The journey of my product design days

Course curriculum The course structure focuses on developing products, services that enables the students to think creatively. It was a balance of creativity, technology, cultural concerns, and environmental needs. Artificial intelligence (AI) was used that made the students well equipped with the fourth industrial revolution. The curriculum encourages a user-centered approach and design thinking. The course is focused on process-driven work that examines all aspects of industrial design from conception to implementation. The curriculum also has workshops that build the model and prototype making for several designs. The learning model includes- field trips, guest lectures, and workshops with artisans, live projects, fashion shows, design disha, international visits, mentoring, CSR, internships and industry visits. The course delivers experimental knowledge to us.

Placements The internships are an integral part of my course. We get to intern with the top designers working with them on their projects. Some of the top recruiter are westside, titan, central, HP, fabindia, shoppers stop, pantaloons, tanishq and clay craft. Every year nearly 80% students are recruited by them. I worked as intern for a month with clay craft in my first year. In second year, I interned with fabindia designing the products for them. All this gave me a lot of exposure and boosted my career.

India design confluence is the major event organized by our department it is an ode to Ahmadabad the first UNESCO Heritage city of India & many ways cradle of Design education in India. It attracts eminent global design thought leaders, change makers, corporate, academia, educators, practitioners, researchers, designers. It is a three day event that marks the presence of some international design speakers who tell about their life journey and experiences. There are workshops such as toy making workshops and design for search engines. The event explores the Indian design context under the SDG goals. The main attraction is the design installations which are displayed by us.

Fee structure The design courses are expensive and this being the private university, it was expensive. The annual course fee was INR 4.5 Lakhs. This included the tuition fee, examination fee, lab fee, sports fee, professional development fee and miscellaneous fee. My parents financed my fee and I paid it through net banking.

Campus life The campus is spread over 33 acres and is located in the vicinity of the city. There are more than 10,000 books in the library and around 5,000 research journals. There were design labs where our workshops used to be held regularly. we were also exposed to master class on week days.There are basketball courts, football grounds, cricket grounds, badminton court and gym. There are power packed matches in the university every day. The shopping complex is there with various shops in it. The students are from diverse cultural background. I have made friends from all around the Indian states. To celebrate diversity, every festival is celebrated with happiness and joy. The environment of the campus is always filled with friends, mentors, fun, projects and celebrations.

Admission After passing m 12th from humanities, I decided to take arts and design as my career. Gujarat is state famous for its design institutes. So I started looking for the colleges in Gujarat. I came through Karnavati University which was newly established and the course looked promising to me. I applied online on the website of the university. For admission, the minimum 50% aggregate was required in class 12th in any stream. Final admission was based on two rounds-round 1 and round 2. Round 1 included Design Aptitude test which tests General IQ, Analytical and Creative Ability of a candidate. Round 2 included situation test followed by portfolio examination. I appeared for the aptitude test which went pretty well. In the situation test, I was asked to draw the still painting of the baskets and fruits kept in front of me. My portfolio was examined and all my designs were thoroughly looked upon. The results were declared on the basis of cumulative score of both the rounds. I cracked the entrance exam and the situation test as my name appeared in the first list. Finally the fees was paid that confirmed my admission.

Faculty The faculty are from diverse background. Some of them are international faculties as well. They all are associate professors who have completed their education in design, economics or engineering. All of them are great artists and have very creative minds. They are patient and support us in all our designs and work with us to improve on them.