Dr. Indrani Medhi Thies is a design and technology researcher, author, public speaker, and startup mentor. She spent nearly 18 years at Microsoft Research India, where she was a Principal Researcher in the Technology and Empowerment group (formerly the Technology for Emerging Markets group). She joined the group shortly after its founding in 2005 and continued until early 2023. During this time, she also spent a period working out of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while remaining part of the MSR India team. Indrani has served for over a decade on the board of Digital Green, a global development organization working with smallholder farmers, and has mentored startups such as Navana.AI focused on technologies for the next billion users. She also supported the ideation and spin out of Karya which brings AI enabled earning and learning opportunities to low-income communities.

Indrani's expertise is in user-centered design, human-computer interaction, and technology for global development. Most of Indrani’s research has been in user experience and user interface design for low-literate and emergent users from low-income communities. Some of her other research is in user experience of conversational agents, mainly chatbots; social media use among mothers of young children; accessibility for visually impaired users; and crowdsourcing for low-resource environments. Indrani has a Ph.D. from the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay, India; a Masters degree in Design from the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech, Chicago, USA; and a Bachelors degree in Architecture from VNIT, Nagpur, India. Indrani is trained in fine arts from an early age at the Assam Fine Arts and Crafts Society in Guwahati, India. Her family traces its roots to Mangaldai, Assam (by way of Bengbari) and brings forward a legacy of public service and social commitment that continues to inform her work.

Indrani’s distinctions include the ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact award (talk here), the MIT TR35 award, and ACM SIGCHI and ACM CSCW best paper honorable mentions. She has received a “Young Indian Leader” award from CNN IBN, a “Youth Icon under 35” award from India Today, and featured in the list “50 Smartest People in Technology” by Fortune magazine. Indrani has published research articles in leading scientific conferences and journals. Her Text-Free UIs work has been featured at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art, New York’s “Design and the Elastic Mind” online exhibit. She has given invited talks at various venues including TEDx, MIT and Harvard.

Fun facts: Indrani loves music and movies, and has recently taken up the musical keyboard  -  an entirely new adventure after earlier training in Hindustani classical vocal many years ago. Indrani has crossed paths with Bollywood in interesting ways: she featured in an advertising campaign with Farhan Akhtar (video here); moderated a brainstorming session in a professional course at MIT with A.R. Rahman on her team; and was in the invited studio audience of the TV show ‘TED Talks India: Nayi Soch' hosted by Shah Rukh Khan and shot at the famed Yash Raj Films studios.

Indrani still works closely with the academic research community and is open to new board memberships. She would love to hear from you at indranimthies@outlook.com.