Design is human intentions and actions that create new value – M.P. Ranjan
Praveen Nahar
With its large population and enormous socio-cultural-economic-environmental diversity, India is like a microcosm for the world. Most of the challenges that the world faces, are all present in India. Design education has been addressing tactical and creative level however it became imperative for designers in India to explore vision led design approaches which address diversity and complexity. They had to understand design from a broader and deeper perspective, which is at systems level.
At the National Institute of Design, we have been exploring various concepts and concerns of System Design from a macro to micro perspective on design in local and global context and prepare students to deal with a fair amount of ambiguity and complexity. This is delivered through various courses and projects. Over the last decade, it has evolved and now major projects deal with complex issues and wicked problems from the socio-cultural-economic-environmental perspective with a high level of ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity through various intermediate tools and frameworks. The educational framework for systems design is reflective, evolving, transdisciplinary, and occurs at various levels. This has been very enriching for the students as well as for faculty and the institute as a whole to open up to the vastness of design and what design can do in almost any field.
Photo of M.P. Ranjan: Sudhir Sharma (outlookindia.com)
