Speakers

K. T. Rama Rao
_{Honorable IT Minister,
Telangana State}

Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao popularly known as KTR, is an Indian politician from the Telangana state . He currently serves as the Cabinet Minister for the State for three different portfolios namely Information Technology (IT), Panchayat Raj and​ ​ Municipal Administration and Urban Development.

KTR has been awarded Most Inspirational Icon on the Year 2015 by CNN-IBN​ ​ and Ritz Magazine. KTR's vision is to see Telangana's capital city in the coming years as the start-up capital of India.

Jayesh Ranjan
_{IT Secretary, Telangana State}

Mr. Jayesh Ranjan is the Secretary, Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana. Guided by the overall vision of IT E&C Minister Sri KT Rama Rao and assisted by senior and middle level officers, the Secretary plays crucial role in IT Policy formulation, e-governance initiatives, promoting investments in IT, ITES and allied sectors, creating congenial environment for companies to

setup and expand their operations, providing strong communication backbone in the State, skilling the youth for availing opportunities the sector offers, among others. Prior to the present assignment, he was Commissioner of Industries and Managing Director for Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC).

Jan Baan
_{Dutch I.T. entrepreneur}

Jan Baan ​ is a Dutch entrepreneur and venture capitalist, known as the founder of the Baan Company, a software company providing​ ​ Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. After selling the company, he founded Cordys, a company to provide web-related ERP products.

In 1978, Jan founded The Baan Company, a software company providing ERP solutions, which became a major player in the

ERP software industry. Jan Baan left the Baan Company in 1998. After his efforts with the Baan Company, Baan became a venture capitalist and invested in companies like Top Tier and WebEx; both were eventually valued above $1billion. Top Tier was later sold to SAP, while WebEx was sold to Cisco.

In 2005, Baan wrote a book on his life as an entrepreneur, called The Way to Market Leadership

Jay Peters
_{Managing Director,
PARK USA & Grow USA}

Jay Peters is the Managing Director of PARK USA, a world leading design & innovation management consulting firm, and Managing Director of Grow USA, a world leading professional education provider in Design Management & Design Leadership. Collectively PARK & Grow endeavor to deliver on their shared mission to Empower Design Leaders.

Jay consults, coaches and educates clients from major leading global brands such as LEGO, Nestle, Sony, Kimberly-Clark, Novo Nordisk, BASF, Unilever, Honda, Roche and many others; as well as (non)governmental organizations and academic institutions on using design and innovation lead practices to maximize value across the triple (profit, planet & people) bottom line. Jay has lived and worked extensively across Europe and the USA, and holds a bachelor degree in Product Design and marketing Minor from Southern Illinois University and a Master’s Degree in Business Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy.

Andrew Mayfield
_{CEO, Optimal Workshop,
New Zealand}

Andrew is CEO and Product Manager of Optimal Workshop. Their tools are used and loved by information architects, designers and user experience consultants around the world. Andrew’s background is in software design and development. These days he sets the strategic direction at Optimal Workshop

and is active in the information architecture and user experience communities in New Zealand and abroad.

“FIVE SHORT STORIES FROM MY EXPERIENCES DESIGNING FOR DESIGNERS” (Keynote)

In my few years as CEO and Product Manager at Optimal Workshop, we’ve built a product suite that helps researchers and designers make evidence-based decisions. I’ll share a few tales that illustrate the delights and perils of designing and managing products used by designers, one of which goes all the way back to when I was just 10 years old.

“Effective user centered product management” (Workshop)

Being a successful Product Manager for online products requires a broad skill base and a united team. We’ll cover some quick tips and practical insights for product management from ideation to implementation including design & development process and recommended approaches for being an effective User Centered Product Manager.

Andrew Mayfield is CEO and Product Manager of online user research software provider Optimal Workshop. Their tools are used and loved by information architects, designers and user experience consultants around the world.

Marcelo Paiva
_{Product Design Director and Educator,
Miami, Florida, USA}

More than 15 years building productive design teams, solving complex systems challenges and developing thoughtful expertise to foster modern design practices in Agile development environments for mobile and web applications.

Extensive leadership with designers and front-end developers, while enabling a creative environment of success for colleagues and team members.

“Impacting Organizations through proper Design practices education.” (Keynote)

The Digital Product Design field has been going through an identity crisis for almost 20 years. It's about time we try to make sense of it.

During this 30 minute talk, you will learn what it takes to impact your organization through proper product design practices education to your team members and executives.

“Rapid Prototyping Mobile Apps” (Workshop)

This session is the perfect introduction to rapid prototyping your ideas from day one. You will learn how to use the right tools and skills to go from low to high fidelity designs and validate your ideas without investing much time and money upfront.

Rapid prototyping is used through out the entire project to:

• Validate ideas with end-users
• Collaborate with Product Managers on refining user stories
• Communicate micro-interactions and patterns to developers
• Get stakeholders buy-in and approval
• And even attract Venture Capital for your crazy ideas! Rapid Prototyping is the cheapest way to test any given hypothesis for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) before investing high on developing anything.

By the end of the session, you will have a good understanding of:

1. Prototyping on day-1 (paper prototyping) - using the Pop app ( https://popapp.in) with hand sketches to quickly convey or validate your hypothesis;
2. Macro Interactions (low fidelity) - using Keynote or InVision ( https://www.invisionapp.com) to test high-level UI patterns or define requirements;
3. Micro Interactions (high fidelity) - using Principle App (http://principleformac.com) to communicate micro-interactions with mobile developers or provide that wow-effect for funding or buy-in purposes.

Steve Fadden
_{Director, Salesforce,
California}

Steve Fadden is Director for Analytics UX Research at Salesforce, and an award-winning professional faculty member with the UC Berkeley I School. He has worked in industry, consulting, and academia for 18 years, with an interest in the use of mixed methods research to study how people understand and make decisions in complex, dynamic environments.

“Decisions for impact” (Keynote)

To create, implement, and execute a successful product or service, designers must make many decisions in short periods of time. Poor understanding can lead to poor decisions which can ultimately lead to failure. So how can designers make sure their decisions -- about ideas, concepts, designs, and solutions -- are based on useful insights and aligned with their ultimate goals? For the best decisions, designers need to employ a number of formative research activities throughout their design process.

“Early validation techniques for impact across the design lifecycle” (Workshop)

Designers in rapid development environments must make many decisions in short periods of time. How can designers and their teams know that their early ideas, concepts, and designs are aligned with their ultimate goals? To make the best decisions, designers can employ numerous research activities throughout the design process.

Jeremy Yuille
_{Principal, Meld Studios,
Australia}

Jeremy has over 20 years of experience in design, particularly around human interactions and user experience, fostering collaborative working across multidiscplinary teams, with a focus on achieving impact for a diverse range of clients.

