Mimo56: The Story so far..
Genesis of The Triangle
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In the year 2013 — Prakhar, Swati and I were working on our first project together during the first semester of our Master’s program in Innovation and Experience Design at Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology. We were proud that we completed a working concept in a matter of few days.
What went unnoticed in the beginning laid the idea for future; the team and collaboration were the stepping stones later on. We spent two years together at Srishti, thinking and exploring what it means to design and had some long, meaningful discourses. While we had different undergraduate disciplines, our energies really synced and we became a collective.
Fast forward about one and a half year later in March 2015 when we’re close to complete our Master program at Srishti. We were discussing each other’s design ideas, and that’s when one of us was also contemplating on doing a job. On the other hand, we were not happy with the way Interaction and Experience Design, and for that matter, “design” itself was being treated, especially in the country. We believed that it is a great opportunity that can be tapped.
The Idea
The job plan was trashed. The idea of Mimo56 was conceived. We started with rethinking the practices, questioning methods as to how design should be perceived in India and across the world. In the last twenty four months, we have learned and developed our own philosophy of how we can transform this idea into a company. In this course, we have done several projects — some of them worked and some of them not. We are still learning every day, and are very faithful to our original idea.
We are not and do not want to become another app design startup, not graphic design and not even internet startup. It’s not that there is anything wrong with being any of them, but the vision we are looking at needs more!
First Stop: Lab
Our first venture Lab (Leaving assumptions behind) was kicked off in later 2015 where we wanted to open new avenues of learning and design thinking for creatives and designers. In its very first program, we ran workshops in the course of one and half month on Creative Coding which had little to no success. We did the part of communicating our ideas and questioning everything but could not sustain the interest of our audience. After trying multiple permutations of operating Lab, we finally gave up, to begin again. Most importantly, we recognised our mistakes. We could not coordinate well and often had different plans in our minds. It was interesting though, and little sad that there were amazing things that we planned but they did not see the light.
While we knew what to do, we failed short in understanding how to do. We could not be perseverant enough and accepted that there is a need to rethink the solution we’re trying apply.
Xtudio
Moving on, we began with new zeal in the next year (2016). Our next venture Xtudio began. Xtudio was an Experience Design studio to tap into designing digital experiences primarily for small and medium enterprises. We started off with our personal connections and the people we came across had limited to zero understanding of design. In fact, there was hardly any appreciation for design. It is very hard to convince people to shell out money for something that they hardly appreciate. One of us realised soon enough, that we were heading in the direction of it’s end, like Lab, but we kept hope. We were again not on same page and tried to sustain in our individual ways. This ran for an year and we could not accomplish much. Nevertheless, we had a lesson.
Can we remove business out of design? Doesn’t too much business-driven design defeats the purpose of innovation and design? How far we can push design to truly signify the solution to needs and problems, and less towards business motive?
And all this while, we had our shares of personal challenges but tried to not affect it to Mimo56. Our personal schedules are conflicting more than ever now, we are operating from three different places today. But, we’re right now more confident of doing it from scratch all over again. And in this process, we’re redoing our brand and strategy to reflect the new Mimo56, (which we will also be sharing very soon).
We were never short of ideas. Also we did not face any problem in accepting each other’s ideas. I think as a team, we failed because we could not anticipate the logistics involved and failed to execute them in a way they should be.
We’re also pleased to tell that we’re now registered as a private limited company and has necessary compliances to operate as a business. And with this, we are embracing social media to get closer to all of you.
Follow us on our new social media handles.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
And do not forget to follow us on Medium.
