I was asked by one of my college junior “What should be a good NIFT graduation project ”. The conversation that followed is what I think everyone preparing for the Graduation project in NIFT should get to know.
Graduation project is something that you will do only once and with all your heart. This will probably be the most elaborate and innovative work of your entire career. It gets you the cake during placements so you should do everything it takes to make it memorable.
You might go to an organisation do a great project and increase the efficiency from 70 % to 80 % or bring down Defect rate from 6 % to 2%, but result is not going to make your project memorable. The objective of the Graduation project should be that the project document should become a book. A book that will be used by junior students for years to come which can only be achieved by Research. Research is the only solution to problems and extending the research is the only way to create effective products or methodologies.
So in my thinking research project is the best way to go for a NIFT Graduation project. It will open your mind, create useful content for others thus helping in continuous improvements, you will be an expert in the end of it because you have dug that topic for 3 months, and it will give you immense satisfaction for finding something that was not known before.
When I talk about Research project I am not really saying that you should create a revolutionary machine or software (I don’t know any of that really coming to use in industry). I am asking you to pick up a simple topic and learn everything about it and infer what can be done in future based on your findings. It should answer, What? Why? and How? for that one topic.
I have made my point very clear that Research is the best kind of project but the difficult part of research is finding the right topic. Chose topics that will- answer something, form a foundation for something, assist in something, compare somethings, open new paths, present factually stated opinions/theories.
A great project will be appreciated for years but research will serve for ages.
Note : Feel free to write on leanstitchtalk@gmail.com if you want to discuss more on the topic.