Using user centered perspectives in design - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 In the negotiation of non-automated tasks and processes in any given system and also to understand the challenges that emanate from outside system boundaries such as the social, cultural, economic, political framework in which the system exists, a nuanced understanding of a variety of people is useful. 

This approach recognizes that any non-automated subsystem becomes alive when the people involved become important components to consider. 

A user centered perspective of such subsystems can look at components and connections as dynamic sets of events, the nature of which is hugely influenced and determined by people within the subsystem interacting with each other and with others such as patients in a hospital who may have a more transient interaction with it. 

While this post does not explore the challenges of discovering and understanding problem areas, it does explore the solution space of discovered problem areas. 

This is especially true in the design of communication, digital, UX and spatial solutions needed for enhancing user experience and easing communication flows within said subsystem as well as outward facing solutions designed for transient users where participation of humans is essential. 

It is easy to see that to design solutions for differently abled individuals, understanding of specific human perspectives is essential. Extend this to children, the illiterate, the culturally different etc. 

Let us explore needs in case of an emergency in a fixed space. 

An auditory alarm will be sufficient for many and will probably reach 99.7+% of very different people which is in the region of standard deviation 3. What is the range of visual alarms needed? How does one design for evacuation flows? 

Similarly one can consider scenarios when a standard deviation of 1 or 2 will suffice and design baskets of solutions that are suitable for different groups within that range.  

This helps us to arrive at an estimate of the range of solutions needed for various tasks. Within such ranges one can fine slice offerings to reach people with more nuanced differences. 

Any set of tasks and processes within this subsystem would require similar consideration and should be worked on in collaboration with other professionals in multidisciplinary teams. 

Will we then find user centered perspectives built on user centered information useful? 

Design notes: 21 November 2025 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Design has never been the sole prerogative of us 'designers' who have come to be associated with it at least since the time when 'modernism' started gaining traction.

Engineers design, as do managers. Management organizations are designed as are engineering solutions of all kinds.

The different approaches can be seen in the centricity. Engineers may look at this as technology centric, managers may look at it as activity and organization centric. Other professions would have other kinds of focus. They are all creative problem discovery and solving.

We designers are 'human centric' which is why we are concerned with human values, ergonomics, aesthetics, likes, dislikes, preferences. For us, obviously, technology, organization etc will be in the service of human values, needs, desires, sensibilities.

My colleagues in Engineering design and build wonderful things and what I bring to the table are approaches that make complex engineering solutions intuitively accessible to a 5 year old, a person of special needs or indeed our illiterate companions.

I asked Perplexity to convert this into a poem, this is what it came up with:

Design’s not just for designers alone,
Since modernism’s seed was sown.
Engineers craft with tech as their guide,
Managers shape the flow inside.

Each with a lens distinct, unique,
Technology, tasks, or people they seek.
Design’s a dance of mind and heart,
Creative problem-solving, a collective art.

But we, the designers, hold a sacred trust,
Human-centered values, fairness, and just.
Ergonomics, aesthetics, what people feel,
Bringing simple clarity to complex zeal.

From children’s wonder to needs unseen,
Special friends and those in between,
We make solutions clear and bright,
Making the complex feel just right.

Thus we bridge the worlds apart,
With empathy etched in every part.
Design’s a language, broad and wide,
Where engineers and hearts collide.

@IICDJaipuredu Varta Series : Beyond Business: Design for Social Equity - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 Prof. Anu Jain, Dean IICD was in conversation with Mr. Deepankar Bhattacharyya on Design for Social Equity. Mr. Deepankar Bhattacharyya is a member of the first under-graduate batch of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. He believes that if we are to effectively negotiate the evolving complexities of our human built world, modern Design has to evolve beyond a stand-alone area of study and practice and must actively collaborate with other fields to create multidisciplinary processes that appreciate holistic views of our world and its infinite diversity.

https://youtu.be/CprS0G2oBpA 

Design 5.0? Reclaiming the profession - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 The current trend of understanding Design as an activity which can be used for solving the ‘big problems’ of the day has its roots in the thinking of individuals from outside the profession who have discovered the virtues of human centred iterative approaches towards so called wicked problems where ambiguity is high. 

This is undoubtedly a good thing but when they believe that the subject of Design itself needs redefinition in these terms with consequent revamp of design education goals and curricula, practising designers need to take notice and revisit our roots and understanding of what it is that we do. 

