular industries may also set demands for certain standard specifications to be

followed by the designer in the manner in which the design concepts are delivered to the client for
further action and decision. Many of these standardised methods of representation reflect the
communication and documentation norms of the industry or trade in question. Notwithstanding these
trade practices and norms the individual designer is always at liberty to explore their personal repertory
of media and skills in the early stages of design visualisation when the emerging images of the external
models are primarily intended to capture the fleeting cognitive maps and scenarios that are being
iteratively explored by the designer. Such early external visualisations are barely recognisable as
coherent images to a casual observer, however for the designer they are of great significance since this
is perhaps the first stage of the dialogue between the left and right hemispheres of their brain that is
facilitated by the external model, however rudimentary. These early visualisations take many forms and
these depend on the media that the designer may choose to employ at various stages of their work and
these may be deliberately varied as a result of experience or in an effort to open up new and unusual
possibilities in response to the challenges of the design task. These external manifestations may be
barely discernible doodles or smudges that for the designer represent a rapidly executed trace of the
cognitive model that is being continuously refined, modified and developed in the designers mind. While
sketching and doodling are used extensively by the designer for this early stage of visualisation there
are a number of other media that are used. One characteristic of the media that is in common is that it is
very fluid and has soft features as if to reflect the fuzzy nature of the cognitive model at this early stage
of design exploration and development. These external traces and markings on paper or soft materials
provide the designer with the multilevel and internodal dialogue between the two brain hemispheres that
is critical for creative reinterpretations of possibilities and for pattern recognition of complex new
relationships that may have been studied in isolated instances but that needs to fall together in the
process of design synthesis. Design decisions are made as a sequence of choices exercised by the
designer at the time of articulation of the external model. The design visualisation progresses by the
designer creating a series of images or models, each an embodiment of a particular set of
characteristics as determined by the data available, the analysis of the task and the user or as perceived
by the designer at that particular point of time in the design process. This very act of articulation brings
new insights and may shift the direction of exploration or launch the designer into a search for a
particular detail that may be critical in making the overall concept to be either viable or interesting. Thus
the designer moves from the general to the particular, from the macro to the micro level of observation of
the cognitive model that is constantly being refined and elaborated without freezing on any one specific
alternative. Usually the designer defers decision on specific attributes and leaves some difficult details in
an ambiguous state in a deliberate effort to obtain clarity of the larger patterns and relationships of the
solution before solving particular structural, formal or production problems. In the user centered design
ideology adopted by many designers and by several design led companies, the early prototypes and
external models are prepared expressly with the intention that they be shared by groups of users in a

variety if real use settings so that they can provide critical insights into the strengths and weaknesses of
a particular design solution. Numerous iterations are made, each exploring one or more dimensions of
the design opportunity and these are documented so that the design team can develop a conviction
about the particular directions to be taken in each case. These external models begin as very abstract
and fuzzy representations and these are gradually refined and elaborated till more concrete models
replace earlier representations. These models, when drawing and sketching are used as a route for
visualisation, grow out of thumbnail sketches, doodles, scale drawings, orthographic drawings,
breadboard models for details of construction or performance of mechanisms, scale models and
renderings for form review, full scale mock-ups and fabricated prototypes where ever possible. It may
be useful to look at a few examples of such visualisation in action. Let us look at a potter as a metaphor
for the process of early visualisation. An artist, designer or studio potter, working at the wheel and
making the model of the clay pot works with clay in a series of iterations to produce one particular pot. A
lump of prepared clay is centered on the potters wheel and the material is turned at a suitable speed.
The potter applies her hands to the rotating clay and observes the transformation of the form with each
application of pressure. The form of the pot emerges as a result of her subtle manipulations. The
feedback to the potter is not merely a visual appreciation of its form, but with the eyes closed, she can
feel the shape and size of the emerging pot, at one point too tall and at another too wide, leading to a
corrective pressure on the tips of her fingers or at the base of her palm. Each application of pressure
and the result thereof is a result of years of fine training and experience and each pot is a unique
expression of a design intention that is revealed to the designer in the progressive iteration of its making.
The designer would have had the chance to see, feel and evaluate numerous intermediate stages
before a design and aesthetic decision is frozen in the shape of the finished pot. If the making of a pot is
taken as a metaphor for the early stage of design visualisation, then we see that a very flexible medium
is manipulated through numerous iterations before the designer moves on to another approach or
attempt to resolve the various conflicting variables of the task at hand. The cognitive model held by the
designer too gets enriched through each iteration. Each new "pot" adds to the designers experience of
the various scenarios that were explored and it helps form some deep bonds with preferred directions
especially if these are confirmed by the interactions with users who are able to see for the first time the
"products" of the designers cognitive explorations. In this process the cognitive model gets progressively
detailed and is far more complex and detailed than any representation. The designers’ cognitive model
is rich in detail and is instantly recalled under varying circumstances of the user and environmental
conditions. The designer sees the solution by day and by night, feels the air flow around its contours and
can sense the soft feel of the flexible material of a handle even if it is only in the mind at this stage. The
designer lives with the changing model through numerous refinements and critiques from users and
colleagues. In team mediated processes it becomes critical that all members of the team are clued in to
the current state of the model and their individual contributions are then directed at solving particular

