Engineering Education has taken a big blow due to the Lockdown as it is one of the fields that require the learners to work hands-on with the hardware tools and software. Also, engineers have to collaborate in doing projects that address the concerns of the society. Typical Engineering course gives equal weightage to theory and lab component. With the chances of resuming face-face classes in the immediate future become bleak, budding engineers and institutes struggle a lot to keep the momentum alive. With the autonomous institutes trying their best to introduce innovations in making engineering an interesting option, they fall short in realizing an aspect which is really important to attract students towards engineering and get them the right kind of opportunities in the future amidst the disruption caused by the pandemic.
With the kind of job scenario prevailing due to the pandemic and the new normal scenario of the future, innovation plays a vital role in bringing the job opportunities back on track
Budding Engineers must be innovative enough in identifying the problems of the future and be ready to resolve them through the emerging technologies. Like the technology enabled online hyper local marts have made the lives of people easy during the pandemic, there should be thousands of use cases that are unaddressed so far. This is primarily due to the lack of confidence and innovation in the minds of our engineering graduates. The Prime culprit here is the way the engineering is taught in colleges these days. To overcome this issue, the engineers should view the world through the eyes of a designer in order to clearly understand the challenges and opportunities lying ahead of them. This would in turn benefit them as well as the society.
Design Thinking is the most important aspect of engineering which is hardly given any importance by the universities and colleges. Very few universities abroad and Indian universities have thought of giving Design Orientation for Engineering. With the kind of job scenario prevailing due to the pandemic and the new normal scenario of the future, innovation plays a vital role in bringing the job opportunities back on track. New challenges emerge amongst the crisis which requires the young minds to identify them and convert them into an opportunity. Design Orientation helps the Engineers to realize the problem and its context and help them to think out of the box solutions towards addressing the problems. The first step in any engineering process is to understand the problem that has to be addressed. This may happen either by interacting with the customers, in case a customer led problem or identifying through observation of the scenario. The second method is more apt in the days to come as the pandemic has disrupted the way the business has been before. The needs or priorities of the customers have changed a lot that requires a lot of observation to identify suitable solution for the same. This situation has opened a galore of business opportunities for the jobless youth of the country. But all that is required now is to create design mindset for the learners which can better be done through the introduction of Design Thinking for the learners at a very early stage of Engineering. This subject must be offered in a most practical way to the learners in order to enable them think about the various methods of addressing real-world problems. The subject should give exposure on how the various stages of the Design thinking process right from Empathize to Unveiling the product to the end users. The primary skills associated with the subject like communication, collaboration, presentation, etc. should be a taught at the early stage of engineering so that the learner understands the purpose of engineering and get aligned to it. In addition to the design subjects offered, the institutes must realize the importance of design component in all the engineering subjects and should enable the learner to think in terms of using the knowledge gained through the subject in designing innovative solutions.
Design Thinking as a subject should focus on enabling the problem-solving mindset to the learners. It should give the confidence to every engineering graduate on solving real life problems through technology. The emerging domains like education, health care, energy and environment have lot of challenges that are yet to be addressed. Even though these challenges seem to be very trivial in nature, designing a long-lasting solution needs a lot of study, ideation and testing. For an example, the education sector needs as revampment as it was not well prepared for the pure online learning mode before. New innovative approaches that engage the learner in day to day activities must be introduced rather than just a one-way boring lecture. The use of AR/VR technologies is highly relevant in the prevailing situation as it is quite easy to embed them in the video content delivered to the learners rather than showing them in a face to face classroom session.
Design Thinking should also support collaboration among the students to be the critic of their own work and bring in more innovative ideas to the table. The subject should also train the learners to convert their ideas into prototypes (small working model) in order to visualize the product they are planning to build. Also, it enables them to benchmark their understanding of the problem with that of the customer needs and help them to refine their product better. The other important area where our engineers lack in is the business model around the problem they are addressing. Unless a product or service is made to self-sustain in the long run, it hardly creates any impact for the customers. Students should be made to understand the dynamics of cost and return of investment so that the product sustain in the market and become successful. Designing for environment is also another key factor that must be addressed in order to build products or solutions that has the least impact over the environment. Altogether, Design Thinking and Design orientation for the subjects of engineering is the need of the hour to address the societal issues through technology.
