Designing Makers

This refers to one news report I came across yesterday titled “IIT BBS in Expansion Mode” (TNIE, Sunday, 11-11-2012). The report says:

“The Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar (IIT-BBS) is planning to open a one of its kind new department, ‘School of Design and Creative Arts’ in the next few years. A process initiated by IIT-BBS Director Madhusudhan Chakravarthy, the new department aims at encompassing anything and everything related to the field of designing.”

Later in the day I chanced upon one interesting book in a local book store at PAL Heights, Bhubaneswar. It is titled “Makers – The New Industrial Revolution” (by Chris Anderson). Late in the evening, again by chance, I came across the same book title in the recommended reading section of the Sunday Economic Times (Nov 11-17, 2012). An excerpt:

“Marx would sound like a strange four-letter word to be invoked when one talks about future — and cutting-edge at that. Yet, that's what Chris Anderson does in his brave effort to predict The New Industrial Revolution. If the first industrial revolution shifted production from your home to the factory, thus letting factory owners dictate the terms — Marx alert: "Power belongs to those who control the means of production" — the coming one will return it to your computer screens.”

The above events that went through me were “intelligently designed” (definition beyond the scope of this post), as though, prompting me to post this blog titled “Designing Makers”.

While the book is futuristic and talks of design technology supporting makers (of all kinds), my focus here is on designing makers (who are undergoing formal education). By that I mean designing the process for developing the makers who are undergoing formal technical education.

Note the word design being used as a verb in the above news report on IIT-BBS. This projects the importance of having design methods governed by design thinking in our higher technical education system. As rightly stated, “it aims at encompassing anything and everything related to designing”. It is, therefore, more important now to adopt this very method in first designing the appropriate agenda for this upcoming school.

In line with the governing philosophy of design thinking, it would be appropriate for the new school to first have a cross functional team (with other important stakeholders) involving arts, humanities, sciences and engineering in shaping the design curriculum and then subsequently implementing the same with as much commitment. In doing so, it would be a good learning experience if the existing batches of students (irrespective of their discipline) are exposed to design theory and methodology at the earliest possible point in time.

Most of the older IITs will have the difficulty in creating this cross-disciplinary culture. Here is one excerpt from an article titled “A New School of Design with implications for the National Science Foundation” by Richard N. Taylor and Michael P. Clark (University of California, Irvine; Written sometime after fall 2000 when UCI embarked on a process of creating a new School of Design).

“…. Creating an interdisciplinary vision requires, however, the constituent older disciplines to abandon claim to exclusive and constricted control over the term “design” – a painful and incomplete process on our own campus.”

{Though the School of Design could not be established at UCI, the 188 page proposal dated November 2002 is made available in Professor Richard Taylor’s homepage as a vision document for the design research community. Visit: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/ }

The new IITs need not undergo such painful transformations as there is enormous scope to adopt clean slate curriculum designs appropriate for India’s developmental and inclusive growth challenges. They need to just think differently and act expediently by putting design up front in the concept design stages to meet the downstream challenges.

A mineral rich state like Odisha can find it rewarding if IIT BBS takes examples from the history of Harvey Mudd College – A School established in the name of Harvey S. Mudd – An accomplished mining engineer who wanted to overcome many of the shortcomings of traditional, narrow technical training of his day {About HMC}. Click this link to know more about the Center for Design Education directed by Professor Clive L. Dym – who actively promotes design thinking in engineering education.

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