As India’s creative economy expands, design education is being reimagined to move beyond portfolios and placements.
In this interview with Edexlive, Nandita, a design education leader explains why real-world immersion, structural curriculum reform and entrepreneurial confidence are key to shaping future-ready designers.
How can institutions ensure students engage with real communities instead of hypothetical users?
Institutions must move beyond guest lectures and one-way industry talks that allow students to observe rather than experience.
Design operates within complex systems shaped by human behaviour, technology, culture and economics. When learning is separated from live challenges, it becomes simulation — useful for tools, but insufficient for navigating real-world ambiguity.
Embedding community and field projects into the curriculum is critical. Early engagement with businesses, policymakers and entrepreneurs helps students understand ecosystems, identify root problems and build implementable solutions.
For instance, in a recent five-week Transformational Design course, students worked with the Nandurbar District Collector in Maharashtra on indigenous food markets, Anganwadi distribution systems and entrepreneurship in marginalised communities. Such collaborations translate district challenges into viable opportunity pathways. Structured industry immersion further ensures sustained, curriculum-linked engagement rather than episodic exposure.
What structural changes are needed to equip students to launch studios and ventures?
The key shift is from output-driven to process-driven learning. Instead of focusing mainly on final artefacts, programmes must emphasise critical thinking, problem framing and decision-making under uncertainty. Confidence develops when students test their ideas against real, messy problems.
Design education must also broaden its scope beyond form and visuals to include service design, systems thinking and user behaviour. Students need exposure to how design creates value across sectors.
Equally important is embedding venture literacy — teaching pricing, contracts, IP ownership, client acquisition and basic finance. Graduating with experience in handling small live projects makes independent practice feel achievable.
Interdisciplinary collaboration and a push for an original Indian design voice are also essential. Designing from Indian realities, rather than adapting global templates, builds contextual authority and meaningful enterprise opportunities.
How can design schools shift focus from placements to nurturing entrepreneurs and IP creators?
Creativity is sector-agnostic and closely linked to value creation, systems thinking and collaboration. To nurture entrepreneurs, institutions must highlight both the creative and economic dimensions of design.
Designers create value upstream — through research, strategy and systems design — and downstream, through productisation, branding and new ventures. Clear mapping of these opportunities helps reposition designers as value creators, not just executors.
Curricula must integrate technology, business models, policy context and social impact alongside making. Real-world engagement, venture labs and industry collaboration should carry equal weight as classroom learning.
Faculty development and confidence-building are equally important. With strong mentorship and structured entrepreneurial pathways, students can move beyond job-seeking and emerge as creators and owners of value in the creative economy.
