Designing future? How to choose a design college

Dr Manisha Mohan, Dean, UPES School of Design, moderated a session on the future of Design education. With her on the panel are esteemed personalities of the design industry – Ms. Ellis Bartholomeus, Founder & CEO, Alice in Wonderland, is a leading product designer who has co-developed more than 50 games and playful interactive products, and Mr. Satish Gokhale, Director, Design Directions Private Limited, is a recipient of several national and international awards, including Design of the Decode award. Some excerpts of their interaction with the attendees…

Q1. How is the early designing journey for a beginner/student?

Ms. Bartholomeus: Having learnt designing when there were no computers and graphic design tools, early designing was all about how human beings interface with products. Games and plays, even today, along with web designing and product designing, should have human angle at its base. The trigger motivates designers to experiment with new tools for people to learn and advance. 

Mr. Gokhale: Design study is a multidisciplinary education. As such, a basic knowledge and understanding about all fields are part of the learning. A designer essentially cross-pollinates this knowledge to other fields and products. Design student should ideally have a basic liking for science, should be inquisitive at all times and always look for new designs in a plethora of avenues.

Q.2 What are the recent design trends impacting the industry today in India and abroad?

Ms. Bartholomeus – Design thinking is gaining much ground now. It is highly practiced for testing start-up ideas based on design research. Design has, in fact, become a tool in business life for testing the validity of entrepreneurial ideas. Earlier assumptions about design thinking were that it only makes things look aesthetically pleasing. So designing was expected to be the last step in product design. Now, as reality dawns, design is literally the first step to problem solving, complexity of framing the solution and predicting the future. Design is entering several sectors such as banking, healthcare, travel, logistics and various types of education.

Mr. Gokhale:  Designers are also getting in to forecasting because by the time a design is created, it is already old technology. It is important to start predicting trends that go ten years down the line. It is very much a designer’s skill now to start forecasting. Design has started commanding respect at all the verticals as earlier design was though of as detailing in the aesthetic aspects.  

Q 3. What are the possible global job prospects for designers?

 Ms. Bartholomeus – Design is a very agile and mouldable field of study. Design people aren’t doing what they thought they would do – such as designing furniture. They are, for example, strategizing in the marketing domain, designing food processes, including transport and the entire supply chain, not to mention the future of cuisines. Designers are always looking for alternatives to the status quo. Design, as a domain, is rebuilding the chain of production, management, marketing and so on.

(To listen to the full recording of the webinar, follow this link- https://youtu.be/fUtxmBeoFKY)

(Compiled by Pradeep Jagwan)