In his opening speech, John Thackara, president of the Doors East foundation reminisced how almost ten years ago, at the first Doors of Perception event, aspirations were cast as to how the newly found capabilities of ICT would perform in society. “Today, we can say that this can be done.” he adds, about the capabilities that were “…dreamt of” in the earlier events.
Organised in association with the Centre for Knowledge Societies, a renowned ICT consultancy organisation based in Bangalore, the event spanned a total of five days. While the first three days were spent in closed group discussions between participants, the last two days were spent in the actual conference. Co-sponsors and organisations in the events included Srishti School of Art and Design at Bangalore, the National Insitute of Design at Ahmedabad and IVREAS, a new but highly innovative design institute in Rome, amongst other industry sponsors such as HP, Nokia and Philips. The event venue was spread over the campus of the National Institute of Fashion Technology and the convention centre of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neural Sciences (NIMHANS) at Bangalore.
Participants listen to a project presenter at the workshop at NIFT
The event was primarily focused on the design of services, i.e. a combination of ICT hardware, software, management and techniques that could be used to develop a system that benefits the community at large. Many of the participants, such as n-Logue (see elsewhere in this issue), TeleDoc, Educational Development Centre and CSDMS shared their experiences in having both designed and developed such services for the community at large. One of the highlights of this exposition included an in-house presentation by Aditya Dev Sood and Zeenat Hasan, from the Centre for Knowledge Societies itself. The effort included how auto-rickshaws of Bangalore were empowered with the cellular telephony services.
Jussi Angesleva defends his design before the faculty and students of the NID
he corresponding entries from the West however, had a panache and flavour of their own. Leading the show was Jussi Angesleva, winner of a competition organised in 2002 by the Doors East foundation. The entry was unique – a phone that could use bodily gestures as mnemonics for its operations! Many other such innovative projects were also highlighted, including the concept of ‘time-banking’ – a practice where time given out to aid and assist individuals is used as a tradable, in order to buy time from individuals.
Besides speakers and presenters, the event also brought together professionals; media theorists and media issue analysts from all over the world. These include architects, industrial or product designers, media theorists and communication designers, artistes and other individuals within analogous or similar creative fields. While some chose to share their views in a more subtle way, some emerged with more innovative approaches. Debra Solomon, an artist, set up an impromptu galley within the event venue, serving what she calls “…fast food – or food for fasting.”
The event, while on one hand saw what may be described as a fair, varied and diverse exchange of ideas, on the other it also saw some interesting products and services launch. IndLinux, launched by Mahiti, a software development group based in Bangalore, is an adaptation of the Linux operating system, but entirely in Hindi!
Such was the focus on the design of services, that Sean Blair, a participant from England, brought to the fore “…the perfect recipe” for a service design curriculum that was to be implemented in the northeastern part of England. Others delved on more esoteric issues, such as privacy, responsibilities of the media in general, and the eveAt the end of the popular opus, the event shed a fairly generous amount of light as to what had actually been transpiring from the service design sector.r-ominous intellectual property issues.
Dignitaries from noted design schools at the conference
At the end of the popular opus, the event shed a fairly generous amount of light as to what had actually been transpiring from the service design sector.
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