Census 2011 is all set to be a colourful affair. The National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, has designed the survey forms which will also integrate information collection for the ambitious National Identity Card (NIC) project.
The new forms expect to throw up all the data in just six months! The forms will be in different colours to make data sifting and analysing easy. Prof Rupesh Vyas of NID, who is also involved in designing the NIC, has designed three forms to be used in the census which will be in 16 different languages. The three forms are under heads of household schedule (leaf green colour), house listing and housing census schedule (golden yellow) and national population register (sea blue). The population register form is a new addition meant to collect information for NIC. T
he new census will mention higher education of an individual, which was not covered earlier. "It was after the NIC design was submitted to the government that the registrar general and census commissioner asked us to design census forms. Simplicity in filling the form and retrieval of information is vital here," said Vyas who teaches IT integrated design. "The census conducted in 2001 took six years to digitise and analyse. With these forms, information will be digitised in less than six months with an Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) scanning system," said Vyas. "Each form has been designed keeping in mind the principals of information design. Questions, wherever possible, have a key so that a simple marking or number will reveal the answer to the question. Other questions where name or other details have to be written, adequate space has been provided," said Vyas.
