Design Thoughts

As we grow in our career life we see more and more people are keen on taking up authoritative jobs. Or the other way, the society in general would consider a person with authoritative job successful. The question here is : Is Career Progression defined by authoritative jobs? Does Authority in any space or domain mean progress of a particular career? On one side we have skill or talent progression where an individual in his career tends to become more skillful in what they do, this however happens only when he/she has continued doing the same thing for a longer period of time. However it is only considered rewarding when an individual working in a particular space gets a better "position" which in turn translates into "managerial" position as progression. Is this social view always necessary? Which also lets us deduce that we believe that managerial position or higher authority is the only way ideal decision making would happen. So in turn it deduces that its...

Our minds are full of thoughts, millions of them. Some of them we realize but many are hidden deep within inside. Its more like we are not ready to look into those ideas consciously. Or to talk in software terms, we dont make them the active selection. They lye down in the background silently influencing our day to day lives. To some extent we can say our subconscious mind is like a huge ocean, its undelved untouched we see what happens on the surface, we see strong tides or even storms at times. But thoughts like fishes are moving rapidly beneath the surface. Many of these thoughts are actually brilliant ideas, ideas that our brain has created out of the millions of things we throw in our subconscious sea. But very rarely do we sit and fish for those ideas. Its only when we sit relax and fish from our conscious real world outside the deep oceanlike subconscious we realize the wealth beneath. Delving too much into the subconscious would just like a sea submerge us...and perhaps ta...

Every passing day the number of devices lingering in the luxury of our homes has increased. Not long back TV and radio were the monopoly, but with the onset of technological advancements the intrusions of devices in our lives has plummeted massively. However what is interesting to see is that these devices are not just mere objects of technological advancements, or machines which help us do things, they are somehow an extension to our identities. Going away from what they traditionally are supposed to do i.e. take care of us and our needs, these shiny intelligent objects in-turn make us take care of them. Say for instance the very daily chore of "Charging your devices", such a chore never existed around 20 years back. If you were to draw a parallel devices of today are more like pets. Just a few days back i even heard a car company advertising " It loves you back", and thats what is happening, we are dealing with a modern day pet like scenario. So we feed our ...

The very idea of the term Management assumes that there is a need to manage things and there arises a need to control a set of people or organization.  A sense of power arises naturally when a scene of a certain set controlling a certain other set comes into action. The question then is, how far is such a disperse practice of separate managing entities required and in what cases is it productive. Will the workplace of the future be still dependent on hierarchical management systems working on authorative pattern of management? Or will we transcend towards a more self managed and contributive world, where each one of us becomes a manager ourselves? It cannot be denied that in places of group activities the focal point of management helps organizing of human skills and workflow. How does this change as we move more towards virtual management of human skills? and what quotient of authority is then required to control such social dynamics? With recent emergence of virtual social s...

There are so many realities that most of us live in. And yet at times we fight for what is real and what is not. Every human in his personal space deals with infinite layers of reality around him. Fighting the void between not real and real becomes a challenge in itself. Based on his relationships with the environment and people around him, every person has his version of his realities modified customized and at times even deleted or hidden. With "different realities" itself as a reality, life seems to be a big complex set of rules which we execute effortlessly across our ages and times. Between families we have some realities while between friends some other. And at times even at our personal levels we are unknown about our own set of realities...or perhaps not in control of our own set of unknowns. Sifting between these realities, we tend to forget the core reality called us...perhaps that gets hidden in the back of all these layers. How then do we make sure our own se...

In the realms of design thinking, User Centered thinking has a critical mass. But when we see the likes of  Fashion design, are the products really for the user only? How much of the designers thought is a part of such a thinking? Its this thin line between "make for self" vs "make for other" that brings me to thoughts. Expression in its own periphery has most of the times been associated with Art. An artist creates his art based on his own expression of his feelings or perspectives towards the world. While on the other side there is Impression. The process of making something to "wow" the other...or impress the other. Now this other could be a single person (like your wife or girlfriend). Or it could be a group of similar people, like we call in traditional design, User Group. So where does design stand? Do we call something created towards self expression as only art? Or if that same thing can be accepted by the society in a useful manner be called ...

Travelling around in public buses gives you a lot of exposure to varied people and their behaviors. As usual I missed my regular "A/C" volvo so i took the general bus. A sudden change in environment surely teaches you a lot with what the rest of the world is doing. As i enter this overflowing bus after much reluctance, I am exposed to a totally differnt environment.In front of me is a carpentar, with his hammer and saw packed in a small little bag, almost ready to cut anything that comes its way. He sort of pushes me inside, making sure i dont occupy his existing space. As I move on inside, I get a corner to stand. But for a curious mind like mind standing without any action seemed boring. So as i keep adjusting my heavy IBM bag against all the people who pass behind me, my eyes get locked by a brand new Samsung Wave. Not that i had not seen one before, but what was interesting was how the owner of this brand new piece of technology was using it. He started the web browser on...