Ganesh N. Prabhu, Professor of Strategy, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Professor Ganesh N. Prabhu is a nominated member on the India Design Council. His doctorate in strategy was from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and his areas of research and teaching are product innovation, strategy and entrepreneurship. He has led executive programs such as Strategic Analysis for Competitive Advantage, Product Development Strategy for Entrepreneurs, NID-IIMB Joint Program on Design and Strategy, Creating Successful New Products and Management Program for Women Entrepreneurs. He has published award winning papers and research cases. He has a masters from the Institute of Rural Management Anand and a bachelors in physics from Elphinstone College Mumbai. He earlier held positions of Chairperson, Post Graduate Program for two years and Chairperson, Placement for three and half years at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
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Amaresh Chakrabarti, Professor, Center for Product Design & Manufacturing, India Institute of Science, Bangalore
AMARESH CHAKRABARTI is a Professor at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He has BE in Mechanical Engineering from University of Calcutta, ME in Mechanical Systems Design from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and PhD in Engineering Design from University of Cambridge UK. His synthesis software FuncSION won an award at the ‘Design Application of the Year’ category of 1994 Morgans-Grampian Manufacturing Industry Achievements Award Competition. After completing his PhD, Dr Chakrabarti led for ten years the design synthesis team at Engineering Design Centre – an EPSRC Centre for Excellence in Engineering Design at the Department of Engineering of University of Cambridge, before joining Indian Institute of Science. Prof. Chakrabarti founded IDeASLab – the first laboratory in India for research into design creativity, sustainability and product innovation. Professor Chakrabarti is a Member of the CII National Committee on Design, India. He is Area Editor – Design Synthesis for Research in Eng. Design Journal (Springer), Regional Editor Asia for Jorunal of Remanufacturing (Springer), and Advisory Editor for MM Science Journal, AI EDAM Journal (CUP) and Journal of Engineering Design (Taylor & Francis). He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Design Society, UK, Co-Chair for its Special Interest Group (SIG) on Design Creativity, and a Member of the Advisory Committee for its SIG on Computational Design Synthesis. He has been Programme Chair for ICoRD 2009 and 2011 conferences, Co-Chair for AI in Design and Design Computing and Cognition Conferences, International Conference on Design Creativity 2010, and a member of the Programme committee of ICED, Design and IASDR Conferences. Prof Chakrabarti is a Fellow of Cambridge Commonwealth Society and Cambridge Philosophical Society, UK. He has co-authored/edited 4 books, over 200 papers in international journals, conferences and book-chapters, and holds 4 patents and 2 software copyrights. He has co-founded Virtual Reality Laboratory (VR-Lab) for exploring the use of virtual reality for product development. With Lucienne Blessing, Amaresh Chakrabarti developed DRM – the most widely used design research methodology in the world. His research interests include design synthesis, creativity, collaborative design, ecodesign, knowledge management, design for variety, and design research methodology.
Vinai Kumar, Acting Dean, National Institute of Design (NID)
Vinai Kumar is design researcher and educator. His areas of interests are Ergonomics and HCI, Industrial Design, User Experience and Interaction Design, Systems Thinking, Strategic Design and Design Management, Innovation Management, and Design Education. In the past he has taught at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) New Delhi, NIFT New Delhi, and FDDI Noida. He nurtured and headed the department of Industrial Design at SPA. He is presently a professor of design and design management, and Acting Dean at the National Institute of Desiign (NID), Gandhinagar. He has been actively involved in the development of the campus and educational and research programmes for the past few years at NID. He has made presentations at national and international seminars, and written papers articulating new ideas and frameworks for design education and practice. Some of his writings and papers are available at his blog http://kumarvinai.blogspot.com, https://sites.google.com/site/vinaikumar/papers.
