Foundation Design Education is a basic or introductory course in modern design education that introduces the fundamentals of design to students. It comprises the first year of a four-year, all-exclusive design educational programme after a high-school education. It includes an introduction to basic skills, theories, design-thinking processes, human needs, and much more. The downside, however, is the focus on skills, which outweighs all else in the current Foundation Design Education courses. This study proposes that an emphasis on understanding the self for the designer and the self-other relationship in foundation design education could highly enrich design education. Central to the study is the humanistic concern that needs to be woven into the fabric of foundation design education. The study begins by attempting to examine the explicit acknowledgement of the self and the self-other in disciplines other than design and attempts to draw parallels in design education. The study also seeks to comprehend Foundation Design Education as it has been developed and practised in some of the world's leading institutions for modern design education, including the Staatliches Bauhaus Design School (Bauhaus) and the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) School of Design, Ulm. The study of the Bauhaus Foundation Program revealed that there was undoubtedly a concern for the New Man in a new technological society, a humanistic concern. A series of interviews was subsequently conducted to discern the humanistic abilities that students needed to develop for a foundational design education. Some of the abilities that emerged from this investigation were: the ability to engage in holistic thinking; the ability to make a positive change; the ability to respond to real problems; the ability to research and imagine the future; the ability to engage in the processes of introspection of the self and extrospection with others. Introspection is one of the most obvious components of our unique human consciousness and sentience. The key concerns expressed by design educators in the interviews underlined the importance of a set of abilities that are critical for these students. These abilities are intended to be developed through assignments. The thesis proposes that an understanding of the notion of self for the designer and the self-other relationship can possibly lead to problem-solving methods that are more humanistic in their response to contemporary issues. A notion of the self sensitises the designer in a holistic manner, reinforcing the ability to observe, empathize, and facilitate preferred changes that pervade preconceived existing perspectives through the exploration of sustainable solutions in ecosystems. The thesis proposes that a suitably modulated foundation design education can enrich the programme. In conclusion, the study suggests that a better understanding of the notion of the self and the self-other relationship in foundational design education can possibly lead to design processes and methods that are responsive to the problems, issues, and needs of present times.

This thesis deals with the sustainability of menstruation management. Lifestyles in rural India are changing. Three changes in menstrual management practices that we have observed in our practice are relevant to this thesis, the increased use of underwear among girls and women, increased use of Time Piece (TP), and the use of disposable sanitary napkins (DSNs). These changes do not necessarily align with recommended "best menstrual management practices" and are unsustainable. Menstrual management practices impact health, economics, cultural aspects, social and environmental factors, while creating multiple challenges for stakeholders such as rural menstruators, programme implementers, policy planners and others. Hence there are many dimensions that need consideration to make menstruation management into a sustainable process. The framework for the study was done in three distinct categories: the devices or products used, practices around management and spaces or facilities or infrastructure to manage menstruation. All three categories are inter – connected and interdependent. Four areas of enquiry formed the core of this thesis.
(a) Sustainability
(b) Social Change
(c) Participatory Social design
(d) Action research.

We explored the research questions through experiments, cross over trials, studies and personal communication with stakeholders, while considering three products, namely TP, DSNs and Uger. This thesis proposes two tools for sustainable menstruation management for rural communities. The first tool called PASS is an assessment tool that can be used to score and compare systems for sustainable menstruation management. The second tool, Uger pads, is a tool for managing menstrual discharge in a sustainable way. This thesis, by proposing these two tools, lays out multiple possibilities for future sustainable interventions for menstruation management.

