Arvind Ashok

Interaction Designer and Architect @ facetplay.com

facetPlay is a startup that rethinks the one-identity nature of today's online conversations and interactions by enabling people to manage all facets of their identity. Context and Identity are at the core of this product. I drive the complete design process with supervision from the VP of Corporate Development. Read more>>>

Understanding the role of HCI, especially in the use of IT in the developing world

Advances in technology, and proliferation of devices in the urban world coupled with movements like 'social corporate responsibility' has led to a rise in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based projects in poorer parts of the world. While many of these projects aim to do something good, they fail most of the time. As the old saying goes, 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' and this is repeated in these projects. A lot of resources are wasted in these projects, and these resources can be better utilized. More importantly, people with very limited resources are subjected to these 'experiments' in a noble/thoughtless manner where the aim is to improve their lives. Interaction Designers need to start a design discourse for designing in the developing world, and my project aims to be part of this discourse. There is a lot of scope for new beginnings, and innovative ideas which can better the lives of billions of people around the world. My framework is a step towards this direction, to provide a starting step for people embarking in the same journey. The purpose of this framework is not to provide a rigid set of rules that should be followed till the end of time. Rather, it is meant to be organic. The aim is for people to add to the framework using their experiences, and for the framework to evolve Read more>>>

Aiding bus conductors in Madras, India in improving the efficiency of the bus system

In this paper, we present a tool to increase the efficiency of public transport buses inside the metropolitan city of Madras (Chennai) in South India. The amount of people dropping out of the public bus system is growing at an alarming rate, and rresting this problem is at the root of our prototype. By increasing efficiency of the system, we hope that this problem will be stopped and will lead to more people entering the system, rather than abandoning it. In Curitiba, Brazil an increase in the efficiency of the transport system started a waterfall effect with increasing numbers of people joining the system. Read more>>>

Designing a tool for client placement and management

During the summer of 2006, I consulted at the software arm of India's largest HR company. The task was to evaluate and redesign two of their existing in-house projects. One was Qvest, which was to replace Ma Foi's existing search utility product which placed CxO's in companies in India. My task as the lead design consultant was to aid in the process of requirements gathering, lead the team through prototyping several times, design the user interface, write the design specifications document for the developers, conduct usability testing Read more>>>

A tool for managing far-flung out franchises of a training institute

This was the second project I was the lead designer for while consulting at MinVesta. The goal of this project was to redesign the software used by the various franchises of the HR company in various locations around India. These franchises needed a uniform way to keep track of student data, like enrollment, test scores, placement history etc. The lead consultant on the team lead in requirements gathering and workflow analysis. As the lead/sole designer, I was in charge of prototyping, user interface design, usability testing and writing the documentation for the developers, visual designers etc Read more>>>

Reconceptualizing the notion of text-based profiles

The number of subscribers to online dating sites has reached well into the millions. Whether people are joining these sites with the intent of marriage or just a night on the town, the importance in establishing connections with other people is First prototypeindisputable. An important step in making these connections is the founding of a mutual interest. Online dating sites portray subscribers using a predominantly text-based profile. While this profile presents a lot of information regarding a person's physical traits and social inclinations, they do not present a good depiction of a person's character. Character is a critical component of defining who a person is Read more>>>

Experience design project to simulate accessibility problems in national parks

One major problem concerning accessibility in parks is how to help the park employee more effective in noticing potential problems and hazards. As someone who is typically extremely familiar with his/her grounds, it is difficult for an employee to understand what it is like for most visitors who are unfamiliar with the area. As a result, we are addressing the problem of how to bring the park employee into the world of the visitor. We are proposing a handheld device to be used by park-goers and employees inside of the park. For the park-goers, they will use Read more>>>

How and what would we do to (then) Macromedia Flash to improve it

A class project where our group was asked to suggest a new feature for Macromedia Flash. The reason for this project was companies posing similar questions in their job interviews. This project poses several constraints. Our solution had to fit in with the culture of the company and its products and we could not suggest a break-away kind of a solution Read more>>>

How to improve the social capital and community togetherness of a college town

With over 40,000 students the city poses a unique problem to cultivating social capital \& to e-Democracy initiatives. Influenced by Robert Putnam's thoughts on social capital, our group came up with a bottom-up approach to get the various sects of people on-board, rather than a traditional topdown approach, which would not have been ideal for this town Read more>>>

Designing a museum exhibit/experience for new students

Our team of three was asked to design a museum exhibit for the School of Informatics. The people who would view this exhibit were prospective students, and their families, visiting the school. Our group was a diverse group, more so than normal groups. And we designed a museum experience, not just an exhibit. Our initial task was to understand the state of mind of a prospective student. Our interviews and brainstorming sessions pointed towards fear and indecision as the two primary feelings experienced by a prospective student. Our project specification, given by our professor, told us to consider accessibility issues. To put ourselves in the position of the student to better understand him, we had to go through some of the feelings that a kid about to make a big decision would go through. So, we took a person with acrophobia (unfortunately that person was me) up a 150 foot tall firetower. We prepared a set of tasks and questions that I would answer while climbing up the tower and standing on top. And we climbed up the tower, conducted the exercise and came back down. And no, that experience did not miraculously cure me of my fear. Read more>>>

Educating little kids to eat healthy by involving them

How can you get kids to eat healthy? If you think it is not a hard problem, think again. The first kid we interviewed said he ate ONLY peanut-butter for a week!!! We began the project by talking to parents, kids (the age group we targeted was 5-10 years old) and to doctors. We looked at resources online that had similar goals. We found that most of them tried educating, and also a game of some sort. Our key insight came from talking to parents. All the parents that we spoke to said that kids love to do stuff with their hands, and pester the parents to letting them "help" cook. Based on that, our basic design centered around kids spending time with parents, and cooking a meal together. This would be in the form of a game or rather, a mission. Kids would choose food ingredients, simple ones and not complex, and dump them on the plate. The plate detects the "food", plastic representations, with the help of RFID readers and tags. Based on the input, the Read more>>>

Programming

I used to be a software engineer at K7 Computing Pvt Ltd, developers of Japan's second largest selling home antivirus solution. I have written code in C/C++, but of late I have been writing code in Django. Village Blogs is my first Django project.

Cybersecurity

I was the associate instructor to Dr. Jean Camp and Dr. XiaoFeng Wang for their cybersecurity courses, and I was also Dr. Camp's Research Assistant for one semester, where I worked with her on Net Trust. I also worked with Dr. Markus Jakobsson on several security related projects, like image-based spam detection, click fraud etc.

Other projects that I did during grad school

For more projects, click here.