Nikhil Varma

Objective
Design holistic user experiences that will bring smiles of satisfaction to many users that will benefit them in real life and last long enough to become meaningful.

Professional Summary
A practitioner of design, and a quick, motivated learner, I have over eight years of professional experience, the most recent two and a half years of which were dedicated to leading/mentoring a design team, designing mobile phone interactions and innovating UI design processes.

An architect by formal training, I have designed and realized buildings of various kinds, including a museum, interpretation centers, hospital, motel, residences, and condominiums. I also delivered interior designs for modern kitchens, restaurants, homes and museums, and as a natural extension established a furniture design company with a business partner.

A large part of my work over the years is in the area of documenting and reconstructing archaeological and heritage sites all over India usually on projects commissioned by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) or Royal and Corporate patrons. This phase has also included leading large teams of architects/design students in on-time, on-budget project deliveries to external customers.

As an architecture student, I did a one-year Urban Design studio (1996-97) with Nasrine Seraji at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria. As a life-long student of design, I continue to explore the meaning of “place” in the universal sense and especially in the Indian culture.

Before plunging headlong into design, was a passionate computer programmer (in BASIC, C). I am a power user of 3D Max, AutoCAD, QuarkXpress and MS Word. I continue my fascination for technology through continual upgrades to hardware and software.

Work Experience Summary

Mobile Phone Design projects, Design leadership and process innovation at Kyocera Wireless India, Nov 2004 to Jul 2007
Design and Architecture projects, multiple locations in India, 2001 to 2007
Archaeological documentation and preservation projects, multiple locations in India, 1998 – 2007

Education
Graduate in Architecture, 1992 - 2001
School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad
Research Thesis: “Place”, a study in the Indian Context; Guide: Kallol Joshi (2001)
One year Urban Design Studio, 1996 - 1997
Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria, with Nasrine Seraji

Skills
3D Modelling , Rendering, Animation and VRML: 3D Studio DOS, MAX 1 to 9, Lightscape, VIZ4
Documents/Reports: Ms Word XP, Pagemaker7, QuarkXpress5, PhotoShop6, CorelDraw11
Web: Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks 8 , Flash (basic), Javascript (beginning to explore)
CADD: Architectural Desktop (ADT) ver.2, AutoCAD (rel.10 to 2004), FormZ
Traditional Drawing and Drafting, Painting, Clay modelling, Sculpture, Print&Graphics (mono-print and lino-cut), Photography (including B/W Darkroom techniques, possess a home-darkroom)
Programming: BASIC, Turbo Pascal, C

Papers

Essence and appearance: Continuity in Indian architecture

Conference on ‘Cultural Heritage and Indian Art: Continuity in Change’, Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, Punjab University, Chandigarh (16-18 Feb 2004)

Living Museum, Perceiving “site” as the museum

Seminar on Planning of Heritage Site Museums in relation to tangible and intangible heritage, Orissa State Museum, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa (15-19 March 2005), organised by National Museum, New Delhi

Teaching Experience
A 16-lecture series on Museum Design: For the Masters course in Museology at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, 2003.
Seminar Papers (guide): For four students for MA Museology at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, 2004
Dissertation (guide): For two students for MA Museology at the National Museum Institute, New Delhi, 2004.

Kyocera Wireless India (Oct 2004 – Jun 2007)
Kyocera Wireless India is a 100% subsidiary of Kyocera Wireless Corporation, a $1B maker of CDMA cell phones for the NALA and Indian market. Kyocera Wireless India grew from a software maintenance and product test organisation, to a complete phone design and development house. Along the way, it added Systems Engineering, Human Factors Engineering, hardware, industrial, mechanical design for CDMA phones world-wide from India.
I was deeply involved with the creation, evolution and 90% corporation-wide ownership of the Human Factors function at the Bangalore office. The challenges involved:

evangelising and creating a place for a strategic product function like Human Factors in a services company,
designing user interfaces in a very constrained development environment and customer requirements,
creating processes for and delivering multiple design specifications in accordance with tight, customer-dictated software schedules, and
making space within it for creativity and innovation.

Overall:

Lead 5 Phone (Targets) UI Design projects including low end bar phone, clam-shell color phone and high-end color OLED phone (Prisma, Thunder, T’Fox, Jaguar and Black Canary),
Leading feature design of Camera, Media Gallery, Memory Card, Games, Hybrid mode UI (EVDO)
Created a html low-fi prototype for and conducted usability testing of Hindi text entry.

Distinctions

Awarded Certificates of Excellence by Kyocera Wireless India thrice

for “transitioning the Human Factors function completely to Bangalore”,
as an assessing team member (ATM) for CMMI level 3 certification
for developing the “Phone-being” concept).

Promoted twice in two years at Kyocera Wireless India from Human Factors Engineer, to Senior Engineer to Staff Manager, Human Factors.
Only UI designer chosen as Assessment Team Member (ATM) of the 5-member cross-functional team, under the guidance of KPMG, to audit all software and support processes of Kyocera Wireless India for CMM Level 3 certification (was a great learning experience in understanding software processes, configuration and release management among others)

Contact Details
Email varma.nikhil@gmail.com