Get Your Hands Dirty: Material Exploration as a Competition

A 10-day studio module where design students stopped deciding what a material is, and started listening to what it does.

In brief

Problem: First-year students force materials into forms they have already decided on.
Approach: I rebuilt a 10-day module as a team competition: scoring that rewards deeper discovery, one phone per team, and no points without proof.
Outcome: 17 teams, 9 materials, documented discoveries and working products chosen by class vote.
Learning: In this run, scoring seemed to make the depth of a discovery visible to students. Whether it caused deeper exploration is what I’m now studying.

Course: Material Exploration, B.Des first year
Format: 10 full-day studio classes, two sections, 17 competing teams
Materials: GI sheet, MDF, bamboo, wood, acrylic sheet, wire mesh, plaster of Paris, sun board, clay
Structure: 4-day Exploration Challenge, then 6-day Product Challenge
My role: Course design, rules and scoring system, live leaderboard, daily reviews and mentoring

The problem

First-year students usually treat a material as a means to an end. They arrive with an idea, pick a material that looks right, and force it into shape. They rarely let the material change their mind.

I wanted the opposite. The goal I wrote on the board on day one was simple:

Understand how the material talks to you, and develop an intuition for it.

The aim was to do something extraordinary with a material property, not with a pre-decided form.

Turning a module into a game

I redesigned the module as a competition, with rules built to push behaviour in a specific direction.

Teams and a live leaderboard. Each section was split into predetermined groups that competed on a leaderboard updated in real time, on the whiteboard and in a shared sheet. Teams chose their own names, and meaningful names earned a 5-point bonus: Quaternery, Metamorphosis, Beyond Matter, Grit Force, Material Alchemy, Trust the Process and more.
Materials by choice and by chance. Each team picked one material and drew two more by lottery. Working with a material you didn’t choose is where most of the surprises came from.
Swapping costs you. Exchanging a material cost 10 points; adding one cost 15. Teams could still do it, if they believed the new material would earn back more than it cost.
One phone per team. All other phones were handed in to the lab head. The one phone was only for documenting work and milestones, which kept attention on the bench.
No proof, no points. Only the written record and photos or physical samples counted. Verbal accounts earned nothing.

Scoring as teaching

The rubric was the curriculum. Each tier asked for a deeper kind of looking.

1 · Obvious2 pts
Direct properties and behaviours: it bends, it floats, it’s see-through.
2 · Un-obviousup to 5
Indirect or modified behaviours revealed through manipulation.
3 · Complexup to 10
Interesting combinations and experiments across materials.

Discoveries were judged on three words: Creative, Revealing, Compelling.

Students explored through all five senses (see, hear, feel, smell, taste) using existing and improvised tools, and manipulated materials chemically, mechanically and by combining them with light, water, heat and sound.

One rule made the combination tier competitive: if a rival team presented a similar combination insight, you lost those points. Teams started protecting their discoveries, and hunting for the ones no one else would think of.

Evidence over talk: the record format

Every team kept a running record on paper in a fixed format:

S.NoMaterialProperty / behaviour revealedResult: photo, video or sampleSteps and intentions

The last column mattered most. Writing down why you tried something turns accidental discoveries into repeatable ones. In the review stage I framed this as “doing and finding” versus “intentful doing”, and asked teams to map their work as a branching tree where each node is a milestone.

Beyond Matter’s handwritten table translating the class brief into their process — Beyond Matter · How one team rewrote the brief in their own words.

Transformers’ notebook page listing simple properties of acrylic sheet — Transformers · A record page: obvious properties first, experiments after.