Is design primarily a problem solving activity? To my mind, it is not. 

Modern Design from its roots in the world of craft, products and communication has grown to embrace experiences and services leading to a certain culture of design that becomes an integral part of human made systems. 

Systems that are imbued with the consequences of what designers do, have a certain quality of ease and delight for all those who interact with such systems. This happens at the interfaces between the various systems and sub systems that we build and people who use these systems. Systems in the area of our physical spaces such as cities; transportation systems; our buildings;  systems of governance, law and education, all benefit. 

These interfaces are complex and nuanced, humans are complex and nuanced. Human made systems which are negotiated by people, who are also part of the system, for all kinds of activities, the process of living itself, must aspire to our highest ideals and offer possibilities for limitless and multiple ways of fulfilling all that we love, desire and want to become. Physical, emotional, spiritual. 

Designers work at these interfaces trying to understand and work with the complexities inherent here, always wanting to improve upon and transform the ordinary and usually difficult interactions that we have with our habitat, our transportation, our relationships with governance, law, health, education.  

People are different from one another. We in India are yet to synchronise our understanding of time, space, order and hierarchy with the systems that we have inherited from other cultures and world views that have hitherto defined the prevailing world order and definitions of modernity and progress. Should designers not address this deep dissonance? 

Should not these interfaces between the variety of human beings and all the activities that define her/his life in a world which is increasingly human made and distant from the natural world be the principle concern of design education and practice? 

Design notes: 13-12-2020 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 It really is time to increase weightage of subjects like drawing; craft studies and practice; form, material and colour studies; music etc. in the school curriculum. Apart from reading, writing and arithmetic the connections and relationships between various subjects could do with more emphasis. Time for some holistic approaches. 

May even go some way to help get past this current fascination with ‘design thinking’ as an added bonus. Problem solving will automatically become more holistic for everyone. This kind of thinking will find integration with other more critical and analytical approaches. 

The profession of ‘Design’ can be left to focus on the relationships of human beings with all that is given to us by nature and all the systems that we build within it. The complex interfaces between who we are and can be and the worlds we build, tangible and intangible.

Design notes: 04-12-2020 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 To explore and to see Ideas not working, I hesitate to use the word ‘fail’ because of its negative connotations although it really isn’t, is integral to the design process or any innovation process. 

This will always be somewhat abrasive in environments where outcomes and delivery of something resembling solutions is the focus. People understand this which is why everyone pays lip service to it but when it comes to implementing a supportive environment for such an approach they hesitate to go all the way. 

It is not easy; these are processes which are essential for meaningful outcomes and solutions but they must compete with the processes that are designed to deliver immediate results however flawed. 

Such is the nature of anything that involves great change. Tiny steps that, over the years, make a difference. 

You may feel frustrated and understandably so but your patience is paying off and will become visible in the long run. 

Nobody said that your design education provides you with a magic potion, it merely starts you off on a journey, often an arduous one. 

Rightly so, because if the focus of education was industry readiness, you would be obsolete within five years and you would lack that essential attribute of open ended exploration and willingness to ‘fail’. 

It is true that designers have increasingly begun to rely on formulas and dogmas. But then, one expects the young to call this out instead of looking for comfort in the art of always being agreeable. 

On a lighter note, this vocation offers you the option of developing alternate sources of income while being an activist on a long road. 😊

Design notes: 19-09-2020 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 ‘What is education’ ‘what is learning’ 

Would it be equipping the young to understand the complexities of life and the universe? Would it be learning the skills to survive and possibly thrive in a human built world? The latter is common to all species and especially to species with sophisticated social interactions. 

The former is perhaps uniquely human; this desire to know, to make sense and to articulate understanding. Both require learning a set of foundational stuff to individually build on. 

That is hardly the problem. The problem lies in the area of costs incurred by the individual while learning all of this. 

Why does this happen, why does the individual get submerged by the learning process and lose itself? 

Is it because of the enormous complexity of what we must learn coupled with the methods we employ to achieve this? 

Have we lost control of the simple innate processes of ‘learning’ in the face of the magnitude and complexity of what we must learn? 

Is the human made world with all it’s attendant systems facing another ‘limit’ similar to the ones faced in the way we conduct the building of our physical systems, our economic systems and our other systems. 

