CEED 2018 Topper Interview: AIR 2, Himani Deshpande shares prep tips

Himani Abhay Deshpande, CEED 2018 Rank 2

Currently pursuing Product Design at MIT Institute of Design, Pune, Himani Abhay Deshpande secured Rank 2 in Common Entrance Examination for Design 2018 with a score of 75.08 to become CEED 2018 topper. She had applied for MDes Interaction Design course in CEED exam.

Belonging to a family of Engineers, Himani shared that she chose Design as her field of choice because her parents noticed the artistic spark in her when she was 6 years old and strongly encouraged her to nurture it further. Talking about her hobbies and interests apart from her creative instincts, she said, “I’m a trained Bharatnatyam Dancer and continued to develop my interest in Indian classical and folk dances. In my spare time, I enjoy watching interesting movies/ documentaries and passionately follow cricket”.

CEED is one of the most challenging design entrance exams conducted in the country and to help aspirants prepare better, Himani shares prep and time management tips that students should keep in mind in order to succeed in CEED exam.

Absolutely not! I had a decent paper and hoped to qualify the exam, but the Rank 2 was unexpected. When the Chairman called a day before to congratulate, I thought someone’s playing a prank on me.

I secured an AIR - 2 with a score of 75.08. My sectional scores were:

• Part A - 63
• part B - 79.11

I was introduced to the field of design in 7^th/8^th std, when I first heard about NID. To me, it seemed like an ideal field as it amalgamated my interests in Art, Science and Maths. It made me curious to figure out how products are made, how they work and how people interact with them. Having said that, I have never thought of it as an unconventional (risky) field which is the popular belief.

Frankly speaking, I didn’t formally prepare for the exam. My previous experience in a design school taught me to sketch smart and sketch fast. So that wasn’t an issue for me. I believe I’m quite aware of current issues and have read significantly about Indian culture, politics, arts etc. The remaining bit is plain logical reasoning and school level Maths. So yeah, no preparation as such.

I didn’t join any coaching classes and would advise everyone against it. They are merely money making devices. One can’t teach you to be ‘creative’ in a year or two. If anything, they actually might cut down the little bit of creativity left in you.   

I would say I have been preparing for this exam for the past 21 years of my life. Everything I have seen, observed, imagined has helped me. If you aren’t able to communicate through sketches and brief writing, then maybe a month of quick sketching practice would be useful. It’s important to be clear in the communication of your ideas rather than how beautiful your sketch looks.

I spent 3-4 days before the exam going over questions papers from the past 5 years. This isn’t the sort of exam where you can lock yourself in for days and read textbooks cover to cover.

The only material I referred to was the sample question papers uploaded by the CEED exam on its official website. I’ve seen a whole lot of stuff out there misleading students, and I would suggest students preparing for the exam to stay away from it. Wrong information is worse than no information.

The exam is very India-centric. The problems given to tackle are based on issues specific to India and one must keep the Indian users in mind while designing. Apart from that, one must brush up on basics of design such as Fonts, Colour Theory, Filmmaking, Photography, Creative people of the past who have contributed significantly to the field of art (painters/musicians/dancer). These are the kind of topics that one can’t prepare overnight. If you have taken interest in these topics all your life, then you’re in luck and I guess those are the kind of people they’re looking for!

I would suggest students to be extremely calm before the exam. Have a good sleep and happy breakfast. I remember listening to my music playlist the entire cab ride to the exam center until we had to go in.

Part A Prep – Each section in the paper has a different marking scheme, so tackle it differently. I answered all the questions I was extremely sure of in less than a minute each. I spent a little more time on the two ‘6 mark’ questions. And in the negative marking section, I left out the questions in which I even had a slight doubt. It’s important to not second guess yourself and be more confident in this section.

Part B Prep – The 50 marks question is key, so I finished off all the others and kept one hour in the end for this one. I solved the design questions showing my complete thought process as I wrote down everything I was thinking. I gave alternative solutions rather than one detailed solution. Here, it’s essential to have more practical ideas and thinking about the problem holistically. Don’t overthink the exam and don’t try to be overtly creative. The faculty reviewing the paper is extremely experienced and can see through each and every paper.

The exam is a race against time, so practice enough sketching so that during exam you’re completely focused on ideation. The exam demands you to not just think about the ‘how’ of things but also the ‘why’ of things. Usually the first idea that comes to our head is a common/superficial one. So I would say think deeper and chuck out your first ideas.

I read the entire paper and decided to get done with all the other questions barring the 50 marks one, in one hour. I spent the last one hour properly conceptualising on the main problem without the time pressure of the other questions.

I think having a clear head and dealing with the time pressure would be the most difficult part. Most of the students worry themselves up by taking unnecessary pressure, and one can’t think freely in such an environment.  

There is no such section. The paper is set in a way that it tests your complete caliber to study Design and every question is important.

Make sure your intent is right. Do it because you’re passionate about Design and believe that Design can bring about positive change in our country.