Mission Statement
Decoding complex situations and exploring the co-design of transformation scenarios provide the essence of strategic design that aims to bring design frameworks, business models and scenarios to the next level.
Biography
Alok Nandi works on the dynamics of design, innovation and narrative.
After a triple education in engineering, management and film studies, he began his career at Procter & Gamble in marketing and brand management. In parallel, working on a book and an exhibition at Cannes Film Festival pushed him in the worlds of design. After co-producing a film, he combined narrative and tech for the digital presence of Casterman, the publisher of a.o. Tintin. There, he launched a narrative lab with projects connecting comic books and AR/VR augmented/virtual realities, hence exploring Interaction Design with new modalities.
In 2004, he founded Architempo, active in prospective projects, leading strategic design works, and supporting the implementation of design-driven innovation roadmaps. Decoding practices and patterns, Alok Nandi connects fields of action in transdisciplinary ways.
Active with IxDA (Interaction Design Association) as local leader, conference chair, board member and global president. Regular speaker in international conferences. Founder of PechaKucha Night Brussels. Alok Nandi has been lecturing in numerous institutions (design, cinema, architecture schools, MBA programs, executive education sessions) and is professor of innovation and design at the Lyfe Institute in Lyon since 2014, co-founded by Paul Bocuse, 3-star chef.
Questionnaire
Where do you want to foster change and why?
Fostering change requires the involvement of leadership and the engagement of people. Design is the key strategic connector for providing the direction and the tempo to enable design-led innovations.
What or who influenced you during your professional career?
Films ans stories influenced the ways we see, we craft, we reflect. Design always begins with a narrative, and gets concrete through interactions, artefacts, environments, infrastructures, experiences and stories.
We all have those significant moments or situations (success or failure); which one was yours, and what did you learn from it?
As designer, we have a long long list of projects which remained concepts and never got realized. This at least showed that we tried, and the ones who became tangible, like a book prefaced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, are pushing you to try and try: if you know what you are doing, you are managing, while designing is to go into the unknown. Go where you have never been. Unlearn to better relearn.