Design Management *

50 MAJOR COURSES

Elements and Principles of Design

This course lays the foundation for the Design minor. The Elements and Principles are the parts and techniques that constitute a Design. Students are encouraged to observe the elements and principles of Design and try and understand their interpretations. Subsequently, based on the interpretations, understand their significance in various forms of design, in various countries, cultures whether in product, architecture or graphic. Develop a fundamental understanding of the impact of design principles and elements, both - visually and psychologically.

Design Explorations with Lines and Shades

This course lays the foundation for the Design minor. Knowledge and skill of sketching and drawing is the foundation to any design discipline. This course offers intensive training in sketching and drawing as one of the means of visual representation. It helps one develop a keen sense of observation, interpretation and representation using various tools, techniques and mediums.  The course also helps in experiencing space in terms of perspective; sharpens the ability to analyze and appreciate the visible or hidden structure of things.

Introduction to Quantitative Methods

This course is designed to give undergraduate students an introduction to decision making. The use of quantitative techniques is increasingly being adopted in all areas of human endeavour. The need to collect, analyze and interpret mathematical output is increasingly being appreciated for arriving at conclusions or in strategic decision making.  This course will deal with fundamental concepts required to model, analyse and solve quantitative problems arising in any discipline. A student undertaking this course can have little to no formal introduction to mathematics and statistics at the higher secondary level.

Introduction to Operations Research

The course exposes students to fundamental optimization procedures and techniques to attain skills at structuring business problems and modelling them as a mathematical program, Microsoft Excel to solve such models, interpret solutions and use the solutions to answer the business problem. The focus of this course will be on applications of quantitative methods in modelling business situations.

Introduction to People Management

The course familiarizes students with the history and functions of management. It gives an overview of the various functions of human resource management and the concepts of organizational behaviour. It prepares students to go deeper into the area of people management equipping them with the basic background knowledge.

Introduction to Sustainability

Through the course of the program students will study relevant topics with understanding “the sources of energy that designers make use of when designing better futures.” Through a series of seminars and studio classes students will experiment with ideas to understand the concepts of energy, water crisis, consumerism, food industry etc. and the “challenges associated with each of these. With an emphasis on the role of the individual as being sustainable and ecological and in the inter-connectedness of all of our actions in the urban environment. The course pushes students further to understand multiple perspectives on energy sources and resources that influence us as a society, as communities and as individuals– citizen and, most importantly as designers. The emphasis will be on practical skills that will allow them to instantly use their knowledge in the solving design problems in the field.

Materials and Processes

Each material is a complete discipline in itself. The course introduces student to materials and processing techniques. Every material is different in character, with its possibilities and limitations. Illustrating the relation between Form, material and the techniques, the student gets opportunity to identify their own comfort with the material and the process.
The course, gives hands on experience of three materials, ceramics, papier mache and carving, and knowledge of different techniques, 
Ceramics is combination of physics, chemistry and mathematics in processing the natural soil. Student gets an insight into the tedious, lengthy process of making a simple tea mug, a product of aesthetics value.
papier mache is an ancient material which was used by women at home, for cladding household products like jars for grain storage etc. It is a simple material which students can easily employ at home.
Carving is a negative process, where the material is removed to get the desired shape.

Principles of Economics

This course is designed to expose the students to the basic principles of microeconomic and macroeconomic theory. The course will use examples from day-to-day activities and illustrate how microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts can be applied to analyze real life situations. This course also aims to develop the broad conceptual frameworks which will enable students to understand and comment upon real economic issues like GDP, inflation, money supply, and their interlinkages.

Introduction to Internet of Things

This course teaches the basic ideas of electronic communication and control using microcontroller kits to build “things that do what you want.” Students should be able to write basic programs to make the microcontroller coordinate with various types of hardware. This course builds on students' familiarity with programming and computational modelling. The student will learn to apply the skills and knowledge from these courses to robustly program hardware systems that operate in the uncertainties of a non-virtual world.

Introduction to Programming

This is a first course in problem solving through computer programming; no previous programming experience is assumed. Programming is introduced as an executable form of mathematics.  The course brings a clean separation between the problem, the model and the machine and the 2 basic binding times: program development and program execution

Principles of Management

This course provides an overview of the key domains of the field of management. It enables them to develop a holistic understanding of the functions involved in developing and managing organizations and prepares them for deeper exploration of the management domain in future.

