Mugdha is a designer and researcher working on combining public pedagogy, politics, data, and speculative thinking to design for equitable futures that celebrate our collective humanity.
Currently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow, pursuing a Ph.D at the DCODE Network, focused on understanding design practice and pedagogy and its interaction with AI in its various forms and using this knowledge to inform speculative world-building of digital societies through post-capitalist, decolonial lenses. Based at the Human-Centered Design Studio Lab at TU Delft and The Digital-Life Centre at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Intro
My design journey began with a fascination for understanding objects and how their design alters the surroundings around them. I completed my undergraduate degree in Furniture & Interior Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India but soon realized I was more interested in designing systems rather than objects. In a quest to better understand how individuals and society function and how these dualities shape the design of the systems we occupy, I decided to pursue a Master's degree in Design Innovation and Citizenship at the Glasgow School of Art which I completed with a Distinction.
My values
Design for me is about understanding people and the ecosystems they create around them. Most of my work is a reflection of that. My practice has a common thread, one that seeks to find the friction points in peoples’ lives where design, society, and culture collide. My background and interest in Anthropology and Psychology have allowed me to transfer my knowledge of human behavior to understand human tendencies & the social avenues we are afforded based on our gender, race, sex, age, citizenship, or disabilities, often through powerful stories, insights, and speculative world-building. The manifestation of these factors in design, combined with public pedagogy and futures thinking is an example of the work that I do and am interested in.
My CV
The nature of my education and experience has allowed me to cultivate exceptional collaborative and mixed-method design research skills as well as service design tools. In my recent work as a Design Researcher at Quicksand Studios, I have work on projects from designing a feminist theory of change for future humanitarian aid systems to proposing service design inputs to foster knowledge sharing and collaboration in a multinational development bank.
By virtue of my unique background in design as well as Anthropology and Sociology, I am able to understand the scope of design problems and propose solutions in both technical and human terms.
About
I have tried to share a glimpse of the various aspects of design and research that I have explored here.