Ecosystem building for Indian Design & User Experience Education

Amit Pande Senior User Experience Manager, Oracle [email_address] , [email_address] Adesh Singh Senior Interaction Design Lead, Oracle Ecosystem building opportunities – Design Education in IIT system (Presented at ADEX, IIT Kanpur)

Agenda
About Oracle User Experience
A brief history of our IIT association
Some reflections
Future ecosystem building opportunities
Some interesting opportunity spaces

Some faces from the UX team

About Oracle User Experience
Oracle User Experience established in 1995 ( http://usableapps.oracle.com )
India User Experience and Design practices setup in 2004
Over 150 user experience professionals, 18 usability labs
Backgrounds in Design, HCI, Ethnography, Psychology
User Centered Design process with empirical basis
Not just pretty User Interfaces, entire User Experience with a focus on end user and business productivity
Some current work areas
Design driven innovation across industry domains & platforms
R&D for emerging markets

A brief history of our partnership
Oracle User Experience established in 1995, India User Experience and Design practices setup in 2004 ( http://usableapps.oracle.com )
Hiring and Internships – History of working with Interaction Design and Usability professionals from different IITs and supported diploma projects through its India operations
Research - Oracle UX has been in discussions with IIT and other institutions to identify research collaboration opportunities
Knowledge exchange - Students from different Design Programs have visited Oracle facilities as part of their Industrial Tours
Faculty visits and workshops – Our UX professionals have volunteered and taught Interaction Design and User Experience courses at IIT/NID
Community building – Through associations such as UPA and CHI city events have connected students with professionals

The good news
Design schools are taking leadership in introducing new courses and starting new hybrid disciplines
Design programs and industry are beginning to collaborate to discuss curricula, projects and research
All IITs have in place excellent physical infrastructure for joint research and innovation oriented collaboration
There are bright and enthusiastic students and faculty and working professionals who are eager to collaborate on some of the ‘big’ questions
We’re able to make it to events like these!

Other reflections
The rest of the world is moving fast on design – India’s services industry has a ‘back office’ and ‘tech-hub’ focus – Indian design faces competition from both West and East
Students and corporations can often both be shortsighted and have misconceptions about the other side
The research to market pipeline needs to be stronger - Internationally, Silicon Valley has a history of investing in research collaborations and taking inventions to market
There are still gaps in industry requirements and existing academic curricula – though often only in specific areas
Most collaboration initiatives often depend a lot on individual leadership and industry enthusiasts
In the daily grind of work, after these kinds of events collaboration and research go on the backburner!

So lets peer into the future now..
The technology/information era is reaching its limits and the conceptual/experience era is upon us
This is an era of Automation and Abundance and speed – but technology in itself is slowly becoming a utility
Globally economic competitiveness now largely depends on the ability to innovate and incubate new products and services
This incubation and innovation requires fresh design and systems thinking
IIT and other design education programs are uniquely positioned to play a much larger role and catalyze India’s economic future
IIT and other design programs can invest in building ‘ecosystems’ - stretching from point design solutions to Infrastructures and policies
=> IIT and other ecosystems should take on large problems because they have the scale, resources and leverage to succeed

Ecosystem building – 1 year view
Internships
Internships/projects during semesters & of longer duration
Student/faculty/professionals collaborating on ‘live’ projects
Responsible leadership to track, shepherd, execute projects
Content is already out there - share knowledge openly about books, papers, references that are being used
Skills
Communication and soft skills focus
Management skills – teaching full product ownership, not just ownership of the ‘design’ outcomes/deliverables
Host events at IITs and other schools to disseminate design – Barcamps, Hackday style of unconferences

Ecosystem building – multi year view
Embrace virtual tech to reduce dependence on travel
Leverage existing academic/corporate environments for remote collaboration – conference calls, WebEx, blogs
Research
Minimize bureaucracy around MOU’s, budgets and resource sharing
Start research partnerships by focusing on small scale, relevant problems before tackling larger ones
Explore ‘open’ collaboration through business models such as ‘Innocentive’ ( www.innocentive.com )
Explore and leverage industry partnerships that provide IITs with interesting case studies (Asian SMB firms)
Collaborate more with social science schools

Ecosystem Opportunity I – Media/Tech Innovation
India’s growth in IT and telecom was heavily fueled by outsourcing and distributed product development
Recent focus on in-market product incubation and since the big guys move slowly, huge opportunity to create products and services for the local and regional market
Internet based products (Zoho/Salesforce.com) can be setup for near-zero cost due to availability of programming infrastructure and network effects
Consumer/media product opportunities exist across the board - for mobility India is the perfect ‘learning lab’. Services (distribution, last mile gaps) also provide an off-the-scale opportunity

Ecosystem Opportunity II – Social Innovation
India’s ascendancy to the league of economic superpowers (US, China, Germany, Japan) depends not only on its ability to innovate on technology and media
The biggest social and business opportunity in India for the next several decades is ‘Infrastructure’
Whether hard (rail, airports, national security) or soft (high end services, customer orientation) – there are huge gaps and there are not enough entrepreneurs to fill these gaps
There is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurs and companies to design around social and market opportunities within Infrastructure (for e.g.: www.kiva.org )

Thank you

Ecosystem building for Indian Design & User Experience Education

by Amit Pande on Apr 02, 2008

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Ecosystem building for Indian Design & User Experience Education — Presentation Transcript