Introduction to Finance and Accounting

The course is aimed at baptising the students to the vocabularies of accounting theories and practices. Beginning with the accounting concepts, introducing the basic tenets in maintaining the books of accounts, the course finally culminates into the preparation of the financial statements like Income statement, Balance Sheet as well as the Cash flow statement. It also covers the Bank reconciliation statement and Bills of Exchange

Design Studio (Learning by Doing)

In this course students will be given a hands-on introductory experience of basic product design process which includes: problem solving; integration of essential skills such as drawing, rendering, and iterative prototyping of three-dimensional form. In this class, students will begin to identify where and how design can act. Students will be working both individually and collaboratively.

Design Thinking and Design Process

The course equips students with the necessary methodologies and processes to the identification and analysis of different issues and concerns related to design and to the initiation, expression, and communication of concepts.

Basics of Graphic Design

Graphic Design is a minimalistic yet highly impactful design expression. Impact addresses the clarity in design and the non-ambiguity and ease in understanding a message.  The course introduces students with basic orientation of the field of graphic design. Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of visual language. They will learn the skills of designing identity - logos, signs, symbols, collaterals and illustrations through graphical media.

Managerial Economics

This course provides a foundation of economic theories and models for use in managerial decision-making.  The course provides students with an overview of theories of demand, supply, production and competition and equips them with the tools and techniques to make effective economic decisions under different business environments.

Accounting for Managers

Financial accounting provides the means of recording and reporting financial information in a business. Accounting plays a vital role as an information system for monitoring, problem solving and decision-making. This course provides the fundamentals of Financial Accounting and goes on to demonstrate how accounting fits into the overall business environment of an organization. In addition to this, Management Accounting systems, which have a strong internal focus can be effective tools in providing information that is useful in decision making at all levels in the organization. Management accountants play a strategic role in developing and providing both financial and non-financial information that is critical to the success of an organization.

Marketing Management

This course provides a conceptual framework to the students to understand the function of marketing in an organization. The course helps students to apply the marketing concepts and theories to solve case studies and projects.  The course makes them vigilant of the marketing happenings in the real world and therefore importance of creating effective marketing strategies.

Organisational Behaviour

This course is an introduction to organizational behaviour for undergraduates. It discusses behaviour in organizations at individual, group & organizational levels and provides an understanding of the underlying aspects that drive behavior. It provides insights into the different theories and their application in the organizational context. It also enables students to understand theutilisation of different tools and practices in directing individual actions towards organizational objectives.

Introduction of UX Design

To introduce students to UX design (Process & Projects) UX Design, is an important part of a product and/or service. User Experience Design encompasses all of the elements that allow human users to interact with computer systems. The students will be able to learn to create intuitive user experience (UX). The course will teach students hands-on skills that will allow them to use their knowledge in professional settings.

Typography and Calligraphy

This is a foundation course in Typography and Calligraphy and focusses on thinking with Typefaces. The practical aspect of the course introduces students to three calligraphic tools; chisel marker, sponge tool and cro-quil. The theoritical framework broadly describes the characteristics of extinct Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Indian script Devanagari and the origin of Roman letters. The course will equip the students with practical skills that helps a designer to put the learnings to practice immediately in the real-world.

Financial Management

This course in Financial Management provides a detailed understanding of the Finance Function and its interrelationship with other areas of Business. It seeks to develop the foundation for financial management concepts. It primarily helps the student to understand how businesses make investment, Financing, working capital management and dividend decisions and what are the key factors that influence these decisions.

Legal Aspects of Business

This course introduces the student to legal system, principles and provisions of various commercial laws that apply to businesses. The course will enable students to appreciate that a robust legal system of the country fosters conducive business environment along with good corporate governance. The course provides broad information about various laws like companies act, contract act, intellectual property laws, insolvency and bankruptcy code, competition laws, etc. that affect businesses. Students would get an opportunity to understand the implications of law and dispute resolution mechanisms through various real life case studies.

Product & Brand Management

There is a constant need in the markets for products or related apps. Consumers or Marketers are both working on different ideas and concepts. However, an idea is incomplete without taking it forward to a product and then to a brand.  As the success rate of products launched in the market is less than 8 %, it becomes imperative to marketing and product managers to understand the process behind developing products and brands and how to do strategic management across the life cycle.  This course helps understand the role of a Product Manager from marketing perspective and various other related aspects of decision making in product development.  Product and Brand Management, thus proves to be an important and basic course for all those students who are seeking a career in product, marketing, brand, retail, sales and also product design or user interface design.
The students will be able to understand the difference between product and brand. Due to increased focus on building and maintaining brand equity, marketers require to understand the complex relationship between products and brands and to develop brand strategies.  The course includes the relationship between products and brands; the history of brands; Brand audits and brand architecture decisions; brand selection, naming and design; brand performance measurement; creating, maintaining and measuring brand equity.

