Jogi Panghaal: Designing Centredness in Products and Services

Bangalore, 2 December 2008: It was 1994 when I met Jogi Panghaal for the first time during the Doors of Perception III conference, named ‘Info/Eco’. In this conference and workshop environment the challenge was to invent new pragmatic solutions to intervene in the developing environmental crises by using information technology.

Bangalore, 2 December 2008: It was 1994 when I met Jogi Panghaal for the first time during the Doors of Perception III conference, named ‘Info/Eco’. In this conference and workshop environment the challenge was to invent new pragmatic solutions to intervene in the developing environmental crises by using information technology.

Since then we have had the chance to collaborate on a number of occasions addressing the shift from product to service design as well as exploring the higher education realm. In these collaborations Panghaal’s insight in the relation between the quality of the sensorial experience and the social environment in which they occur, has been an inspiration to me. This time we meet in Bangalore where we have a long conversation in which we explore the impact of witnessed presence from the perspective of the interaction between human beings and the materials they touch and with which they interact.

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Read the interview here

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Jogi Panghaal

Designer, Ahmedabad & Delhi

Jogi Panghaal is concerned with the shift from product to service design, with a special focus on how craftsmanship and traditional artisan communities can be an inspiration for the design of services in current modern societies.

Jogi Panghaal is concerned with the shift from product to service design, with a special focus on how craftsmanship and traditional artisan communities can be an inspiration for the design of services in current modern societies.

Jogi Panghaal

Panghaal works with artisans to use their traditional skills to find new markets for their old/new products as well as that he works with industry to enhance concepts of design. For many years Panghaal was a contributor to Doors of Perception, a conference and network in which design, industry and social science collaborate to develop new ideas for service design. Panghaal graduated in Product Design from the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India in 1977. He co-founded Lifetools in New Delhi to provide product design and communication services to communities, both rural and urban that needed design help. Mr. Panghaal has been a visiting teacher at National Institute of Design in India, ID, at Les Ateliers Paris, at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

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Interacting with materials

Jogi Panghaal argues that while interacting with material the human being changes the material , and the material changes the human being. The senses get skilled early in life when human beings learn to distinguish between light and heavy, soft and hard, more fragile and less fragile and so on.

Jogi Panghaal argues that while interacting with material the human being changes the material , and the material changes the human being. The senses get skilled early in life when human beings learn to distinguish between light and heavy, soft and hard, more fragile and less fragile and so on.

The moment one touches material, this material becomes present and it communicates it qualities. How these qualities are perceived is dependent on the way the senses of the human being have been trained and the experiences one has had. Like natural material, also the interaction with technology deeply affects the human being’s presence in the world. With the same skills of the hand for instance one can interact with natural materials and technology as well. However, the use of technology changes deeper concepts of behaviour, like how and when to make decisions for example. When making new things, the interaction with the material is playful, exploratory, testing the possibilities of the material to see what is possible. Such an attitude is part of the survivor’s kit of any human being.

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Centredness as social structure

Learning the skills to work with the material is a process of inducing in traditional artisan contexts. It is about learning the body language of approval and disapproval and finding the sense of one’s self to be able to relate to the environment. Centredness is an important concept in the daily physical practice of the artisan and it is also a quality of the products that are made.

Learning the skills to work with the material is a process of inducing in traditional artisan contexts. It is about learning the body language of approval and disapproval and finding the sense of one’s self to be able to relate to the environment. Centredness is an important concept in the daily physical practice of the artisan and it is also a quality of the products that are made.

Even more important is that it creates centred communities. A centred person creates a centred object, which will centre the users and as a result the community gets centred as well. In a technology context only reference to physical and sensorial qualities can be made. Up until today the sensorial experience of technology and the experiences one can share in online communities with others are still secondary to sensorial experiences one can share in real life contexts. A quality like centeredness may be approached in technological environments through knowing more and having more engagement, even though it is still very distant from the original experience of centeredness

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Reference to profound experience

The way references and values will be understood in a technology context is highly dependent on how a human being is grounded in his or her life. A quality experience creates a search in you to look for quality experiences in other areas of life as well.

