• MPR’s Guiding Models: Pedagogies & course developments at NID for new design education and his books as role models
Prof. M.P. Ranjan created a special course called Deign Concepts and Concerns for the foundation students at NID. The course significance and relevance achieved great success with respect to learning from field-based and collaborative project-based learning outcomes for students, that the course also became a regular inclusion as part of the early semesters of the PG design curriculum as well.
The course also became a regular inclusion as part of education programmes at NID Bangalore too. The course asked of students to assume the role of design activists collaborating to offer design innovations for newly selected themes per course ranging from commercial/economic concerns, business developments, social developments concerns, etc.
Foundation students of the 2009 batch at NID created these models during the DCC course that showed us how India could get new design education strategies that could address the needs and aspirations of the various regions of the country.
Copyright ©
2012 M.P. Ranjan blogpost
From one of the DCC courses and the devlopment and use of a Systems Design model in classes of 2008 for foundation students at NID [6], Ranjan shares the aim and objective in his blog as follows:
“Several years ago, as part of the DCC course, we realized that strategy and planning were as important as concept and product detailing if a particular set of design offerings were to be successful in the marketplace. Unlike technological innovations and science innovations which can be proven in the laboratory or be subjected to peer reviews for validation, design innovations and design offerings are of a class that can be measured and the success of which can only be tested in the marketplace and this makes it truly complex to prove. The producers who have almost the same quality of product on offer can only differentiate their offering by the thoughtful development of their business models. So we see objects being converted into a service offering through a lease finance model or a service being dematerialised through the use of technology and the shift could be in either direction and the winner is the one who can capture the imagination of the consumer and offer a special convenience that the other is not able to offer.” [28]
Prof. M P Ranjan explaining the Systems Design Model to the DCC class. This four stage process includes User studies, Scenario Visualisation, Concept Detailing and Business Model development | Image Courtesy:
MP Ranjan’s blogpost of March 2008 [28]
Learning business processes is seen as the exclusive domain of the management graduate and not that of the designer, however as teachers at NID we realized that without this knowledge being integrated into the product creation and development process, the impact of the new product or service offering would be essentially incomplete. This led to the creation of the four stage systems design model that he presented at the CII-NID Design Summit in 2001. This model was several years in the making and was an implicit part of the DCC assignments over many years before it got formalized in the Design Summit paper and presentation which is called “
Cactus Flowers Bloom in the Dessert” [29].
His keynote lecture given to the 4
th National Design Conference held in Istanbul in 2009 envisages an entire journey of all different metaphors and models generated as part of DCC and similar design thinking and methods courses at NID and similar design schools in India; and also his experiences as an industrial designer as part of his professional practice. Of these, illustrated is the well-known model that traces the entire journey that a designer undergoes as part of his/her design process: using the
stone in a pond metaphor [11], [18].
Left Image: The Design Journey Model. Copyright © 2007 M.P. Ranjan | Sourced from the
Derek Lomas paper [18]
Right Image: Prof. M P Ranjan delivers keynote lecture titled “Hand-Head-Heart: Ethics in Design” at the ITU Auditorium in Istanbul on 8th October 2009.
Other similar systems based models as approaches and philosophy frameworks aided the educational basis and devlopments of design schools, other than NID as well. Ranjan’s thought leadership to analyze existing and futuristic needs of students, the design milieu and their contributions to design for society has been instrumental in the making of these proposed model approaches [30].
Proposed NIFT Programme in Fashion & Accessories Design Copyright © 2007 M.P. Ranjan from his blog
In Ranjan’s words, “
IICD is the first and only Institute that is mandated to develop knowledge resources and the ‘Agents of Change’ who could make this happen in the field. The Institute has taken time to establish its foundations at the new campus in Jaipur and over the past ten years a credible education programme in crafts design has been established and the students of these programmes are showing their impact in various fields across the crafts sector.” [30]
Models proposed in the
IICD Feasibility Report to set up a craft ecology as part of education programmes for IICD, Jaipur
Prof Ranjan was also invited to develop the education philosophy for undergraduate courses for the Ahmedabad University as well as conduct courses in Design Thinking for the institute as adjunct faculty member during the same time period [31].
Design Thinking at Ahmedabad University: An approach paper for a proposed course for undergraduate students |
Images Courtesy:
MP Ranjan blogpost of August 2013
Ranjan has been a devotional author with a fearless streak in hus penmanship. His blog design-in-india openned new national and international doors to a continued design discourse. But, that was not enough for him to be at content with the state of affairs that design underwent and evolved through. His
design practice with Bamboo, cane and the materiality [17], [32] that gave his designs
new entreprenuial strengths for the people in India [12] – have been his guiding lights to explore the themes of
handmade, crafts, craft technologies, craft-based design methods and materials, etc in context of the Indian land [16], [33].
Left Image: Book:
BAMBOO AND CANE CRAFTS OF NORTHEAST Rural Economy INDIA by MP Ranjan, Nilam Iyer and Ghanshyam Pandya [32]
Right Image: Book: KATLAMARA CHALO: A Design for Development Strategy – Design as a Driver for the Indian by M.P. Ranjan [20]
In-house Catalogue Nooklet for BAMBOO INITIATIVES from NID-BCDI, Edited by MP Ranjan and Mann Singh [12]
Book:
Handmade in India: A Geographic Encyclopedia of Indian Handicrafts by Aditi Ranjan and M.P. Ranjan [33]