He has an uncanny ability to synthesize, translating between and drawing on, many different disciplines.

Jeremy is a strategic thinker who shares his ideas visually.

“Design Thinking → Design Mindset” (Keynote)

It's no surprise that a focus on impact brings with it a reflection on how we use design in UX projects. From building engagement by embracing ambiguity to delivering insights through synthesis, design brings a range of techniques that have changed the way we understand, conceive and deliver user experiences.

As the complexity and scale of our challenges grow, so do the situations we find ourselves designing for. Digital projects open up questions of organizational design; strategy quickly leads to culture; users shift to populations. Change becomes a material we work with, and our skills of bringing design to a focused channel or situation can be challenged.

I want to describe how we are addressing these challenges in our design projects, and what we've learned about leading clients and stakeholders across the chasm of ambiguity, to build lasting impact together.

“Introduction to Journey Mapping workshop” (Workshop)

Join Jeremy Yuille from Meld Studios for a hands-on introduction to customer journey mapping. Learn about customer experience design, what a current-state service map is, and how it can help you connect design problems to organisational outcomes.

You’ll walk out of this workshop with the skills required to build a useful snapshot of your current service ecosystem.

Pablo Sanchez Martin
_{Director of User Experience,
TiVo, USA}

Director of User Experience Design with 20 years of creative leadership gained in Europe, USA and Asia. Proud to have built UX teams for companies such as Yahoo!, TiVO, Hewlett-Packard, Western Digital or Chase. Humble to have been honored by The Webby Awards and the N/N Design Annual.

“Design Leadership in Silicon Valley” (Keynote)

This presentation is intended for UX designers who want to have a bigger impact and broaden their reach from the crafting digital experiences/services to shaping organizations, processes and careers. The goal is to provide an understanding of the design revolution that is taking place in the valley these days: who are the actors, what are the drivers, what do the new design leaders do to institutionalize design at large corporations?

“Design Leadership, a career path for brave souls” (Workshop)

How to put together a results-oriented strategy

"I shall either find a way or make one." Hannibal

• The problem definition: What’s wrong with this company (that design can solve)?
• What is a 30-60-90-day plan? Do I need one?
• How to become more data-driven oriented: the tools of the trade.
• Case study: How to increase TiVO online sales 15% with a team of two designers in 90 days.

How to create a design team inside a corporation

"We are smarter than I am

• Overview of organizational models that nurture design thinking.
• The challenges with cross-departmental collaboration.
• How talent flourishes in well managed organizations. Teaching by example vs micro-managing.
• The balancing act: how to manage contractors, full-time employee and agencies.
• Case study: Building a team of 36 designers for a top-financial institution in US.

Shaun Wortis
_{Senior Director, UX and Product Design,
Pegasystems Inc, Cambridge, USA}

Shaun Wortis leads the product UX design team at Pegasystems, as Senior Director of UX & Product Design. The Pega 7 application-building software platform is the world's most advanced and Pega's clients are the largest organizations in the world. Pega software solves incredibly complex problems, touching the lives of millions world-wide every day.

Before joining Pegasystems in 2011, Wortis ran a design and development firm in Cambridge, USA. He was a founder of the Open Scholar web platform, built for Harvard University.

“Building UX Design Systems” (Workshop)

UX design systems are increasingly critical to how organizations drive UX in their applications. UX design systems are pattern libraries of nested rules which help designers focus on core UX, and allow faster development as well. Learn how UX design systems are changing the face of the UX field and how you can harness a design system for success in your organization.

Kaladhar Bapu
_{Chair & Strategy UXINDIA2016,
Newyork}

Bapu Kaladhar is a Strategic Design Thinker and Information Architect. He is most interested in incubating new business models that deliver social impact, that are environmental friendly and that drive economic growth while strengthening the ‘Good Design for Better Living’ value proposition.

He has established a reputation for building innovative, easy and pleasurable to use products and applications for Goldman Sachs, Met Life, Fannie Mae, Fidelity, Microsoft, Sapient, Cordys, BaaN and numerous startups. He is one of the very firsts to bring User Experience Design to India.

His relentless commitment to social impact has led him to contribute to several non- profit boards.He founded UXINDIA and UsabilityMatters.Org (UMO) – a not for profit organization to create design awareness and make a positive difference in how we educate our next generation through strategic, technological and sustainable innovations. He always believes that spreading awareness is the best form of education.

Programs like Industry + Academia Fusion, UX Clinic, UX Talent Fair, Instill Design - Design Education for a Social Change, TechEase, iINNOVATE, Boycott Bad Designs and World Usability Day have been the most participated and appreciated initiatives.

He graduated from the prestigious Pratt Institute, New York in Design Management and from the Industrial Design Center, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay(IITB) in Design .

Satish Ramachandran
_{Global Head of Design, Nutanix,
San Jose, USA}

Satish Ramachandran is the Global head of design at Nutanix where he is dedicated to applying design to reimagine enterprise computing. Satish ensures the products being built reflect the user’s intent, with minimal, simple and delightful interactions. Additionally, he strives to scale the design organization and processes to keep pace with rapid growth.

Prior to Nutanix, Satish held a variety of management and technical leadership roles over the past two decades at computing infrastructure companies such as DataDomain (EMC), Andiamo (Cisco), and Tandem (HP). A deep background in engineering coupled with a long standing interest in literature, music, cognition, human behavior and philosophy enable him to bridge the twin worlds of design and engineering effectively. Satish holds an M.S. in computer science. He lives in Silicon valley with his family.

“Reimagining Enterprise computing using Design” (Keynote)

Today's Enterprise computing infrastructure is composed of various technology silos such as compute, storage and networking. These silos have evolved independently over time leading to overall complexity.

Meanwhile, technology has become commoditized, ubiquituos and cheap.

The scale of deployments are massive.

Complexity coupled with scale has led to slowness and an increase in cost.

Meanwhile, the need for speed and agility in IT has increased since it impacts business agility overall.

These observations motivate us to take a fresh look at the entire Enterprise computing infrastructure and its purpose.

This talk focuses on how design is used to reframe the Enterprise computing infrastructure problem and solve for it.

Prasadd Bartakke
_{Chief of UX Design and Research,
YUJ Designs, India}

A Design Purist

What has brought accolades to YUJ Designs is the way Prasadd drives user research, interaction design and visual design with equal zest and excellence. This is what our organization believes is at core of being a fine designer and campaigner of user centered design.

As Chief of Experience Design (CXD), he is responsible for anchoring new engagements, building strategies and teams that help our customers – most of them fortune 500 - create winning solutions to business challenges.

