Apala Lahiri Chavan - HFI
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Apala was responsible for starting up Human Factors International's UX consulting operations across Asia (Mumbai, Bangalore, Pondicherry, Shanghai, and Singapore) since joining HFI in 2000 as Managing Director – India and Vice President – Asia. Apala is an award winning designer (International Audi Design Award) and specializes in the area of Cross Cultural Innovation and Design. Apala has taken on a new role recently in HFI as Chief Oracle and Innovator.

Usability to Innovation - An Exciting Journey

Usability has forced its way on the radar, in the last few years. As users/customers get more aware of their right to have easy to use products and systems, usability professionals get ready for the next phase of the journey. And what is the next phase? The next phase of the journey , i believe, is an especially exciting one! It involves moving from improving the experience of an existing product or system by designing it in an appropriate manner to creating entirely new products and systems and hence crafting entirely new experiences.

This involves new skills and a new repertoire of tools and techniques for the usability professional. It is time to get started on this journey towards Usability 2.0!

	Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy - Microsoft Research
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I received my PhD from the University of Mumbai and M.Phil from the Delhi School of Economics. My doctoral thesis analyzed a variety of print propaganda in Tamil politics as instantiation of broader regional political culture. Before joining MSR India, in 2005, I lectured for several years at colleges in Delhi and Mumbai and have been part of the editorial team for the journal Economic and Political Weekly. At MSR, my primary interests are the adoption and dissemination of information and communication technologies in emerging market spaces

• Small businesses offering shared access internet, PC and mobile phone services: cyber cafés, computer training institutes, PC assembling and trouble shooting units, mobile phone hardware and software repairing units, networking and software servicing
• Usages and sharing of media, communication and information technologies: The Internet/Mobile Internet, PCs, mobile phones and television

I conduct research in two contexts;

• The urban middle-class home were technology is shared as a way to pool resources and disseminate skill and usage
• The urban slum community were technology dissemination and appropriation are organic, intensely dynamic and a mix of formal and non-formal socio-economic relations

	Kranthi Kiran Vistakula - Dhama Innovations
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Kranthi Kiran Vistakula is the founder and CEO of the technology venture Dhama Innovations Pvt. Ltd. Kranthi is the innovator of the breakthrough ClimaCon® technology, that went on to secure a patent and win numerous international awards and accolades right. ClimaCon® is a unique technology incorporating novel heat transport mechanisms that can be readily embedded into apparel, accessories, products and systems to provide heating/cooling on demand. As the CEO of Dhama Apparel Innovations Pvt. Ltd, Kranthi is the company’s spearhead for innovation, strategy formulation, business and product development.

Kranthi is also instrumental in building into the organization a culture of innovation, creativity, leadership and teamwork. Kranthi has also been the Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of Intact Labs, Cambridge. In the capacity of this position, he was the Co-Principal Investigator leading a research team in a NASA project to create a mechanism to generate electricity using proteins for space applications. Kranthi pursued his Masters degree in ‘Mechanical Engineering and Technology Policy Program’ at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, after having completed B.Tech in Biomedical Engineering from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad.

	Rama Vennelakanti - HP - Hewlett Packard Labs
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Rama Vennelakanti is a Senior Research Scientist – User Research at HP Labs India. She works on the Intuitive Multimodal and Gestural Interaction project. She joined HP Labs India in Dec 2004 as a consultant and became a member of the regular research staff in June 2010. She has a Masters Degree in Social Anthropology from the Andhra University.

At the Labs, she has led technology field trials and user explorations and is currently focused on multimodal gestural interactions towards enabling simpler and intuitive interactions for the non-tech savvy users and discovering technology needs among the unaddressed markets. Prior to joining HP Labs she has worked with BPL Innovision Business Group (BPL Mobile) as a Senior Manager Market Research, with Probe Qualitative Research – Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) as a Associate Project Director and held research positions at other organisations.

	Anirudha Joshi - IDC, IIT Bombay
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Anirudha Joshi is a faculty member in the interaction design stream in the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay, India. He works in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design. He teaches HCI and related topics in IIT Bombay and in academic institutions all over India. He was one of the first teachers to introduce usability and ethnographic user studies methods to design education in India.

Anirudha is involved in designing interactive products for users in developing economies. He has done user studies, interaction design, and usability evaluations for diverse domains including healthcare, literacy, Indian language text input, banking, education, industrial equipment, and FMCG packaging. His work has been for users in urban and rural India and on a variety of platforms including desktops, the web, mobile phones, ATMs, and custom hardware.

Anirudha also works in the area of integrating HCI activities with software engineering processes. He has developed process models, tools, and metrics to help HCI practitioners deliver a better user experience.

