This is a YouTube video titled "Discover Indigenous Innovation: Learn Design Inspiration from Street Interviews" created in June 2024. The content features Jagadeesh P delivering a detailed monologue about the challenges faced by design students and professionals in the industry, emphasizing the importance of real-world experience through indigenous innovation projects. Jagadeesh P encourages viewers to engage with local artisans and craftsmen to gain practical insights and validate their interest in design. The video is primarily a single-speaker presentation with intermittent brief acknowledgments from another speaker, but it is not a multi-speaker conversation.
When it comes to real time implementation of the design skills, people don't know whether they are equipped. People don't know whether they are okay qualified for a job or an internship. People are not sure whether if I go to the industry, will I be able to survive. There is a huge amount of dropouts, 40 percentage more people who come out of design after they go into the design industry. People who drop out even when they are exploring design as a field is even more larger than that. So only a few amount of people go into the design field and then they are successfully growing over there. What is the reason for that? Let me break down for you. The very first reason is they don't know whether their fantasy is matching with the real world. They have not given enough time or a chance or a moment to even check it out. That's the very first thing. Second is their expectation is really, really high compared to what is reality over there. Okay, how to overcome it? Let's come to that. But this is the second reason. Okay? Their expectation is way far higher. Maybe they would have got fantasized by some YouTube video. Maybe they would have seen some designer. Their lifestyle, all these things will actually impress them. I've seen a lot of people coming into the design field by seeing car sketches. I was also one among them. But over the time I realized, I recognized, I evolved into which is more favorite for me.
That's okay.
Journey is fine. But coming into it, staying here is a big problem. Okay, so that's the second thing. The third thing is nobody understands how to even do a proper statistical analysis or talking with the reliable source or the trustable information. Whether to know this field really is apt for them and whether they can sustain and grow whether it's matching with their interest or not. Nobody takes that time to even research. If you don't invest time here, you will regret a lot of years later, two, three years after. Also people have come back from design to their normal field.
Okay, okay.
So how do you avoid this? These are three things which, which people have a problem about. The only way to avoid this is, let me tell you, indigenous innovation. What does mean by that? Indigenous innovation. Go out of your house, okay? Just imagine what I'm doing. Just, just take down the notes, what I'm telling you so that you can visualize and then you can execute it. Do an indigenous innovation project, okay? It's a very simple thing. First, you have to get out of your house. Okay? Second is you have to go and observe some craft which is happening in and around your place. Maybe your town, maybe your city, or maybe in your village or maybe in your nearest vicinity. Every 10km you will find somebody like a craft maker or maybe a ceramic textile or maybe a bamboo tree or maybe people who will just use coconut leaves to use some utensils or the household products. So people do some kind of a crafts in and around you. Okay? There will be artists also. There'll be craftmans also. Over 3 lakh plus artisans and craftsmen are available in India.
Okay.
In and around. I'm just telling very less numbers. But it's more particularly when you take bamboo. More than 35,000 bamboo artisans are making a livelihood. Sorry, 25,000 bamboo artisans are making their livelihood out of bamboo craft. If you come across one second thing, what you have to do is go and talk with them for one hour. Jagdish, what are the relevance of me being coming into the design field and what is the activity now? Just wait till then. Second is go and talk to them for a hour. Third is observe their lifestyle. Ask them questions, hey, how long you do? What is the profit you're making? Maybe people will not share you all these details immediately. But you have to break that icebreaker and then use your own skill of talking with the people and engage with them. Visit their house, visit their workshop, visit their places where they, where they take the raw materials. Try to understand whether they'll transfer this to their next generation. What are the kind of visibility they're seeing in the future, how this particular craft has evolved into this generation. Observe, talk, listen, observe, ask, listen. Take photos, take videos, take notes, do lot more things. Whatever is possible with you.
Okay?
There is no format, there is no particular questions to do it once. If you're talking with one hour with somebody, maybe there could be another possibility. People will not accept you.
Okay?
Say Tata, bye bye, hi baby. And then go for the next person, tell that you are doing a project. You're trying to revive this craft because this craft is dying. So maybe your input can really help me to improve the best outcome for this particular artist or a craftsmanship. They'll be more than happy to help you out because you're trying to help them genuinely, right? Yes. So try to spend one hour with them. Take photos, videos, audios, whatever you want. You can take permission before you record something and come back. Once you're coming back, then try to make a detailed case study out of it. Try to make a detailed analysis out of it. What did you observe? What did you understand? What did they say? What did you observe? What did they not Say what is it making them do? Become innovative in order to create something out of nothing. And then they sell it as a product. What kind of a mindset they will have? What kind of a creativity they had, what kind of a problem solving ability did they exhibit? Who taught them user Persona? Who taught them user flow? If you ask them who's your target audience? They'll exactly tell you. If you ask them whether that person will buy your products walking in the road, they'll tell you exactly they'll buy or not. Because they've seen hundreds of people, patterns, user Persona, geography, whether this product is affordable or not. They know the pricing strategy, everything.
Okay?
They are the big entrepreneurs in India. They have developed inbuilt ability and skills even without having an MBA and sales and marketing and knowledge.
Okay?
So okay, Jaglist, still you have not come to why it is. Let me tell you guys, the moment when you step out of your house, the moment when you wear a hat of observing, asking questions and listening, you are trying to find something which is not there, which is not seen by obvious people. That's your first quality. The second quality is you will be more curious to understand how they solve it. Empathy. The third is you will be able to relate with what they are doing. And that ability will. That ability will trigger your curiosity to also go and create some kind of a product service, solve problem or maybe monetize it in the future. I will tell you guys, most of the people will not do it successfully.
Okay?
If you're not doing it successfully, I would say that is the one way you can jump out of this field right now. It's a good option. Maybe the skill is not for you. You can find something else, that's totally fine. But if you're doing this field study successfully, you definitely have a great interest in. I will tell you, I told you the three relevance of it.
Okay?
The fourth relevance is that shows how you're absorbing, how you're curious, how you're able to get to the problem, to really understand in detail. The fifth ability is this will create an overall system on the ecosystem. Kind of a thought process that from the end to end, how you're visualizing a problem where nobody sees that as a problem. You're just randomly going out of the house, finding out some craftsman, talking with them, taking the data, coming back to the home and summarizing it. Let me tell you guys, this activity has more than 100 different benefits. If you do it right, as I said exactly in the sequence and the steps take one hour of your time. Go out of your house. Share your report with me in this video below. Let me tell you how much passionate and interested you are in design. If you're not able to do it, then probably you need to rethink. You're just mumbling here and there. Then you're coming to this design field, not sure whether to stay here or not. One or the other way, you are wasting your time here. Over the time you will realize it. By the time one or two years would have been gone and six months, you will be still searching for the job and you will be not getting it.
Okay?
There is a huge correlation in how you initiate something and how you do the other things. Because how you do anything, how you do everything. My mentor, Blair Singer always says that. So this one activity will determine your own interest. This is to validate yourself. This is to make sure what has really driven you to come into the design field and what is going to take you further. And I'm telling you guys, you will get a lot of insights when you do this one.
Okay?
All the best. And share me that report, whatever you have created.
Okay?
Make sure you drop your contact as well. I'll be giving you a personalized feedback and insight. Don't worry, I'll be reading each and every video, each and every summary and then I'll be sharing you the insight. Because you have taken time, right? I will be definitely more than happy to validate that.