At work, his top operational priorities are design management, bringing structure, aligning strategies to goals, transforming talent through training, craft processes for culture of directed growth.

Prasadd is always hungry for finding new insights, revealing hidden connections and bringing clarity to supposed complexity. He enjoys taking up wide range of projects at any time – enterprise application, comsumer sites and devices or innovation stints to create impactful designs.

Prasadd conducts workshop and training programs for design institutes and corporates. He has been a speaker at national and international conferences and his talk focus on Design management, UX strategy, reimagining UX.

“There is gap the design community needs to bridge; pretty fast!” (Keynote)

At YUJ Designs not a single week goes by where we have not seen a job application. To find the right talent the process is tedious but well worth at the end. Why is it tedious? What can the design community do to make it easy?

Robert Newham
_{Head of User Experience Design,
Fidelity International, London, UK}

Robert leads the UX design practice at Fidelity International. He has a background in digital strategy and design consulting for organisations such as British Library, BP, Care UK, EY, FCA, HSBC, Grosvenor, KPMG, NS&i, RBS, Sage, Shell, State Street Global Advisors and T Rowe Price. Most recently Robert worked alongside the UK Government Digital Service as Head of Digital at the Money Advice Service.

Robert advocates design thinking and agile principles to transform businesses by focusing on the genuine needs of customers and creating compelling value propositions around these. He believes in digital as a force positive disruptive change. Pushing beyond the simple digitisation of marketing information and transactions to the evolution of digitally enabled services that make life easier, better and more enjoyable.

He has spoken at events for Interact London and TISA and has judged innovation awards for Innovate UK and CIPD.

“Design is too important to be left to designers”
Creative and collaborative problem solving techniques to tackle any design challenge. (Workshop)

Design thinking is a core process in Fidelity's overall User Centred-Design (UCD) approach.

Typically undertaken pre-strategy, this highly collaborative process transforms difficult challenges in to opportunities for design. Ultimately delivering relevant solutions that create positive impact for a business and its’ customers.

This interactive introductory session highlights the power of collaborative problem solving and includes a step-by- step guide for completing a design challenge using the design thinking process.

Stuart Trevithick
Head of Digital Design, Fidelity International, London / Gurgaon, UK / India

I've worked in Digital since 1999 (17 years) following my degree in Fine Art and realising I wasn't the next Vincent Van Gogh. I spent the first half of my career working in digital agencies, publishing and telecoms producing work for IT Giants, Mobile phone companies, the UK Government and large ecommerce sites.

For the last 6 years I have worked in financial services, building award winning creative teams, embedding User Centred Design into the businesses and providing overall creative direction. I've learnt to sweat the small stuff and to show the value of design and ux to the corporate world. In my last role I was Global Head of Design & User Experience for Multi-national Insurance brand. In my spare time I teach Kung Fu and Tai Chi, Love food (Specially Indian) and have recently started painting again.

“Design is too important to be left to designers”
Creative and collaborative problem solving techniques to tackle any design challenge. (Workshop)

Design thinking is a core process in Fidelity's overall User Centred-Design (UCD) approach.

Typically undertaken pre-strategy, this highly collaborative process transforms difficult challenges in to opportunities for design. Ultimately delivering relevant solutions that create positive impact for a business and its’ customers.

This interactive introductory session highlights the power of collaborative problem solving and includes a step-by- step guide for completing a design challenge using the design thinking process.

Lakshman Pachineela Seshadri
_{Chief Consultant and Vice President,
Service Innovation, SAP, Bangalore}

Lakshman's interest and current area of work is on Design, Strategy and Innovation. As a Design Strategist, he has been driving end-to-end software solutions and Innovation projects with Design Thinking, Business Model Innovation and Lean Methods for SAP customers globally and social change projects in India. He is a mentor for a couple of Intrapreneurs in SAP and start-ups in India.

Lakshman is one of the founding team members of SAP India, where he built the pre-sales and consulting organization. He also co-founded SAP Global Delivery and was responsible for its operations. Later he ran several strategic projects for SAP Consulting globally, and was the Head of Innovation at SAP Global Delivery prior to his current role.

Prior to SAP, Lakshman held leadership business roles at IBM Global Services, India and Digital Equipment Corporation (India). Lakshman is widely traveled and has led large and complex IT and non-IT projects across countries.

Lakshman is the teaching team member at the School of Design Thinking, Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany. Lakshman teaches Design Strategy and Innovation at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai. Lakshman earned his Master’s in Technology, Anna University, India.

“SCOPING A DESIGN CHALLENGE (FAST FORWARD)”
For Designers and Design Thinking Practitioners (Workshop)

Preamble

Design strategy is seen as interplay of design activities and the business strategy. The notions of design management and leadership integrate design with business, and design strategy provides direction and roadmap for business within this integration.

The important and starting point in the Design Strategy process is the aspect of Defining the Problem. This will be the focus of the workshop.

About this workshop

As a designer who’s likes to create a delightful solution/experience, you have to first know how to properly define the problem and understand the scope.

In this workshop, you’ll get introduced and have hands-on experience with some problem-finding methods of the design strategy practices. You’ll learn how to quickly get to core of the problem context and define the problem.

You will work/collaborate in teams, apply your empathy-building skills to define the scope of the project as well.

Takeaways

• An understanding of problem definition approach
• Problem definition methods
• Teaming/Collaboration and Empathy skills

Prerequisites

Students with some background in Design.

Shyam Duriseti
_{Co-Chair, Strategy & Content,
California}

Mr. Duriseti is a customer experience manager at Citrix Systems Inc. He's worked with enterprises, online start-ups, and non-profit organizations across various industries to help them grow by adapting to the changing needs and behaviors of users. He is passionate about creating consumer experiences for technology driven products and services. He has master’s

degree in Visual Communication Design from the Industrial Design Center, IIT Bombay and is also a graduate of Interaction Design from Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy.

His commitment to drive design awareness and education in India for sustained social impact and business development has led to cofounding the platform UX India and launching host of programs like Instill Design, iINNOVATE, TechEase, and Industry + Academia Fusion. He has co-authored 'Expanding User Experience in India' an invited article by UXPA.

Kevin Boezennec
_{Manager UX/UI, Aegon,
Singapore}

I practice User Experience design to solve solutions to complex problems.

As an athletic individual, I understand the concept of working hard through the obstacles and challenges that lay ahead to achieve the goals I have set for myself.

I trust that new technologies will help to facilitate interactions and create new social opportunities for people on a global scale. My goal is to transform ideas and concepts, however far-fetched and abstract, into a polished end product that enhances the user’s experience in everyday life.

