Academics
DIC is proactive in nurturing creativity amongst students. Design is a systematic problem-solving process that is beneficial for professional practice(s)/professionals. IITGN recognizes the potential of design, therefore it has made the ‘Introduction to Design and Innovation’ course mandatory for undergraduate students of all engineering disciplines.
Students can also opt for a ‘Design Minor’ studying design courses and independent projects in their bachelor’s degree.
Courses
ES 201 Introduction to design and innovation
The course aims at developing creative problem-solving skills, nurturing radical thinking and encouraging holistic solutions to the problems amongst students.
The course content includes an understanding of the design process starting with defining the problem statement, ideation, and development. The course encourages them to fail early through testing, and iterate the solution during development. They are also required to switch between holistic aspects and finer details of the solution.
ES 334 Interface Design
Interface design focuses on effective communication whether interpersonal or technological. Students study mental models, communication gaps, emotional and cultural aspects of communication. Evolution of interfaces, elements of interfaces, applied ergonomics, principles of visual ergonomics are also studied with contextual examples. The methodology followed is to define user personas, building scenarios, opportunity mapping, information management, prototyping and testing of interfaces.
03
DES 302 Creativity, Design and doing
Creativity needs to be nurtured as a way of thinking, as an attitude to learn design methodology. One needs to understand the ‘soft aspects’ of products and spaces. This course aims at developing one’s skills to appreciate the abstract and emotional aspects of design. The students learn the fundamentals of design followed by visual expression, abstraction, visual storytelling and design for emotion.
04
DES 499-1 Immersive storytelling through augmented /virtual reality
Immersive storytelling using AR/VR is designed to stimulate student’s creative storytelling abilities and also introduces them to immersive technologies. Each student creates an experience around a scientific principle they are familiar with for the general audience. Their initial idea is heavily workshopped multiple times( Their initial idea is refined multiple times to give a concrete shape). In the next step, they choose an appropriate immersive technology (AR/VR) to create the experience using software like UNITY, Google poly, etc.
Guest Workshops – Dr. Anezka Sebek, New School, NewYork (2019)
Teaching Associate: Singhara Kannapan and Kshitij Gajapure (2019)
05
DES 201: From Idea to Marketable Product
Aspects of design with the product as the central focus; making students aware of the journey a product makes through the development phase. Students will delve into the following aspects of manufacturing and marketing through case-studies and projects.
- How industries diversify their markets; conception of new product(s)
- Practices for efficient manufacturing, packaging, transportation and quality control
- Systemic impact: Concepts such as consumerism, planned obsolescence, along with larger aspects of influence like socio-political issues and environmental impact.
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DES 399/ DES 499 Independent Project
An independent project gives the students an opportunity to work on a topic of their personal interest. It enables them to learn thoroughly the design process and choose a direction without restraining them by a predefined course structure. Students work on projects like teaching tools, design for special needs, electromechanical products and cardboard furniture.