Indic design framework at Tacit

Design in some way is as an act of connecting ourselves with reality in the process we may illuminate and liberate. It is as much an internal process to refine your own self. As designers and by designing, we hope to become better listeners, sensitive creators and responsible members of ecosystems.

Everyday we engage with our collaborators who struggle in finding sense of current realities, meanings and connections with ever-changing cultural world. We walk together in discovering subtleties, unobtrusive beauty, hidden structures, mystery connections, seed of ideas, origin of a fountain, or many such unexplainable forces that drive creation of experiences. We engage by getting to know better, building trust and deepening relationships. We often view a business as a self sustaining responsible community that is strong and relevant to other communities, rather than a profit making entity dominating others. Design interventions tend to (hopefully) act as humanising agent to improve relationships between communities. Not to forget our relationship with nature.

Innovations in last two centuries have accelerated production and innocently if i may say, we have cluttered our beautiful world with unnecessary objects, symbols, information and services. New generation is conscious and cautious of this. We collectively want to heal this explosion. We may walk different paths. We may discover new worlds or we may discover ourselves. At Tacit, we immerse to enliven the current moments. We like to spend time on learning what our senses say to us without too much intervention of symbols. The process looks slow but opens our senses, connections actively. We do not claim to solve problems, but we may touch that is “essential” — that which makes us feel better holistically, genuinely and make us collectively wiser in the process.

Indic Cyclic Process

In India, design is as an act of responding consciously to the situation as well as self. The ultimate goal is 'Mukti' or liberation. We respond by absorbing context (Rikta), unearthing the essential/subtle (Rasa), development of form/experience (Roopa), engaging time (Kala) and oneself (Mana) in an endless cyclic process. The spiral of a sea shell helps us to visualise our process with ease. It suggests creation and growth of the shell in its biological constraints. I guess, it's a natural conditioning growing up here in India.

Design playground

This process or act of creation today sits in a larger context of our life. Frameworks helps visualise key variables influence a design act and highlight the need to examine how those key variables might differ/affect and under what circumstances. Design playground is a visualisation for common variables in general. We listed “key essentials” that we touch in the “act of creation”. We spend good deal of time with these “constraints” and “opportunities” via critiquing. As designers, we try to respond sensitively and creatively. I attempt to map the cyclic design effort objectively via this process.

Design playground broadly contains the following. 'Aesthetics' is that, which makes the experience alive, 'Functionality' refers to efficient workings of the system, Socio-politics covers how people live and behave, 'Environment' is everything to do with how we use/manage earth, 'Economic Sustainability' is our ability to maintain sustainable transaction based events, in our contexts of creation, we create new knowledge continuously. We often move around in these zones, mostly aspiring to liberate from it.

We attempted to visualise sample projects to see how this may work. We recorded our inputs (effort/process) and output (influence/impact) on a scale rating. The scale rating parameters can be requested. In the end the map looks something like this.

What you see above are two projects mapping of our engagement. We noticed some interesting insights.

• In many cases, an artefact's aesthetics may have tradeoffs engaging with users creating meaning for them immediately. This happens often where the MVP versions of the product often are not robust in aesthetics but are valuable to get the feedback around its value creation or product market fit.

• We create new knowledge which is practice driven, each time we engage in a project. We often fail to document it. Writing about our unique journeys in the form of stories, papers help to share this knowledge and speeds up design knowledge sharing.

• We do not seem to have the right tools to include environmental factors, not many really know concrete solutions. This is great area for progressing in this millennium.

• Creation contexts — Creator, consumer, producer/client relationships improve with transparency of communication. The easier you make it to talk with each other, more productive are the projects.

• There is no one winning formula! We have to compose/improvise consciously, constantly, with realtime inputs if necessary from the collaborations. This results in progressive working models.

Above exercise is a quick glimpse of how we work. At Tacit, we deal with “concepts” and “contexts” on a daily basis. We embrace this complexity of each project. We enjoy these constraints and the impacts we can create by the clarity one can bring in the process of creation.

Welcome comments on framework and share more details. Let us know how this works for you.