“Driving UX in an insurance company” (TED Like Talk)

I joined Aegon, an insurance company, last February to take a regional UX management role. As my role is regional (Asia) I'm spending 25% to 50% of my time in Mumbai to put in place User Centric Design (UCD) methods and processes in order to improve the website, core of the business. From Design to delivery, I'm helping the team focusing on customers behaviors and data before changing the website. Today the team is working with a UCD approach, the flow from design to delivery is fluid across all the stakeholders, from Business to IT. The ROI of this methods and processes can be seen at different levels. Investing on design is cheaper than iterating at the development level.

“Personas Building” (Workshop)

Madhuri Kolhatkar
_{Director, Applications User Experience,
San Mateo, USA}

A design thought leader with 30 years of experience as a usability practitioner and design manager,

For the past 16 years I have worked at Oracle, USA PeopleSoft and JD Edwards growing and managing a team of designers and researchers all over the world. I enjoy and love evangelizing user-centered design best practices and providing design leadership in the product development cycle.

Before Oracle I worked in US WEST (QWEST/CENTURYLINK) in Denver, Colorado and Nortel in Montreal, Canada.

My current focus at Oracle is to lead a team of researchers to bring insights from voices from the field into the design and development world and solve real world enterprise problems.

I see my future as a coach and mentor for budding designers and researchers teaching them the best practices and skills required to flourish in this profession.

“Driving Design Thinking in Enterprise Products” (TED Like Talk)

This talk will address my journey as a woman leader driving change in the enterprise world to rethink the way products are designed.

My story traces back to my humanities background and the strong grounding in critical thinking that paved the way to design thinking in my professional life.

The theme of my story is how over the period of 25-30 years in my career what inspired me was grit, hard work, perseverance, the desire to make life better for the users I was serving problem solving bring about design changes that impact products.

“Personas - How to create and use them in your design projects” (Workshop)

This workshop will provide a primer on creating and using Personas. It will help you understand the value of creating personas even in an fast paced agile development cycle. using hands on exercises it will show you quick steps in creating and using persona to inform your designs.

Ranjeet Tayi
_{Co- Chair, UX Clinic & Partnerships,
California}

Ranjeet Tayi is a passionate product User Experience designer & design thinker with over 13 years of experience designing world class UX for large scale data products with user centric approach. Most products which he designed ranked top in category by Gartner, Forrester & other Analyst firms. Currently he leads the UX Team for Informatica’s data security products and recently designed UX for the world's first data security intelligence product.

Mainak Ghosh
_{Faculty, IIT Kharagpur,
Kharagpur, India}

Currently, faculty in Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, his research interest revolves around visual perception, visual communication, and cognition in continuum with design process and products. PhD submitted in the realm of visual perception and environmental design. Dynamic and high-performing academician - professional with a unique background of post

graduation in Design from IIT Kanpur and graduation in Architecture from Jadavpur University. There after consulting experience in the field of design and cognitive study focusing on experiential aspects of users or audience perceiving creative forms. He has served noteworthy clients both nationally and internationally. He has several accolades, journal and book publications to his credit. Various ongoing research, consulting projects and workshops are driving his passionate approach to improvise work practice aligning to his research at personal level as well as organizational level. He has been invited speaker to World congress in Paris and presenter in Singapore, speaking on perception paradigm. With a career spanning over 10 years involving both industry and teaching experiences, he has travelled exhaustively to USA, UK, Canada for his project works and allied research.

“Infographics, Semiotics and Creative Visualization” (Workshop)

Our environment, systems and operations are flooded with information. Innumerable data points generate data, these are meant for communication and various functions. But how is data visualized, transformed, and presented in an effective and meaningful way. Is there any creative way of doing so; What is the basic underlying semiotic principle to data and information communication! This particular workshop delves into acquainting the participants with some of these points raised through a hands-on session. Giving an experience to infographics and creative visualization in a systematic manner.

Muzayun Mukhtar
_{Head - User Experience,
AgroStar, India}

Muzayun Mukhtar is passionate about technological interventions in complex social problems. As the Head of User Experience at Agrostar, she is involved in solving for the agri-business needs of farmers in rural India. She is using her design thinking skills to help make a farmer’s life simpler and better. With a background in Product Design from NID,

she has contributed her research insights and people-centered design approach to variety of projects in domains like information management, healthcare and mobile technology across diverse geographies.

“Designers - Think Rural!” (TED Like Talk)

Rural India deserves our imagination!

AgroStar (www.agrostar.in) is a young social innovation startup in India's agri-tech sector, specifically focused on how technology could improve the lives of farmers. Its mobile e-commerce and m-commerce platforms are designed to simplify the agribusiness experience for the farmers in rural India by providing access to best agriproducts on their fingertips, ensuring smooth delivery to the last mile, sharing expert action-oriented advice, and fostering social learning.

This talk will introduce the audience to the impact that Design at AgroStar has created on the lives of millions of farmers of India. By design thinking, getting closer to people and asking the right questions, AgroStar's design team aims to make it simple for farmers to solve their crop problems, protect their produce and in turn help them make a better living.

In this talk, we will share our lessons while thinking Rural.

Dheeraj Batra
_{Founder / CEO, Propel Labs, Hyderabad}

Dheeraj Batra is a serial entrepreneur leveraging human centered design (HCD) to build high-impact ventures. Currently, he is the Founder and CEO of Propel Labs, a Design and Innovation consultancy. Propel Labs leverages HCD to help organizations and entrepreneurs accelerate their innovations to market and address their toughest challenges.

He is also the Co-Founder and Director of Arogya Finance, a revolutionary financing venture that lends to those cannot afford to pay for their healthcare expenses. Prior to Arogya, Dheeraj helped IDEO establish its India presence and also served as its Head of Business Design. Before that, Dheeraj focused on building businesses in India as a Director at Innosight Ventures. His efforts have been featured in books on Innovation - the Lean Startup and the First Mile - and in the Harvard Business Review.

Dheeraj holds an MBA from the Wharton Business School and BS degrees in both Finance and Computer Science from the University of Maryland. He works and lives at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad with his wife and their two children.

“Zero UI - Designing for Invisible Technologies” (Keynote)

Srinivasu Chakravarthula
_{Lead Accessibility Consultant,
Informatica, India}

Srinivasu Chakravarthula – studied in the area of Computer Science and digital accessibility and is certified in ‘assistive technologies’. Has been in the accessibility industry for 10+ years and passionate about raising awareness about accessibility, turning reactive customers to proactive customers.

Joined Informatica in 2016 to lead accessibility initiatives. Portfolio includes helping teams to make Informatica products accessible, raising awareness to both internal and external stakeholders, help teams to up-do-date about accessibility standards and best practices.

