Why is a compulsory subject in schools?

Ever been student or a CEO who came up with ingenious product idea and even executed it, but had hard time marketing it due to less engaging design? Ever been a Youtuber and taught yourself to edit videos and posters and had hard time juggling between these tasks? If you are the one who taught yourself to design, we honour you!

A lot of us did get through it by teaching ourselves UI and UX through applications and software’s like Marvel, Sketch, proto.io, Axure RP, Adobe XD, Invision, Figma, UX pin, Webflow, etc. but there still is a segment of innovators who prefer sticking to lucid drag-dropping apps like Canva and Adobe spark. This is a major slice of life for digital marketers and CEO’s preparing a pitch deck or a BMC. Also a lot of products aren’t able to funnel traffic to their landing pages because the Ad is too mediocre to see or is has got the psychology of colours in branding wrong.

Ever wonder what would have been the case if those marketers and CEO’s would have been taught ‘Design’ from the school itself? Feels Utopia? Absolutely. Teaching ‘Design engineering’ to students at early age can be a great differentiation to how future products will be.

This idea is not to teach ourselves to design (just as we teach ourselves to code through bootcamps or MOOCS) so that we do not have to hire front end developers or graphic designers for our website, product/brand. The idea is to teach yourself to design so that you can:

• 1. Have a design of the value proposition to the product you prepared the BMC for. This will help when you set out to pursue co-founders or hunt team members for your startup.
• 2. Express your notions on a more reliable canvas and start an instagram handle and be a real Instagram influencer. This applies to everybody who has a skill and wants to showcase it out to YouTube but is waiting for a graphic designer to aid with design.
• 3. Wait less and do more on your own. This applies to digital marketers who have to wait for graphic designers to give them graphics for the Ads.

If ‘wolfram’s mathematica’ has been doing justice to student’s math, science and computer skills, then we are firm that teaching designing will instil and enhance virtuosity. To prevent such nemesis, here is a curriculum which every school and college must have in order to justify a design rich inclusive nation:

Note: This utopian school curriculum does not contain courses like lithography, fine arts, applied arts, etc. as those are intended to be taught in design colleges for students who urge to pursue designing as full time career. Thereby the below curriculum just ensures that every student has a substantial comprehension over designing and prototyping skills when it comes to drafting products for startups or a lean interactive interface for a website having stable back-end.

SCHOOL CURRICULUM:

Grade 1st to 5th:

Origami, Quilling, calligraphy, typography.

Grade 6th and 7th:

Canva and Adobe spark to design posters for various events.

Grade 8th to 10th:

Design graphic toollike Photoshop to design comic’s art, develop characters for storytelling, and vector Illustrations and posters for events, brands and companies.

Teaching basics of video editing tools like Aftereffects or adobe premiere pro to get students acquainted with editing videos.

If Photoshop’s lessons can be evenly distributed to semesters of every grade, then it can do potential miracles to nation’s graphic perception.

Grade 11th and 12th:

In a group of 5, the students have to prepare a mini project’s to submit. The themes can be – I. Creating a comic book. II. Or Continue learning advanced video editing software’s and make a video portfolio. III. Or make graphics for a novel. IV. Or make graphics for science and technological concepts which are demanding to understand.

COLLEGE CURRICULUM:

Semester 1st and 2nd (for every college discipline – whether it be engineering, commerce, pharmacy, yoga, dance or music):

Teaching prototyping UI-UX tools like Marvel, Sketch, proto.io, Axure RP, Adobe XD, Invision, Figma, UX pin, Webflow, zeplin, mockflow, balsamiq, flinto, framer, rapid UI, Hype 3, principle, origami studio, atomic and protopie

With above mentioned tools, students have to make projects relevant to their discipline. For ex: a student enrolled into a classical arts college studying yoga can design mockups for apps which can be helpful to another people. Later showcasing such app which already has an extensive research done by the expert him/herself, contract can further be given to programmers who can easily code and deploy it.

Semester 3rd:

Students in a group of 4 can use the prototyping tools and their previous designing apprehension to create an actual product – whether it be an app relevant to their study discipline or a startup prototype or even a YouTube channel. The project should ensure the collaboration of ideation, prototyping, designing and product modelling.

How fluid will the upcoming semesters and life drift?

For “The earth without art is just eh.” – Demetri Martin.

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