‘Design’ as a means for development, for the future of India.
As one of my role-model Chris Do, says “ God is the Designer”. Though we haven’t realized it that, from our birth to death, our entire life is a product of a design. Our mother’s womb designed for the development of an embryo, to a casket we get buried in is all designed. Our parents designed us to act in a certain way by their beliefs, we design and evolve our character as we grow and brands design products to create a materialistic world that influences our behavior and thoughts. Design plays a vital role in shaping our thoughts and ideologies.
Unfortunately, the meaning and perception of the word design is very restrictive in people’s minds. According to the Cambridge Dictionary and Google, the meaning of design is “a drawing or set of drawings showing how a building or product is to be made and how it will work and look”. For people whose whole life is influenced by design, the meaning of it is perceived and limited to a very little part of the whole process of design.
Currently in India, with billion of population and lakhs of business, we certainly don’t give that much importance to design or its process of thinking. For people with business, old and new, the design is usually an afterthought, it or just an expense for fancying up things. With globalization, the incline in startup culture and the ‘ Make in India’ movement has given the opportunity to designers to play a vital role in the process of developing our future India.
‘Design’ for ‘Make in India’
The rise of the ‘Make in India’ movement and issues with China, has given our Indians an opportunity to make and innovate our own Indian version of the product which we use in our day to life. Though some people are buying those products to encourage our young makers and the movement, the majority of Indians are still hesitant towards buying them. According to an article in the ‘timesnownews.com’, people are making calls and enquiring about the make in India products, but still buying the goods that give them their value for money and people who can afford are going for imported products.
The ‘Make in India’ products are solely focused on the cost and the functionality of the product for and mass-produced, where people may or may not buy. Now bringing designers into the equation and adding the whole process of design thinking, I believe we could make, not just an affordable product, but also products that actually match our Indian ideology and user behaviors, which would make them more desirable to buy. Including our Indians designing principles and ideology into ‘Make in India’ products will not just make better for our Indians but we would also be able to make products that could be exported to other countries and make the world enjoy our products.
‘Design’ for Sustainable India
With our population in billions and growing, everyday India faces a huge shortage of resources and space. Our excessive use of products creating more problems for the environment. Our age-old traditional ideologies and practices will not work anymore and if taken further, we would be only depleting our leftover resources much faster.
With the wave of information and awareness on sustainability, designers ( existing and new generations) could trend to focus on these aspects. By combining the designer's ability to visualize and create, the design could help create more sustainable products and systems that help people to learn and maintain our leftover resources. And space, being the second most problems in India, designers especially architects could think of creating low cost and less space occupying housing for the future of India, their ability of storytelling, solving and thinking for others, we could be activists who can create and fight for the systems and teach people to live more sustainably.
‘Design’ for Data &Informations
With the rise in smart technology and digital services for our Indians, imagine the amount of data created in a day. And due to the recent events of the pandemic as made government introduce various online products and services for people to track and get better policies and schemes. But the government is having a tough time collecting and storing that data without getting lost. This is where information design and UI /UX design can thrive, by designing a proper system that could centralize and store the whole data. With visualizing being the fundamental of design, it could create visualized data that could be feasible assessable and more importantly easily understandable, where data could flow to a centralized location with proper streamlining and data security.
‘Design’ for Politics
In our country politics is rooted very deep, it's followed and preached like another religion. But all the politicians and politics are solely driven economically rather than problem-solving.
Problem-solving, being a crucial part of the design process, I strongly believe that design in politics can thrive to solve complex societal problems and create systems that are more secular and which help in improving the lives of an individual. A designer's ability to empathize and diverse thinking could make our Indian politics less biased and could make the election process healthier.
In conclusion, the advancement of technology and India’s use of smartphones are revolutionizing the way we think and process information. Though it is tearing India into two with all the unhealthy believes and misguided information, ‘design’ as a community is getting stronger and connected with one another by sharing our ideas, philosophies, opinions. Taking this as an advantage if all the design thinkers come forward to solve problems and educate people to think more freely and diversely, than ‘design’ and its community could play a vital role in building our new India.