Srinivasu is also a volunteer Usability Tester for Access Works of Knowbility.org

“Impact of Inclusive Design - beyond disabilities” (TED Like Talk)

For Accessibility and inclusive product, design is the first stage to begin. There is very little awareness among design community as to why accessibility is important.

This talk will illustrate business and social impact of building inclusive products. It will also emphasis how accessibility could impact not just only users with disabilities but all users + impact for product itself.

The talk will focus on e-Services, mobile apps and technology in education.

Pradeep Joseph
_{Director - UX,
Bosch, Bangalore, India}

Mr. Pradeep Joseph is leading the Bosch UX Studio in Bangalore, India. Mr. Joseph has over 18 years of experience in the area of Design and User Experience. Before joining Bosch he has been leading the UX activities of Juniper Networks in Bangalore. He has working experience with companies like Intel, Human Factors International and Tata Elxsi.

Mr. Joseph holds a Bachelors Degree in Mecahnical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Product Design from IIT Bombay.

“Building a great UX team: The hiring experience” (TED Like Talk)

The author has experience in building up UX team across multiple organizations. He is proposing to share some of the key aspects pertaining to building up a high performing UX team with a focus on the hiring of right talent. The talk intends to address some of the commonalities and peculiarities of designers which could have a bearing on hiring and creating a wonderful team.

Abinaya Palaniappan
_{Usability Analyst,
iNautix Technologies Pvt Ltd, India}

Part of BNY Mellon User Experience team - specialized and hands on experience in User Experience Design and Design Management. Strongly believe that Design solutions can make the world a better place to live in.

Specialties: Adept in Information Architecture and Visualization, Story boarding, Mind Map, Prototyping, Design Research, Usability testing.

“How our digital ecosystem evolved to deliver unified experience” (TED Like Talk)

Designing Interaction patterns are often considered as a bad reputation, reason being they are considered to be quick, off-the-shelf solutions that could be applied without considering the context of a problem. So there is a great need for instilling a notion of design philosophy among all the engineers responsible for developing the application (in our case it’s an enterprise wide behemoth platform), thereby creating and sharing a design ethos. The problem we started to face is creating a coherent, unified language which can scale across devices - not just beauty and aesthetics. So we decided in designing a strategic platform with evidence and research based design.

As a baby step we started to focus on the components first, and then combine those to build larger components that eventually make up for a bigger ecosystem. Easier being said, actually, it really is a more daunting and fragile exercise in conducting the research. So we’ve conducted research starting with the building and foundational components .

This talk discusses about the research we created and bring substantial impact for the design we have created.

Chandni Rajendran
_{Masters student, Interaction Design,
IDC, IIT Bombay, India}

Chandni Rajendran is a graduate student of Interaction Design at IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay, class of 2017. Her research and work centre around assistive technology, education, way-finding and navigation. Her work was featured in the top four at a student design competition held at CHI’16, the top conference on Human- Computer Interaction and she has also been a panelist at UXIndia’15. She previously studied Architecture and Urban Design at NIT Trichy.

“Assistive Technology and UX” (TED Like Talk)

Digital accessibility standards and practices have come a long way, but there are still large challenges yet to be addressed for users with disabilities. What's more, designing for diverse users leads to better quality of experiences for everybody. The talk will introduce digital accessibility on different devices, discuss examples of inspiring assistive tech and provide pointers on integrating inclusive thought into your design process.

Prashanth Shanmugam
_{User Experience Analyst,
Verizon, India}

Prashanth works as a User Experience Designer for Verizon’s Technical Operations and Development Center. He holds more than three years of professional experience in Design technologies with great passion for UX Design, Usability testing and User research. His contribution to the team includes comprehending the requirements, designing and delivering high

quality experience for both online and offline world. With his expertise in Design Process, he provides interactive prototypes for Desktops, Mobiles and Wearable Technologies. He is proficient in analyzing the application or product requirements and user personas; designing user interfaces from scratch; creating High and Low fidelity prototypes that conveys design and interactions to the Business and Technology; Redesigning user interfaces to improve productivity, user performance and addressing design problems; Conducting usability tests, analyzing the results to benchmark the UI and arrives at possible recommendations. Prashanth holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology and apart from relishing as a designer he is also an avid Technophile, Blogger and a Socializer.

“Creating delightful human experiences | Social Centered design approach to impact people & Communities” (TED Like Talk)

Embracing social-centered design means believing that all problems, even the seemingly intractable ones like poverty, gender equality, and clean water, are solvable. Moreover, it means believing that the people who face those problems every day are the ones who hold the key to their answer. This design process offers problem solvers of any stripe a chance to design with communities, to deeply understand the people they’re looking to serve, to dream up scores of ideas, and to create innovative new solutions rooted in people’s actual needs. This short talk is inspired from IDEO's Human Centered Design processes and projects which made huge impact on people's lives and communities. The talk will explain about how to identify, get inspired and solve any problem that hiders the society. At the end, our approach amounts to wild creativity, to a ceaseless push to innovate, and a confidence that leads us to solutions we’d never dreamed of when we started. When all designers take inspirations from the society and nature around us to bring business and revenue impact, I strive to make designers give back to the society that nutured their creativity and innovations.

Rahul Rout
_{Senior Developer - UI,
Walmart, India}

I have been working on building a PWA for the last seven months. Have gone through the loops of learning and re-learning to get my app up and would like to discuss my experience. I am working as a web developer with Walmart Labs helping the Analytics team build web solutions for better decisions using data representation and visualizations.

I am an avid traveller and an amateur musician with a bit of skills on the piano and the guitar.

“Progressive Web Applications - What to keep in mind” (TED Like Talk)

By now, you’ve probably heard that Progressive Web Apps are the future of all mankind. They’ll bring world peace, end hunger, save the rainbows and unicorns, bring balance to the force, and a whole lot more. In the process, they might even push the mobile web forward, bring parity to web and native apps, and help mobile developers reach more users beyond the confines of the app stores. – blog.ionic.io The talk is going to provide an overview of what Progressive Web Apps are, what features do they have and what are the aspects to keep in mind when designing a PWA. Finally show a couple of Demos of PWAs.

Srinivas Chinta
_{Co-Founder & Chief Designer,
Divami Design Labs, India}

I am a UX practitioner and the Chief Designer at Divami Design Labs, a User Experience company that I co-founded seven years ago.

I love every single moment of the journey I take while designing something. For me, everything is ‘design’, and every user is a designer. I firmly believe that a professional designer’s job is to

facilitate great design while lending a truthful ear to the needs of a User.

After spending many years as a hands-on designer, now I am into writing, managing a design team, mentoring young designers and speaking to design lovers.

My background in UI development is something I value a lot as it gives me the ability to validate a design in a pragmatic sense. So, I don't just empathise with Users, I also understand and appreciate the technical boundaries of the canvas offered by my developers.