Dr. S. Ghosal, Acting Dean NID R&D Campus, Bangalore
Dr.S.Ghosal is currently the Acting Dean of NID's R&D Campus at Bangalore. He joined the National Institute of Design in 1987 in the Faculty of Industrial Design. His parent subject being Ergonomics / Human Factors, he has worked in almost all areas of design. He has been teaching Human Factors and UID both for the UG and PG Courses at NID India since 1987 and was instrumental in developing NID's two PG Programmes in Software and User Interface Design and Information and Digital Design, which were offered during the period 2001-2007. He has guided more than 75 projects (students' projects, research and consultancy projects) in UID and Interaction Design including innovative ones. In his Administrative positions, Dr. Ghosal was in charge of NID's training activities (as Vice-Chairman of the Activity) during the period 1996 – 2000. During the period 2000 – 2002, he was in charge of NID's Outreach Activities (As Chairman of the Activity). As academic and research accolades, till date, he has been the recipient of a number of international scholarships from the World Health Organisation, British Council, International Council of Societies of Industrial Design etc. Dr. Ghosal holds a Ph.D (with specialization in Ergonomics) from the University of Calcutta, a Post Graduate Diploma in Management of Technology and he has about 20 publications, nationally and internationally. Dr. Ghosal's areas of interest in education research and consultancy range from User Interface Design, Management of R&D and Product Innovation, Strategic intervention of design in new business developments and systems development and integration.
Dr. Murli Nagasundaram, Head, Learning Innovation, Manipal Universal Learning
Dr. Murli Nagasundaram is a consultant on creativity, innovation and design thinking in business, government, education and society. He has been training and facilitating business teams, conducting research, and teaching innovation and information technology for over two decades. He was trained in the Osborn-Parnes Creativity Problem Solving Methodology (CPSI) at the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) founded by Alex Osborne and Sid Parnes, the oldest such gathering. In the 1980’s he co-founded Collaborative Technologies Corporation, in Austin, Texas, where he helped develop VisionQuest, a pioneering groupware tool to structure and augment group interaction and creative thinking, as well as the socio-technological theories on which it was founded. Later, he taught at the Boise State University College of Business for over a decade. He has also has taught, conducted workshops, and consulted at other institutions and corporations in the US, Singapore, Dubai, and in India. Murli’s interests extend to organizations, culture, cognition, collaboration, complexity and emergence among others. He received his PhD from the University of Georgia, Athens. His prior education was at IIM Kolkata and REC (later, NIT) Tiruchirapalli.
Dr. Satyaki Roy, Assistant Professor, Design Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Dr. Satyaki Roy is a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur jointly associated with the Design Programme and Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a member of the Programme Implementation Committee of the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (Joint initiative of IITs, IISc & MHRD) and the coordinator of NPTEL, IIT Kanpur.
He is the founder member and presently the faculty coordinator of the Media Technology Center at IIT Kanpur. Dr. Roy’s research and teaching interests include Media Arts, History of Art, Visual Communication and Experience Design. In USID Gurukul he sees an opportunity for students to be exposed to a process of learning that is experiential and exploratory and therein the pragmatic knowledge to be more enduring.
Warren Greving, Director, Srishti Labs
Warren Greving has been doing product research and development since 1986 . Currently, as director of Srishti Labs, he is developing a new research organization as a part of Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India. This new lab focuses on collaborating with companies during the early phase of innovation using design thinking to effectively navigate the breadth of new users, value propositions and business models in high growth markets like India. He also consults on the challenges of international R&D organizations working in the global mixture of developed and developing markets with a focus on the US, India, China and Russia. From 2001 to 2008, he led the establishment and development of three new, research organizations for Hewlett-Packard in India, China and Russia. His primary research interest is the interaction between human culture, technology and new product development. His career was launched from the combination of degrees in cross-cultural communication, computer science, mathematics and education. Presently, he lives in Bangalore, India but has enjoyed living in Beijing, California, Hong Kong, Colorado and Taiwan.
