PhD Research Areas

IDC School of Design invites candidates to apply for PhD in the following core domains: Industrial Design, Communication Design, Interaction Design, Animation and Film, Mobility and Vehicle Design, Human Factors and Ergonomics. Besides these core domains, the PhD programme fosters an open interdisciplinary approach involving the disciplines such as engineering, social sciences, media and education.

Before applying, the candidates are strongly suggested to refer to the list below, to know about the research areas of the faculty members and the research topics that are suggested for this intake.

Candidates are strongly encouraged to contact and discuss their research interests with individual faculty members of IDC School of Design before applying, to gain a better understanding of the current research focus. Candidates are also encouraged to work with the faculty member, for a few months, and develop their research areas before the application.

PhD research areas for the 2022 Autumn Semester applications :

Biomimetics
Cinema
Cognitive & Physical Ergonomics
Comics Studies
Design for Craft
Design for Health
Design Forecasting / Design for Future
Design Theory
Game Design
Human-Computer Interaction
Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems
Human-Machine Interaction / Human-Automation Interaction
Immersive Media Design (VR/AR/XR)
Information Design
Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Instruction Design
Interaction Design
Mobility Design / Future Mobility / Vehicle Form & Aesthetics
Sustainable Design
Systems Thinking and Design
Typography / Calligraphy / Type Design
Visual Language & Storytelling

Below are a few specific PhD topics suggested for the 2022 Autumn Semester applications :

Faculty	Topic
Purba Joshi	Designing age-friendly cities of the future (see description)
Anirudha Joshi	Text input in Indian languages (e.g. see papers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) Understanding technology adoption by emergent users (e.g. see user usage model) Content creation in Indian languages (e.g. supporting education in Indian languages, tools to support content creation in Indian language tools such as dictionaries, spell checkers, grammar checkers and smart editors, improving accessibility in Indian languages e.g. this paper etc.) Usable security for emergent users (e.g. graphical passwords) Health and fitness among older adults (e.g. see this paper) Strategies for scaling up design education (e.g. design education at undergraduate and masters levels, school level design education, design for people from non-design domains etc.) Creating and evaluating interaction design tools (e.g. personas vs proto-personas, see papers: 1, 2, 3, 4, ) Here is a document summarising current developments in some of the above projects. The document is not publicly available, but can be made available on requests for access. Potential PhD students are strongly encouraged to do a 6-month to 1-year pre-doctoral internship in our lab, where we explore some research questions. Additionally, here is a blog for prospective PhD students.
Jayesh Pillai	Grammar of storytelling in Virtual Reality (e.g. see recent papers 1, 2, 3) Application of immersive media in education (e.g. see project & recent papers)
Prasad Bokil	Readability and legibility studies for Devnagari (Marathi/Hindi)
Sugandh Malhotra	Identification of form related design drivers in nature
Venkatesh R	Data Visualization (visual encoding, next billion users, mapping, scientific viz) (e.g. see projects & recent papers)
Vivek Kant	Human- Machine Interaction / Human-Automation Interaction (open to new directions) (also see recent papers and Google Scholar page will provide an idea) Human Systems Integration (open to new directions) (Google Scholar page will provide an idea)
Swati Pal	Designing healthcare of the future Design for elderly

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PhD Research Areas