aspects of the design task that their special skill or expertise enable. It is important to generate these
external models in a suitable media. Sketching has been used by many architects as a means of
capturing complex concepts that need to be clarified and developed through numerous iterations before
communicative drawings or scale models can be made. The works of architects Reima Pietila and Louis
I Kahn are well documented examples of great design vision being captured through a series of fuzzy
sketches leading to the articulation of some of their finest works of architecture in India and elsewhere.
Kahn designed the Indian Institute of Management campus at Ahmedabad and his early sketches speak
volumes of the highly refined cognitive model that he carried about in his head long before a single brick
was laid at the campus in Ahmedabad. Similarly the Finish Embassy at New Delhi emerged from some
very fuzzy markings and doodles in pen and ink and dry pastels from the experienced hands of Pietila.
The key decisions are made in the mind's eye and the external markings at this stage are but a trace of
the rich cognitive model where some critical details or proportions are expressed as a slight stress in the
quality of a line of the thumbnail sketch if you can call it a sketch. Like foot prints in the sand on a
crowded beach these fleeting impressions are captured on paper (or clay) by the designer in an attempt
to clarify and elaborate the form, structure, performance, content and context of the design solution, all
in a single moment of design synthesis, only to be reviewed and revised as the design task progresses
to its formal conclusion. For the designer these markings are very personal and memorable just as for
the person strolling on the beach his very own footprints are clearly distinguished from those of all the
others, which for him is mere noise. Very few design tasks are documented to retain some of these
moments of breakthroughs that are achieved on the back of an envelope or through a little doodle on the
corner of a large drawing that just lets all the complex variables fall neatly in place for the designer to
know that the solution is near at hand. The excitement of the moment is sharp and intense particularly
after many attempts were frustrated by the critical needs of the problem at hand. Sometimes the
designer too is unprepared to see the radical proposal that has emerged from the subconscious just as
Leonardo Da Vinci and his colleagues ignored the perfect sketch of a bicycle drawn on one of his
sheets. Mankind invented or should we say reinvented the bicycle four hundred years later as a result of
this oversight. There are many dimensions to design visualisation and it is this special capacity of the
designer to generate visible and tangible scenarios to complex needs that makes the profession different
from the managers who also develop strategies and scenarios for action in their own way. However
these are rarely expressed in visual form but in the form of feasibility reports and verbal specifications. It
is then the designers task to give form and expression to these strategies and the particular embodiment
of the design strategy is captured and the image produced carries with it messages of a complex nature
be it fashion, reliability or meaning to a set of users or the community. ~ UNQUOTE I would certainly
like to hear from those who believe that the term “creativity” is useful, critical and has a clear definition
that can be studied and used in the context of education. I would also like to hear from the list on the
ultimate short list of books that must be added to any design library on the subject of creativity and

