Karmic

In September 2019, I got an email from Prof. Avanija from Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College, Tirupathi. The gist of the email went something like this:

Dear Sir, can you please recommend a good book on Design Thinking that we teachers can use for teaching and may also be useful for the students to learn from?

When I read this, I was surprised, since so much of literature and books have been written on the topic of Design Thinking. So, I did a basic search for a book on the leading libraries of the world. It is not that I didn’t find any books. I didn’t find a book which could go alongside an academic course.

So, I responded.

“Dear Madam, you are right. Currently, there seem to be no books which match your requirements. However, are you willing to wait for 3-4 months?”

Avanija Madam kindly agreed to my weird request.

What I had in mind was what I learned from the writer community - “If you don’t find a book you want to read, write it.”

Little did I realize that it would take 6-8 months and 7 iterations with my professional editor - Anita Nagarajan. The end result is here: https://dt.balaramadurai.net

Karmic Design Thinking - Part 3 - Defining Structure

in Teaching

2016-12-22

karmic design thinking

To refresh on stuff - Rethinking Design Thinking and What is Karmic Design Thinking were things that I talked about earlier.

The broad design of this form of design thinking consists of these four stages:

I. People Orientation (or System Orientation)
This is the stage in which we acknowledge the deficiencies in the system and try and find out about what is it that people are going through. Or if it is a device or a service, our job is to figure out what is it that this system is doing.

Karmic Design Thinking - Part 2 - What is it?

in Teaching

2016-12-15

The “Aahaa” moment that design thinking is probably much older than only a few decades. That moment came to me when I traveled to an ancient set of Buddhist caves in India. These caves are located in central India and are at least 2000 years old. Ajanta caves, as they are called, were lost to humanity for about 1000 odd years before a British soldier rediscovered the caves in his hunting expedition. If you are planning on visiting Mumbai or Pune, I would highly recommend visiting these caves and spend a few days admiring these beautiful caves.

Karmic Design Thinking - Part 1 - Rethinking Design Thinking

in Teaching

2016-12-08

Let me stoke your curiosity. I have an important reason to write this series of posts on Karmic Design Thinking. Please promise that you will be patient.

Design is ubiquitous and is all around us. A tree is designed to bear the entire weight of the tree on that one single trunk. Ok, you can really say that, well, design is a conscious process. In my opinion, designs evolve naturally, either by nature or by human intervention. And since we are all part of nature, it is one and the same. Talk about talking in circles.