	Mr. Abhichandra R Hupare - Intel SSG India
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Abhi is a Human Factors Engineer presently working in Intel, Bangalore in Customer Experience Research group. He Evangelizes Usability, Human Factors Engineering and User experience design practices in Intel. He is a Mechanical Engineer by qualification but because for his passion for design and usability, he is working in the Information technology industry for the last 12 years working in the usability domain. He is also a Certified Usability Analyst (CUA). He has coined a name which he proudly attaches along with his name ‘Simplogist’. Making things simple is his no. 1 priority for any project he works on. Apart from this he is also very much interested in development of various Usage models, User Research, and User Testing.

	Mr.Ramesh Chandak - Microsoft
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A graduate with a Fellowship in Advanced Engineering from MIT (USA), Master’s in Computer Engineering from Boston University (USA), and Certificate in Human Computer Interaction from IIT IDC Mumbai. Ramesh has 20+ years of experience spanning across program management, user centered design (UCD) and engineering, consulting, technical writing and training. Ramesh Chandak is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Corporation. He manages user centered design for Corporate Functions Engineering (CFEI) and outreach programs for Microsoft IT India. Ramesh has delivered 40+ sessions evangelizing Microsoft platforms and technologies to faculty, students, IT professionals, developers, government and public sector institutions. Additionally, Ramesh has authored and edited several technical books and articles. Some of his popular publications include:

• Oracle8 Bible, IDG
• Advanced PowerBuilder 6 Techniques, John Wiley & Sons (also published in Chinese)
• Advanced PowerBuilder 7 Techniques, John Wiley & Sons
• IIS 4.0 Exam Cram and IIS 4.0 Exam Cram Adaptive Testing Edition,Coriolis (both also published in Japanese)

While a movie and music aficionado, Ramesh has a particular flair for reading, writing, traveling, playing badminton and cricket

	Dr. Jennifer Mankoff - HCII
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Dr. Jennifer Mankoff is an Associate Professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she joined the faculty in 2004. She earned her B.A. at Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology advised by Gregory Abowd and Scott Hudson. Her research focuses on addressing critical social problems through interactive technologies that empower people. Dr. Mankoff's work leverages mobile, desktop and social web technologies to help individuals and effect positive social change. She uses empirical methods to uncover problems, innovates new technologies and methods to address those problems, and constructs enabling tools and processes. Application areas of her work include persuasive techniques for encouraging energy saving behavior, web accessibility for the blind and mobile transcription services for the deaf. Dr. Mankoff is an active member of the ACM ASSETS, CHI, and UIST research communities, and has served on the program and conference committees at all three conferences. She helped found the sustainable-chi group (sustainable-chi@googlegroups.com). Her research has been supported by Google Inc., the Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, and the National Science Foundation. She was awarded the Sloan Fellowship in 2007 and the IBM Faculty Fellowship in 2004 & 2006.

	Sanandan Sudhir - Neuation Technologies
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Sanandan (Sandy) Sudhir is an accomplished & Award winning Design Leader, Trainer & Educator with more than 14 years experience of proven abilities in Product Design & development, establishing new design studios, conceiving and executing new projects. Currently leading Design & Development and one of the founders of Neuation Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Sanandan has earlier been the key person to define the vision for Industrial design, innovation & concept development for organizations like Lumium Innovations and GE Healthcare.

Winner of several Industrial design, Engineering & Management awards such as Grand Jury Award, 1998, Organized by Core Emballage Ltd in association with National Institute of Design, Bobst, Switzerland and Khetema Fibers Ltd., Engineering Award (GE HealthCare) 2004, Excellence in Industrial Design Award, (GE HealthCare) 2005, Management Award (GE HealthCare) 2006, “You are a Hero” Award, (GE HealthCare) 2007 to mention just a few. Sanandan is known for his ability to evolve unique design processes integrating best practices across the globe. He is also the first Indian to receive an IDEA Silver Award at the 2009 IDSA Design Awards (Category- Medical devices) for the product Discovery MR (designed at GE Healthcare).

Sanandan has worked with the likes of GE, Jarden, Haier, Dell, GSK, Shell, Tata, Temptations, Symphony, Eureka Forbes, Godrej, Electrotherm, HLL, Voltas, Michelin, Clorox, Eton, Polycom, Whitney, Iridex and Amul and has deep insights of both local & global perspectives in relation to market differentiation, product design practices, consumer preferences & trends. Passionate about Design Education, he is not just a regular visiting faculty in reputed institutes like NID, CEPT and NIFT but also an esteemed member of the Program Advisory Committee, NID, Bangalore.