perhaps we need to open a new thread on models and cognition in design to explore some of these
issues and processes to arrive at a better understanding of this very complex and elusive phenomena. *
Reference: Heinz Ronner, Sharad Jhaveri & Alessandro Vasella, “Louis I. Kahn, Complete Works, 1935
– 1974, Institute for the History & Theory of Architecture, The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
Zurich, 1980. (Pages 265 to 305 - Drawings and illustrations on the process of conceiving & building The
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.)
With warm regards
003632 2003-09-14 16:12 Re: Justification for New Design Schools

Dear Dr Terence Love
Thank you for your informative post on the various dimensions of need analysis for the establishment
and development of design related activities in any country. While there are unique needs in each region
and country that is dictated by its history and status of current development we still need some estimate
of how to place designers in an economy dominated by scientists, technologists, engineers and
managers as it is in India today. We have a reported 40 million technically trained manpower across all
disciplines in India and the design population is very small indeed when compared to this figure. The
group of colleagues with whom I am working felt that even a basic list of comparative statistics from the
industrialised countries and the newly industrialised ones would give us some basis for the initiation of a
deeper study into the subject. The points that you have related are indeed very pertinent and our
eventual interest must be to get a better understanding of all these dimensions as they apply to the
Indian condition. While we are very convinced about the value of a new design school at the University
level in India we do need to address the large number sceptics in the National administration who
unfortunately still perceive design as one that provides aesthetic embellishment to the hard core
research areas of science and technology. While design in India has made many successes it is still a
drop in an ocean of opportunity that some of us see on a daily basis, particularly in the areas of
development and outside the areas of conventional industry. I will get in touch with you off the list with
specific questions since what you say about the design scene in Australia has many parallels in the
Indian scene as well.
With warm regards
003628 2003-09-13 14:35 Justification for New Design Schools

Justification for New Design Schools - 13 September 2003 - Prof. M P Ranjan
Dear Friends I have been looking for statistics on design schools in industrialised and newly
industralised countries to develop an argument for the setting up of new design schools at the University
level in India. I seek your support in pointing out new sources that can be checked out for data on the
population of designers in each country in relation to the general population and if available some
information on the impact of design and designer population on the economic and social development of
countries. I came across a very interesting study by the Japan Industrial Promotion Organisation that
dates back to 1980 and some stats from this report are quoted below. I am looking for similar data from
any country or countries on or off the list so that this can be compiled to make my arguement for a
substantial increase in quality design educational seats in India at the University level. I am quoting
below some extracts from the report that I had circulated to my colleagues in India in search of current
data and statistics. QUOTE "International Survey on Design Promotion", Japan Industrial Design
Promotion Organisation, Osaka, 1980 The survey covered 20 countries for the 'Survey of Design
Activities' and 106 Organsations from 48 countries on "Summary Survey on Activities of Design-Related
Organisations. There are a number of interesting bar charts that show the analysis of the data that the
survey has generated which is summarised below for ready reference. Table 2-1 Social Recognition of
Design ( note: according to the JIDPO note this stage was reached at around the 1960's and in some
countries education of designers started before this event and in some others this was a cause for the
commencement of new education programmes) Europe 1930 - 1950 Finland 1945 Czechoslovakia
1950 Sweden 1957 East Germany 1959 Spain 1959 West Germany 1960 Norway 1965 Ireland 1965
Austria 1970 Switzerland Asia 1960 Japan 1960 -1970 India 1969 Hong Kong 1970 Korea America
1946 USA 1960 Mexico 1963 Argentina Table 2-2 Number of Designers per Million Population
Finland..................... 126 (persons) Japan....................... 95 East Germany......... 72 West
Germany........ 50 Czechoslovakia....... 43 Isreal........................ 37 USA......................... 33
Norway.................... 20 Austria..................... 19 Korea....................... 16 Spain........................ 14
Ireland...................... 13 Switzerland.............. 12 Mexico..................... 07 Argentina.................
04 Philippines............... 03 India......................... >01 This data is old but it does show the number of
designers in the industrialised and newly industrialised nations and India in 1980 had a very low
penetration of designer creation. The situation today is no better, on the other hand it seems to have got
much worse. Table 2-5 Includes Year of Initiation of Design Education in the respective countries
1900's Finland, Czechoslovakia & Japan 1920's East & West Germany 1930's USA 1950's Korea
1960's Spain, Mexico & Austria 1970's Argentina, Isreal, Hong Kong & India 1975+ Sweden, Norway,
Ireland & Philippines Table 2-6 Number of Design Training Institutios classified by country 1 (school) ...
Hong Kong / Norway 2 (shcools).. Argentina, Austria, India, Isreal, Ireland, Philippines, Sweden 3