The way references and values will be understood in a technology context is highly dependent on how a human being is grounded in his or her life. A quality experience creates a search in you to look for quality experiences in other areas of life as well.

When making reference to profound experience, these references cannot be exhausted since one makes reference to what one could be looking for. Through references to profound experiences the search for quality is shaped. In a technology context only reference to physical and sensorial qualities can be made. Up until today the sensorial experience of technology and the experiences one can share in online communities with others are still secondary to sensorial experiences one can share in real life contexts.

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Cycle of quality & wits to survive

In traditional artisan’s context, where the user and the maker shared time and place, there was an immediacy to the cycle of quality of the work. Craft had its very own consequential: an artisan made something, a person used it, the problem was immediately told, the object was improved, the artisan became a better craftsperson.

In traditional artisan’s context, where the user and the maker shared time and place, there was an immediacy to the cycle of quality of the work. Craft had its very own consequential: an artisan made something, a person used it, the problem was immediately told, the object was improved, the artisan became a better craftsperson.

With the abstract concept of the market, this immediacy has faded. The senses become less skilled, quality easily travels away and other quality control mechanisms like statistics have come in place. However, when having to address crisis, the senses are crucial indicators for survival. Sensorial trial and error, pattern recognition and analysis, define a persons wits to survive.

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Informing the form

With the new technologies there are new possibilities for service design and these can bring some values of the material to the technological realm. Synchronicity of the voice, sharing a rhythm and personalization of online environments, are some of those features.

With the new technologies there are new possibilities for service design and these can bring some values of the material to the technological realm. Synchronicity of the voice, sharing a rhythm and personalization of online environments, are some of those features.

Film 1

When tuning witnessed presence, ‘sensing it’, between human beings and machines the principle of the handshake could be applied. Both move 50% towards each other. The machine can recognize and anticipate the human being. In this anticipation user values are first. Features like historical awareness can be interesting, but are not part of the core experience.

When designing new work one looks at values and locates something in a particular community and see what shape the hardware and the technology. It is an interesting question to reflect upon the effect of this way of ‘informing the form’. To be able to inform the form, the community does not have to have consensus as before, on what values should be represented. Today’s technology is capable of materializing many ideas and forms. It is a question of self organization and self ordering now.

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Jogi Panghaal on Centredness

Jogi Panghaal on Centredness

CN: Can you elaborate on being centred as you mentioned before we started the interview?

JP:What you see in these joined families, where there are artisans, masters, and the new ones who are going to get into it, you see that what is essentially encouraged is to see what is happening and to make a sense of it yourself. You have to find your own centre. Your physical activity, the way you hit and the way you strike has to come out, not from a disturbed centre, but from a coherent centre. It is best illustrated with the potter. You cannot throw on the wheel unless you are centred and you cannot get centred unless you throw. It is like riding the cycle, you keep falling until you find a common centre with the cycle and then suddenly you are riding it. All riders have this. Even the horse riders have it. Unless you find a common centre with the horse, you will never be comfortable. I think you have this in every field when you become 'one' with your...

CN: So what is the centre?

JP: In artisan sense it is very real and very physical. You become conscious that where your energies are flowing out from. When you make a hit, and you will be hitting the whole day, you cannot be wasteful and spill your energies. It always has to be in a particular way when you hit and the movement back has to be in a particular way and then you take a rest in a particular way. It all comes from one same centre. Otherwise you become a nervous wreck and you get so tired that you are unfit for the next day. The only way you can keep coming back, day after day on something, is if you actually know how your body is working. And that your hammer beats are actually making sense, that you are not in one object hitting it 20 times and in the next 24 times. That you are not wasteful.

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Transcript Panghaal

View full transcript including film fragments here

Hereunder the transcript in text.

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