The Union Cabinet in India approved a “National Design Policy‘ on 8th Feb 2007. The step was taken realizing the strategic importance of design for national and industrial competitiveness. The vision behind initiating the ‘National Design Policy’ is to have a design enabled Indian industry. The government initiated a consulting process with designers and industry stakeholders to outline what the policy would entail. After a design policy was put in place, an Indian design council was formulated by the government  in March 2009. The council is made up of designers, heads of design institutes and members from departments of commerce, information technology, ministry of textiles etc. Amongst other activities the design council is meant to undertake design awareness and effectiveness programs both in India and abroad. In other recent news, the council recently unveiled the I-Mark – quality tag at the inauguration of the Japanese Good Design Exhibition at the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The idea behind the I-Mark is to raise the profile of Indian design. The products that bear the mark will be a combination of great quality, aesthetics , functionality and technology. Other developments included, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laying the foundation stone for an upcoming National Institute of Design (NID) at Jorhat in Assam, the first of the four new NID’s planned through the 11th five year plan. There are concerns that the funds allocated to the National Design Policy are not wasted without a discussion with the stakeholders in the design community.

Which brings us to the point of design thinking within the government. With the setting up of the National Design Policy, Indian Design Council, I-Mark and the four more National Institutes of Design nationwide, all in the last five years the government is slowly trying to make a transition towards a design literate nation. Inspite of all this, not a lot has been done to involve the public in general in the government’s design awakening. The UK and many Scandinavian countries have Design Councils that are created so that the government can understand the design needs of the public. This is done by hosting workshops for the public so as to better governmental services by community feedback and collaboration. The list of to-do’s for the Indian Design Council doesn’t really include an internal assessment of a broken service system that includes health, education, urban infrastructure and more that plagues India.

There is a huge disparity between how the government, designers and the community thinks about design. A shared understanding of design thinking and innovation will benefit all, especially the government and the community. In the past a lot of attempts have been made to reform government, make services more efficient and reduce corruption and bureaucratic delay in decision making. A lot of these initiatives have not involved public participation and have not been sustainable. Design thinking via the Indian Design Council could bring about some of those changes.

RBI's data warehouse

One other way is to adopt open data standards. The open data movement allows the digital data freely available to the public. With the Right to Information Act 2005, an Act of the Parliament of India “to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens.”, (source Wikipedia)  the time for open data movement is ripe in India. For the data to be useful to others, it should be machine readable and should offer an API for the programmers to be able to design products and services using it. In India the RBI database of Indian Economy and Election Commission of India, have data available and open but most of this data is not in a machine readable format.  Opencivic is a service based in India that opens data in a machine friendly format. They provide a set of API’s that let the developers interact with this critical data and design engaging application and services.

Most of the design innovation in service sectors has happened in the private sector in the past 25 years. Can services become better in the public and governmental sphere? Yes, but not if all entities work in isolation and try to fulfill their personal agendas. Creating design councils for bettering Indian design is one thing but fixing broken infrastructure is design related as well. Buying ‘Made in India’ should make Indians as proud as taking a bus safely in the capital. Reforming public system is one of the biggest design challenge India faces today and it cannot be dealt with, without public participation. There is a need for a platform that can bring together high level thinkers and doers who are design practitioners, technologists, general public, policy makers and government representatives to initiate a process of design thinking and to share information to accelerate the improvement of public services in India.

References :

Open data movement : triumphs and tribulations

The Center for Internet & Society

Proposal for game design for rural education system -

After doing a thorough research on how education system of primary schools gets implemented in rural areas of the state, I found out many opportunities to intervene and design games to teach student differently and interestingly.

Key insights-
1. Need of a resource other than book, for teaching children basics of each subject.
2.Children should not feel burden of schooling. Learning can happen parallely with playing.
3. In a small village, children remain in school for more than 10 hrs. ( because many times their parents go for working in fields and children don’t have anything to do at home). Except school timing they play in court yard.

Game -
Player has to hit marble on every planet with his own marble using his traditional marble playing skills. Starting the journey from the Neptune one has to land on the Earth.
1. Collect points by hitting planets. Large planet you hit, more points you earn E.g. – Jupiter has the highest point in the tally and mercury has the lowest point in the
tally because of their relative sizes.
2. When you come hitting planets in descending order from Neptune to mars, you have change your path and hit mercury then sun and then Venus. At last you land on
earth.
3. If you miss any hit, turn goes to other participant. You can start from same planet next time.
4. Sun is the hottest star and Venus is the hottest planet in the planetary system. So after you get mercury, you have to get sun and Venus one after another as you can not survive on the Sun and the Venus.
5. Player who lands on earth first wins the game. Second, third numbers will be drawn on the basis of collected points

Numerous game plays are possible-
Teacher can change the game play after few weeks of playing and introduce children with some new one.
Teacher can teach children about the planet using the game as a
tool.

Game will be distributed by education board in rural area primary schools where the number of students are not more than 80. ‘School co-ordinator of the area’ will distribute the game in each school. He will guide teachers about rules of the game and hand over him the product which is consist of -
1. main game
2. charts.
3. small slate or black board.

