As a designer who just boarded the ship at Google, I find that my works here reflect quite a lot of things I learned at IDC. This medium post is about these reflections which came directly from my design education.

I have always been someone who loves to be around technology and have had myself graduated as a Computer Engineer. As such technology is my first and for quite some time, has been my only approach on problem solving.

When I co-founded a startup with the help of my mentor Mintu Bora, I learned a couple of things about business however little it is. Attending local TEDx talks, meeting entrepreneurs and so on taught me about the struggles startups in India face in terms of establishing a successful business. This led me to adding a business layer on top of my technical approach on problem solving.

My inclination towards design however has always been mediating my problem solving approaches. I have taught myself as much as I can about design through materials found online applying on my own little projects and ventures. The only essential concept that I could not adopt fully is learning to understand the holistic perspective of “empathy”. No matter how many articles you read or how many design videos you watch, it is always tough to mentally tune yourself towards the human-centered design approach. My brief design education at IDC fine tuned my attitude and problem solving approach to what Bill Moggridge describes as the user-centered approach. This probably is what every design school on this planet teaches but that is exactly the point. Julie Zhuo’s approach of a senior designer becomes astoundingly apparent once you take a stand on your design approach.

Design pedagogy is a lot different than other education I have obtained in my career. The question of usefulness of what you learn at college in real life is arguably obsolete in this part of my education because a huge part of it is hands-on research.

Finally as a closure, I hope I have put this post up as a well chunked information in the form of a story — story-telling being the next and communication theory being the final important thing that I learned during my design program.