Leading from the front and how!

By  A Balasubramaniam

The INDEX Awards   is no ordinary design award. It is a recognition for using design for improving lives. While it re-iterates the huge potential of design for improving lives of people, the awards do put the spotlight on thought leaders who could leverage this potential and make them actionable. In a world full of form-giving designers these award winners stand apart in using design for its primary purpose of ‘improving lives’.

In that context, India’s KIran BIr Sethi and Pranay Desai win this year for their ‘ Design for Change’ is truly a proud moment for Indian design.  My last post was about designers from India leading from the front. This award is proof of this potential. KIran Bir Sethi has taken the lead and ‘infecting the bug’ into every child, the potential to feel for a problem and taking charge to find solutions for it. The contest runs for a few days but it empowers every child to solve their own problems and prepares them for facing the challenges of the world.

Kiran Bir Sethi, a designer by qualification, has been recognised for what she calls as ‘common sense’ in leveraging the creativity and potential of school students into a game-changing movement all over the globe. She easily manages to make each child a protagonist, who take charge of situations and solve problems. Kiran has managed to leverage ‘desisgn thinking’ to hep solve everyday problems. And has managed to inspire the future generations of the world.

Her TED talk on the subject continues to be inspiring. It shows her journey ffrom 2007 when she took a small idea and ran with it. She proves that design thinkers from India can lead from the front using the ‘common sense’ approach.

Lead on Kiran BIr Sethi!  And hearty congratulations!

A Balasubramaniam is a trained product designer who founded January Design. He is an early graduate of NID, Ahmedabad in Industrial Design. He can be reached at bala@januarydesign.com

Can Indian Design lead from the front?

By A Balasubramaniam

When NID’s senior design faculty Vikram Panchal won the international Core77 Design Award for the Best Design for professional equipment this month, it was for a humble load carrier. The product competed with all professional equipments to win the gold in the category. This must be a first for Indian Product design. The award is an important recognition of the fact that Indian design looks into areas that other countries have never considered!
The design was developed a good 20 years ago. Which just goes to prove that we have always had the talent. It is only being recognised now by the world community.

(Pic Courtesy : Core 77 Awards)

The award is also a recognition of areas where design inputs are required and India is clearly showing the way in this for the rest of the world. In a new development, Stanford has said that the future in medical design may be in India. Stanford India Biodesign is a new iniatiative, a three-way collaboration of Stanford-IIT-AIIMS is working towards medical equipment design. The article goes on to recognise the fact the future of US’s medical design may be in India.

In the article, the emergency ‘bone-drill’ was developed and the Indian team was told that…”the device needed to be disposable, have a low part count, be inexpensive, easily assembled, capable of being used by a poorly trained person, and able to be manufactured cheaply in India.”  This sounds like a design brief for any product in India! We are almost always working with such seemingly impossible conditions and such talent is now being put to good use for international design.

( PIc Courtesy : Fast Company)

GE , a pioneer in the medical design field has successfully managed to leverage this
talent by what is called ” reverse innovation” to design low-cost electro-cardiogram machines that costs less than $1000. Another example of Indian design expertise in colloboration with international engineering expertise.

This is just the beginning. Indian design needs to take the lead in projects that have never been considered for design intervention. We need to teach the world the Indian expertise of working with chaos. We need to show that cane and bamboo can be as important a material to be considered as carbon fibre! That cost cutting will benefit GE and the American economy as much as the TATAs and the Indian economy. We need to bring our ability to collaborate with different cultures for the common good of solving the world’s problems. We need to bring forward, our ‘jugaad’ or ability to innovate amongst trying conditions! Indian designers have a lot to contribute, but now is the time to lead.

Indian designers, go forth and lead!