Then for first 3-4 times teacher has to act as a facilitator. Afterwards children can play the game without any monitoring.

The second part of the video is titled ‘Indigenous Modernities’ based on the title of Jyoti Hosagrahar’s book with the same title. In this video, she talks about modernity in the context of the developing world. She brings up the perception of ‘Modern’ where it is equaled to western living vs it being understood as sustainable and practical response to day to day problems. To emphasize on that aspect of ‘Modern’, she talks about Old Delhi, Hinglish and FM Radio as examples of practical solutions, interactivity and modern living in the context of the old world. Jyoti Hosagrahar’s recent book Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (Routledge 2005) won a 2006-2007 award from the International Planning History Society.

For Jyoti’s video on sustainability, click here.

Ever had to catch one of those New Delhi auto-rickshaws? You know that you are being taken for a ride then. The rickshaw drivers are rude, they refuse to go by the meter, they always seem to be going the opposite direction to where you want to be going. I have questioned the local transportation system in the capital a bunch of times. The new metro system is a part of the solution but will not really replace the rickshaws as far as short distances are concerned. The government intervened in 1998 only to implement CNG or LPG for all auto-rickshaws and the bus fleet in the city. However, there were no service changes in order to improve any of these transportation systems. Recently, I came across a non governmental organization called NyayaBhoomi. The two main centers of focus for this organization are public transportation system and government accountability.

NyayaBhoomi has been developing a venture called the ‘Auto Star Club’ for sometime. The venture is focused on developing an auto rickshaw service that creates an ecosytem of profit generation, client services, long term growth options for the drivers, and technological innovation. NyayaBhoomi published a handbook for the auto drivers that tells them about their rights and duties. The book is aptly titled “Samaadhan” and was published in June 2007. They have also facilitated advertising on auto rickshaws by creating an organized framework for such advertising and got the Municipal Corporation of India to approve this initiative. Around 10,000 rickshaws are registered as volunteers under this system and around 5000 of them are expected to be included in the Autotisement initiative.

A new initiative called Auto Star Club is an initiative that aims improving the auto rickshaw service in India. They intend to have a call-in rickshaw service, very much like a taxi service. The auto’s would be equipped with GPS system to calculate distance and estimate the fare. The drivers would undergo and intensive etiquette and manner training sessions to deal with customers. They also want to create an organized sector for employment by giving the drivers uniforms, health-care and other retirement benefits. This would be made possible by money from the advertisements as well as higher fares.

The ‘Mission Mafia se Mukti‘ initiative is aimed at freeing up rickshaws from the clutches of the Mafia. NyayaBhoomi is still trying to raise money in order to put the some of these systems in place. Their main goal is to understand the underlying problems that causes the rickshaw service in India to be flawed, inefficient and corrupt and then work on solving the problem. It is almost a bit scary to think how we live through broken systems everyday and do very little to rectify them. NyayaBhoomi has taken that step and I hope they succeed. They made this very entertaining but very educational film about future possibilities in this sector that can be put into place as soon as Oct 2010. A hopeful film and perhaps a future possibility.

Mapunity uses and develops technology to tackle social problems and development challenges in India.  They provide map based services and design geographical information systems along with mobile technologies mostly for government departments and civil society organisations. They are also extend their services to R&D initiatives of commercial ventures.

Of all the various project Mapunity is involved with , the one that caught my fancy is their Urban Traffic and Transport Information Systems, with particular reference to the city of Bangalore. (check http://btis.in/) Bangalore is India’s third most populous city and fifth-most populous urban agglomeration. As a resident of this city, I fully understand the need for a well designed and defined transport information system.

Thanks to Sean @ Babajobs.com, I was lucky to to engage in conversation with Ashwin Mahesh – CEO and Founding Member of Mapunity. Truth be told, Ashwin is a very busy man. Along with acting like an evangelist, who helps government departments gain the benefit of emerging new capabilities in technology; he co- edits a public affairs magazine – India Together, and is an urban affairs researcher at IIM Bangalore and with the Government of Karnataka. He is also part of the ABIDe – Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa’s Agenda for Bangalore Infrastructure and Development task force . I managed to weasel a precious 15 minutes of his time.

Ashwin patiently explained to me how Mapunity went about to provide beautiful and intelligent solutions to Bangalores urban chaos. (Needless to say, he was able to intervene the above mentioned space, not without having friends in higher places. Governments are skeptical of outsiders and so it helps being an advisor to the BMTC – Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation).

Bangalore follows a circular  transport system.The city’s road follow two concentric circles with outer radial lines. In order to create and redefine a system, one had to conceptually redesign the map in peoples minds. The massive shift was made from a destination based system to a direction based one. This is how Big 10 was born. It is a bus service that connects 10 major roads to the outer ring road of the city.The main goal was to achieve a situation where people would be able to identify from the bus board, where the bus goes. People need not keep wondering where to get a bus from, to reach a particular location. If one knows where the bus is going and where to get it from, it is bound to bring in more commuters.The main objective was to make public transport a better system. In order to achieve this, Ashwin suggested that one made these buses recognizable and make them stand apart. Essentially brand the whole bus. Lime green in colour and bearing the Big 10 logo in a large bold fashion, these buses can be spotted from a distance. Designed by Dig Design Studio (www.digdesignstudio.com), the logo reads as Big 10 in both English and Kanadda. Operated at high frequency, the Big 10 buses address three key elements of : predictability,  understandability and reliability .

