Week 1: Design to improve life
WEEK 1 :Our class kicked off with a very simple question — How can design improve life? In order to press upon the importance of designs that remain sustainable, we were made to watch a documentary Enough White Teacups. This documentary was about how to build sustainable solutions that are feasible to implement and has an impact on a very large scale across the world in order to tackle a “wicked problem”.
The brief:
Your challenge is to design a product, service, or solution that improves life. Demonstrate a creation that is innovative, maps back to a clear need, and leverages current technologies (or those that are feasible in the near-term). Your creation may be near-term practical or blue sky, but it must have a realistic chance of adoption if instantiated.
Week 1 (Jan 13th/Jan 15th)
Exploring different topic , 15th jan
Our discussion began with a conversation about each other's interests and any particular topics one might be interested in.
Since we all come from diverse backgrounds and cultures, our different experiences had inherently lent us different perceptions about a variety of topics. Nevertheless, It was interesting to see that somehow, there was at least one common point which could be a potential problem in all our respective backgrounds. However, narrowing down to a single topic proved challenging.
We decided to filter the topics on the based on the following criteria -
- 2 topics of interest with their relevant project examples from each of the members.
- Why did we want to pursue that particular topic?
Meeting 1.
Before the discussion started we made a list of tasks that would form the agenda of the meeting.
We started off by laying out all the topics and evaluated the overlaps between any of them. The topics that were discussed while being interesting still needed to be narrowed down to a single subject area. So, we decided to vote on the final subject area that we wanted to explore.
Following are the topics we discussed -
- Political literacy / political engagement/ demystifying the government
- How do you make the general population politically aware?
- How do we improve citizen engagement in the electoral process and policy making
2. Complex concepts for underprivileged kids
- How can children without access to large resources be introduced to complex concepts spanning science and life skills?
3. Increasing life/value of products
- How can we increase the life span of existing consumer products?
4. Data for good
- How can data science be leveraged to benefit the society as a whole?
5. Circle of self sustaining
- How can we become self sustaining by using unconventional sources of energy
6. After life of veterans/ elderly isolation
- How do we improve the quality of life of veterans and senior citizens through design?
7. Learning disabilities
- How to design teaching aids to assist students with special needs?
8. Bamboo/glass ceiling
- How to promote equality among genders and dissuade misogyny through effective use of design?
9. Biomimicry , biodiversity
- How do we design solutions for existing problems by seeking inspiration from nature?
All of us gravitated towards the idea of sustainable circles because in the current scenario, the challenges of climate change and global warming requires immediate attention and foolproof solutions. Also, the idea of giving back to the environment resonated with us at different levels.
Meeting 2, a notch deeper
This meeting was held with an agenda to get some more clarity about our focus area under the final subject i.e Sustainable circles
Sustainable circles had a large number of focus areas, of which we had to narrow down to one:
Food and agriculture
Energy saving plan
Waste management
We talked about understanding the basic ecosystem that underlies the process from the production to the consumption of food. One of the things we touched upon was the sustainability factor in terms of food and agriculture. We explored the following questions as part of our discussion:
Is it a worthy endeavor to spread general awareness about how much time and energy is invested to be able to produce a certain kind of food?
Was it more reasonable to educate local framers about sustainability and its long term benefits?
Or did the problem lie with the general lack of knowledge about the kind of food we eat?
We realized the need for an initial research about different systems and trends that are prevalent from the production to the consumption of any kind of food. The following would be the focus areas for our research:
Farm to table system
Types of consumer groups on different levels for eg: individual, family, community, institutional
Different types of farmings and produce
Farmings trends and patterns