CAD is an important innovation of this era that has enabled designers and engineers to visualize their ideas in 3-dimensions and communicate the same across various platforms. It is a well-accepted tool that is being used at various stages in the process of new product design and development. Many researchers (Stappers and Hennessey 1999, Tovey and Owen 2000, Robertson et al. 2007, Ibrahim et al. 2010, Won 2001) have argued the suitability of CAD when the ideas are crystallized and not for idea generation stage. CAD is well accepted as the drafting, visualization, and detailing tool but not as an exploration tool. However, it is an important tool and one of the many skills needed for a holistic design education without overriding the design process and curbing student’s design conception process. The literature illustrates gradual inclination towards the inclusion of CAD in the early stages of design with new input devices, better systems, and advanced software systems. The research focuses on investigating the impacts of using CAD on creative exploration during the idea generation stage of product design. It does not compare CAD with other tools but tries to understand its role when used in conjunction with conventional tools. As the role of CAD is well established in the later stages of design, the study focuses on the early idea generation stage in the context of product design (Cross 2005, Paul and Alex 2011). It was identified as a gap through the literature review. The research methodology is based on qualitative research. For the exploratory phase of the research, two pilot studies were conducted. For the first pilot, a time[1]bound design task was given to the students of product design. The next pilot study was conducted with the professionals where they were given a design task to be performed in limited time. The data used for the analysis was the visual data recorded during the design exercise and verbal data from the interviews. Based on the findings from both the pilot studies, an interview guide was formulated. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and coded using MaxQDA software. MaxQDA helped organize, cluster, and retrieve coded data,which was further used for interpretation and re-interpretation to draw the inferences and articulate findings. The findings inform readers about how 3D solid modeling CAD tool positions itself in the idea generation phase of product design. Research sheds light on the advantages CAD offers as a tool and the limitations that it can impose. Findings make designers aware of the limitations so that they can make informed decisions while designing. It helps establish a research methodology that can be adapted to study parallel contexts like fashion, craft, interior, and accessory design. Research informs pedagogy and can be used to develop the teaching strategies to make students more aware and not let tools drive their design decisions. Further, software developers can adopt the study to develop CAD programs more aligned with the needs of the designers.

Educational games have remained more of a promise than a reality in changing the way we learn. Occasionally, a few educational games have gained prominence. However, the "code" to designing educational games that consistently meet the desired goal of learning through fun is elusive. A key to unlocking the potential of educational games is the creation of designs that merge the act of learning and playing. It is best if the player achieves the goal of learning by merely playing the game. Games with an "endogenous" design have the potential to meet this objective. In endogenous design, game elements are derived from the educational content. However, creating endogenous design is challenging. The commonplace technique of superimposing known gameplay over educational content will not lead to endogenous design. Superficial integration of content and gameplay, often referred to as' chocolate-coated broccoli’, results in games that are neither educational nor fun. Designers can achieve better integration with appropriate guidance. Unfortunately, research in educational games has focused less on the synthesis of educational games, especially so on endogenous design. The need for endogenous design has been identified in the current literature, but research has not progressed toward building specific guidance on creating such designs. The aim of our research is to bridge this gap. We identify specific strategies that designers can use to design endogenous games. Our research is guided by a pragmatic approach that the outcomes should be of use in practice while also adding new knowledge to the domain of educational games. We chose Design-Based Research (DBR) as an overarching research approach because of its focus on practical utility. The DBR hints at mining knowledge from existing practises and improving upon them. Hence, the strategies for design are discovered through the study of design practice. By inviting participants to design endogenous games, we explicate the heuristics they may use in doing so. Using ‘think aloud’ protocol analysis as a technique for data collection and analysis, several raw strategies are identified. We evaluate, aggregate, compare, categorize, and extend these discovered strategies. The strategies are organised into a process framework using the "Function Behaviour Structure" approach. This framework, named "Endogen, is the core contribution of our research. Exploration and translation are the two primary groups of strategies in the framework that enable endogenous design. The exploration strategies help in identifying the gameable elements in the content, such as actors, objects, movements, events, situations, and more. The translation strategies help in translating the extracted elements into game elements such as mechanics, resources, and gameworld. These two are supported by other strategies for core design, elaboration, and verification, to make the design process complete. With a focus on practical use, our framework is validated for its utility using a multi-method approach. The validation exercise confirms the utility of the framework in enabling endogenous design. The studies also bring up a few shortcomings, some of which are addressed in this thesis. In the end, we enlist issues regarding the adoption of new frameworks and address them in the context of the Endogen framework. The Endogen framework will benefit educational game designers and academicians, as well as students, in designing effective and enjoyable learning games. Researchers can extend our work in the future by adding newer strategies, applying them across contexts and in more ways than we can yet imagine.

