The team of Prof. V. Bapat and Prof. Purba Joshi was once again involved in a discussion over a cup of tea. The discussion led to a plan of action for the ‘Product Design – I’ module; a week before the actual scheduled start of the module.

Students of first year; by then would have equipped themselves with learning from courses like Studies in Form, Elements of Design – I, and Media Investigation. Prof. Bapat and Prof. Puba wanted to design Introduction to Product Design assignments in such a way that students will have enough scope to innovate. Understanding user needs, and user scenarios, writing a design brief, idea generation, converting them into concepts, selecting concepts, model making and process documentation; were the agreed must-have points for the Introduction to Product Design assignments. Introduction to branding by making a logo for the product and suggesting packaging design for the product was left as a part of the semester examination.

The user survey for refining the design brief was intentionally left out of the Introduction to Product Design course plan because of the time constraint. Professors wanted the students to have user feedback at the end of the course for the result of the Introduction to Product Design assignments.