(schools).. Czechlovakia 4 (schools).. Germany (DR), Finland 15 (schools).. Spain 16 (schools)..
Korea 20 (schools).. Japan 21 (schools).. Germany (FR) 30 (schools).. USA Table 2-8 Annual
Number of Graduates from Design Training Institutions (College or University) America > 10 ...........
Mexico, Argentina 500 ........... USA Asia > 10 ........... Philippines > 50 ........... Hong Kong, Isreal,
India 100 .......... Korea 1000 ............ Japan Europe > 10 ........... Austria, Ireland, Sweden. Norway
50 + ............ Finland 75 .............. Czechoslovakia 100 ............. East Germany 300 .............
West Germany Source: "International Survey on Design Promotion", Japan Industrial Design Promotion
Organisation, Osaka, 1980 UNQUOTE
I would appreciate any contributions of sources on the web or in print that we could follow up to
substantiate our arguments.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan from my ofice at NID
003625 2003-09-12 10:59 Re: Design Learning.

Dear Chris Heape
My comments were about the perrenial need and the current opportunity that exists for a new digital tool
set that could help offset the very problem of trying to get a contemporaneous documentation on any live
project in the real world and in real time. It is indeed extremely difficult to get a post- project review to
provide any deep level of insight since each of the participants have a particular view of the project from
their own vantage points and this does influence the collective view as well. If I look back at the various
experiences that we have had at NID to try and capture and build case studies (with limited success) it
has been due to some of the inherent difficulties in managing post-project reviews and documenting
these in some form of objective records that can be of use later in education and research. You have
stated that the review meetings with a sharing of experiences and process artefacts helped - QUOTE -
"......so in a sense there was a kind of re-alignment of the personal understandings of the project and the
common understanding then generated could help the way forward." - UNQUOTE This is indeed true
since the post-project review does tend to be a session for smoothing out many layers of pent up
communications between team members as well as an avenue for looking for lessons from the
experience and it need to be managed with a great degree of sophistication. This reminds me of the
great film Roshomon by Akira Kurosova where five actors relate in a dramatised manner their own
points of view of a single incident, each with their unique points of emphasis and with a great deal of
variety which represents real life perceptions fairly acurately. Similarly all players on a design team
would carry their own real and imagined sequences which would need to be re-aligned through the de-

briefing processes. In many cases theere is a conflict of credits, imagined or real which would get sorted
out by some established process of the Institute. All this does produce new learning and a degree of
humility for team contributions vis a vis individual excellence. The other example of externa model that
has proved to be very effective is the use of a history wall as created by Charles and Ray Eames for
their various extibition design projects and these techniques were used at NID by the Eamses for the
Nehru Exhibition. The History wall and its use are described in the book "Charles and Ray Eames:
Designers of the Twentieth Century" by Pat Kirkham, MIT Press, 1995. pp 266 - 298. Such history walls
or time-lines drawn in real-time on a digital work-flow system and digital tool set could help resolve some
of the needs expressed in these exchanges on design learning.
With warm regards

