The Birthday Party | System Study of Local Bakeries

Posted May 6, 2026

During our third semester project for "Design Concepts and Concerns," my group and I spent four weeks exploring the bakery culture of Rajpura, Punjab. We focused our research on three local staples: Darshan Bakery, Standard Pastry Shop, and Cake Bake by Divesh. We spent our time interviewing owners, employees, and customers to understand the systems that keep these shops running. Through insight mapping and feedback loops, we identified a path forward for each business. To make our findings easy to understand, we visualized the entire system through the metaphor of a birthday party. In this story, illustrated characters represent the forces at play, and our stakeholder map is reimagined as a layered cake.