Dr. Gerrit
Meixner, Senior Researcher, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Kaiserslautern, Germany
Dr. Gerrit Meixner is Senior Researcher and head of the group "Human-Machine-Interaction" at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Furthermore he is lecturer in Human-Machine-Interaction at the University of Kaiserslautern. He got his diploma and his master degree in Computer Science from the University of Applied Sciences Trier and his doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern. He has published more than 50 papers in different HCI related conferences, journals and books. He was co-organizer of the MDDAUI workshops at IUI 2009 and at CHI 2010 as well as workshop chair at EICS 2011. Currently, W3C is establishing a new working group on Model-based User Interfaces where he will act as chair. Additionally he is co-chair for the revision of the German guideline “VDI/VDE 3850 - User-friendly design of Useware for machines” at the Association of German Engineers. His main research interests are in the field of model-based development of user interfaces, user interface engineering and usability-engineering.
Aditya Dev Sood, Founder and CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)
Dr. Aditya Dev Sood is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS), an innovation consulting firm based in India, which focuses on user research, user experience design, design strategy and innovation management. CKS uses ethnographic research, design thinking, and user experience modeling to make new things possible. It has operations in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Patna. Through his consulting work, Dr. Sood offers a compelling vision of the central role of design and innovation for emerging economies such as India.
Dr. Sood received two doctorates from the University of Chicago. He also has two undergraduate degrees from the University of Michigan. He is a former Fulbright Scholar.
Dr. Sood has directed three editions of the Doors of Perception design conference in India (2003, 2005, 2007). More recently, he convened the Design Public conclave (2011) dedicated to exploring how design thinking could be used to promote governance innovation. Dr. Sood writes a fortnightly column on Design and Innovation and has often spoken on design and innovation topics in televised discussion and debate panels.
Jhumkee Iyengar, Principal Consultant, User In Design, Pune
Jhumkee Iyengar, Principal Consultant, User In Design, provides consulting services to organizations starting up or new to user experience. She guides project strategy, defines services, mentors, trains, evangelizes and guides applied research to establish or enhance UX as a revenue generating practice. Her experiences of over 18 years in the US and India have covered technical, consulting, research and project leadership roles.
In the US, she worked at Pitney Bowes and Philips Research Laboratories, on the designs of embedded consumer products as well as software driven user interfaces for next generation products, concepts and documentation.
In India she has been consulting in offshore usability as well as in UX services for the Indian market. She founded the UX practice at Persistent Systems. Her community orientation led her to initiate a ‘usability in e-Governance’ program for the Pune city government.
Jhumkee holds a Masters in Human Factors Engineering Design from Tufts University, USA, a Masters in Product Design from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India and a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from College of Engineering, Pune, India. She has 3 awards, several publications and articles to her credit, has presented at national and international conferences and delivered invited talks. More details at www.userindesign.com She has also conceptualized and taught UX at various levels. Her interests are UX in global organizations and Design applied to community work.
ED Cutrell, Manager, Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research India
Ed Cutrell manages the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India. He is a cognitive psychologist with a background in cognitive neuroscience and has been working in the field of human-computer interaction HCI for more than a decade.
Ed's research concerns the exploration and measurement of human interactions with information technology. Over the years, he has worked on a broad range of HCI topics, including input technologies, visual perception and graphics, intelligent notifications and disruptions, and interfaces for search and personal information management. His current research focuses on Information and Communication Technologies for Development. In this work, he seeks to understand how people in the world's poor communities interact with information technologies and explores new ways for technology to meet their needs and support their socio-economic development.
He has studied at Rice University for BA, Psychology & Cognitive Science and M Sc. Cogintive Psychology and PhD. Cognitive Psychology (Neuroscience Focus) from University of Oregon.
He has several research publication and conference presentations to his credits. He is also members of many Program Committies including ICTD 2010, ACM DEV 2010, UIST 2010, HCIR 2010, WWW 2010, SIGIR 2010 workshop for Desktop Search, CHI 2009, ETRA 2008, CHI 2007, UIST 2006 and reviewing panel of many jonourals published by ACM (TOAP, TOCHI, TOIS & CACM) , HCI , IEEE (TVCG) , International Journal of Human-Computing Studies (IJHCS), Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) and User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction (UMUAI).
