Design Process
Resume:
Diya Gangopadhyay
www.diyahci.com ****.****@*****.***
Usability Specialist
Primary Career Interests: User Centric Design, conceptualizing new modes of
interaction to meet diverse user needs
Website: www.diyahci.com
Academic Qualification:
Master of Human Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University (2008-
2009)
GPA: 3.88/4.0
Bachelor of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India (2004-
2008)
GPA: 8.96/10
Skills:
User Centric Design Methods: Think Aloud, Cognitive walkthrough, Eye Track
Protocols, Heuristic Evaluation, Contextual Inquiry, KeyStroke Level
Modeling, Wireframes, persona and Scenario Creation
Programming and Scripting Languages: C, C++, ActionScript, UML
Interaction Design Software: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Indesign,
Flash, Dreamweaver, Flex
Current Position:
Usability Specialist at T-Mobile Centre of Usability
Work Experience:
1) Currently working as a Usability Specialist at T-Mobile, Centre for
Usability Evaluation, Bellevue, WA (November 2009 to present)
2) Research Assistant at the HCI Institute of Carnegie Mellon University
(September to November 09). Worked on User Research and UI design
3) MHCI Capstone project of seven months duration (January to August09) for
salesforce.com, to improve the usability of their CRM interface using
natural language. Our design is an intelligent agent that auto-fills CRM
forms. Role: User research and Usability Lead User Centric Design Methods
used: Contextual Inquiry, Journal Study, Participatory Design, Think Aloud,
Speed Dating
I was also involved in the design conceptualization process, wire framing
and prototyping.
4) Internship (May to July 07) at Nokia Research Centre Beijing in the
field of User Interface design and usability in the context of mobile
phones for emerging markets.
The projects worked upon are:
Mobile User Interface for the textually non literate users
Text Input Solutions for Indian Languages on handheld devices - A patent
(Nokia Code: NC61064) has been applied by Nokia in 2008 for the concept
designed for this project
5) A two month internship (Summer 2006) at Centre for Knowledge Societies,
Bangalore on user research for mobile handsets in an emerging market.
Projects:
1. Concept Design for a mobile phone as a personal safety device for urban
working women (winning entry to the Kyocera Design Contest 2006).
An entry for an all India design contest organized by Kyocera, it won the
first prize in the Interface design category. The concept involved making
use of the mobile network and the GPS technology to design an "emergency
information system".
Process: As a group of five students, we brainstormed ideas, created
personas and scenarios of use, conceptualized the design and detailed out a
feature set as per needs of the user group.
Outcome: Interaction model and navigation model of the design, detailed
feature specification
2. Mobile User Interface for Low Literacy Users -
Inspired by the summer internship with Nokia, it involved user research and
analysis of usability issues in speech based mobile interfaces and speech
based navigation to design and test a prototype.
Process: User research in the form of interviews, task analysis and
controlled experiments, iterative design with wizard of oz testing of
prototypes, navigation model design, UML, wireframes, usability testing
Outcome: Navigation Model and a Flash prototype of the final design
demonstrating use case
3. Predicting perceived "usefulness" of Amazon book Reviews using text
classification -
Process: Use of TagHelper Tools to train a model to classify a set of
Amazon book Reviews as "helpful" and "not helpful" from pre-defined labels
and testing the model on a different set of data, iterative error analysis
and adding new features to improve the performance of the model.
Outcome: Result indicating that positive reviews are more likely to be
perceived "helpful"
4. A web based interactive Itinerary Builder to enhance travel experience
A classroom project by a group of three, this innovative concept is aimed
at making travel planning easier and flexible and connects travel
experience with social networking.
Process: User Research - interviews, directed story-telling, observational
study
Competitor Analysis, affinity diagram to select focus, persona and scenario
building, multiple stages of ideation, final design
Outcome: A prototype using HTML and Flash demonstrating the web based
travel planner application.
5. "Capture" a mobile based memory aid for the elderly- This is a tool
allowing users to "capture" with a picture anything interesting they come
across, along with GPS information and remind them if they are in its
vicinity.
Process: Persona and Scenario creation, idea generation, affinity diagram
to select idea, conceptualization and detailing of final design, detailing
out features
Outcome: A Flash demonstration of the tool being used in a particular
scenario
6. A mobile based route tagging application for the visually impaired
This concept design got a special mention for being among the best seven
entries, in the USID-Nokia Design Challenge in 2009.
Process: User interviews, persona creation, scenario development,
conceptualization, wire-frames and story-board
Outcome: A concept for a route tagging device to help the visually impaired
users in way finding using GPS and step-counter
Research Paper:
A Study of the Culturally Rooted Barriers Affecting Mobile Phone Usage
among Indian Women
Description: The paper analyzed the various factors that adversely affect
the mobile phone usage among Indian women, and their possible cultural
roots. The paper was presented in the Indo-Danish HCI Research Symposium
held in IIT Guwahati in April 06.
Process: Literature review, Usability Evaluation of a Nokia 1100 Handset
with the target user group using task analysis, conducting interviews,
observational studies, questionnaires, analysis on the framework of
Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions
Outcome: Results indicating a correlation between certain cultural
dimensions and difficulties with mobile usage for Indian women in age group
35-50
Other Achievements:
1. Winner of Merit Scholarship in 2005-06 at IIT Guwahati
2. Winner of the Institute Silver Medal at IIT Guwahati for securing the
highest GPA in the Design batch of 2008.
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