Language teachers are increasingly using image prompts in their composition classes, in keeping with the increasingly visual culture that learners are exposed to. In India as well, teachers use images as writing prompts to help learners practise various kinds of writing. However, there seem to be no specific guidelines or frameworks towards designing images for use as writing prompts, nor any reasoning as to why certain images might work best for this purpose. This research tries to address this, by looking specifically at image prompts in terms of identified content elements (dynamic action, background, foregrounding) and number of images, with the ultimate aim of arriving at a system by which image prompts appropriate for the purpose of eliciting narrative writing from young learners of English can be selected or created. In this experimental study, these image elements have been used to create prompts with specially-controlled features, and the responses of 117 learners from Class 5 of a CBSE school in India, to each of these prompts, have been recorded. Following blind rating by multiple raters, and a close study and qualitative analysis of the responses of different learners, it is concluded that including the content-element parameters of dynamism, a rich background, highlighting of special elements in the foreground, and presenting prompts in sets of 2 images, are ways in which image prompts can be made suited for the purpose of teaching and practice of narrative writing for this age group of learners. A validation study conducted after the main experiment confirms these findings. Additionally, this research also infers two additional points from the analysis of data: that image prompts with such features are particularly helpful in aiding learners to be imaginative and hence produce narratives with diverse themes, and that these prompts are particularly helpful for struggling writers.

This dissertation aims to study the ‘Filmic House’ in Hindi cinema, a popular cultural medium, from an architectural standpoint by a systematic exploration of its architectural space. The domestic space is a most common cinematic image in cinema. In many cases, it forms the principal setting and displays distinctive characteristics. ‘Filmic House’ is defined as domestic space rendered in a film. The first chapter of Introduction explains some of the basic premises of the thesis, defines and creates a background for the subject of ‘filmic house’ from various perspectives, presents a review of literature and sets out the objectives and research questions. The second chapter on research design lays out the manner in which this dissertation deals with the subject area. The research design includes – devising a model for analysing the filmic house, setting out a typological approach for the study, explaining the criteria of selecting films for discussion, and making a filmography for each of the three typologies under consideration. Towards the end of this chapter is described the common methodology adopted for each of the three typology chapters. The thesis has discussed three dominant urban architectural typologies – the bungalow, the chawl and the apartment block – by way of their filmic representations. A chapter each is dedicated to each typology where they become individual essays, generating a set of readings. Finally, this research has produced a comprehensive appreciation of representation of domestic space in Hindi cinema and it furthers the understanding of architecture of home as a narrative and social space. This would be of interest to both film and architecture students and practitioners.

The rapidly changing world scenario and its implications on social needs and behaviours in this new century have stirred the focus of organisations towards the fostering of new ideas. The phenomenon of idea generation has been studied in the field of cognitive psychology in order to better understand the workings of the mind. Substantial innovations often result from transferring solutions from one industry or domain to another by forming correspondence between elements of representation, creating a path for cross-transfer. Analogies possess the potential to juxtapose knowledge from one domain to another, following the principle of making "the strange familiar and the familiar strange" (Gorden, 1961).

In the creative field of design, expert designers often use analogies for strategic problem solving and new idea generation based on prior experiences (Dunber & Blanchettel 2001). Therefore, in the case of novice designers, inculcating this way of thinking can be a way to overcome linear, patterned thinking and expand the boundaries of creative exploration. This stems from the tendency to search for solutions that have previously shown results or search for results within an area of expertise to override the fear of failure. This has led most "design by analogy" studies to focus on data mining (Altshuller 1984) using computational support for big data management and retrieval. While studies reveal that analogy usage is pervasive in many disciplines, there are very few studies that show how and why novice product designers face challenges when using analogy for ideation.