Is it a question of scale? 

Too unwieldy? 

Perhaps humans need to rethink everything from foundation onwards and radically change the way we live our lives on this planet. 

Education, manufacturing, economics, governance. Everything is interconnected and springs from the same impetus that we have to transform our world. It is what we are. 

The only question is whether we are on the path to getting better at it before we screw things up irretrievably and kill ourselves in the process. 

Nature won’t mind, either way.

Design notes: 31-07-2020 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Design thinking is an innate trait in all humans, is it not?
Imagine, before the 20th century, design wasn’t considered a profession. Does that mean that it didn’t exist. All our professions are codified into silos and spring from human impulses that we all share.
Does it bother you that others are rediscovering parts of themselves that were common before the advent of modern education, which is designed to develop analytical processes at the cost of more rounded possibilities that humans are capable of? Simply because it is designed to cater to 20th century needs driven by forces like industrialisation and urbanisation?
Erecting barriers are what all professionals do, their economic value and livelihood depends on it.
Well, you had better shape up or perish because the profession is metamorphosing.
It is no longer confined to the realms of applied art and craft or indeed products.
Do you imagine that design doesn’t function at the interface of governance and people, or social justice and the citizen?
No products there necessarily, of any kind.
There will always be a place for products with roots in art and craft but there is more. Design is expanding its bandwidth and we are discovering that the processes we honed there are applicable in many areas of human life.
Design thinking is becoming mainstream in response to newer challenges which humans everywhere are facing.
It would be a pity if the only people caught unawares are trained designers.

Design notes: 30-07-2020 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Indian design education, indeed all education will always be a me too laggard trying to play catch-up as long as it copies other models from elsewhere and tries to transplant them here. Copying something means that you will never be better than the original because the vision isn't yours, can never be. Having said that, many individuals in India, from all walks of life are charting fresh paths and doing stuff that is truly unique and fired by an energy that comes from our mileu. 

I think that things are definitely getting better and our grandchildren will truly come into a forward looking impetus with their own brand of confidence and ability that no one here can begin to imagine.

BBC - Electronic India - Electronic Music at NID - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

 Released On: 17 May 2020Available for over a year

In 2018 Paul Purgas found a box of dusty reel to reel tapes in the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. They featured a collection of intriguing electronic compositions made by a series of unknown composers dated from 1969 to 1973. In this documentary Paul sets out to find the musicians he heard on the tapes and to discover more about this little-known chapter of Indian music history.

The National Institute of Design (NID) was a design school in Western India which during the 1960s became a creative hub, where leading international artists came to teach, share ideas and socialise. Louis Kahn, David Tudor, Iannis Xenakis and John Cage all passed through the college. The NID also housed an electronic music studio containing an early Moog synthesizer. Paul’s discovery raises some intriguing questions: how did such a rare piece of technology come to crash land in Ahmedabad in the late 1960s, what else was recorded there, and why have we not heard of it before?

Paul Purgas is a British electronic musician. Born to Indian parents and raised in the UK, he has created a form of electronic music that owes as much to Xenakis as it does Detroit Techno - but in all his years of researching his craft, he has always looked West, from Stockhausen in Cologne, to Laurie Spiegel at Bell Labs to tell the story of electronic music. Until Now.

Produced by Alannah Chance.

A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j969 

BBC Documentary - NID Electronic Music

Design and the Stories we know, tell and believe - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

From the time we are born, we start making sense of our world, we form ideas of who we are and what our world is. These become the stories we know and believe in. They are at the core of who we are. From a state of tabula rasa we are able to develop a paradigm which we use to outline our worldview. Everything we do bears the imprint of our evolving paradigm and our creations express it in different ways. 

Design is an activity as old as humankind itself; looking at fire and harnessing it for our needs can be seen as one of our earliest design acts. We have, through design, transformed our world in ways that have helped us evolve to our present selves. 

We have created a world of our making, nestled in nature and drawing sustenance from it. Our institutions, our belief systems, our knowledge systems. Our cities, our networks of various kinds, our buildings, our products. A complex ecosystem of interconnected parts which governs every aspect of our lives.  

We have created an environment that manifests our collective selves. 

Examine your city. Its markets, its roads, its hospitals, its services for the poor, its sense of wellbeing and safety, its institutions, its infrastructure. They are unique to it and are a testimony to the thoughts, emotions and stories of its inhabitants and generations of people who have passed through. 

