Observation Skills Assessment
Many times in your paper you will be shown a picture and you will be asked your observations as different user profiles. Some of the examples are given below

Sample question -
Here is the picture on a typical day at VT station in Mumbai around 5PM in the evening. Answer the following in reference to this picture

Q1. Imagine you are a kid of 10-12 yrs age, what would be your observations, thoughts, things which will catch your attention if you are standing here with your moher

Q2. Imagine you are a youth of 25 yrs age, what would be your observations, thoughts, things which will catch your attention if you are standing here

Q3. Imagine you are a adult of 40-45 yrs age, what would be your observations, thoughts, things which will catch your attention if you are standing here

My Notes- Here you have to be very observative to make sure you can write about a page of document about each of the sub-questions in your answer. For this it's very importent to understand the nature of the user pprofiles mentioned in this question. You have to put yourself in the shooes of these users and imagine if you stand here what would you think or talk about.

Another sample question

Imagine a following situation in the cricket where one team has taken a wicket by catching-out the opponent team memer in the match among two countries and answer following questions

Q1. Imagine you are the captain of the fielding team what would be user thoughs, startegies, observations in this situation?

Q2. If you are the person who are playing for the 1st time for the country and you took this catch, what would you be thinking in the mind?

Q3. If you are the person who got out on 99 and walking back as shown what are the thoughts going into your mind?



My Notes - this is a completely different case than the 1st quetion here the age groups of all the user profiles are same but if you look little deeper the thinkin going in the mind for all of these 3 people would be different and this is very importent to capture in your answer.


Answers of these questions though are not going to be same or there is no correct answer you need to have some clear differentiators in your answer...

Example - Hating the crowd in the example of the mumbail VT station could be common observation, or this pitch is my favorites or i hate it could be possible common in the cricket case, more than such observations the real crucks are in giving real differentiators and may be few commons too.


So feel free to solve this ...and send email to me at askbhushan@yahoo.com with subject line [sample observations] in the subject lines, I'll try to comment on the same.

Bhushan

CEED Online Yahoo Group

Yahoo group "ceed_india" Launched

Based on the request from some people visiting my blog I'm adding the Yahoo group assting your guys and gals to become member of

JOIN THE YAHOO GROUP

Bhushan

DDS - 2006

The Design Degree Show, (DDS)

This is being held at IDC, IIT Bombay during 10th, 11th and 12th of June 2006. New aspirants can go to IDC on these dates to get to see how and what the designers do at IDC. This is a showcase of the designers work where you can meet then and ask questions about the concepts as well as get to meet IDC faculty in person.

So any aspirants this is amust attend show!

Institute evaluation

Someone asked me about this.... so here is some more info on institutes....

Little about the design institutes

IDC – Best among all, can be compared to NID. One of the selling propositions of this is PD and VC study together and have very well equipped labs to try out most of things. Good faculty better get in soon to catch the sr. faculty for their inputs.
IDDC – Second best, good infrastructure blessed as 2nd design school in IITs.
CPDM – Descent, has more stress on functionality and working models. Job market for this after few yrs of experience is quite comparable with IDC.
IIT Kanpur – I do not have much data about this.

Just to complete the list I would not mind adding NID to this as they too have been doing great work and my personal opinion would be if you get into IDC fine or else try NID before anything else, but this is my personal opinion.

NOTE – Nid runs it’s own design test. I do not have much data about it..


have fun....

CEED - While @ Exam

What's tested in CEED from the aspirants

This is what is tested in CEED, just a guideline not a bible or exam paper format. As you would see there is no definite answer for any of these questions it in addition to solution following does equally matter

What matters
1. Impression - overall impression (assume your paper like a business presentation asking 1 million dollar so you need to create best impression possible)
2. Presentation (avoid shabby paper work)
3. Structure of information
4. Though process – how did you come to it…
5. Any innovative way of presenting your paper
6. Consistency
7. Highlighting the USPs in your solutions
8. Creativity in answers and presentation - Remember pictures talk more but if you are not a good drawing expert better write in some creative way!..
9. Ability to think out of the box – Avoid general answers… the questions here are asked to get how your mind can think out of the box than the average person’s thinking. Thumb rule could be – if 2 of your friends can think the same about something it may not fly… but in some cases you may want to think what people think so better be cautious or awake answering them…

Some areas which typically tested are -
• Observation Skills
o How many circular objects can you think
o Make/draw objects from triangles
o For any public place photo you will be asked what will you be thinking if you go here as 10 yr kid, 20yr youth, 40 yr adult or say aged person

• Design capabilities
o Design a torch for kids
o Design the alarm bell be used for public places

• Quick thinking
o Solve many problems in bulk… as time is important for CEED tests, you need to think quickly and creatively faster while solving the paper…

• Problem solving
o At wash basins you will always see the soap in the mess, solve this problem
o Public place shoe racko How to avoid children putting fingers in the electric sockets
o Design the mobile for blind

• Resource utilization
o Come out with a school bag from a rope of say 10 meters
o Use paper to build a filing cabinet
o You have metal sheet of 1mtr X 1mtr and a wire come out with a shoe rack with maximum capacity to hold, avoid welding and screws etc.

• Drawing and rendering skills (got some wt for these too)
o Draw a 3d view of an iron
o Draw the earphone
o Design and draw the gas stove


Have fun....

Product Design

You will find this useful to get data on product design and where you would find yourself ones you opt for this course....

Product design in India today is still assumed to revolve around pysical products like a vaccum cleaner, autos, mixers, furniture, interiros etc. but this is no more true with many software products getting built now out of India there is a potential to excel in the software area too. So now with this kind of education nothing would stop one to start designing an application like MS word or excel. So with IT sector the spectrum os what you can do with this kindof study has gone much beyond it's scope in Indian context. So do bank of this...

For new kids it would be great to take this as a applied course and see how they can extrapolate using the creative skills in various industry sectors... nothing stops you from designing some stock broking financial model and I think with creative mind you can defnitely do better... again this course offers some way of out of the box thinking which may never has happaned so far taking the best or somecases revolutonary out of someone... example has any one thought of watch for blinds in usual study material ... this course may make you think of it!.... and there are various such creative problems which a normal huam may never think in his lifetime and this course triggers your thinking in this directon making you tap in more opportunities as comapred to other courses....

This may sound like selling but real crux lies in the word "extrapolation" (I think) how can you take something or learn something to bring in new innovations which are usful to human or any human function.

Switching the grears a bit if you are wondering what have been people from IDC doing outside ... there are many who have achieved greater positions like people at GM, Ford, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, Telco, elephant design and many also have started on their own....

Few have struggled but not so long I have ot met any IDCan yet who says it was a waste!.. so cheer up and give it a shot!

Bhushan

Where you can go with CEED

• IDC - Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay;
• IDDC, IIT Delhi;
• CPMD, IISc Bangalore;
• IIT Kanpur
• Some design school in dharwad - this is little suspicious as some of the ceed qualifiers got direct admission calls from this school in 1996 when I passed out

CEED

CEED - Comman entrance examination for design.

This is an exam taken by IIT to let aspirants who wishe to make their future in design. It has got product design (PD) and visual communication (VC) as two cources.

This blog is created to help promote, help asiprants to know more about it, IDCans to suggest career options.

- Bhushan