TIDES

Tennis on Table

“A healthy mind lives in healthy body.”

We too believe in that and that’s the reason why Ideafarms organized a table tennis match at Siri Fort complex for its employees …

apart from the most obvious reason of having fun and yes we had loads of fun.

Every one was supposed to be in sports wear but… well every theory has some exceptions .

Even before the event started everyone was in the mood, everyone warming up and thinking like they are themselves Wang Hao …

We were pretty excited about it as such events give us a break from our daily routine and also a chance to interact with our colleagues outside the office.

All the fixtures were already decided and its was a knock out competition … with men and women competing separately.

During the starting rounds you could clearly tell who would win and also sometimes by how many points ; even though it was table tennis most of us treated it as lawn tennis and the ball seldom touched the table .

As the competition progressed the matches started getting more intense and got us all excited …

and as for those who lost in the early rounds … they started their own league championship .

When we were down to our final rounds, that’s when the competition in its real sense became entertaining.

Tip : don’t play after eating or you might feel sleepy.

As for the results

Women’s Table Tennis Fixture :

1st prize : Mita Majumdar

2nd prize : Manpreet Rai

Unfortunately the men’s table tennis event never came to a conclusion due to a muscle pull with one of the finalist(Sunil Malhotra) but since it was finals we decided that they deserve their prize.

Men’s Table Tennis Fixture :

1st prize : Rajiv Malhotra

2nd prize : Sunil Malhotra

All said and done one important lesson that we learned is to work out on daily basis or events like this can leave your body aching.

Balance and symmetry

This workshop is one of a six-part series of Basic Design workshops,

Balance and Symmetry are essential components of design that can often be overlooked. When designing a logo, webpage or product it is important to keep these concepts in mind. Ideafarms recently held a workshop for its employees that explained the concepts of balance and symmetry down to their simplest level. The goal of the workshop was to have the team leave with a better understanding of the concepts and an orientation to applying them to daily work.

Participants voted on which composition best portrayed balance and which depicted symmetry.The participants then entered into a lengthy discussion on how and why the pieces were successful.

After a round of discussions, examples were presented to the group on how Balance and Symmetry work at their best and how they can be used to make attractive compositions.

Internship @ Ideafarms

Patrick J. Shea an art major from the College of Architecture and Planning at Cornell University, USA had first visited India in the summer of 2008 for an internship at Ideafarms. Well, we must’ve done something right because he decided to come back this year to learn and work with us for a full 3 months. On his last visit, Patrick had left with an impression of the role of design thinking while conceptualising a solution and how technology and design work together. Right after graduating from Cornell, Patrick headed back to explore Industrial Design as a career option. In Pat’s words –

“During the months of June and July of 2008 I was given the opportunity to intern at Ideafarms. I gladly took advantage of the opportunity to learn about their company and business platform. Over the 40 days spent living in New Delhi and working there, I was assigned a mock website for the company. I began by learning about what Ideafarms was all about, and the image that they had created for themselves. Only after truly grasping what the company stood for was it possible for me to create something that suitably represented them.

Overall I got to learn a lot about the creative and technological aspects of IT. The internship was an opportunity for me to open my mind and begin to grasp concepts new to me about the business world and allow me to be a part of a day-to-day office experience.

In July of 2010 I was given the opportunity to head back to Ideafarms for another internship of 90 days. Having just graduated college and feeling a little more confident and mature I felt that it was time to go to Ideafarms and learn as much as I could and get a feel of what it would be like to work in a creative environment. There are a number of projects lined up for me this time round which include, designing a website, working with a team for the design of a web application and a physical product. This time around I feel that I will be about to take my experience further and learn more than my previous visit.”

The Marshmallow Challenge

20 spaghetti sticks, 1 yard of tape, 1 yard of string, 1 marshmallow and 4 teams with diverse areas of expertise competing to build the tallest free standing structure in 18 minutes with an entire marshmallow on top. Sounds simple?? We had thought so too.

The marshmallow challenge was first introduced by Peter Skillman, but we came to know about it from Tom Wujec.

It may sound easy but we were surprised by the complexity we experienced in those 18 minutes – Planning, designing and building, deciding the approach, making up our minds and then changing it when peeked at another team’s strategy.

The moment of truth was when the marshmallow was placed on top of the structure that each team had created and the teams were asked to let go of their structures and let it stand free. Not too many spaghetti towers stayed standing beyond a few second.

One’s approach to the marshmallow challenge can easily be compared to how they would go about approaching any task. This activity was a fun way for the team to learn the importance of creative thinking, planning and teamwork.

Every project is a metaphorical marshmallow which looks soft, weightless; harmless and mostly goes invisible until its actual weight makes the whole project crumble. This exercise brought back to us some fundamentals of project planning and design – Plan before you proceed, keep material properties and constraints in mind and improvise as you go along.

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