India is the seventh-largest country by geographical area and the second-most populated country in the world. Almost ninety-four percent of the Indian workforce is working in the unorganised sector. Unorganized activities are labor-intensive, necessitating low-level skills and relying on age-old, primitive technologies that pose occupational hazards. Occupational stress can be divided into four major classes, such as physiological stress, postural stress, psychological stress, and environmental stress. The earlier research on the unorganised sector recommends ergonomic design interventions to improve workstation ergonomics. more ergonomic. Mechanization or automation in India, like in other developed countries, is prevalent. An unorganised sector is difficult. Therefore, it needs a context-specific, low-cost design. intervention from the viewpoints of sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and manpower employment, which can reduce occupational stress. It is essential to find out the most significant In the unorganised sector, there is a pain point for doing context-specific design interventions. Hence, the prioritisation of the most painful stress among all other occupational stresses is most important. A physiologically stressful job demands a high physical workload and needs to be redesigned to provide leverage or low-cost mechanization. The pastorally stressful job must be eliminated. change the working posture. The causes of psychologically stressful jobs must be discovered. psychological stress, reorganise the job, and improve the employer-employee relationship. For an environmentally stressful job, the working environment needs to be modified by the worker. acceptable limit. An environmental stressor can be managed at the source or in between the source and the subject (like using PPE).

The Minimum Wage Act, 1948, helps with the fixation and execution of minimum wages to prevent exploitation of labour through the payment of low wages. The minimum wage rate can be fixed at a) a time rate, b) a piece rate, c) a guaranteed time rate, and d) an overtime rate. The Indian Labour Conference (1957) had come up with a norm that should be considered during minimum wage fixation. Minimum wages in India's unorganised sector are set at 2700 calories per day. Ergonomics can validate unorganised workers' energy requirements. The minimum wage fixation committee considers four consumption units per earner. But in the Indian scenario, there are six consumption units per earner (worker, spouse, two kids, and parents). Social scientists must reconsider wage fixation norms in light of this.

The Indian schools in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have technology-driven classrooms. However, learning subjects such as (but not limited to) mathematics, science, and history that include abstract concepts often becomes challenging for students due to the requirement of visualising skills, a lack of learner-content control, and frequent disengagement. This leads to the requirement of a student-centered technological pedagogical tool. According to recent research, Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the emerging technologies for student-centered learning that superimposes computer-generated virtual objects onto the real world in real time. Moreover, the ubiquity of mobile phones has led to increased integration of AR and mobile learning. In the context of Indian schools, this technology is still being explored and is yet to be added to the benefits of classroom teaching. Hence, there is a need to identify the ways in which AR technology can be designed and used in Indian schools to provide an interactive, immersive, and enhanced learning experience. To create such a classroom-based Augmented Reality Learning Experience (ARLE), the potential design strategies have to be identified and applied.

This dissertation advances our understanding of these problems in two ways: (1) to characterise the design strategies of an ARLE incorporating the three dimensions of learning, i.e., content, incentive, and interaction (Illeris, 2003), and (2) to apply the identified design strategies in creating an ARLE. We have used design-based research (DBR) as the overarching research approach to design and iterate on the potential solution. DBR is a research methodology that aims at the development of educational interventions or learning environments through iterative cycles of analysis and exploration, design and development, and evaluation and reflection. We carried out seven research studies (N = 235) using a mixed-method approach in two cycles of DBR.

The artificial divide created by formal institutions such as schools makes us believe that learning primarily happens within the confined walls of a classroom. This assumption, besides certifying learning of a certain kind, inadvertently disowns learning practises in other informal contexts, past or present. The study endeavours to celebrate 'learning of an art form," which is perhaps more spontaneous, natural, and organic, with the intent to draw pedagogic insights that might be later adapted to informal and formal learning spaces as well. The choice of the Bhil artist community in India was deliberate and conscious, as it makes for an interesting case study where their artforms, which are in transition, reflect both continuity and discontinuity in their beliefs, relationship with art, and art practises from the past. On the one hand, their ritualistic Pithora artform is essentially traditional and confined within the community, and on the other, the Bhil art is also emerging as a commercial artform. This transition is comparatively recent and situates indigenous art in the present by addressing the dynamism and evolution of the art itself.