From discovery to product

The second half of the module moved from properties to products, with its own scoring:

See how products were scored

At least 7 alternative ideas showing creative material useup to 40
Justifying how the product uses the material propertyup to 25
Meeting committed deadlines (teams set their own timeline; beating it earned points, missing it cost them)up to 30
Completion, finish and workingup to 65
The design journey story10
Class vote for best product on day 10100

For ideation I gave every team the same frame: no idea is a bad idea, it might inspire a great one; and one idea is not enough. Ideas were mapped on an axis from originality to abstraction, by source: an existing product, an existing product reimagined, a product category, the user’s life, or something that just occurs to you. Teams then narrowed down through “idea bouncing”:

~25 ideas7 shortlisted1 chosen

Mentoring at the table

Most of my teaching happened in quick sketches beside each team.

See six examples

Acrylic clutch purse. Soft-heating the sheet in repeated passes instead of once; why MDF breaks as a former; how the latch should work; asking about usability and occasion before looks.
A clay piece using capillary action. Splitting the work into detailed functional design and testing; comparing kiln-fired, normally dried and fine-art clay slabs; warning that MDF in a damp setup invites fungal growth.
A pen designed part by part. Breaking a pen into nib, refill, grip, stem, cap, weight distribution, connections and ink, and exploring inks from bamboo, coffee and fragrance.
Puppets in clay, bamboo and wire mesh. Three aims in order: something children would buy, characters with family relationships and a story, then something sellable, cheap and quick to make.
Wearable art in acrylic, bamboo and POP. Letting a story drive the form, and balancing “story power” with “aesthetic power”.
A food and medicine keeper for mothers and hostel students. Context first (who and what), then functional requirements (temperature range), then cost, durability and looks.

What students made

Beyond Matter

Bamboo · clay · wire mesh

Their name came from their approach: not judging bamboo by its appearance, but changing, testing and combining it until its behaviour suggested design directions. Their loop was observe → change → notice → connect to a design possibility.

Discoveries included the different sounds of a node and a hollow section when tapped, how scraping the outer skin reveals fibre and changes water absorption, and bending bamboo after soaking and heating. Combining clay with salt, they found they could control shrinkage, create self-forming surface textures, and re-plasticise dried clay with water, making reworkable clay construction possible.

Design directions: a glue-free self-locking bamboo joint (node, slit and tapered cut), a foldable slit-bamboo screen or lampshade, a bamboo water channel, a tactile surface library, and a sound object built from nodes and hollows. Their product work led to a puppet story with fully developed characters, and a drawing station: an adjustable MDF board, wire-mesh reference holder and storage, and a clay paper stopper.

Handwritten page listing creative directions: self-locking bamboo joint, foldable bamboo screen, water channel, tactile surface library — Creative directions: a self-locking joint, a foldable screen, a water channel and a tactile surface library.

Beyond Matter’s intro page explaining their name and approach — Intro: observe → change → notice → connect.

Notes on tapping a node versus a hollow section of bamboo — Tapping a node vs a hollow section.

Notes on combining water, heat and bending — Combinations: water + heat + bending.

Notes on a sound object made from bamboo nodes and hollows — A sound object from nodes and hollows.

Notes on salt pressed into wet clay leaving textures — Salt + clay: the surface grows its own pattern.

Notes on salt controlling clay shrinkage and re-plasticising dried clay — Clay + salt: controlled shrinkage.

Illustration of the drawing station with MDF board, wire-mesh holders and clay paper stoppers — The drawing station: MDF board, wire-mesh holders, clay stoppers.

A student shaping a bamboo section on a belt sander — Shaping bamboo on the belt sander.

A shaped and scorched bamboo section beside the team’s notes — A shaped, scorched bamboo section.

Metamorphosis

Bamboo · GI sheet

They listed nearly 30 properties of GI sheet alone (magnetic, conductive, formable, perforable, able to store energy when bent) before turning them into Laser Maze Challenge: a two-player game where each player steers a coloured laser through a maze of GI sheet hurdles on a bamboo frame to hit the centre target first. It came with written rules, timed and night modes, and a “first to three wins” series.

Laser Maze Challenge poster showing the GI sheet maze on a bamboo frame, how to play, materials and dimensions — Laser Maze Challenge: the final game, with rules, materials and night mode.

