Design thinking and it's relevance to India

1. Design Thinking and It’s relevance in Today’s World

2. Global Issues at hand.....

3. THE STORY OF STUFF
A short film thats tells us about how big corporates
are emptying our resources across the globe.
We live in a finite world where the leaner system of production
and consumption is a threat to our planet
We are producing trash beyond our sustainable limits we
have polluted waterways forests and air.
http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

4. Rising Indian Consumerism - Wealth seen as a means to
create waste.
Culture of Trash - Landfills a dreadful reality and failed
urban waste management systems
Media driven hype to consume - Upwardly mobile families,
social pressure to live a high consumption lifestyle.
Deeper Pockets, Quick satisfaction - the vicious loop;
age of instant gratification lower self discipline.
Issues of a Modern India

5. Design and Creative Learning
Pre Industrial era - Pragmatic approach to learning and living with ownership
of the one’s life and means
Learning the Big Picture way

6. http://bit.ly/PnizfW
Over centuries humans have known to overcome hardships through skill of the hands
combined with an innate ability to apply common sense with constant stimulation from the
natural world giving a wholesome experience of competence and well being

7. With the onset of Industrial revolution and the increase in
the complexity of a global economy it is increasingly
difficult to apply conventional (linear) means of problem
solving.
Thus the rise of Design Thinking

8. Design thinking at its core, I like to think, is simply an application of
advanced common sense.At its core, design thinking is a different way
of looking at problems, understanding problems and then going about
solving them.The alternative to a linear thinking process that is taught
in analytic business systems is one in which we are using simultaneous
thinking and more broadly based thinking, generating many more
alternative solutions for evaluation.And doing so without all the rigid
linear thinking processes. Design thinking is no better nor worse than
any other kind of problem solving framework, it’s just a different one–
a new toolset.
- Clark Kellogg
Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/ckgsb/design-thinking-
demystified-an-interview-with-clark-kellogg/36967/1#ixzz2zV6IBjri
Design Thinking - Definition -1

9. Design Thinking - Definition 2
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that
draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people,
the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business
success.” —Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO

10. Design Thinking Approach
Comfort with ambiguity is one of the major
ones.What we know and what we learn from any
professional design discipline are things like visual literacy
and the capacity to be more comfortable with ambiguity.
By that I mean that all problems don’t have to be neatly
and tightly wrapped up and resolved rapidly. Instead
there’s a broader acceptance and comfort with the
unknown
Another element of design thinking is a Spirit of
optimism. Positivity comes from the fact of shedding
liner business practices and adding innumerable (lateral)
possibilities ...So there’s a spirit of optimism about design
and design thinking that helps to keep ideas fresh and the
search for new ideas going forward.

11. Another element of design thinking is a a human centric
approach to the problem. Design thinking is a deeply human
process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by
more conventional problem-solving practices.
It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize
patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally
meaningful as well as functional, and to express
ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody
wants to run an organization on feeling, intuition, and
inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the
analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an
integrated third way.
Peeling down the problem to the core....‘The Five
Whys’ approach . It is the sequence of asking ‘why?’ about a
problem five times. By the end of that fifth ‘why?’ you are
typically at what we call a root cause.And so by peeling back
the layers of the question to a deeper level, we usually find that
the real issue is something quite different than the outside layer
of the onion.

12. Local sensibilities + Global Influence
confluence of vernacular design thinking ( local
myths, aesthetics, building knowledge) with
more formal body of design knowledge
Design thinking as a life skill -
Institutions and business across the indian subcontinent have realized the potential
of design thinking as a way ahead for corporate as well as non-corporate sectors.
Design Thinking - Indian Context

13. The age of Design Thinkers
Bridging gaps - from creation to conservation
People over product/service approach,
Design transcending All Boundaries
Open source knowledge, consumer participation
(Inclusive over exclusive)

14. Examples

15. http://quicksand.co.in/?p=386
UNDP: Design Thinking and
craft
Explore Rural India is a project jointly
funded and managed by Ministry of
Tourism of the Indian Government &
the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP). It is an imaginative
and effective project that seeks to
promote rural development through
the twin means of Sustainable, Rural
Tourism and indigenous crafts based
Livelihoods promotion.

