Many think that a design school is an art and craft institute. But design is more than that. It has an important role to play in our everyday life. The products and services that we use daily are an outcome of design education. Experts believe that design thinking and education need to evolve with the changing times.
A panel discussion at the 14th Pune Design Festival, organised by Association of Designers of India, on Design Education at Crossroads helped design students and industry experts to get an insight on how improving design education can be valuable for one’s career and also help improve life.
Design education has gained momentum in India in the last 50 years, but has it changed from what it was back then? The panelists discussed how it is important to change the way design education is taught and perceived for it to make an impact on society.
Design and innovation
The economic discourse in India is incomplete without taking into consideration the progress design and innovation has made in the past years. This has lead to the creation of opportunities in design and innovation, and more and more people are getting into it because design now, more than ever, has become the confluence of multi-disciplinary streams and thinking. However, at the core of it, it has always been talent and mindful thinking.
For it to work, Dr Nachiket Thakur, head of department at MIT Institute of Design, said that institutions need to push students to be creative along with pursuing academic excellence. “It all comes down to creativity and thinking, be it for industrial design or social impact, because global problems need aesthetic solutions which can stand out and get to the core of the problem in order to solve them,” he said.
Starting early
Design education has made its way into mainstream education, however the importance of design thinking would be understood only when design education is integrated with other mainstream education structure.
“However, what I believe is that it is time design skills be identified from a more earlier stage, that is from primary classes. Art-craft class should be taken seriously by all education boards since it is probably the only way design can be introduced to a lot of people,” said Thakur.
Mainstream education in India teaches people that there is just one right answer. “It is design thinking that helps people get to a point where you understand that answers are limitless and you can question teachers, which will be possible only if we help students unlearn things in the first place,” pointed out Tarun Deep Giridhar, principal designer in the Graphic Design discipline at NID.
He believes that this would be possible only if it is taken up collectively with responsibility because of which design exposure is required from an initial stage.
New skills are required
In the past, industrial designers focused primarily on form and function, materials and manufacturing. Today’s issues are far more complex and challenging. New skills are required, especially for such areas as interaction, experience, and service design.
Ravi Mokashi professor, Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, pointed out that when it comes to design education, students must be able to find a niche for themselves while they are still studying it. That said, the professor believes that this is possible only when a student is ready to adapt to new changes along the way.
“Design education can be a very complex thing if you look at it in a basic 12+4 education category because there is so much going on in a design school, which is why students getting into it need to keep their minds and prospects open at all times,” said Mokashi.
The panelists agree that education is more than employment, it is rather the process to polish your knowledge and then decide what you want to do with it. “Seeking employment is obviously important to sustain yourself, but you need to realise getting a good training is not equal to getting a good education, because of which design education needs to be taught in a different context,” added Thakur.