Sketch of the maze layout with blockers, splitters and reducers — Early maze layouts: blockers, splitters, reducers.

Sketch of two player zones, a common zone and goal mirrors — Player zones and goal mirrors.

Handwritten list of 22 GI sheet properties — GI sheet, property by property.

Handwritten table of bamboo properties — Bamboo properties.

Handwritten rules page for the game — The written rules.

Transformers

Acrylic sheet · plaster of Paris

Careful recording of how acrylic bends when heated and holds its new shape, how sanding creates a texture that scatters light, and how plaster of Paris behaves when mixed with sand or glue instead of only water.

Notebook page of acrylic experiments: heating, sanding, burning — Acrylic: heated, sanded, burnt.

Notebook page of plaster of Paris properties and experiments with sand water and glue water — Plaster of Paris: simple, then experimental.

Design Alchemy

The best-documented timeline: dated photos from day one (17 September) through exploration (23–24 September) to the finished product (4 November).

A student examining a cut acrylic sheet at the workbench — **17 Sep** · Day one

Clay worked into swirls and a ball on a plaster surface — **23 Sep** · Exploring

A small wooden piece painted with a lilac swirl pattern — **4 Nov** · Final

Quaternery

Section 2’s top team on the leaderboard, with 380 points at review, and the team whose photo timestamps show work continuing past midnight.

Clay coils held in an open hand — Clay coils, photographed just before 1 am.

Two GI sheet pieces perforated in different hole patterns — Perforation patterns in GI sheet.

More from the studio

See five more teams

A perforated clay vessel — **Trust the Process** · Perforated clay.

A drilled and scorched wooden strip bound to GI sheet with wire — **Material Alchemy** · Wood, GI sheet and wire.

Wood shavings with foil flakes in an MDF tray — **Grit Force** · Shavings and foil.

The shadow of a bent acrylic piece projected on a wall — **Fusion 4** · Acrylic in light and shadow.

A small clay figure held in a palm — **Material Cipher** · A clay figure.

Outcomes

17 teams across two sections, 9 materials, 10 studio days
Every claim backed by a written record and a photo, video or sample
Working products and prototypes, chosen by class vote on the final day

Reflection

The game was a means, not the point. On the leaderboard a 2-point observation and a 10-point discovery sat side by side, so students could see the gap between noticing and really noticing. The strongest teams weren’t the ones who knew the most at the start; they tended to be the ones who stayed curious longest and wrote down why they tried things. Whether the scoring itself produced that is the question my current research asks.

Learning to Notice: Field Immersion for Business Students

Two programmes in which management students went out to NGOs and public places to find real concerns. I also treated our own teaching as something to observe and redesign.

In brief

Where: JIMS, PGDM 2025–27: Self, Society & Organisation and the Industry Research Project. IILM University, Greater Noida, MBA first semester: Design Thinking & Entrepreneurial Mindset.
Role: Design educator on Dr Avijit Chakravarti’s team, Jul–Dec 2025. I helped design the course plans, took classes, observed sessions, mentored student groups and reviewed projects.
Approach: Each session moves from an activity or a film, to group reflection, to what the group works out together. Between sessions students go into the field and keep journals.
Learning: Observing is the hardest part to teach, and the hardest to watch someone learn. I’m still working out how much to guide and how much to let students find for themselves.

What we were trying to build

When we planned the course, my notes kept returning to one aim: that noticing, empathy and reflection should become second nature, not a technique used once for an assignment. I split that into three layers: awareness, a shift in attitude, and skills.

The keyword list grew long, and these were the ones I most wanted students to feel rather than define: empathy is not agreement; the difference between not judging and not caring; pseudo-empathy; a complaint versus an actual need; and being comfortable with confusion and not knowing.

Can you create knowledge from your immersion that you’re sure you can’t get from ChatGPT?

That question, from my planning notes, became a quiet test for every field report.

