The prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here, known for its engineering courses, will soon set up a school of design.
Board of Governors
The proposal has already been approved by the IIT senate and is likely to be placed before the Board of Governors later this month.
“Be it machines or gadgets, what’s inside is what engineers design. But take a phone for instance. How should the case be? How should it look like? Where and how the buttons should be? This is not something a technocrat can work on better. There’s need for someone who specialises in product design,” IIT Delhi Director V. Ramgopal Rao told PTI .
The proposed school will offer Bachelor of Design (B.Des), a four-year course, and Master of Design (M.Des), a two-year-long programme. “There is a separate entrance test for B.Des and we will be a part of it,” he said.
IIT does offer M.Des but only has four faculty members for the course with limited intake. “Once we have a full-fledged school of design, we will recruit more faculty for M.Des and then start offering the B.Des degree... For practical aspects, design students will work with engineers and design products that we will patent and commercialise in the long run as we do for technical projects,” he said.