M P Ranjan from my office a NID
003578 2003-09-02 19:24 Re: Design Learning

Design Learning and change in the Individual - Prof M P Ranjan - 2 September 2003
Dear Chuck
Your question quoted below is generally true when design practice in successful agencies is like a roller-
coaster ride from one scene of action to another or from one project to the next with very little real
learning taking place on how they do design although the results of each task is both credible and
effective. Many of us do get caught up in such a chain of events with little or no time for reflection that
could provide such opportunities for learning about design and in devising new and improved
procedures. This reminds me of Prof. Bruce Archer's advise to all of us at NID when he had visited our
Institute in the early eighties to deliver the Sir Misha Black Award to the then Director of NID, Mr Ashoke
Chatterjee, for the excellence of the NID's education programmes in design. His specific comment which
I have repeated many times to my students and colleagues was that "experience by itself does not
generate knowledge, but it is the reflection on and about experience that creates new and useful
knowledge about design". He further suggested that NID should perhaps create a faculty or staff post
that could institute a procedure called in his words, "contemporaneous documentation", that would
provide the resources for such detailed and informed reflection that in turn would set the platform for the
creation of new knowledge about and from the particular design experience in question. Great words of
wisdom but indeed extremely difficult to implement and follow in the topsy turvy world of commercial
design practice. Today, with digital tools it is perhaps easier to implement such an exercise, if we were
to embark on it at an Institutional scale. I have tried to follow his advise over the past couple of years in
trying to systematically and comprehensively document all the stages of work done by my students and

also on my professional and research projects, using digital tools, and the effect is startling and very
satisfying. I now have a (crazy) collection of over 200,000 digital pictures, fortunately organised and still
accessible for reflection and an additional collection of over 700,000 other digital files, many duplicates
and versions of earlier files.....also organised and still accesible. This is perhaps possible since I live and
work in an academic environment and at an academic pace and not in a typically commercial work
place. Now this brings me to the key issue for innovation in the design workflow of a learning
organisation. Can we help create tools for designers that would facilitate their capture and reuse of the
complex action sequences and the associated data of their various actions so that such reflection can be
made an integral part of their review proceses leading to embedded learning from all ongoing tasks? A
tall order but worth trying since it is extremely difficult to pry the experiential data out of the designer
after the tasks are completed since many just seem to loose interest in the task stages once the event is
past and a satisfying synthesis is achieved. There is another situation where some significant learning
and change in the individual has been percieved and this is when we have our student designers coming
into contact with complex challanges in the field that change their attitude quite completely and in many
cases their pre-meditated career paths as well. The situations that I refer to are tough developmental
situations that could be emotionally taxing as well and that causes or seems to cause a major shift in the
motivation level of the student designer almost as a response to a higher calling and a search for
meaning in their lives and work. This is one of the reasons that we at NID introduced and encouraged
field contact projects and field exposure programmes in many disciplines as well as in the Foundation
programme as well which is called Environmental Exposure and the entire class spends a period of two
weeks in an Indian Village away from the campus in the Urban setting. I am convinced that ideology and
motivation play a significant role in design learning but the exact processes involved still beats me. I do
not know if this response can throw some new light on the very difficult question/s that you have posed.
However I do believe that design is a very complex and multi-layered activity that is yet to be fully
understood or defined, it is still being discovered by all of us. We will therefore have many interesting
questions to grapple with design learning which has parallels with other forms of learning but it also has
its unique place. While it uses all of human knowledge in a context driven manner, the style of operation
adopted by the designer is quite diferent from the route usually taken by the practicioners of that specific
discipline. There is indeed a designerly way of apropriating the available knowledge but this is still very
difficult to describe. Prof. Gui Bonsiepe has offered a new term for the classification of knowledge with
the term "Visuality" used in conjunction with "Literacy and Numeracy" as the accepted routes for
knowledge creation and documentation. It seems designers tend to use this route more often but I do
not understand this fully as yet and would seek some clarification on this from you. Perhaps this is what
Prof. John Chris Jones is also exploring in his call for a more universal use of design in his new book
"Internet and Everyone' but that analysis and reflection must be kept for another day.
With warm regards

