Fire and Smoke + A.P.E.
Education Design Research and Design Solution during the final year of undergraduate design
Undergraduate Thesis
Education Design
Research
Illustration and Brand Design
Fire and Smoke is a repository of insights on various education modes, around the world and across time, with the aim of driving those insights towards designing a more student-centric education mode in India. I explore the meaning of a true education by delving layer by layer - from modern institutions and curricula to indigenous Indian modes that propound holistic development; government-supported schemes to grassroots innovators in the ecosystem of learning; and finally to the metaphysics of epistemology: how we know what we know, and how can that process of knowing be facilitated?
From John Dewey and Finland to Tagore's Shantiniketan or Krishnamurti's schools, how do the best schooling systems around the world achieve their results? How do different systems around the world view knowledge and progress with their alternate relationships to learning?
Conclusions from the research were used to create frameworks which further helped crystallize an idea of a true education, and are covered in their own sections within the book:
Patterns of the System - inferences and definition of the problem areas of education.
The Knowledge Economy - where "knowledge" in our society comes from and where it's meant to be applied.
Why We Learn - how our passions and interests help form our ideal vocations.
The design research book was then used to synthesize potential design solutions and hone in on the outcome of my final year college thesis: a concept of a livelihood network where young adults could connect with their desired real-world work experience, the Adolescent Professional Enterprise (APE)
APE was conceptualized to bridge the gap between learning and application by immersing young adults in work experience. In parallel, the professionals at APE would develop self-learning tools and routinely facilitate students to reflect upon and integrate their experiences into their lives.
Adolescent Professional Enterprise
The introductory tools are frameworks to help students make sense of their work experiences in the world. They frame action as Games and knowledge as Stories to help add purpose to how their work and learning will aid them in their real lives.
01 - A Story to Game Life
02 - Crafting Your Own Tools
03 - Choosing your Fights - Set goals aligned with your capacity
04 - Mastering Your Character
05 - The Real Game
On the ‘Apes’The Apes hearken back to our most primitive mode of learning: mimesis, where the young animal would learn from the adult by playacting and imitating their mature counterparts. This evolutionary instinct is still embedded in us today and APE hopes to empower it's students in rediscovering their curiosity. The Apes are wide-eyed, quirky and haphazard - voracious learners who are unafraid of failure, and they are a fitting mascot for the program.
The Apes can be drawn using simple polygons and the color-block palette of black, cream and energetic orange can be used to communicate engaging yet serious information.
