Brought user-centric design skills to tech-centric Indian IT industry

1996-2007  Indian IT industry

Richard Anderson was Pradeep Henry's mentor in hosting India's first seven national usability conferences. He was also Henry's teacher at the University of California, Berkeley (Extn) usability course 1994-95.



CONTRIBUTION CHART

SITUATION: Indian IT industry didn't have usability skills that Western organizations wanted in software development teams
EFFORT: Brought usability skills to Indian IT companies through public conferences, university course, and corporate practice

PUBLIC CONFERENCES: Organized India's first 7 annual national usability conferences. Featured expert speakers from abroad. Had participants coming from all over the country. The conferences were consistently rated high for great content and experience.

UNIVERSITY COURSE: Pioneered a usability course at BITS Pilani as part of their MS degree program in Software Engineering.

CORPORATE PRACTICE: Set up India's first user-centric design and testing group at Cognizant.

OUTPUTS: 1. Annual national conferences. 2. ACM chapter in India. 3. Usability Engineering course at BITS Pilani. 4. Usability practice at Cognizant.

OUTCOMES

VALUE FOR PRACTITIONERS: 1000+ practitioners received usability awareness and skills

VALUE FOR COMPANIES: 100+ Indian IT companies were empowered to meet the customer expectation of usable software

SUCCESS: Indian IT industry became the West's go-to place for developing software applications
EVIDENCES: Seven National Conferences | The New Indian Express | History of Design in India | University Course | Media clips


First usability conferences (2001 to 2007)




With Richard Anderson’s help, Pradeep Henry got ACM (world’s largest computing society) to charter a chapter of their Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction. Through this chapter, Henry hosted India's first 7 annual national usability conferences. Henry's Cognizant team members made an excellent contribution for 7 years. At the conferences, Henry featured expert speakers from the US, UK, and Australia. Participants came from all over India. The conferences were consistently rated high for great content and experience.



First university usability course

For a premier engineering school, Henry proposed a usability course, designed it, trained the faculty, and guided a team to run it. This was in 2004.



First usability lab

In the late 90s, Pradeep Henry institutionalized user-centric design methods into Cognizant's software practice. As part of the initiative, Henry set up India's first usability lab. This turned out to an inspiration for the rest of the country. MORE.