“A Case of Strategic Design” (TED Like Talk)

In 2013, I worked for a Hyderabad-based E-Commerce site that specialises in selling project kits for Engineering Students. While the product-line and the concept were hot, the conversions were not upto the mark. The management felt the need to improve the UX and that is how I joined the team.

It was not a straightforward redesign as multiple layers of issues were there to be resolved. In this presentation, I tried to cover some significant identifications and how we resolved the issues.

Some of the items I would like to speak are

• Why User research is key
• Why we need to look beyond the direct conversation we have with the users
• Why the overall experience is crucial to the success of a product/concept and how to build that
• How to read between the lines
• What can be ignored and what should not be ignored from your findings
• And how a great User Experience pays

Neha Modgil
_{Chief UX Strategist,
Techved Consulting India Pvt Ltd, Mumbai, India}

Neha Modgil, through her love for UX design has set a commendable benchmark as a woman entrepreneur. Beginning her journey as a consultant she grew as a person who understood the importance of designing user-centered websites. With immense vigor, she set up a company called Techved Consulting in the year 2007. Housing the strength

of 100 employees till date, the entire team thrives to work on the principles that Neha believes in. Neha Modgil’s beliefs are to transform business needs into a user-friendly product that can serve every user in an outstanding way. Being a speaker at many national and international seminars and an author for IGNOU’s teaching Design through Distant Learning, she is pioneering her way to the world of interactive design.

“Design Intervention- How the industry evolved with it?” (TED Like Talk)

Design is all-pervasive and omnipresent. We may ignore it but cannot live without it. The impact of design in the Indian Diaspora has just started showing up. Industry has become more sensitive towards their consumers. The good news is that UX as an industry has not only evolved but has created tremendous job opportunities for people who wish to make designs delightful. Earlier jobs were only concentrated to left sided people but design is bringing more opportunities to the right sided ones. On the contrary to what the situations were before, designers these days have started moving upwards; it has evolved from mere colours and graphics to delivering emotions to the users. In this industry, Chief Design Strategists/Design Heads are holding more value and people have begun looking upon them.

Design dictates innovation! It is not only technology that brings innovation into the market, but design has the upper hand now.

In general, we as Indians have become more sensitive towards our users, their needs and emotions. That is solely because of the kind of exposure that we are introduced to. Our tastes have refined and each person has become a design critique due to tremendous exposure.

Niharika Manchanda
_{Senior User Experience Design Specialist,
SAP, New-Delhi, India}

Niharika Manchanda is a User Experience Design Specialist for SAP Labs for Asia Pacific and Japan, where she drives the user experience and design innovation for business solutions. She has published several papers and invited to conferences in India and abroad. A Master's in Design Graduate from IIT Bombay and Bachelor's from NIFT Delhi, her journey has been creative

and exciting covering multiple facets of design world, ranging from Leather Design, Product Design to Human Computer Interaction Design and winning several National and International Design awards, along the way. Prior to working at SAP Labs, Niharika was a Lead Designer at Samsung Research & Development, where she worked on several advanced design projects for Mobility, Digital Home Appliances and Visual Displays.

“The Design Sprint - Transforming Constraints into Catalysts for Creativity and Innovation” (TED Like Talk)

Design is continuously rearranging our relationship with Technology. Our tools are getting smarter, data is influencing our process and the user is often our co-creator. All of this changes how we approach the craft of design.

All designers, engineers and product managers strive towards great product experiences. But what does that really mean in a fast-paced custom development environment? And is there an established method for complex organizations to achieve that goal and to drive innovation within the constraints of time and budget? Constraints need not be suffocating. They don’t always make your lives easier, but embracing them can lead to new paths and surprise us (in a good way). At SAP Custom Development, customer requirements generally dictate creation of custom UI. User Experience Design and development in such time constrained situations over a period results in creation of design and development methodologies that I feel would be beneficial for any product team. Through this session, I would like to share some of my experiences and best practices on delivering UX in the Design Sprint.

Balakrishna Chamola
_{Lead - Information Visualization,
Tata Consultancy Services, India}

I’m a User Experience(UX) professional with 15 years combined experience in UX Solution Architecting, Information Visualization and Visual Designing across various domain, technologies and devices. Primarily focuses and manage Info-Viz team and assignments.

Possess and practice User-Centered Design Process, Usability Principles and Information Visualization Techniques in a day-to-day engagements to create a holistic, end-to-end experience for quick, accurate and context driven information to the user.

Have been exposed and involved in various activities, like Understanding Requirements, Gathering Data, Analyzing Data, Information-Interaction Designing and Usability Testing; to transform business/user needs into effective and efficient products, which in return add high value to the business and provide engaging and delightful experience to the customer.

“Data Visualization Aiding Not Just Super Heroes” (TED Like Talk)

Data Visualization has the ability to transform complex and raw data into clean and consumable information that translates into knowledge and finally enables the user to make intelligent decisions. However, in addition to addressing the 3V’s of data, visualization is now breaking grounds in impact design, by being an aid to socio-economic problem statements.

Over the years, we as consumers have seen the evolution of data visualization in movies like Ironman, Avengers, Mission Impossible, etc. In reality, it is not very far away from impacting you and me. This presentation is an impact design solution to act on a social cause – Participatory Surveillance. Participatory Surveillance is a concept where the citizens are considered as the eyes and ears of a city surveillance. They are encouraged to contribute by sharing captured information to assist Government Official or Defense Organization in analyzing and monitoring threats, to maintain social control and further crucial in crime investigation.

This talk will walk you through an intelligent system design that uses various connected themes and systems to pro-actively react to a potential social, man-made disaster.

Kshitiz Anand
_{Co-Founder & Managing Trustee,
Happy Horizons Trust, India}

Kshitiz is a passionate designer, educator and public speaker. His approach is firmly grounded in applying the principles of Design Thinking to Problem Solving, Product Management, Design Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Consulting with the L'école de design Nantes Atlantique, he has led the India Studio for 5 years to mentor award winning

designers. Currently, he is a Managing Trustee of the Happy Horizons Trust, that uses the power of Design Thinking, Community based learnings and alternative education interventions (story telling, game based learning, learning through films and videos) to improve the quality of school education in India.

He also organises sessions and workshops to help the people in the industry get familiar with the latest tools of Innovation, gain contemporary domain knowledge around Product Management, User Experience, Design Thinking, which are key ingredients to have as we strive to build better technology products and solutions.

He is a regular speaker at conferences, TEDx events. He has been invited to deliver lectures and take workshops at various Corporates like McAfee, Honeywell, ThoughtWorks, Lumiplan, Mindtree, Arvind Brands, Trellborg, Amdocs, ADP, L&T Infotech, HP Enterprise to name a few.