16. This project, funded by International Development Enterprise
(IDE) as part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, sought to provide NGOs and social enterprises
with the tools to do just that. IDEO, in collaboration with
nonprofit groups ICRW and Heifer International, developed the
HCD Toolkit to help international staff and volunteers
understand a community’s needs in new ways, find innovative
solutions to meet those needs, and deliver solutions with
financial sustainability in mind.

17. Arvind Gupta
Arvind Gupta is an Indian toy inventor and popularizer of science. He developed his
idea of creating simple toys and educational experiments using locally available
materials as well as items usually thrown as trash.These simple toys, he found,
fascinated children and Gupta went on to make these as the hallmark of his
movement of popularizing science.
His first book, "Matchstick Models and other Science Experiments" was reprinted in
12 languages. Gupta's website holds instructions, including short video clips on
YouTube, in a number of languages, for making hundreds of improvised toys, which he
makes available freely without copyright restrictions.
www.arvindguptatoys.com

18. Typography Design
HandpaintedType is a project that is dedicated to preserving the typographic
practice of street painters around India.These painters, with the advent of local
DTP (Desktop Publishers) shops, are rapidly going out of business with many of
them switching to the quicker, cheaper but uglier vinyls. Many painters have given
up their practice altogether.
The project involves documenting the typefaces of road side painters across India
and digitizing it so that it serves as a resource for present and future generations.
www.handpaintedtype.com

19. Ecology ,Waste Management and Design Thinking

20. Puma’s Bring me back program promotes
recycling and benchmarks what all global consumer
brands must look into.

21. Eco-friendly, disposable, reusable,
slippers for indoor
Courtesy: Design Direction, Pune
Design Thinking enables to
Envision Waste

22. Ecolink is recycled chipboard made from
Tetra Pak package waste.
www.ecolinkindia.com

23. ExNoRa:
Zero Waste
Management: Vellore model
ExNoRa International focusing on mobilizing and
empowering communities to participate in preserving
nature and preventing environmental degradation,
thereby improving the quality of life of the common
man.
Founded in Chennai by renowned social activist and
"master motivator of masses" Dr.M.B.Nirmal, Exnora
International is a Non-Profit, Non-Political, Secular,
Non-Governmental, Environmental Service
Organisation. It was formed with the aim to realize a
cleaner, greener and more enviro-friendly world.
Within the 16 years of its existence it has grown into
a wide spread movement covering many parts of
India.

24. Community Management & Restoration and Design Thinking

25. Navadarshanam ("NewVision") is a small organization,
a registered charitable Trust operating near a small village 50 km south of Bangalore
Design Thinking - Navadarshanam model

26. 1. Eco-restoration: Merely by preventing grazing, the land has been converted from wasteland to a nascent forest.
2. Natural farming: On this improved soil, in limited and carefully selected areas, fruit saplings and a few vegetables and
cereals/pulses have been planted with minimum disturbance to those trees and bushes which have come up naturally. No
chemicals and pesticides are used.
3. Health and food: Food items and cooking methods have been classified according to digestibility/acidity-alkalinity.
Diseases are seen as `absence of ease’, caused by undigested food, which disturb the ecology of the body. Food items
developed along these principles have been made available to our network of friends in Bangalore.
4. Energy: All power requirements, including that for pumping water and for lighting, is generated through solar panels
and systems, wind power and also from oil made from the seeds of honge, one of the trees that nature has brought up in a
big way during the regeneration process. Gobar gas (methane from cow dung), charcoal made on the land and wood
stoves are used for cooking needs.
5. Housing: All dwelling units at Navadarshanam have been constructed with the help of alternative technologies, using
eco-friendly concepts (such as compressed mud blocks).The philosophy adopted has been to combine ecology with
economy.Thus, least amount of cement and steel has been used, instead the stress is on locally available material and
labour.
Design Thinking - Navadarshanam model

27. THANKYOU