Gaurav Singh

In my postgraduate Advanced Diploma in Innovation and Experience Design, I found an interesting extension of my previous technical education. While the technical aspects of the courses weren't entirely new to me, the shift from an engineering-focused environment to a design school setting was a refreshing and desired change. The first year was filled with workshops and exhibitions, but the real value lay in the diverse perspectives and ideas shared by peers and instructors. Courses like 'New Interfaces for Creative Expression' and 'The Future of Work' were about exploring design's impact on society rather than introducing new technical concepts.

The second year continued this trend of exploration and understanding. It was less about acquiring new technical skills in interaction and user experience design, and more about applying my existing knowledge in these new, creative settings. The hands-on work, especially in prototyping and design, was familiar yet applied in a more meaningful context. The culmination of the program in my final project was an opportunity to combine my technical background with newly learned insights and approaches to design. The most significant takeaway from this program was the exposure to a myriad of perspectives and the chance to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds, thereby growing my understanding and approach to design in ways that a traditional engineering environment might not have offered.

Thesis. A study on (a) Chintalayyagarepalle, a remote and off-grid village in India and (b) conceptualising simple devices using Piezoelectric materials to store and use electricity — The thesis was divided into two parts where he first looked at how electricity was used in Chintalayyagarepalle, an off-grid village after it had suffered an electricity outage owing to political unrest. He studied the piezoelectric properties of potassium sodium tartrate in the second part and proposed a method to extract more energy by extending extrac- tion at translational and longitudinal axes under shear stress.