Our many stories have crystallised into concrete forms and abstract thoughts. At all times our motivations have been rooted in a search for improvement. 

How we perceive ourselves, our values and our motivations are part of the paradigm within which we approach questions of ‘Quality’ and the meaning of ‘making things better’. This determines our needs and desires, the nuances of our likes and dislikes, our comfort zones. These in turn determine the form of all that we build.

Contemporary Design can be seen in terms of actualization of intent. An intent to make things better. It harnesses our stories to satisfy our needs and desires, to transcend the norm, to offer fresh perspectives, or sometimes, to help the coming together of diverse streams to chart new futures. 

Fulfilling needs and desires; creating experiences of value, usefulness and delight are the objectives of any design endeavour. Designers continually strive to recreate our human built world of cities, buildings, spaces, products, services and communication. 

Everything that we do to transform the natural world to our will. 

Quality of our offerings depends on the ways in which we are able to optimise all of the many variables determined by user needs, sustainability considerations, technological feasibility and economic viability and the ways in which we articulate them in new, better ways.

Crucial to any successful design solution is a nuanced understanding of the complexities of the problem space. With human beings in all their diversity at the centre of our scheme of things, ambiguity is ever present and gaining clarity of intent is an ongoing process.

Receptive and sensitive understanding of ambiguous, diverse and sometimes conflicting emotions of users offer design teams opportunities to gain insights which can lead to sets of objectives that can be addressed and translated into the many experiences that are embodied by all that we build. The stories that we know and tell reflect who we are and aid us in understanding our innermost desires. This is an invaluable tool for designers to make sense of the complexities of human needs and desires. What we deliver, in turn, adds to our individual and shared stories. 

Our human built world can be seen as the articulation of our collective stories. Our physical spaces, our systems of governance, education, commerce are built on shared stories that we learn to negotiate and add to. There is diversity and plurality here, and conversations. There are histories and an increasing awareness of the need for herstories. An evolving collection of ideas of who we are.

The stories that are woven into the environment that is our Earth and those that are reflected in our built world are the foundations of our individual stories and all together are an evolving design of great complexity. 

Design, when seen in these terms, belongs to all of us and modern design practice is co-creation involving a multitude of disciplines and more importantly, the intended users at all stages of the process of evolving fresh perspectives and articulations that inspire, delight and transcend. 

Ever evolving stories of the ways in which humans are ‘becoming’. 

AGI in India - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Ajeenkya DY Patil University Published on Feb 06, 2019

Deepankar Bhattacharya, Academic Council, ADYPU, speaks how design has influenced our lives and the emergence of design thinking over the years. The National Institute of Design Alumnus has also contributed largely to start India’s first magazine on architecture and interior design - Inside Outside. On speaking about AGI in India, he said that conferences like these help us understand how graphic design has evolved over the years.

Design notes: 27-09-2018 - DeepankarBhattacharyya

Design Thinking is actually fuzzy, messy and non-linear where the ‘steps’ are ill defined and one doesn’t hesitate to go back and forth in search of meaning, clarity and solution. It can also be very participatory where decision making is de-centralised. 

The more rigid interpretation as a step by step process along with an expert at ‘empathy’ is one, which the new converts find handy because of their innate need to define things and analytically understand complexity. 

Will our fuzzy intuitive selves retain it’s essence and usefulness in the hands of those who must keep their eye firmly on results and deadlines; and prioritise these over innovation and creative output? 

Only time will tell whether there will be happy meeting grounds but a start certainly has been made.

Workshop on Design Thinking at Vishwakarma University - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

"The prime function of design is to make life better for human beings and this prime intent is at the center of form, function and context of design”. Mr. Deepankar Bhattacharyya, Strategic Design Consultant, conducted a workshop on ‘Design Thinking’ for B.A., B.Des and M.Des students. Mr. Bhattacharya designed activities for the students which helped them engage with issues of design and intent.

Design notes: 21-11-2016 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

We try to enhance the experience of ‘users of the world that we humans build'. This could be for one's grandmother negotiating a complex metro system or getting one’s food delivered or even crossing the street with minimal chances of mishap. 

I really do think that Design schools have lost their way and teach very little 'Design' but quite a lot of 'Art'. This has its place but not more than technology, culture and a host of other inputs. 