Ranjan from my office at NID
003565 2003-09-01 18:28 Re: Design Learning

Design Learning: Comments on the Discussion – Prof. M P Ranjan – 1 September 2003 Long Post!!
New Member...
Dr Charles Burnette’s description of Design Learning appeals to me since it corresponds extremely well
with the stages that I have experienced personally (over the past thirty years) as a teacher and, as a
professional designer, and a design theorist over many different kinds of design situations and covering
several design disciplines that are practised and taught at the National Institute of Design in India. I
quote “…Design learning to me, involves learning to initiate, guide and manage intention; learning to
access and develop relevant information; learning to develop and analyze conjectural models; learning
to interactively resolve and communicate responses to situations; learning to act on proposed responses
efficiently; learning to assess success in terms of intention; and learning to acquire and adapt knowledge
for future use. (For me, design learning is related to the seven modes of thought that are the basis of my
theory of design thinking. Design learning is role related and modal even as it is holistic,
autobiographical, cultural and concerned with learning about learning)….” Unquote The first deals with
learning to understand the context and the situation that usually leads to trying to get clarity from a very
complex set of signals and processes the provide the essence of a direction. This kind of learning, like
many others, does go through several iterations but at the end of these multiple cycles the level of
conviction and sense of purpose is usually very high in the task and the purpose that it represents. Many
a times this conviction can be a source of great frustration since few others have the insights that the
design learner has garnered from the unique situations that has been investigated in some considerable
depth. The second deals with access to information to many classes of information types which includes
published and reported facts and speculations and also field based observations and self initiated
experiments that are contextually mediated to fill gaps in the current information or for a direct
confirmation of some reported fact or speculation which cannot otherwise be verified easily, to list only a
small sub-set of the information types involved in design investigation. Designers have drawn from all
kinds of disciplines the tools and techniques perfected within these disciplines over the years of
specialised investigations. For example for tips on field work and observation of people in the field the
work and techniques of anthropologists and sociologists have been adopted and used in numerous
cases that I know of. The third deals with analysis of conjectural models and the tools to conduct such
analysis. The hypothesis that drives design investigation is in the form of advanced scenarios of parts or
the whole of the design situation or in the form of stories that cover both the micro and the macro levels
of observation and visualisation of the need and the consequences that are being investigated by the

designer. This too moves through numerous iterations till a selection is possible of a few alternate
courses of action that can be taken to the next level of investment, be it models, experiments or
prototypes of part or whole, as the case may be. This also applies to the pre-cognitive diagrams,
doodles and fuzzy sketches that are the preliminary visualisations created in many cases intuitively by
the designer for themselves in the search for possible configurations and relationships of the various
attributes of the solution in a search for affordances that resolve the many contradictions that exist in all
design tasks. We can call this an analytical exploration of the design situation using visual tools and
processes that generate external models rather than numerical or verbal expressions, although in some
cases even these would be used in conjunction with the visual. The fourth kind of learning deals with
the typical nature of design that involves a number of participants who need to be convinced as the work
progresses. This calls for many interactions with numerous stakeholders and in most cases approving
authorities with whom the interactions are both critical and necessary for the task to progress to the next
logical level of action with funding and other supports. The learning involved is in communication, in
seeking collaborations and in understanding the responses with empathy to the situation and the needs
and feelings of the identified users. This leads to the fifth kind of learning to accept and process the
feedback into constructive actions which brings about a great change in the individual themselves since
some of this feedback could be cultural or outside the accepted frame of the designers frame of
“personal ethics” – for want of a better term. There are any instances of the designer embarking on a
new path outside the scope of the current task based on the insights and convictions derived from the
learning experiences. The sixth form of learning is in decision-making choices from out of the numerous
alternatives of parts and wholes that are the result of progressive visualisations and experimentations
conducted in the progress of the design task. The definition of the task itself is open to review and many
a times the investigations and design investments have veered of into an entirely new direction as a
result of this kind of review which is quite normal in a design situation that is complex and previously less
explored. The seventh deals with the constant self development that we see designers do in their
search for new and interesting bits of knowledge that would be of value in the future on some not yet
anticipated task usually within the frame of interest paths that each designer traverses over a career of
continued learning to cope with the new and the unexpected in their usual area of work and areas that
overlap their multiple interest paths. Thank you Dr. Burnette for this very crisp and evocative
classification of learning styles available and often adopted by designers. In spite of this level of
understanding exhibited at this forum we still find design education programmes floundering with very
antiquated methods and contents for technology, skills and conceptual areas of subject content for
design and the delivery of these that are neither effective nor suitable for the absorption of design
concepts and capabilities, not only in India but in many parts of the world. The implication that this
understanding has for the design of individual courses and projects and the whole curriculum at the
under-graduate and post-graduate levels of design education are quite significant when it comes to the

