Did engineering teach me this?

In my life, I have always experienced educational gaps. I took my education in all types of schools and colleges- from dirty and ugly village schools to one of the best institutes in India. I always used to face a gap. When I passed out of my engineering college, which is supposed to be one of the best engineering colleges in the country, I felt biggest gap ever. It was time when I started to explore the world around me. The realization was, actual life was much different than what we perceived it to be.

In engineering college, we were taught that technology is everything. That is not the case. The product consists of technology but the person who will be purchasing the product is a human being. We never were taught this ‘Personal’ aspect of engineering. In today’s world, even technical products are designed considering the mindset of human beings who will be using the product. The whole stream of design and innovation is an effort to study psychological aspects of a product. Did engineering tech me this? The answer is no.

Any engineering college has to cover too many topics in a short span of 4 years. What a college is supposed to do? Should it cover the basic engineering subjects or these new trends which are ruling the field? My opinion is, all the things like innovation and human touch which I talked about, are attitudes to be developed. Innovation is an attitude which can be taught as a bye- product while teaching the mainstream subjects.

The point which I want to raise is, no one cares about innovation. No one even thinks about human users. Companies which are giving due importance to all these things are prospering like never before. On the other hand, the giants which are neglecting these issues are going the way down.