Problem solving is increasingly human centred and is the reason why 'Design Thinking' is increasingly being adopted by other professions. Design is far too important in our lives, considering that we spend so much of it in environments that are human-made, to not be multidisciplinary. 

Design schools must evolve to embrace the complexity of modern systems that rely on advanced understanding of technology and sophisticated human psychology. Our world today is very different from the world of Bauhaus and Design has come a long way from the early days of 20th century 'Modernism'. 

Perhaps it is time to seriously consider introducing 'Design Thinking' in schools. 

What does Design mean to you? - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Compiled from slides supporting a talk on the ecosystem of Design

Design notes: 07-07-2016 - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Sorry to be such a spoilsport but the days of 'Design as skill' or 'style' has outlived it's usefulness. Traditional design schools are obsolete. Design encompasses processes that are being developed and rapidly absorbed by everybody. At long last Design is being led out of the hallowed portals of a kind of specialised thinking that essentially belongs to the industrial age and was an antidote to the times of extreme analytical thinking. Everything is far more holistic now. Design processes are being rapidly synergised with other processes. I am all for this and look forward to the demise of the sort of design school that has defined design over the past few decades. Those times are past, they have outlived their usefulness. I will go so far as to say that unless designers can redefine their roles in multidisciplinary teams they will no longer find a useful role. We have seen the most innovative and creative ideas come from the synergy between T shaped individuals who have their specialisation dovetailed into a very generalised understanding of wide range of subjects. I am working to make design a part of the vocabulary of every university student, I hope this happens to every school student. I am dismayed by the quality of output from the design schools who basically look at design either as styling or a very uninformed version of design for the web masquerading as user experience. 

They will, of course, be always needed for their skills. But Design is far too important to be left to them. May this sort of design find its place in problem solving teams without laying claim to the word 'Design'. At least not wholely or substantially. 

Fix your design schools. Drop the walls that you have built to protect your turf. The times, they are a changing. 

This was a response to a post on 'Design Educators in India - Facebook' from A.Bala Subramaniam - 'Is Design Education going the Engineering way in India? Every self-respecting University has announced courses in Design without having recruited faculty. No permissions needed to start a programme in Design from anybody. Curriculum development means cut-pasting from various sources. " The uninformed are teaching the uninformed" ( Don Norman). The best students take up UX jobs in spite of other specialisations. Is anyone else seeing the rot setting in?' 

Also see: 'What do I bring to the table? 

A note to self about 'Beginnings' - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

At the beginning there was NID. It was going to drive design in India; it was built on a remarkable vision and unstinting support from an idealistic government and a few forward looking financial partners. 

I entered a world of exploration of material, form, colour; workshops and drawing; photography and film making; general subjects; great products; new ideas; of understanding design methods and processes. Of hearing about the masters who influenced and shaped 'modern design'; meeting some of them, listening to them. All the while, every Saturday morning, with Gautam Sarabhai talking and teaching about the meaning of learning, of freedom, of responsibility. 

There was a pedagogy developing that was fresh and experimental; every body's viewpoint was important, there was going to be no hierarchy and emphasis was on learning, experimenting and doing rather than teaching. Spoon-feeding was absent and everybody was on a very new and open ended journey where solutions were being found on a daily basis and a culture was being established. One was encouraged to not compete with others but to improve on oneself. There were no barriers between learners and teachers and everyone was on a first name basis. The number of people on campus were very few, brand new contemporary equipment courtesy Ford Foundation was available for use. Faculty was being developed and were trickling in after their training stints in the various institutions abroad. Everyone was very into what everyone else was doing and there were no real distinctions between the departments; one generally learnt from everywhere and one dabbled in weaving and screen printing as much as animation and working on form exercises in plaster of paris and acrylic. One knew that exposure to music, cinema and dance was as important as keeping abreast of technologies and the socio-cultural environment. Political awareness - not that much. 

Was this too idealistic to survive? 
Was it possible to maintain this in the long term? 

Government of India thought 'NOT' and at some point decided to start asking for a much more result oriented, less ambiguous, less experimental, more repeatable way of functioning. Gautam and Gira Sarabhai left. They were still available to us old timers though. They would come anytime I called or needed guidance. 

Things started to get tighter; lucky for me, I could continue in the old ways for my six years and left. 