The Big 10 took seven months of planning and execution, and is India’s first direction based system. This system also allows for more accurate tracking of the mobility patterns of people. Mapunity, has prepared and is maintaining a database for the BMTC. Ashwin and his team hold consultations, surveys and regular meetings with BMTC officials to update the database which has details about how many people travel per day, on which route and how much is the public transport system helping the public.  The data is self reveling. These buses are a favoured choice amongst frequent commuters and their popularity is only growing. 1/10th of the BMTC buses are run on this module.Currently there are 187 buses on the road and it estimated to go upto 400 buses by the end of the year.

For more information, please visit – http://www.mapunity.in/

Babajob.com is a Bangalore-based start-up that uses the web and mobile technology to connect employers and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids, cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable and profitable solution to combat poverty. Babajob aims to do this by creating greater market efficiency in the informal sector through voice and web features such as SMS, USSD, automated voice systems, and operator manned call centers, enabling employers and job seekers to find each other. The simple premises, upon which it built itself and continues to grow on, are –

• Everyone deserves to get a better job, no matter what their income or skill level, and
• Technology can enhance our ability to both hire more efficiently, and better communicate with those we care about.

While at Microsoft Research India in 2005, CEO Sean Blagsvedt co-ran the Advanced Development and Prototyping Team and worked very closely with the Technology for Emerging Markets research group, whose aim was to study and invent new ways that technology could be used to positively impact the social and economic development of the world’s poorest 4 billion people. Sean’s first thought was “Great – all they need is the village version of LinkedIn.com!” In reality however, in order to make such a system work, one has to overcome the problem that most low-income workers of the world may not be literate, nor own a mobile phone and rarely own or have ready access to an Internet-connected PC. Most people in India find jobs through people they know – namely their extended social network – and most employers – particularly when hiring employees that work in the home – would like to hire a person who someone they trust can vouch for. Another important factor with the increase of travel time (owing to the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads) and often-unreliable public transport has resulted in people looking for jobs closer to home, in their neighborhoods. More often than not, it’s the simply not-knowing that causes people to miss out on better-suited opportunities. Babajob.com is an attempt to digitize this process and information to efficiently “get the word out” and importantly provide an incentive for the folks in between an employer and employee to connect people together.

By leveraging web and mobile technology, Babajob scales and engages a wider audience creating greater efficiency for employers and further deepens the social impact on job seekers. Employers can conveniently browse job seeker profiles based on salary, location, languages, employment background, skills and references. Babajob offers several fee-based services to help in the matching and hiring of seekers.

With services available for all major cities in the country, Babajob is currently testing out a new voice application that will help communicate the necessary information into various regional languages. With a likely tie up with a mobile handset maker – the goal is to transcend, once again, the language and literacy barrier, to broaden the scope of Babajob’s services.

Babajob serves as a fine example of complex system design for a country that is socially and linguistically diverse; and where literacy is a major point of consideration, while attempting to make information accessible.  With a constantly evolving set of parameters and a strong belief in the transformative power of software on society, Babajob is social entrepreneurship at its best. By tapping into informal social interactions and streams of information, and using a blended value business model that combines a revenue generating business with a social-value-generating component, it provides us with a glimpse of the paradigm shift that is brewing with regards to businesses in emerging economies.

The ChotuKool is like no other fridge. It does not have a compressor. It runs on a battery. Utensils and bottles need to be loaded into this 43-litre cool box from the top. It weighs only 7.8 kg and costs only Rs 3,200. A product of Godrej & Boyce, the fridge was co-created with the woman of Osamabad, a small town tucked away in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. This project has another service design component which is extremely interesting – the retailers who go from house to house selling the Chotokools. They belong to the self-help group created and run by Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an NGO microfinance institution (MFI). The number of women retailers approximate 101 in 77 villages. They sell nano refrigerators among other products, in Osmanabad, Maharashtra. and earn Rs 3,000 a month as commission. The MFI also sells Hindustan Unilever water purifiers and BP Energy India cooking stoves. It accounts for 60,000 of the 200,000 Oorja stoves sold across the country by BP Energy.

Outlook Business cover story on India’s New Retailers

“This is the first toilet in the world — in the world — where you use the toilet and you get paid,” Nair says. Now India is trying a different kind of cash reward to encourage toilet use. The Nirmal Gram Puraskar, or “clean village prize,” gives 50,000-5 million rupees to local governments that end open defecation. Thirty-eight villages qualified in 2005. A year later, 760 villages and 9 municipalities got the prize. In 2008, more than 12,000 awards were presented.

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