Two design experts, a college dropout setup most innovative design school in Bengaluru

Bengaluru (Karnataka) : Who was guiding Christopher Columbus when he discovered America for the rest of the world? If you think that he was on a pre-determined path and a guided map was showing him all the lighthouses, then you are wrong. He was out in the search of Asia and he ended up in America. The world of UI/UX also symbolizes a similar journey. Pre - guided maps or the existing solutions cannot help you a big deal. The concept that marks "state of factory" is diminishing in this field and giving way to this word called redundant.

UI/UX is an essential part of your business operations. DesignBoat is a school and a studio where they think about out-of-the-box solutions and serve you better. After gaining a great experience with industrial integrated digital designs, Harsha Kakkeri, the founder and CEO, along with two Co-Founders Akshay Bukka and Chetan Deshmukh, finally decided to launch a design school. When we look at the faces of satisfied and budding future designers, then we find that what they've created is a "creative school" for the designers who want to explore the umpteen sky of the world of design and logics.

It is the creative breakdown of an idea that really matters. It might sound like a lift from the Aamir Khan Starrer film "Three Idiots" but it fits well, in the year 2016; where the three friends, Harsha, Akshay and Chetan, started a design school with a difference. According to them, it is a place where current industry practices were serving as the textbook and futuristic problems are designing the question papers. Within the first three months, the endeavor of DesignBoat attracted one hundred and eighty future designers. Harsha contributes this success to the amazing formula of the creative breakdown of an idea. According to this formula strategy, user experience, user interface and development are the four pillars to execute a successful idea.

In the past one year, DesignBoat has imparted practical training to 180 students and the current batch set to start in the latter half of October already has 30 enrolments. Eighty percent of the students are fresher engineers who failed to get juicy pay packets from campus placements. Thanks to the placement cell of DesignBoat 100 percent of them got jobs in the previous batch. The starting salaries range from Rs 25,000 to 35,000 per month. More than 45 companies offered job placements to the last batch. The remaining graduates from DesignBoat got promotion in their companies itself. They were quite happy to shift into a niche segment of UI/UX designing. In this way, DesignBoat is making a conscious effort to resolve the employment issues of India through skill development program. In fact, companies like Titan and ABB groups have approached them for corporate training as well.

The trio also actively interacts with colleges and universities where there is requirement for expert design training. In the past, they have conducted seminars in Christ University (Bangalore), Cambridge University (Bangalore), CAVA College (Mysore),AMC College (Bangalore) and Jyothi Nivas College amongst many others.

Harsha spent 14 years on the job to master the craft of UI/UX design. He has no formal education for the same. In these 14 years he climbed the corporate ladder from being a mere Graphic Designer to the Head of Product Design. This is the mission statement of DesignBoat that textbook teaching is passe and Gen-X needs practical teaching lessons than just theoretical. So, challenging the text-bookish contemporary approach of teaching, DesignBoat happens to be one of the most innovative design schools in India.

From being a techie to a designer, Co-founder Akshay Bukka focusses on mentoring and monitoring students and helping them build their outstanding portfolios, there-by framing a brighter career. He believes that "most of the other industry sectors are emphasizing on industry-ready employees, the demands of the design world are different; here we need futuristic brains that can adapt fast with the changing trends."

DesignBoat is an attempt to design creative knowledge workers with a penchant to think out-of-the-box. Most astonishingly, yet lovingly, the instructors at DesignBoat form a life-long relationship with students. They promise to support each student throughout their career in the design field. Many students come repeatedly to the teachers for clarifications, practice and to grab a cup of coffee. DesignBoat gives free-of-cost lifetime support to all their students.

In his book "Industries of the future," author Alec Ross, emphasized the need of knowledge workers with great analytical abilities. DesignBoat is a school that works on the same lines. It challenges the monotonous methods of textbooks. It promotes the culture of trial and error where a sharp analytical ability supports the creativity of students and makes them ready for umpteen "future industries."

DesignBoat is currently accepting applications, the details can be found on http://www.designboat.in/.

Industry veterans can also follow DesignBoat on social media for latest developments in the UI/UX industry - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dribble, YouTube.