Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti, Ideas Lab, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) said that ICoRD 09 saw huge international participation. "Over 200 attended the seminars, over 70 research papers were presented of which 80% were from outside India."
"DESINE - Design Information Network" was launched at ICoRD 09 to foster collaboration between designers and to raise awareness about design and research aspects.
"We received tremendous feedback and everyone is looking forward to the next edition. It will be conducted next in 2011," added Prof. Chakrabarti, who was the Programme Chair for ICoRD 09.
"This was the best complete set of Keynotes I've seen for a long time," Dr. Timothy Charles McAloone, Associate Professor at the Management Engineering Department of Technical University of Denmark mentioned in his feedback regarding the Conference. Prof Timothy McAloone presented a keynote titled "Meeting the challenges and opportunities of sustainability through product development," at ICoRD 2009.
In 2003 CPDM, IISc launched the first research programme in design in India. The programme currently has 25 research students. The industrial acceptance rate for this programme is one of the highest in IISc. Over the next 10 years the programme is expected to result in over 50 PhDs in design.
"If we cannot understand 'design' well, we cannot improve it" - Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti "We try to inculcate a very strong social element in design, not just designing for the super rich but for the common man. Once our students create the prototype they have to get the actual intended users to use the product. About 50% of these get patented every year. For example some of the innovative products this year include Cycle mounted portable washing machine, Tea harvesting machine, Sugarcane juicer, and an automatic drying and de-wrinkling apparatus for clothes. There is a tremendous possibility to improve the design of a product from the point of view of the environment," Prof. Chakrabarti added.
Research in design and the emergence of a research community in this area has been relatively new, its development influenced by the multiple facets of design (human, artefact, process, organisation, and the micro- and macro economy by which design is shaped) and the associated diversification of the community into those focusing on various aspects of these individual facets, or various applications.
CPDM has a strong focus on research, teaching as well as practice of design through its programmes. It teaches a two year, interdisciplinary Masters course in design (M.Des.), with graduate architects and engineers from any discipline of engineering as input, with the focus on developing the functionality, form and ergonomic aspects of a complete product. Its research programme in design focuses on a variety of facets – product safety, human factors, creativity and innovation, design for manufacture and assembly, sustainability, product life cycle management, virtual reality and so on. There are six research laboratories in CPDM.
For instance, Innovation, Design Study and Sustainability Laboratory (IdeasLab) [http://cpdm.iisc.ernet.in/ideaslab/index.html] is a laboratory pioneering design research in India in the areas of creativity, design methodology, sustainability, collaborative innovation, knowledge and life cycle management, and design research methodology, as well as teach and support product development in practice. It is founded and directed by Amaresh Chakrabarti, who has been actively involved in research, teaching and practice of product development processes and methodologies with national and international academia, industry, and peer review bodies for the past twenty years.
The IdeasLab is responsible for software like:
"FuncSION" - a software that automatically generates alternative concepts of mechanical devices - now automatically creates their potential alternative embodiments as well.
"Idea Inspire" - a software that inspires ideation using analogical search for relevant biological and artificial systems from a database - increases ideation productivity by a factor of 2-4, tests with the software revealed.
"Idea-Sustain" - a software that captures evolving product information in real time - captures rationale information better than using conventional modes of rationale capture.
