Industrial design started to emerge as a profession in India in the late sixties. The post-graduate programme in industrial design (product design) was started by setting up the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bomabay. Driven by the need to solve the "problems around us," graduate engineers and architects were trained to give creative and aesthetic inputs to the products of the industry. The influence of Ulm was evident in the education programme. This philosophy led to sensible designs with clean uncomplicated lines, concentrating on what is absolutely necessary. The early student designs tried to answer the 'real' needs of 'real' people. The concept of 'design in everyday life' served to create design awareness amongst the users and a sense of accomplishment for the designers, to spur them to outperform their capabilities. Industrial design is a creative activity whose aim is to determine the formal qualities of objects produced by industry. Formal qualities include the external features but are principally those of structure and functional relationships that convert a system into a coherent unit, both from the point of view of the producer and user. Industrial design extends to embrace all aspects of the human environment that are conditioned by industrial production.