Very interesting point of views so far. Here are my two Paise ( 'two cents' if you please, but the difference is 1:40 ) :-)
I have three seemingly unconnected observations. Lets see if there is an affinity insight in between those. Personally, I like to design for Indian Users. I will tell you why. In India, if you travel 250 Kms in any direction, from any point, everything changes. The spoken language changes, the written script changes, the culture changes, religion (or its interpretation) changes, FOOD changes, water changes, people's skin color changes, economics change, weather changes etc. To design for such diversity, every project has to be crafted. Designing for India, trains Designers to work for alien contexts all the time. My second point - In India, most UXD professionals I have met either come with a Indian college degree in Design or an American college degree in Human Factors, the rest come from engineering and technology backgrounds and are mostly self taught. Unlike software engineering, Interaction Design was never a focus for most universities in India, and still isn't. I personally feel, Designers need to publish more and Human Factors professionals need more training in Design Principles. For the rest, some good educational institutes like IIT Bombay and our group offer training and focus more on "Excellence" (ref. Dave's write-up) than certification. My third point- When I work with Indian IT companies, (most of them are CMM-5 and ISO etc). For the size of efforts they run, I guess one has to be extremely systematic and process driven. I find that to be a problem sometimes, because as a Designer, I like things to more fuzzy, thresholds more flexible and everything not so uptight! However, I refuse to buy the argument that the IT companies in India have communication problems. I trouble between Engineering and Design as ideologies. But I admit, I have never met a more motley bunch of professionals with an OCD for documentation and clear communication than the ones in Indian IT companies. If these companies can make technology, including rocket science work, we should certainly give it more benefit of doubt. If all these three observations are true, then I see this affinity- 1) There still aren't Standard Formats of Communication between Designers. For example- When I made films as a student film director in my design school days, if I said to the film crew that "I want a 'master shot', cut to a 'dolly' till the 'frame is tight' on the character's face"- Everyone including the cinematographer, the actor, the editor, the sound recorder, the grip, etc all understand. We don't really have that in our profession do we? The problem I feel is standard vocabulary and standard deliverable formats. 2) There are cultural gaps in making designs offshore, and huge ones. The gaps are both ways; for designers in India to understand the context of users, for designers outside India to understand the Software Development context in India. But if 18th century Sociologists / Ethnographers from Europe can understand tribal Africans and present them to the world, 19thCentury Archeologists can understand how the Neanderthals lived and acted, I am sure 21st Century Designers can understand the culture and needs of users and developments team members in different parts of the world. The biggest advantage in India (as Alok mentioned) is that Designers are very close to where the product is actually being imagined, created, developed and built. I think Design overall shall be better if the Designer is involved in every detail of the product and available as part of the development team rather than away from the team. Perhaps, Indian Designers need to spend more time in the context of the User or International Designers need to spend more time in context of product development. That can reduce time to act AND improve quality of design. 3) I feel Indian Designers do not get many opportunities to publish. Firstly, its lack of local conferences; there should be more. Secondly, it's very expensive for them to participate in International conferences. I think Indian Designers have a lot of opportunity to bring Design centre stage by improving design inputs during product creation during the development cycle. I feel the international community should support more Design Research in India, and in turn, it will create newer opportunities for everyone everywhere. I feel, through collaboration, everyone makes more business because the size of the pie is larger. Everyone improves quality of design, because Designers are close to user data and designers are also close to product development. This is assuming that there is enough knowledge and communication between designers at both ends. Regards, -- Atul N Joshi Design Director, Design Incubator R&D Labs (P) Ltd, Mumbai - India info: www.designincuabtor.com mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