The research objective thus has two aspects: understanding the nature of the human-art relationship and the pedagogic approach to its practise. The research posed several challenges, particularly in identifying a particular theoretical lens that would do justice to the above research objective. Since the artform had various dimensions to the study, I have used critical insights from the works of several thinkers and scholars working in diverse areas. I have used Durkheim’s lens (1912) to study the belief system of the community linked with art, Paniker’s lens (1972) to interpret the oral narratives guiding the art, and Dehejia’s lens (1990) to understand the visual narratives. Further, I have used the elements and principles of art to analyse the visual form of the art.

For a study of this kind, ethnography—the flesh and blood approach, which entails immersion in the field and uses participant observation as a central tool—was an obvious choice. Given the complex nature of the study and its location across multiple sites, involving several artists and respondents, the methodological approach adopted in the beginning also kept evolving. The research tools were extended to involve structured, unstructured, and group interviews and workshops. Visual ethnography helped in documentation through photographs, videography, and sketches. Over and above this, a research methodology was designed such that the researcher herself started learning the indigenous art from a senior Bhil artist, Bhuri Bai1, and documented the process through visual ethnography and reflective research. This ‘experiential ethnography," along with reflective documentation, later became the critical tool for data collection and analysis.

Board games are meaning-making institutions. Certainly, they can be things—objects or artefacts for passing time, entertainment, learning, or socializing. However, a thing cannot survive millennia without being meaningful to the people, their countless generations, and their culture. Board games are institutions because they have norms and behaviours set around them. There are cultures in and around gaming with procedures, norms, and rituals identified over years to support the meaning-making in games. Mokshapattam, the 13th-century predecessor of the modern Snakes and Ladders, Chutes and Ladders, and other variants, served as a conduit for moral instructions, play, and performances. Contemporary board gaming encounters can also be seen as having gaming etiquettes that facilitate collective and individual meaning-making. Board gaming is an institution because it caters to fundamental social, cultural, and human needs—the search for meaning in acts, environments, and events. Perhaps it is the novel meaning that games afford, or perhaps it is the novel mode of meaning-making in games that has allowed them to survive for so long. The quest to understand the meaning and the meaning-making in games has puzzled thinkers from across time and disciplines. On the surface, games have been used to make sense of life. "Life is like a game" is a commonly suffixed sentence used by thinkers and philosophers. The "like a game" kind of thoughts indicate that games were used as a scaffold, a muse, perhaps an inspiration to understand other aspects of a thinker’s interest. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus used games to understand the abstract concept of time using games: "Time is a game played beautifully by children." Wittgenstein used the family resemblance of games to understand language. Using games as a metaphor for other concepts perhaps indicates the meaning-making potential in playing games.

The Indian agriculture sector is an essential part of the country's economy and employs a significant portion of its population. Farmers with landholdings of less than one hectare and between one and two hectares are classified by the Indian government as marginal and small-scale. Due to the fragmentation of landholdings and land division among children with each new generation, the number of small farms and farmers is steadily increasing. This land size reduction can impact the farmers' yield and ability to afford farm inputs, making small farm cultivation a challenging process. Despite a thrust towards farm mechanisation, most small farmers still rely primarily on traditional tools and methods. Though farm implements reduce drudgery and enhance efficiency, small farmers struggle to balance investment in expensive farm equipment and crop yield. A gap exists between simple, cheap hand tools and costly, large-scale powered tools like tractors. The research has led to the generation of a design framework that allows for designing context-specific, human-centred interventions in farm equipment for small and marginal Indian farmers. The design framework has been verified during the steps of the project-based iterative design approach. This has led to the design of a low-cost, portable, human-powered rice thresher that considers the locally available materials as well as skill sets of fabrication and repair while allowing ease of learning and operating. The framework developed to design these types of interventions would help other researchers, designers, and engineers to work more effectively in the farming domain. In the long run, the research aims to improve small farmers' livelihoods while improving food security.