Prakash Sayini, Head of Developer Programs - Global at Nokia
Prakash Sayini is a seasoned telecom professional with 17 years of experience, who extensively worked in all domains of mobile telecommunications starting from R&D, 3GPP Standardization, Pre-Sales, Business Development and Developer relations. He is currently the Global Head of Developer Programs –Nokia, where he is actively refining and refreshing developer programs for programmatic engagement of developers globally ensuring a vibrant developer ecosystem for Nokia. Prior to this he was Heading Forum Nokia India activities with a mandate to build Nokia developer ecosystem in India. One of his areas in Nokia is also working with Universities helping them to incorporate mobile technologies into course curriculum and creating specific university engagement programs.
Prakash spent 8 years with Siemens Communications which is now part of Nokia Siemens Networks and 3 years with National University of Singapore (NUS) leading the 3G software development and standardization activities. He has solid e2e understanding of telecommunication systems mainly in the areas of IMS/FMC and Service Delivery Frameworks and Platforms.
Sanket Atal, Sr. Vice President & GM CA Technologies, India Technology Centre (ITC)
Sanket Atal is Senior Vice President & General Manager of the CA India Technology Center (ITC). In this role, Sanket is responsible for providing overall strategic leadership and direction to the center. He is accountable for the coordination of all major business functions within the center, including product development, product management, customer support, services, GIS, HR, facilities and finance.
Prior to assuming stewardship of the ITC, Sanket Atal was Vice President R&D for Oracle Corporation. In this capacity, Sanket headed the India Country Operations for 3000+ people in the Oracle Product Development Organization (PDO) in Bangalore, Noida, and Hyderabad which owns the DBMS, FMW, Enterprise Manager and Collaboration Suite products. As a Senior Director at Oracle, Sanket was responsible for delivering robust products on schedule and working with Oracle’s Sales and Marketing teams in India on product positioning and interfacing with key customers.
Sanket holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration.from University of Oregon , Portland and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from University of Wisconsin Madison. He holds a Bachelors degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Cornell University Ithaca, NY.
Deepa Bachu, Director, Emerging Market Innovation, Intuit India
Deepa Bachu, Director, Emerging Market Innovation, Intuit India. Creating products that completely delight the customers is what she is passionate about. Her responsibilities include innovating for the emerging markets using Customer Driven Innovation – building solutions that enrich customers’ lives by solving important and unmet needs. Deepa has 15+ years in User Experience, Innovation and Product Development.
Deepa is an innovation and design evangelist. She has presented at several conferences & is an active member of design and innovation organizations.
Sudhir Sharma, Chief Creative, INDI, India (www.indidesign.in)
A very well known and active name in the world of design, creativity and Innovation, Sudhir Sharma is the Chief Creative of INDI Design.
Based in Pune, INDIA, with partner offices in Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Hanoi and Riyadh, INDI is an international Brand, Design & Innovation consultancy with its project footprints in all regions of India. Additionally, INDI has become increasingly involved in management consulting, organizational design, design of products, services, environments, and digital experiences.
INDI’s founder and Chief creative Sudhir Sharma is well known amongst the global creative leaders. He was invited to join the first India Design Council, constituted by the government of India, and is an alumnus of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on the Global Council for Design. He sits on the various Design, Innovation and Management Council Boards and Institutions.
Sudhir founded a very active forum for professional designers “Design India”, with 6000 members across various social media networks Designindia has become a voice of Indian design.
Sudhir has participated as a juror in many important international Design, Advertising Awards including Cannes Lion, ADfest, Design Turkey, Dutch Design Awards, Design for Asia Awards.
Sudhir is also the editor in chief of the highly reputed global monthly magazine for Design, Innovation and Creative sectors – www.poolmagazine.in
Dr. Vishal Shah, General Manager, Corporate HRD, Wipro
Vishal has a combination of academic and corporate backgrounds. He has had the opportunity to work in different industries like Consulting, IT, BPO and Retail. As a consultant he has worked with senior management teams in companies like CA, Polaris, Aon, Britannia, Biocon and L&T. His work experience spans roles in Sales, HR, Training and Leadership Development.
