Experience Design - PGDP Finish | Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology

"What is it that has led me away from the present, to another place and another time? How is it that I have arrived here or there?" - Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others

Sketching and Prototyping ReRide, a Personal Bike Area Network as a platform for interactive experiences before, during and after motorbike ride. In collaboration with the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. PC: Gaurav Singh

Vision

The vision of the Postgraduate Diploma Finish Program in Experience Design at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology is to help design practitioners broaden their practice towards being critical, creative and reflective.

The course fosters critical creative practitioner, who delivers effectively and ethically to the demands of the field of Experience Design at present, while continuing their own quest for mastery of the craft of designing for experiences through a self-critical and informed approach of reflection-in-action. A reflective maker, who is equipped with the creative confidence to navigate the inevitable future complexities and uncertainties of this emerging field, challenge status-quo, to not only inform current and future technologies, but also the larger practice through conscious experimentation and knowledge building.

The aspiring practitioner-inquirer begins by unpacking the very idea of experience design by asking some very fundamental questions:

What is an experience? And, where is it situated, really?
And, what then are the elements of an experience?
What is design? And, can experiences be designed for, at all?

As the human paradigms shift from the ‘efficient and usable’ to those of ‘well-being and care’, how does one,

Craft for services, systems, interfaces and interactions that are pliable to the needs of those who interact with it?
Understand the intricacies of human-technology interactions i.e. the nuances of the human and non-human somas to encourage complementary relationships?
Speculate, envision and inform future technologies that respect and truly coexist within the ecosystems they are to be in?
Build for complex cultural contexts such as that of India, to create futuristic, yet authentic experiences for its populace?
Design consciously, with cognizance to the environment and impacts on it?

Exploring Paper prototyping as a way to foster participation in design with rural Health Workers. In Collaboration with MAYA Health. PC: Naveen Bagalkot

Learning Approach

Learning at the postgraduate diploma - Finish is driven by a exploring published lines of inquiries that is enacted through studio based learning, workshops, theoretical reflections and field work. This approach cultivates an enhancement of your critical-creative practice through engagement in diverse contexts, collaborative and participatory approaches leading to knowledge development.

Program learning components include:

A theoretical and historical knowledge of philosophies and methods of shaping human experiences with digital technology.
Methods of Hands-on and critical making as means of research and design.
Methods of speculative and participatory creativity and research.
Frameworks and methodologies of ethical perspectives and self-reflexivity while designing for experiences.

Capability Sets

Upon successful completion of the program, graduates will have the capabilities to:

Understand Experiences: Observe and systematically evaluate everyday human activities and develop an empathetic and nuanced understanding of the human, lived experience.
Understand Contexts and be Insightful: Engage with multiple forms of data sourced from multiple stakeholders through participatory methods and synthesize into novel insights that will inform design.
Position self in practice: Discern and align to develop an informed stance on historical, current and emerging trends about the relationship between the embodied and lived experiences and technology through conscious perceiving, questioning, and distinguishing between information from different sources, theories and knowledge forms.
Make to iterate and reflect: with multiple media and materials and technological artifacts for iterative or critical evaluation.
Communicate compellingly: the design process to invite critique and develop a community of stakeholders for the work.
Be Responsible: Be aware of, transparent and ethical in acknowledging and articulating one’s position with respect to the social, cultural, and political implications of technology, and one’s design interventions.

Opportunities

You can shape your practice of experience design to be able to work in user research, user experience, and service design.
You can pursue your inquiry to do an MA or M.Des and further develop your research by doing a PhD.
You can continue your practice, develop your own work and become entrepreneurs.
You can work in design firms and studios.
You can develop your own projects and apply for grants.