integration of a design programme inside a pre-existing University that deals with the traditional Arts and
Sciences streams of education. In India we are indeed looking at such a possibility when we need to
expand the base for design education and the question that comes to my mind for this forum is “How do
we differentiate the content and style of delivery of course contents for designers while the teachers may
have to be drawn from the traditional disciplines in the new University departments for design
education?” Is there a body of work that deals with this difference or do we leave the designer to
integrate ones learning on their own? This is a very long post but there are so many other observations
that come to my mind on the numerous and exciting posts that have appeared over the past few days on
this subject of Design Learning that I thought of venturing some comments from the Indian perspective. I
will perhaps add other comments at a later date. I have been a member on this list for a few months now
and have browsed through the archives, which I find of a very high quality. I have been a teacher at the
NID for over thirty years now and am indeed glad to have a forum to share views and learn from an
active dialogue on design and design issues. My school was set up in 1961 based on a report (The India
Report, 1958) by Charles and Ray Eames and was influenced in the early years by the teachings at the
Bauhaus and Ulm. I will be happy to share more about our school and its design education if it is of
interest on or of the list for which I could fall back on some of my earlier writings on design in India and
at the NID in particular. This is my first post to this list and my first name is Ranjan, which is what most
of my students and colleagues call me, in our rather informal design education environment at NID.
With kind regards
Prof. M P Ranjan Faculty of Design and Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives from my office at NID
~

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MPR on PhD-Design_Mstr 2013 May.

Reflections on PhD-Design: A collection of posts on the PhD-Design discussion list by Prof M P

021827 2013-05-30 20:50 Re: Design of Fire

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021796 2013-05-26 09:56 Language and design - Ranjan

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021220 2013-02-28 13:49 Re: design research and design practice

021088 2013-02-12 08:06 Re: Collective design

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020734 2012-12-13 09:15 Re: Design Thinking Readings -- going deeper

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020704 2012-12-12 00:38 Re: Design Thinking Readings -- going deeper

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019695 2012-08-13 23:01 Re: Defining Design

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019688 2012-08-13 10:25 Re: Defining Design

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019654 2012-08-09 10:40 Re: Design and Politics

019620 2012-07-23 09:38 Re: Design Thinking resources post

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With warm regards

M P Ranjan from my Mac on tour at Flame campus in Pune

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018350 2011-11-25 22:55 Re: Philosophy and Design Thinking

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018176 2011-11-03 08:22 Re: The History of 'Modern Flat'

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017804 2011-09-23 09:02 Re: Material Studies

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017399 2011-07-13 22:44 Re: projection before analysis

017391 2011-07-13 11:50 Re: projection before analysis

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017371 2011-07-09 01:52 Re: projection before analysis

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017358 2011-07-06 15:04 Re: chaos and design

017161 2011-06-18 18:49 Re: Research, writing and thinking

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016998 2011-06-06 11:06 Re: lego limits and freedoms

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016894 2011-05-13 09:12 Re: Why design education must change

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015433 2010-08-10 09:28 Re: types of design research

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