The field of People Development has been a passion throughout his life, the common thread running through his career. He has a deep appreciation of the “movement” and change that a learning orientation can bring in a company. His doctoral thesis in the area of “organisational capabilities in knowledge intensive services” complements his passion and experience.
Vishal has published papers in international journals and presented in international conferences. He is an alumnus of IIMB’s PGDM and FPM programs.
Satish Gokhale, Design Directions Pvt. Ltd.
A graduate of India’s premier design institute, National Institute of Design (NID), Mr. Gokhale and his firm Design Directions Pvt Ltd founded by him and his better half - Falguni - also a graduate of NID Ahmedabad - combines design, technology, aesthetics and relevant materials to create a major impact on industrial, medical, electronic and consumer products. Design Directions focus is on brand strategy, industrial design, visual communication and user interface design.
Design Directions is a recipient of several local and international awards. The latest being for one of the products designed by his company - Tata Swach - a low cost water filter. This received three international awards - 1) Design of the Decade Gold award by the Industrial Designers Society of America. 2) Gold award - Asian Innovation award by Wall Street Journal - USA and 3 ) iF - Gold award in Germany. 4) IDA - USA. Besides this Design Directions has received several BW- NID awards for its UI and product design.
He has been a jury member on several design award committees internationally. He is a member of the India Design Council, and the CII committee on Design and CII manufacturing committee. He has been invited to speak at many National & International Design conferences.
He has been able to raise a great level of awareness towards design in various sectors and prove to them by sheer market success, the importance and benefits of industrial design. He has till date, successfully designed and launched over 650 products in the Indian and international markets.
Paul Neervoort, Lead User Experience, Philips Design, Netherlands
A Paul Neervoort is working with Philips Design as Lead User Experience for the Interactive Living domain of Philips Consumer Lifestyle. Trained as a psychologist Paul was the first creative director with Philips without formal design training. With 18 years of experience in the consumer electronics domain he has a broad and deep experience in designing of user experiences of every day products, such as TV, telephones, DVD and portable media players. Paul is well versed in the intricacies of usability and user experience design as well as having a clear understanding of the issues in marketing of a variety of consumer products.
Between 2005 and 2009 Paul has been located in Hong Kong where he was responsible for the development of the Interaction Design competence in Asia and the creation of user experiences for the larger part of the Philips Consumer Electronics division, including mobile phones and all Audio and Video products. In this position he has gained firsthand experience living and working within Asian and Chinese markets. Since the middle of 2009 Paul moved back to Philips Design Amsterdam, Netherland.
Sandeep Datar, Sr. Director, User Experience Design at Yahoo! India R&D
Sandeep Datar is the Director of User Experience Design and User Research at Yahoo! India R&D. He has over 14 years of experience in applying user centric design and innovation to hardware and software products. Prior to joining Yahoo he was heading the User Centered Design team at Symantec (formerly VERITAS). Earlier to that he worked as an automotive designer with Bajaj Auto. His current areas of interest include Ethnography, process driven product innovation, designing for the emerging markets and exploring the role of Art Direction in software products. Sandeep leverages his experience in the automotive and IT segments, in enterprise and consumer domains to compare, evolve and refine the End to end User Experience design process.
Arvind Lodaya, Independent Design Consultant
An industrial designer by training, Arvind’s experience spans all design disciplines, his work having great impact on the popular culture in India. He has been Creative Director at Artistree (Ogilvy), has run his own strategic design consultancy, and works closely with NGOs, activists and the corporate sector. Arvind has taught and lectured at some of India’s premier institutes: National Institute of Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Indian Institute of Management, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, and the Center for Environment Education. He has presented lectures and talks and been published nationally and internationally. His current interests include incubating creative socio-cultural enterprises and blending spirituality into design.
He was on residency in Gothenburg, Sweden as a guest of the department of culture of the regional government as visiting scholar. He will be lecturing at local art/design universities there, studying and working with Natverkstan (the cultural think-tank/NGO) and leading a EU seminar exploring approaches for cultural institutions towards engaging with popular culture.