Am I happy that I went through this kind of learning experience? 
I had just turned 16 when I joined NID and I can truly say that this was the best thing that happened to me. 

Of course I wasn't prepared for the humdrum non existence of any design framework and the appalling lack of 'quality' outside of NID. Every day was explaining what 'Design' was and how I could contribute. 

I didn't join the advertising industry which would have been safe financially and which was kind of a sister profession if you could overlook its shallowness and a certain doubtful integrity. Imagine selling fairness creams or soaps that made you completely sanitised and germ free. If you were a designer and system thinker you would recoil at such notions. I did. Tall claims were not for me. 

Building a design ecosystem from the ground up was the need of the times and that's what one set out to do. All of us early birds did that in varying degrees and success. There were many casualties. Not many could muster the grit to face the never ending, sometimes overwhelming, absence of any light at the end of the tunnel. 

You wanted to give up, join a corporation and live like your buddies from IIM. By the way my contemporaries from that institution started out, like us, as rank outsiders. We would all start off at around Rs.1500/- a month and hugely resented by entrenched systems (mid 1970s). Everybody in middle management was 40 something and had come up through hard work and experience. They weren't going to listen to a 20 something mouth case studies from Harvard or in our case from the work being done by the design pioneers in Europe and USA. These guys from IIM worked really hard, were given impossible tasks, showed results and broke through with remarkable success. We designers were still out in the cold, no real need for us, you see. Blame it on an anti competitive market environment and confused ideas of pseudo-socialism of the times. The IIM wallahs overtook us financially very quickly. 

It didn't help that we were trying to do stuff that had roots in other cultures. 
I was trying to find an 'Indian' voice or at least trying to understand whether there actually was one or a need for one. Took many years to sort that one out. One trudged on and could, in due course, painfully slowly, build a more receptive environment and find demand for what one thought was acceptable 'Quality' and real 'Design' 

Cut to the 90s; computers and digitisation were changing the game, younger designers were poised to work the fledgling ecosystems of design that our generation had built; Dr. Manmohan Singh had done his thing and Design Thinking was being taught at business schools. India was, at last, ready for 'Design'.

So ready that it started to proliferate in epidemic proportions; everybody was or wanted to be into DESIGN. Well, a certain kind of Design but it's a start.  

You know the rest. 

I hope this article offers some perspective on where we come from and help to develop insights into future pathways for design education. Design pedagogy needs continuous evolution; we must pay more attention to it, much more than what we are doing presently. We must not become formulaic and close our minds to evolution, experimentation and change. Remember that had we thought too much about employment possibilities when we started out there would not have been a design ecosystem today. Take risks. We really do have a long way to go before design becomes a part of our everyday processes and life.


This one is for you M.P. Ranjan and for you Nilam Iyer Ghosh, two of my closest mates who decided to hang up their boots this year. 
See you on the other side. 

11 August 2015 

India and the copycat designer - Deepankar Bhattacharyya

Modern Design is human centric in the sense that it has always endeavoured to solve problems from a user's standpoint. It is sensitive to human concerns, ergonomics, sensibilities and aesthetics. 

Really?! 

Indian Designers educated in a system that developed and flourished in a completely different milieu got so caught up in their training that they forgot to try and understand the 'Indian' ecosystem. This has led to chaotic solutions that, far from solving problems, create untold misery to many people. 

Admittedly, this ecosystem exists on many levels and has a prominent 'International' dimension to it especially in the marketplace of desires and aspirations. Is catering to this alone, enough? 

A large majority of people who were hitherto unseen and unheard are joining the mainstream and are bringing with them habits, desires and aspirations rooted in a diverse and plural past. 

Designers must understand this if they are not to become irrelevant to the emerging processes and needs of a more comprehensive and democratic reality. 

We must embrace diversity and plurality and once again put the human being at the centre of our design processes. All human beings. 


Finding long forgotten 'voices' 

Originally a set of slides complimenting a talk at a Design Education seminar on the occasion of DDS15 at Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay, Mumbai on 15 June 2015 

Finding long forgotten 'voices'

Design Thinking - An Introduction by Deepankar Bhattacharyya

I use this framework for workshops and classes and adapt it for learners from different backgrounds and disciplines. Exercises are devised around the ideas presented here and interactive hands-on experiences are created to assist learners understand Design Thinking. 





Design Thinking - An Introduction