Dr. Indrani Medhi Thies is a design and technology researcher, author, public speaker and startup mentor. Until recently she was Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India in the Technology and Empowerment group (previously known as the Technology for Emerging Markets Group). She worked in this group for close to 18 years, joining just after its inception in 2005 and stepping away in 2023. Indrani has also spent some time working out of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Indrani served for more than 10 years as a board member of Digital Green, a global development organization that works with small holder farmers. She has mentored startups like Navana Tech looking at technologies for the next billion users.

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.

Indrani’s distinctions include the ACM SIGCHI Social 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: In her free time, Indrani loves to do artwork with her child, listen to music or watch movies and review them. 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.