“Design as Social Capital” (TED Like Talk)

Design as a commodity is passé. The modern impression of Design is to lend itself to solving problems confronting the human race today both in the urban and rural context. How may we use design thinking in this experience driven economy to create solutions that emphasise on social and economical development of societies and the individual. Can we attempt to bring about systemic change through the methods we developed as designers?

Pick up any of the Sustainable Development Goals, and you realise the huge potential design has in addressing them. Design is the keyword, not who does it. As one gets exposed to Design Thinking and Human Centred Design as a way of problem solving, one realises the immense value in addressing wicked problems and deal with complexities in an ever evolving world. The challenge being that there is no one problem in such a context. Addressing them becomes tougher and leaders need to be prepared for it.

Today Design is more about ‘Design for Need’ rather than ‘Design for Want’. Design and Designers needs to accept this challenge to create stories of Impact, and contribute towards the creation of Social Capital, as a key factor for businesses to succeed.

Naveen Mamgain
_{UX Designer,
RailYatri, India}

Inspired by the power of interfaces design and driven to improve the user experience. Strong on new ideas and an advocate of user centric designs.

My experience includes core concept development, information architecture, and product skeleton design by using my skills of User Experience

“Design, Develop and SURVIVE” (TED Like Talk)

Once app has developed and submitted to the store then in first few days decide the fate of application. And for app its pivotal to get the attention and downloaded. What companies should focus on while launching their app. What happens if your target audience is almost everyone. In this talk I want to focus on key things which we have experimented in our company and got good results.

Mario Van der Meulen
_{Design Consultant, MVDM
Singapore}

Mario is a creative who’s able to see what others are saying. A versatile, ambidextrous designer able to think strategically and execute tactically. A bit of a visionary, able to tell compelling stories.

With experience working across a range of digital and physical touch-points, he can demonstrate a track-record of partnership with colleagues and clients. And in getting the right idea and then get the idea right.

Mario understands how people, ideas and brands work, and more importantly, how they work together. As a creative leader he seeks to inspire, and be inspired by, talents across disciplines to think outcome over output.

His purpose is to uncover, assemble and advance ideas, rooted in insights and research, to solve today’s most complex business/communication/brand challenges. Create elegant and effective digital/physical solutions that encourage exploration, foster engagement and build loyalty.

In other words: humanize by design.

 Because people ignore design that ignores people.

“Design Thinking - Getting From There to Here” (TED Like Talk)

Design is being reinvented. Be it Brand, Product, Digital, Spacial - the core discipline of advancing any of these has, and is continuing to be, transformed. Ironically, it’s the people with the valued experience of longevity in their design careers that often get bewildered by the new, multiple-front process of delivering a designed outcome. Those once-warm waters suddenly turn into rapid torrents of murky uncertainties, with overlapping disciplines, new specialists and technology-based media popping up seemingly at random. I have had to learn how to adapt and change to this new playground. These are some key mindsets that I convey to seniors I collaborate with.

Sirajuddin Mustafa
_{Director, Human Experience Design,
India}

Siraj is a human experience designer at heart, been a founder & co-founder of startups, business executive, systems engineer & graphic designer. Successfully lead design, dev and tech teams throughout his 20+ years career.

He currently leads a young passionate human experience design (HXD) team at ILM UX Pvt. Ltd. based out of Mumbai.

Siraj had a successful exit from his first startup ILM Innovative Solutions Pvt. Ltd. where he lead as a co-founder, UX Practitioner and a strategic thinker.

Siraj has spent 10+ years in middle east in a strategic role as a Head of IT for a leading wealth management firm, The Family Office Co. BSC (c) where he contributed significantly to its growth as is still an admired leader.

In his previous roles he has been a Project Manager, System Admin & Graphic Designer for various verticals.

Siraj is a perpetual learner and is passionate about listening & telling great stories with a purpose to impact positively as many lives as he can throughout his existence.

“Designing for Humans - Responsibly” (TED Like Talk)

For every passionate & influential designer in the UX industry, the key challenge is to get the desired conversion rate. In search of the business success, we often tend to forget the purpose behind our design and how it impacts people in their lives day-in day-out.

In this talk, Siraj will take your through a journey of designing with the mindset of Humans and enlighten you about the impact you as a UX designer, can create by practicing human centered design.

The talk is designed to deliver an Impact by Good Design.

Aditi Agarwal
_{Creative Director,
Lucknow, India}

Hi! My name is Aditi Agarwal. I work as Creative Director with Singsys. I am an User Interface Designer . Having 5 years experience in design industry under my belt, I dedicate my time in creating creative and user friendly interaction design solutions. I have studied Communication Design from Symbiosis Institute of Design, Pune. Along with designing mobile

applications and websites, I love to design identities as well. I have experience in working with many Fortune 500 brands like Delsey, KPMG, Cisco, Olympus, Samsung. Design is in my soul.

I am 26 years old, based out of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

“Standing Strong: Leading Business By Design” (TED Like Talk)

My topic of the talk is Standing Strong: Leading Business By Design. Design is everything nowadays. A good design leader can create great impact on any business and can lead the business. My talk will be covering four important aspects. Firstly, what does it mean to be a leader in design. Secondly, what attributes a design leader should possess. Thirdly, what impact a good leader can make on any organization and it's people. At last but not the least, how can a good leader pull the future of any organization forward. A good design leader needs to maintain balance between managing a creative team and having a creative vision at the same time. Leadership starts with people, hence it is very necessary to see the abilities of the team. Every leader should adapt 8 behaviours - act with empathy, trust your people, have creative vision, learn and teach, communicate ideas, set example, be accountable and express gratitude. Talk will also be covering three real case studies from my organization where design leadership helped in producing great revenues.

Narender Gangapuri
_{UX Principal Architect,
Cognizant Technology Services, USA}

Narender has 18+ years of experience in Design with an ability to envision futuristic products with delighted customer experience. His core skills include driving the Business, product innovation, Design and Strategy.

He is solution oriented, customer focused and a forward thinker. He successfully completed design/deploy enterprise products in web/mobil platforms for Fortune 500 global clients. He is a social mover in UX community and an active organizing member for various innovative design events and international conferences.

Prachi Sakhardande
_{Product Experience Lead,
TATA Consultancy Services, India}

Prachi Sakhardande heads a Product Experience group for a Product Engineering division of TATA Consultancy Services. Her team is responsible for providing services around User Experience, Customer Experience, Information Visualization and User Assistance for a range of products across diverse domains. Prachi has 15+ years of IT experience. She has

published articles in several leading IT and UX journals and authored a patent for Assessment of User Experience Maturity.