An Interactive Visual Narrative (henceforth IVN) is a form of visual storytelling where the mode of narration is interactive in nature. In this form, the audience’s role changes to that of a participant, collaborator, and co-creator of the narrative. The focus of the study is from the vantage point of a designer into the dynamics of discourse production in IVNs. It tries to address their prime concerns, the level and nature of interactivity to be provided to the participants to facilitate the production of an engaging narrative. Scholars have conducted research in distinct genres with various agendas. The scholars have not adequately borrowed methodologies from each other. Hence, the methods of investigation for these studies and the outcomes are disparate. In this thesis, we relook at the mechanics of discourse production in IVN by situating IVN as a universally existent phenomenon. The enhanced approach to the study is at a structural level, focusing on discourse production in IVNs. The proposal examines the ‘order of presentation’ and the ‘order of telling.’ There is a change in focus from ‘a content–presentation-oriented approach to a content–presentation–telling approach,’ which we designate as a deficit in previous research and theories relating to IVNs. Formulating the elements that make the structure, their function, and the IVN model will facilitate the encapsulation of the obscure mechanism of discourse production in IVNs. We devised an IVN Analysis Tool to systematically capture the elements and illuminate their function in the overall IVN structure. The composition of the narrative units was designated to facilitate the understanding of discourse production, the mapping of elements that provided interactivity, and its implication on the discourse.

This thesis deals with the wayfinding needs of people with vision impairments (PVIs) in Mumbai Suburban Railways, also called the Mumbai Local Train Commuting System (MLTCS). This suburban rail commuting system serves 7.4 million commuters daily in India's financial hub and boasts the world's highest passenger density among urban railway systems (Gardas et al., 2013). Despite being the most crowded public environment, rail commuting in India is still the most dependable and economical mode of commuting both intercity and within the city. They are the oldest, fastest, most affordable, and irreplaceable means of daily commuting, supporting the livelihoods of millions of commuters, including people with impairments. In the economically developing world, people with impairments suffer a high incidence of poverty, perpetuated by a lack of access to socioeconomic opportunities. Mumbai's suburban rail commuting system plays a vital role in alleviating poverty if it supports the mobility needs of people with impairments through an empathetic and inclusive wayfinding system design approach. Unfortunately, to date, attempts made in the direction of development focus on most travellers who are non-disabled, thus ignoring those with special needs such as mobility, sensory, and cognitive impairments (Raheja & Tyagi, 2016).

Public transportation is pivotal for achieving social and environmental sustainability in rapidly expanding urban areas. Yet, transportation systems frequently overlook the needs of diverse demographic groups due to skewed or incomplete user data, perpetuating issues of transit captivity. This research underscores the importance of incorporating gender perspectives into urban mobility planning. It scrutinizes the Comprehensive Mobility Plan of a Tier II city in India and the implementation of a new bus service, shedding light on the biases inherent in modelling transportation solutions in the consultant-driven processes of technocratic urbanism. By adopting participatory prototyping methods and qualitative data analysis as methods of inquiry, a generative participatory design toolkit was developed. The toolkit is designed to capture the tacit needs of underrepresented demographics, such as women, in the design and delivery of public transportation services, thereby mainstreaming gender in urban mobility plans. The generative prototyping toolkit was developed through iterative development with four pilot workshops, involving 19 design professionals, students, and community members from across the country. Eight participatory workshops were then held with 32 carefully selected representative participants from the same Tier II city, gathering qualitative insights into their commuting needs. The data from these workshops were analyzed using rigorous qualitative data analysis and mapped onto design features in the workshop-created prototypes. Based on the design morphology observed in the prototypes, two bus models were developed and validated by a larger group of community members in an evaluation workshop with 42 women to confirm the findings from the participatory workshops. Finally, a framework for integrating citizen voices into urban mobility plans, through participatory prototyping, is proposed, offering a pathway to more inclusive public transportation.