Interaction15

A series of design workshops conducted in rural India had interesting and illuminating findings. The effort required a convergence of diverse issues like emerging market considerations, bottom of pyramid, Indian design and design education methods.  These rural workshops began with a hypothesis about design education and led to an experiment in contextual design. They also began with the assumption that the urban designer’s repertoire does not easily include designing for the ‘other 90 percent’.
Initial efforts of teaching design to rural teenagers met with success and thereafter evolved into an experiment with training rural teachers. A curriculum with commonly used design principles and approaches and design problems formed the key groundwork. 
With the initial hypothesis validated, more specific contextual design methods and design thinking approaches like problem discovery, field research and iterative design were applied alongside collaboration with and mentoring by post-graduate design students. The journey has been gratifying while results have been beyond expectations, enlightening and of widespread applicability. 
Directions for an inclusive and broader education have emerged, with potential to begin shaping the next generation of designs, designers and design education, and focus on the rural segment in India and other countries.