Tinkering Laboratory

This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience in tinkering with basic electronics, 3D printing, laser cutting, and other fabrication techniques. Through a combination of theory and practical exercises, students will gain a foundational understanding of various tools and technologies commonly used in design and prototyping. They will have the opportunity to explore their creativity, problem-solving skills, and innovation in a controlled tinkering environment. The course will equip the students with practical skills that helps a designer to put the learnings to practice immediately in the real-world.

Enterprise Risk Management

Risk management has traditionally been associated with financial institutions, banking, and insurance businesses. In today's business world, whether large or small, risk management is a crucial success factor. Enterprise risk management encompasses risk-based decision making in its essence. The increased likelihood of a startup's survival and the development of a resource-efficient growth model can be ascribed to risk-based decision making. This course's objectives are to increase participants' risk awareness and instill a culture of risk management. In this comprehensive course, students will gain an in-depth understanding of enterprise risk management (ERM).

Service Design

The course is designed to introduce the fundamentals of services such as service economy, service sectors, etc. & to explain the importance of service design. Students will learn various tools, frameworks and processes required for service design. Through design research, they will discover service design challenges and identify new service design opportunities. In many instances, service design is also a precursor to UI/UX design, and this course will contribute to the foundation required for UI/UX design.

Information and Data Visualization

This course will give students exposure to the history of visualization practices across disciplines and in relation to technology developments. This course will explore the theories and practices of information design through studio projects. Students will be required to research visual systems and information structures such as maps, timelines, charts, and diagrams. Students will understand the creative process of organizing, visualizing, and communicating data by seeking to make complex information easier to understand and use methodologies and processes to the identification and analysis of different issues and concerns related to design and to the initiation, expression, and communication of concepts. The course will teach students hands-on skills that will allow them to use their knowledge in professional settings.

Managing Creative Teams

This course is aimed at sensitizing sophomore students about exploring the symbiotic relationship between self, environment and ecosystem through creativity and curiosity. It will also intrigue students regarding design and its applicability in the context of organizational strategies and their functional behavior. The attempt is to give the students an understanding of the working of creative teams of different disciplines and sizes and help them develop their personal style of working with creative teams. In a burst of workshops, students will learn about the transforming organizational structures around the globe. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.

Business Ethics and Corporate Governance

The course aims to develop in the student a clear perspective on the role and responsibilities of business in society. It helps the student understand the role of ethics in business. It also dwells on corporate governance frameworks and their relevance to contemporary business environment.

Negotiations

Negotiation is a commonly used and vital tool to make decisions in the organizational context. Based on the position and role of an employee, he or she has to engage in some kind of negotiation at one point of time or the other. Negotiation is driven by assumptions, perceptions and understanding about human behavior. This course would be designed to familiarize future professionals and managers about when to engage in negotiation, how to understand the negotiation partner, what negotiation technique to use at what point in time and how to develop negotiation skills.

Machine Learning - 1: Introduction

This course provides a basic level analysis of machine learning algorithms. This course will introduce supervised learning algorithms such as decision tree learning, support vector machines, and neural networks, unsupervised learning algorithms including k-means and hierarchical clustering.  Evaluation of learning algorithms and dimensionality reduction techniques will also be discussed. The pedagogy will include case-studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving activities that helps in equipping the student with the skills required in the workforce.

Marketing Research and Consumer Insights

Marketing research is an element within the field of marketing information. It links the consumer, customer and public to the marketer through information which is used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; to generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions; and to improve understanding of marketing as a process and of the ways in which specific marketing activities can be made more effective. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process; analyses the results; and communicates the findings and their implications. Qualitative research characterized by its aims, which relate to understanding some aspect of social life, and its methods generate words rather than numbers. It is applied in situations where little is known and helps in understanding social phenomena in natural settings, giving due emphasis to the meanings, experiences, and views of the participants.

Business Design

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of the “Business” – its components, structure, operations, processes, etc. The students get familiar with different challenges in business whether strategic or operational in nature and learn to apply design methods to solve these business challenges which could range from new products, process improvements, business development, got to market plans, and customer experiences. This course also includes case studies on how design thinking approach creates a business impact in the organizations.

UX Design Project

UX design project aims to give students exposure to a project from ideation to execution. We will discuss various methods in UX that a student can adopt at various stages of the progression of the project. The students will have the option to choose from an area of interest by validation. They will also have to prove viability of the project and learn how to execute user research methods. Students will learn various tools to apply information into interaction. The course will culminate with every student being able to present a proof of concept of his/her project idea.

