Assignment as discussed in the Seminar conducted by Dr.

Rupa Aggarwal
Submitted by Abhinav Srivastava (Roll Number PG/BRIDGE/21/01)

The pandemic related lockdowns seemed to veer me off to a different direction altogether.
The direction of becoming a designer. With my retail consultancy failing miserably, I had to look at
other avenues of revenue generation. These came in two forms:

1. A few eCommerce projects – enabling me to explore the world of a UX designer

2. A design teacher – I started teaching as an adjunct professor with School of Design at a
reputed University in Bangalore.

Coming from an engineering and management background, it helped me develop my understanding

of design and design education. I figured out a couple of things which I resonated with in Dr. Rupa’s
seminar:

1. Design is not just about producing an artifact. A large part of design is about user / customer
research that involves meticulous planning, execution and interpretation. Design is not
about just art. It involves lot of empathy and internalization of user perspective. It also
means that you are not creating things at your whims and fancies.
2. Design is not just aesthetics. The outside view of the design / design team is still simple ‘how
can you make this beautiful’ . While designers today have started looking beyond the ‘mood
boards’ to elements like ‘client board’ , there is a long way to go for the designers to look
beyond the aesthetics. This is possible with more inclusion of the designers specifically from
a senior management driving it.
3. Design education in India is still in the Design Vs Art argument mode. A large part of the
recruitments in design disciple at the design institutes in India is made by Vice Chancellors /
Principles who may have a very technical background or have a very siloed approach to
design. Such persona’s are always going with degrees and root for M.Des./B.Des.
qualifications, eliminating the multidisciplinary approach to design; which MIT pioneers. Add
to this is the challenge of recruiting and managing artists in design education. While artists
are integral to design education specially in the foundational years, the challenge is to
integrate their thought process in the entire design education process.
4. Multidisciplinary approach to design is the way forward. While convergence as a concept is
way past it’s shelf life, design institute in India are yet to assimilate the concept. With a
design centre at the heart of MIT, cutting across the various disciplinary scenario is the key.
With G.o.I’s new Education Policy bring forth the focus on Entrepreneurships and Idea
Incubation , it is an imperative that the multidisciplinary approach is the way forward.
5. Design Thinking is getting eroded by relentless marketing around the buzzword. Almost 2
years back the Indian market got flooded by Bootcamps and leadership workshops
announcing a breakthrough approach to business management which is ‘Design Thinking’ .
Aiming to ‘put a method to a so-called perceived madness’ the design as well the
management community got enamoured and embraced the process. While there is nothing
wrong with the process it defines the entire approach as being the one and the only one
design and assuming that most of the insights will come from user. Well, the user always
does not know what they want!!

Submitted by Abhinav Srivastava (Roll Number PG/BRIDGE/21/01)