“[We] become reflective researchers in situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and conflict.” -Donald Schön in “The Reflective Practitioner” (1983).
I am a freelance User Experience Design and Research Consultant and am presently available for freelance assignments. My areas of expertise are Interaction Design, Web Applications, Usability and Design Criticism. I am presently located in Bangalore, India.
In Focus:
In the context of the Design for Social Impact, I recently launched the Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! project for the promotion of child education in Rural Bihar and this project is a result of my Masters Graduation Project.
Fig: Page from actual website
Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! is an endeavor to use digital photography as a social reform tool to create awareness of the existing educational situations in rural Bihar. This project serves to provide a platform to people from different backgrounds (photographers, writers, educationists, social workers, donors etc) to collaborate. It allows to utilize the work done by one group (like photographers who go to these locations and shoot), for discussion with the others who are not able to. The project is based on the ACT-Now model, which is derived from Activity Theory.
The ACT-Now Model
My Design Philosophy
A smiling face, nature, and different cultures have always fascinated me; molding my personality and actions, and inspired me each day. While traveling the country and shooting pictures on the streets I have often come across people living in abject poverty. But the smile is omnipresent and that inspires me. The perfect blend of elements in nature inspire me towards excellence. My world revolves around users and user experience. The most simple feedback for a pleasurable user feedback is a smile. Over eight years of design experience as a student and a professional has made me into a reflective practitioner with a strong design philosophy.
Educational Background and Work Experience
As a graduate student of Human Computer Interaction Design at Indiana University, Bloomington, I have explored the theoretical and practical side of Experience Design and Research. Prior to that, as an Interaction Designer at Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, I got first hand experience of the interaction with the different stakeholders in a project and on the different technologies. As an undergraduate design student at IIT Guwahati, I was fortunate to explore the technical rationality side of things equally with my creative thinking. Most recently, over the summer of 2008, I worked with Motorola Corporation, Chicago in the Customer Experience Design Group and have been consulting for startups in India.
Photography and Beyond
I have also been doing freelance photography for the past 8 years, published images across magazines and books and taken photography workshops. In particular lately, I have been looking into Visual Ethnography as a tool for informing user research. I enjoy shooting portraits, cultures of the world, nature and street life.
Workshops
Recently, I had been invited to NIT Trichy to conduct a basic photography and Light Painting Workshop at the annual Technical Festival, Pragyan 2009. More about it here. I will be conducting two workshops at Techniche 2009, the techno-management festival at IIT Guwahati in September 2009.