The course as a journey

At JIMS the course ran on 20 contact hours and about 130 hours in the field. Films such as Class of Rowdies, Manthan and the Aravind Eye Care story opened discussions on judgement, empathy and purpose. Field visits followed the same arc each time:

Concern. A first worry about the place or people, from reading before the visit.
Immersion. Observe only: space, people, interactions, and what is missing.
Conversation. Build trust, then interview users and others involved.
Persona and common challenge. Turn raw notes into people, then find the challenge that ties the issues together.
Problem statement, ideas, prototype, pitch. At IILM the strongest projects went on to an Innovation Day.

What we asked students to notice

Space and objects. The overall place first, then what stands out.
People. Expressions, actions, clothes, body language, what they say and what they do.
Interactions, systems and rules. Who deals with whom, and what rules shape it.
The intangible and the absent. What isn’t there is often the clue. Compare with other places to see it.
Show, don’t tell. Describe it so a reader can see it, rather than labelling it.
Observations and questions, not conclusions. Hold back the light-bulb moment; note speculation as speculation.
Write up the same day, and notice how your own presence changes what happens.

What makes something a “concern”?

Students found this word slippery, so I tried to pin down what makes something snag your attention. My working answer: it comes out of your world view, your assumptions and beliefs, the areas you are sensitive to, your intent, your values, and plain logic. How strongly something snags depends on how thorough those principles are and how sharp your observation is. You can’t be a neutral camera; the aim is to be aware of the lens, not to pretend it isn’t there.

Watching our own classes

I recorded sessions and the students’ group discussions, then went back through them with timestamps. I tagged each moment as an observation, a thought or a question. I also wrote down six lenses for judging a session. The point was to judge us as teachers, not only the students.

See the six lenses

1 · Interest
Are students engaged, in the room and with their projects?
2 · Initiative
Do they take steps towards the class and their projects without being pushed?
3 · Care
Do they show empathy and genuine interest in the organisation they work with?
4 · Shift
Is there a change in temperament: patience, empathy, a sense of cause, creative connection?
5 · Collaboration
Do they improvise and build on each other?
6 · The course itself
From what students go through, what should change in how we teach it?

Some patterns from the first day:

Groups agreed quickly and seldom questioned the question.
Answers drifted towards general morals rather than the students’ own stories.
Small misreadings changed whole discussions. A question about being included in decisions turned into one about taking advice.

See how I logged one group discussion

Paraphrased from my notes on a six-minute recording. Students are not identified.

00:00ObservationThe group reads the question and splits it in two: how it feels, and how to use that in problem solving.
01:10ThoughtThey have answered the second half and dropped the first. The misreading is small but critical.
02:30QueryWhy does nobody bring a personal story? Is it the time limit, or the presentation they know follows?
03:00ObservationLots of “yes, yes”. Everyone agrees, nobody stops to question.
04:00ThoughtThey are filling the page with every answer they can think of, instead of one or two that are true to themselves.
afterFor next timeGive the question five minutes of pondering before any answering. Maybe start from the opposite case.

The rewrite I proposed for that question:

GivenWhat does it feel like when someone includes you in decisions about your life? How could you bring that into problem solving?

RewrittenDid someone ever include you in a decision about your life at a crucial moment? Tell that story. How did it feel, all the way through, and how could it have been better?

My notes question me as much as the students. Was I listening, or waiting to pitch my own idea? Was I questioning everything instead of improving the programme? Was holding back helping, or just moving the load to a colleague? One note from a later session simply says:

Do not intervene.

Doing the exercise myself

Before asking students to observe a public place, I spent two mornings in August 2025 doing it myself, at the Qutub Minar ticket complex in Delhi. On the first day I mostly recorded my own journey. On the second I drew the layout and followed each observation with a question.

Sketchbook page of the Qutub Minar ticket complex with guides, guards and a crowd note — **Day 2 · 11:15** · Ticket counter, guide lounge and crowd, each with a time.

Sketchbook page showing the ticket windows, a canteen and a family sitting by a tree — **Day 2** · Where families wait and sit while one person buys tickets.

