Manga ws4 11

International Toy Research Association (ITRA), 2018

“The best thing a child can do is to break a toy; the next best thing is to make it; even better is to create it.” As part of my work, I explore design processes in school education in India. The intent is to integrate in curricula, design processes through series of design in education workshops. Why deploy toy design as a medium to achieve such a goal? Everyone can easily connect to toys and games. We usually start the workshop with a study of a heritage toy. As part of “toys and tales” workshop series, usually one specific toy design or concept is selected and explored through various ‘Tale’ concepts. This process helps create many ideas for toy product design. The participants are generally teachers of education, therapy, child development and psychology. They are able to develop new ideas in these workshops. The aim is to empower educators and enhance their creative abilities in their respective work by introducing design process, relating toy and game design. I teach product design at a university in India. We felt the need to introduce space and facilities whereby both digital and tangible toys and games may co-exist. The design students are encouraged to incorporate elements of play in their product and interior design projects. Students value this approach as it brings a special design process. In my studio, I design and produce toys in small quantities. One of the toy design projects, “Khel Manthan (Churning-Learning) – handcrafted storyteller and storymaker”, is designed and developed with a community. The experiment is used as one of the case studies during design in education workshops, to highlight the significance of the design process. I will be presenting some of the experiences from these workshops and courses with various groups of school teachers, university faculty, students, and development communities involved in training. My presentation will highlight the process of design development work through group participation.

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference for Design Education Researchers

Design thinking is determined as one of the must have abilities for every profession in the XXI century. New product development is a prerogative of professional designers and engineers, trained to use design thinking, design research and new product development methods to solve problems, to create solutions or to face challenges. Research testifies application of professional designers’ design thinking and new product development training methods in school age children informal education. Case study analyses problem based design brief and sustainability personification assignment performance, effectiveness of applied methods’, process and results in two audiences - 12-14 years old primary school age children and professional design students to find out the effectiveness and applicability of design thinking, new product development and design process teaching methods in dissimilar groups. Results of the case study validate that professional designers’ design thinking, new product development and design process training methods can be successfully applied in primary school age education as creative problem solving and design thinking methods to educate pupils. The paper proposes a question: what are the future of professional design education and the role of professional designers, when all professions will be trained to use design thinking as a critical method? Keywords: design thinking, design methods, school age children

Deep Stories, 2017

Technology is transforming designer concepts by eliminating the traditional gap between design and production. Many VCUQatar students will never experience the designing process and creation of tactile objects through fabrication documents and communication with man-ufacturers due to the lack of appropriate facilities available locally, which can be discouraging as they pursue entrepreneurial careers. This course proposes a new model for the making and distribution of locally designed and fabricated goods by examining rapid manufacturing, and more specifically-3D printing. With the cooperation of a local shop, a business plan which combines the factory and reseller was developed. This sustainable and innovative production methodology allows students to create and produce small batches of local designs that can be submitted as digital files, fabricated on demand, and sold to regional communities.

Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2006

International Conference on Teaching and Learning 2018, 2018

Design thinking is a critical component and has potential impact to business competitiveness. The effort should start early so that younger generations can develop their intellectual abilities to be able to recognize connections, redefine problems, plan and analyse possible ideas, solutions and be near to the potential customers in order to sustain. This design thinking mini project is initiated to build interest among students taking Technology Entrepreneurship (ENT 600) on the importance of new product development. Looking at technological evolution, students are encouraged to think innovatively about a problem or have the ability to evaluate business opportunity. In this mini project, students are required to meet potential customers and gain inputs. Once all information is gathered, students will discuss further with their team members and come up with their product design and build prototype with limited resources. The idea of offering limited resources is to educate students that networking is prominent in the real business environment and they need to find suitable market players to work together and they should be mindful with competition. Finally, they need to present their output in five minutes business pitching. Questionnaire will be distributed after the mini project is completed to analyse the responses.

Proceedings of DRS2018: Catalyst, vol. 7, 2018

This paper explores co-designing with children in the context of undergraduate industrial design education, and investigates the potential of performative and narrative-based design methods in co-designing with children. It addresses the early phases of design process and proposes a co-design method for supporting industrial design students’ eliciting children’s needs and preferences. The field study conducted involves a co-design session with 51 industrial design students and 24 third grade primary school children, and face to face semi-structured interviews with 24 design students who participated in the co-design session. The findings indicate that the proposed co-design method, I-Wonder-How, is supportive for industrial design students in their eliciting children’s needs and preferences. Based on the challenges experienced by design students during the co-design session and the post-session design process, the study draws attention to the importance of the entire co-design experience including pre and post phases. While the pre-session phase entails preparedness of the parties involved, the post-session phase requires design students to focus on reinterpreting and reconstructing design insights.