“Change by Design – A Woman-Centric Way of Driving the Design Culture” (TED Like Talk)

Men and women leaders share many common leadership attributes. However, women through ages have got hardwired with abilities of observation, collaboration, patience and perseverance. Call it nature’s way of ensuring survival of the species, but it is these attributes that lend themselves beautifully to the credence of Design Thinking. What is Design Thinking, after all, if not the ability, to observe, connect, interpret and internalize?

This talk focuses on my learnings as a woman who has traversed through several roles, as an Interaction Designer, UX lead and then as the Product Experience Lead at one of India’s foremost IT Service companies. Through my journey, I realized that everywhere we go, the organizational obstacles that we face to delivering good design are somewhat common. As my own understanding of Design Thinking matured, I was able to separate the Problem from the Person, conceptualize changes and test prototypes. This is a living experiment, just like life. Here, I share some interesting examples of changes that we brought about in our own approach and how it helped me and my team to entrench Design Culture successfully in our organization.

Kranti M
_{VP - Design,
Furlenco, India}

A serial entrepreneur in the design space with 15+ years. See www.uxdesignlabs.com and www.furlenco.com for work done. A design mentor at Google, IIM Bangalore, Microsoft and NUMA india. An angel investor and advisor to 3 startups in the design space.

“UX gone wild -What happens when you take UX out of software and apply it to say : furniture design?” (TED Like Talk)

We built a cross disciplinary design team from UX to Furniture design. Peppered that with a highly user centric approach. The result, we built a social furniture piece called bounce. It sold out inspite of a 30 day lead time and today after 700 pieces in the market it has spawned a whole range of UX inspired furniture. This talk is a look into the magic that happens at the intersection of disciplines. The attached document is only a place holder, a detailed presentation will be made if the topic is of interest. See www.furlenco.com for details about the concept and the team behind it. The company is now one of Indias largest online furniture companies. And I head the design team.

S. Sridhara Murthy Mudrika
_{Hyderabad, India}

Sridhara Murthy Srikantham, is known for the customized fonts for Newspapers in Telugu namely Eenadu, Vartha, Andhra Jyothi, Andhra Bhoomi, Andhra Prabha, Prajashakti, Sakshi, Namasthe Telangana and also for Kannada Newspapers -Vijayavani and Prajavani. He developed Telugu on-screen fonts for several Telugu TV Channels and Gujarati for TV9. He taught in Symbiosis Institute of Design-Pune (Publication Design), NIFT Hyderabad and JNAFAU College of Fine Arts- Hyderabad as a Visiting Faculty.

Sridhara Murthy is passionate about Languages and education – He designed fonts for Tribal languages and designed Text Books for Konyak (Nagaland) and Gunjala Gondi (Adilabad and Bhadrachalam). His multilingual abilities contribute in designing books for Multilingual Anthologies, Handwriting/Copywriting books in Indian Vernacular.

“Base Line – Impact by Design ” (TED Like Talk)

The author has experience in handling Indian Vernacular in Design, development and Typography across various organizations. He focuses on exploration, understanding and the usage of fonts in different environments. He discusses about the needs, problems and solutions.

He is widely recognized for his immense contribution in developing the Gunjala Gondi and Koya both Telangana Tribal Language Scripts. Besides, he has also designed fonts for Konyak Language (Nagaland).

Narsing Rao Bongurala
_{Founder,
Wonder on Wheels Trust
(WOW Foundation), Hyderabad}

Narsing Rao Bongurala a truly inspirational person. Moving on Wheelchair started Career as a PCO (Public Telephone Booth Operator) turned to Computers by passion and Migrated from DTP to Graphic & Web Development, Branding Services to Accessibility Consulting and Accessibility Auditing. Being a Tech

Savy learnt most of the technologies on his own, facing lot of hurdles. But he never gave up learning new things. He is a Self made man.

Supporting many NGOs in his own way. As part of Social Responsibility, founded an NGO named WOW FOUNDATION (WONDER ON WHEELS) to bring in awareness, fight for rights of Differently Abled at public places, public transportation and the information technology fields etc. Recently a WOW Social Initiation “Accessibility Friendly Telangana” Hyderabad Chapter was kick started and launched by Shri V.B.Gadgil, Chief Executive & Managing Director, L&T Metro Rail (Hyderabad). Currently working as a Consultant for Graphic Designing, Web Designing, Branding and Accessibility Services to lot of National and International Software Companies and also supporting lot of NRI Telangana & Telugu Organisations.

Rajib Ghosh
_{MD, Propel Labs, Hyderabad}

Rajib is Managing Director at Propel Labs. He is passionate about leveraging Design Thinking and HCD to solve tough problems and improve quality of life.

Rajib Ghosh has always been in startup environments. Before Propel Labs, Rajib was the Head of Design at DLabs Incubator at ISB. He also founded Studio Aum, a User Experience Design firm, and as part of that worked for Citibank, GroupOn India,

EA, etc. Earlier Rajib was Director of Design at reQall Inc., one of the first cross-platform, voice enabled memory apps. He helped set up the usability presence at Oracle, Hyderabad. Rajib is passionate about leveraging Design Thinking and HCD to solve tough problems and improve quality of life.

Rajib is a graduate from the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

“Designing Zero UI” (Workshop)

As we moved into the 21st century we saw a proliferation of technology in all aspects of our lives. Visible and sometime invisible. As designers we are used to designing tangible experiences and interfaces for tangible artifacts. The future will challenge us to design interfaces and experiences that are wrapped around invisible technologies that are embedded in our day to day lives. How will we be able to step up to the challenge? The workshop will explore a few techniques and invoke discussions around this.

Shipra Bhutada
_{Director of User Research,
Propel Labs, Hyderabad}

Shipra Bhutada is the Director of User Research at Propel Labs. Propel Labs is a business and innovation lab. We build the next generation of businesses using a Design-led, Lean approach.

Most of her days are spent interacting with end users, understanding them, their motivations, needs, and desires to enable clients build their next generation of products and

services. She believes that true value of research is realised when one can impact and influence the shaping and decision making of products and services that are meaningful, desirable and easy to use by the end user. In past she has worked with Microsoft, Computer Associates, and Kern communications, helping develop products that are meaningful, desirable and easy to use. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Post Graduate in New Media from the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

“Designing Zero UI” (Workshop)

As we moved into the 21st century we saw a proliferation of technology in all aspects of our lives. Visible and sometime invisible. As designers we are used to designing tangible experiences and interfaces for tangible artifacts. The future will challenge us to design interfaces and experiences that are wrapped around invisible technologies that are embedded in our day to day lives. How will we be able to step up to the challenge? The workshop will explore a few techniques and invoke discussions around this.