Sketchbook page with a QR banner, a guard, the canteen queue and timed notes — **Day 2 · 10:56** · Nobody used the QR banner for half an hour. Why a banner at all?

Read day one: getting there

Expecting nothing. I went in thinking there would be nothing to note at a monument, perhaps litter.
Getting lost. The metro station named after the monument isn’t really near it. I chose not to ask the auto drivers, walked the wrong way, and asked some passers-by but not others. Why those and not the rest? Probably a fear of an off-putting answer.
The QR banner. To skip the counter I scanned the ticket QR in full sun. It asked for my name, email and phone number just to enter. I gave up, then came back to it at the counter’s suggestion, and the payment failed.
Giving up. No cash, phone battery low, a headache coming on. I went home without getting in, and found the monument was much closer to home than I had thought.
What it taught me. Strain colours everything you notice. I was sweating while two women walking past praised the weather.

Read day two: what I noticed about noticing

Rough drawings with a few words keep the load low. You only have to remember what you drew.
Pairing each observation with a question (O → Q) kept me curious rather than concluding.
Notes go stale fast. Too long between field noting and writing up, and the vivid memories fade.
My hesitation to talk to people eased the longer I stayed. Many times I wanted to speak and held back, partly from the “observation only” rule, partly from inhibition.
I was apprehensive of the guides and had a ready opinion of them. They became a group worth understanding rather than avoiding.
Open question: you can ask a hundred more questions. How do you choose, and how deep should a first round of observation go?

From concern to “How might we”

Students kept asking how a concern becomes a problem statement, and I wasn’t sure either. So I drew the steps as I understood them.

Concern → issues → intangibles → common challenge → problem statement → How might we. The open questions are written on the map.

The open question I keep returning to: whether something counts as tangible depends on where you start. If the concern is children missing school, a father’s drinking is an issue. If the concern is his drinking, the reason behind it becomes the issue.

The questions I left on the map

Do the Whys give you the intangibles behind issues, and does clustering those give the common challenges?
Do you then choose one common challenge as your problem statement?
How does the concern get refined, and the problem statement, and the challenge? By discussion, re-seeing, reframing?

Mentoring and review

At JIMS I mentored about ten groups working with NGOs and on city topics: street vendors, monuments, children’s education, menstrual hygiene, livelihoods. I tracked each group by stage. My feedback kept coming back to the same few things: don’t assume, ask; check how you arrived at the concern; make a cloud of questions about what you know, what you don’t, and what you only think you know.

An example of the feedback

One group studying street markets sent me nine concerns. Four were broad topics, such as online versus offline shopping. Five were specific: a vendor priced just above what students would pay, a buyer who trusts store quality over street quality, a seller whose income swings day to day. I told them the specific ones were the way to write a concern. Then I asked them to compare five markets and a public garden (who comes where, and why), and to test the concern they had chosen against what they know, don’t know, and only assume.

Another group came back from their first review having learned exactly that: their concerns about missing information at monuments might be their own assumptions, so they built a short visitor questionnaire to check.

At IILM I reviewed mid-semester projects on three readings (attitude, articulation and content), each on a scale from cold to searing. I wrote notes on every project and recommended teams for Innovation Day. The most common gap was a jump from concern straight to solution, with the insights in between missing, and too few ideas at the “How might we” stage.

Testing prompts at home

Before using reflection prompts with students, I tried them on a family member: once reading a short text and then answering questions, once hearing the questions before reading. By the third pass she was tired of the same content, and her answers turned into suggestions rather than reflections. What I kept: tell people in advance, commit to fifteen minutes rather than half an hour, and always end with “anything else you want to add?”

Still open

How do you prepare students to discuss a question instead of presenting an answer to it?
Which of my six lenses can be seen in journals, and which only in the room?
When does a teacher’s silence help a group, and when does it just leave them stuck?
Should teachers guide students towards what we hope they find, or reveal topics only as students unlock them?