Data Driven Design

The design process is often treated as an art, and intuition usually is the way to go. Unfortunately, designers can’t read users’ minds. That’s why this approach may lead to a design that is out of alignment with the needs of a user. This is where the data-driven design may help.
This approach of data-driven design helps to create a user-centric design and a better user experience. It enables you to make better design choices based on real evidence about the user’s behavior, attitude, needs, etc. The course will equip the students with practical skills that helps a designer to put the learnings to practice immediately in the real-world.

Project Management

The Project Management course helps students understand how the large-scale projects are conceptualized, planned and executed in a systematic way. The course covers the generation and screening of project ideas, assessment of techno-economic feasibility of the projects, project appraisal techniques, project financing (including infrastructure finance), project planning and control using network techniques (PERT and CPM), cost control and quality control, crashing of activities for optimising project costs vis-a-vis project schedule, computerized project management (using Microsoft Project), and risk management for projects.

Strategic Management

Today it is the irregular people, with irregular ideas developing irregular strategies that create irregular wealth and creating a threat for competitors. This course will enable students to understand the dynamic nature of environment i.e. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA world) and the need for strategy. Strategic decisions determine the future direction and competitive position of an enterprise. This course reaffirms the relationship between strategic planning, formulation and implementation. The practical and interwoven theoretical nature of class deliberations will cull out the deeper understanding of strategy in business. This course enables a student to build business decisions based on careful analysis of resources, capabilities, competition and environment.

Machine Learning - 2: Introduction to Deep Learning

This course covers introductory aspects of deep learning techniques. Some of the tools we learn are deep learning techniques, including Convolutional networks, RNNs, LSTM, deep auto encoders. Applications of Deep learning to text mining, image and Video Processing will be covered. Applications of deep learning to Business and Social media analytics will also be introduced. The pedagogy will include case-studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving activities that helps in equipping the student with the skills required in the workforce.

Integrated Marketing Communication

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a concept of integrating activities of marketing, selling, advertising, sales promotion, and other forms of Communication activities at the marketplace, to build and maintain brand value and brand equity for products and services. The Course is expected to offer an overall perspective of Marketing Communications and Promotion -- theory and practice - with activities including advertising, public relations, sales promotion, events, personal selling, direct marketing, and on-line promotion for overall effectiveness and success of the brand and the marketing company.

Business Model Innovation

This course is focused on studying existing businesses and their business models and designing new business models for existing and new businesses or start-ups. Right business model is the core for an organisation for establishing a foot in an industry and gain a sustainable growth. Market trends, regulations, new opportunities and consumer needs, competition are some of the factors that could change the business model of an organisation. This course also dwells into various approaches for business model innovation The course will teach students hands-on skills that will allow them to use their knowledge in the real world immediately in an entrepreneurial setting.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking challenges students to develop a comprehensive project that synthesizes the understandng of the systems thinking and its application. Understanding multiple stakeholders and users, students will work towards their projects as a form of systems design, with a particular focus on user-centered design and innovation. Students will primarily work individually but may collaborate with classmates and other programs with special approval.

Gamification

Learn how fashion and luxury companies work and understand their brands, products, retail, and communication strategies. Travel through business models, international development, and product categories with industry influent experts.
Adopting a case-study approach, the course presents strategic brand management in luxury and fashion companies as a balancing act: tradition vs. innovation, expertise vs. experimentation, casual vs. stylish; in order to increase the brand value by nurturing the brand heritage and at the same time staying fresh, relevant, and contemporary in the global marketplace.
Topics such as the impact of new retail channels, new media channels, and new business declinations for the brand and emerging markets will be discussed in the course

Speculative Design

This course explores the idea of inevitability and how designing for the future can affect your thinking of the present. This is to prepare students for the upcoming uncertainty and cross-disciplinary paradigms that the design world is shifting towards.
The subject matter here deals with looking into recent past, understanding and mapping trends, exploring the lateral present, envisioning the near future with respect to one or multiples of 8 speculative lenses, generating a plausible scenario, developing disruptive/innovative solutions or outcomes in response to a future problem/opportunity. The course will equip the students with practical skills that helps a designer to put the learnings to practice immediately in the real-world.

Leadership and Change Management

The course creates awareness about the various kinds of leadership. It critically analyzes the concept of leadership and the associated theories in the organizational context. It helps develop understanding of the change process in business organisations and equips students with knowledge of managing change.