The 10th Confederation of Indian Industry and National Institute of Design (CII-NID) Summit

20-21 December 2010, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

DESIGN DEMOCRACY DESIGNING FOR A BILLION CUSTOMERS

By Indrani De Parker

The 10th Confederation of Indian Industry and National Institute of Design (CII-NID) Summit that took place in the capital, addressed the complex challenges that designing in India is facing in the 21st century after 50 years of conventional design practices. This conference addressed the design trends in India which are changing to meet the needs of a billion customers at price points that are affordable and with solutions that keep the spirit of innovation alive, make products user-friendly and reach out the widest cross-section of consumers. With the Summit theme Design Democracy - Design for Billion Customers, the two-day summit that has drawn design experts from across the country deliberated on the changing customers demography, new design opportunities

that mass production can create, setting up of new ecosystems for innovative and costeffective designs and the scope for unique businesses in the transforming design industry. Addressing the inaugural session, Praduymna Vyas, Director NID Ahmedabad said designing for a billion customers has to be inclusive and participatory. He said innovations in design have to address how one can bridge the divide between economy, ecology and education. We are currently overwhelmed with the fast-moving technology. We are trying to create products and services without realizing their impact on the society. We have to bring a gamut of people like sociologists, psychologists, technologists and managers who are working independently under one platform so that each can contribute to the direction that design for a billion customers has to take. It will help policy makers carry the process of evolving new design parameters forward, Vyas added. The NID director advocated the use of information-technology enabled design solutions that could reach the hinterland and cut transportation and overhead costs. According to Hrridayash Deshpande, director of the DYP-DC Centre for Automotive Research and Studies director, Growth was an imperative for India. Design and design thinking provide the roadmap and tool kit for this radical thinking which is people-centric. Design is essentially a human activity. Besides, aesthetics and style expresses peoples aspirations and needs. It channelises expressed and unexpressed needs of the people. Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, CEO of Center Knowledge Societies (CKS), talked about Consumer Insights to Drive Innovation and highlighted the importance of understanding consumer behavior and expending

their insights to harness future design models. Satish Gokhale, Director, Design Directions, presented the Tata Swach, a water purifier designed and developed to serve the base of the pyramid market in India. The Tata Swach Hindi for clean meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, and doesnt require running water, electricity, or boiling, executives said. Its cheaper than boiling water, cheaper than bottled water, and 2.5 times less expensive than Hindustan Unilevers low-cost Pureit filter, according to data provided by the companies. Gokhale further said that their primary criteria as a business for the design and development of this product was to take the concept of the Bottom of the Pyramid as a viable demographic to serve, setting the design criteria and constraints for both the product itself as well as their revenue model and pricing structure accordingly. The fact that it will do good or improve life is as important but this aspect has not been permitted to overshadow the need for the product to be competitively priced and attractive to the consumer, offering value for their hard earned rupee, even as it prevents their children from suffering from diarrhea. Lakshmi Murthy, founder, Vikalpdesign, has designed visuals, sensitive to cultural and societal norms for non-literate and low literate audiences. Through interactive communication, Vikalpdesign seeks to encourage individual action and empower young women and men to share their knowledge with others in the community. She made a presentation on Vikalps niche area of work Sexual and Reproductive Health Communication for Rural Adolescents. This included: 1. Design, develop, produce and sell communication products 2. Conduct workshops for rural audiences on sexual health 3. Conduct training of

trainers and health educators Murthy said that, To design for effective communication, it is crucial to first understand visual perceptions of the intended audience and incorporate their visual language into the final product. For this, we take the drawing board into the field and collect pictures drawn by rural community members to study visual perception. We hope that future development programs will not only acknowledge the value of visual communication products as a central development tool but also respond to local pictorial language and cultural and societal norms. In his special address, Fabindia managing director William Bissel said India had missed the first real design revolution. Almost all of what we see in India was born of the scarcity of thinking of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Indian planners believed that there was a scarcity, everything was in short supply and there was no reason for design. It killed Indias great aesthetic tradition, Bissel said. Design today has evolved into a strategic tool for structured innovation. It is a holistic and multi-displinary problem-solving approach. At macro-level, there is a strong positive correlation between the use of design and national competitiveness. But with the economys liberalisation and the presence of a billion young consumers, design will have to redefine itself. Themes were pre-decided for the breakaway Focus Group Discussions. Education, which was absent from the original list of focus areas, was included by popular demand. The group members were Prof Sudhakar Nadkarni, Prof Ravi Poovaiah,

Jogi Panghaal, Indrani De Parker, Benoy Thoompunkal, Archana Surana and her team. The issues discussed were: 1. De-mystify Design 2. Form Learning Clusters where people who are involved in creative activities will teach 3. Create a model where students acquire credits from crafts people directly 4. Dream One Billion Educators for One Billion Learners 5. Dream One Billion Designers for One Billion Consumers Professor Sudhakar Nadkarni has the distinction of having initiated three major Institutions in the country. He was instrumental in starting the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay in 1969, the department of Design at IIT Guwahati in 1997 and the Design Management programme at the Werlingkar Institute of Management at Mumbai. In his concluding speech, Prof Nadkarni stressed that change can be initiated only when there is a change in education. He urged everyone involved in design education to promote this change.