apurva pangam designer @apangam

San Francisco based, business-driven and customer-focused designer and product manager.

I'm enthusiastic about helping companies sell better on the web, planning and executing branding- and commerce-related changes to sites. I love whiteboards.

I spend my time on engagement sales and management, eBusiness product and project management, interaction & visual design, marketing.

Recent Work no fine print

Manager, Deloitte Consulting. Jul 2006 - current

7 years experience with delivery of strong eBusiness and customer experience design over multiple projects.
Bootstrapped UX group at grassroots level at Deloitte. Over 15M sales and managed revenue over the past 3 years.

Bio-Rad Labs

  • Project Management and Design Management for over $15M in projects
  • End-to-end global B2C eCommerce strategy and design, product management & launch
  • Interface with digital studios to deliver web and mobile solutions
  • Product Management for a qPCR assay product (product launch coverage)
  • Life Sciences and Diagnostics experience

VMware

  • Front-end development and QA
  • Project Sales and client management

Walmart International

  • Led a team of 6 for the global/localized customer-facing interaction design and information architecture of site
  • Developed strong in-country business relationships to influence and enhance product design and operational strategy
  • Gained strong retail operational experience with product catalog, checkout, fulfillment, order management

Apartment Investment & Mgmt Company

  • Unified over 400 online sites and customer interfaces, simplifying the process of apartment finding to leasing
  • Led a team of 3 over the project lifecycle - including research, requirements, design, knowledge transfer, and training
  • Responsible for design of all customer experience touch points including web marketing and customer service

Deloitte UX Group

  • Responsible for leading a team of 15+ professionals to streamline the UX competency within Deloitte
  • Involved in setting vision for UX group and go-to-market strategy for Deloitte sales cycle
  • Developing processes for web related strategy and design UX projects

Other projects include:

  • Fortune 500 rich application software client - Led business requirement and UX brief creation
  • Fortune 500 retail client - Participated in design and led usability test planning and execution
  • Top 10 Healthcare client - Defined taxonomy for an enterprise content management system

Previous work

  • Designer - Creativity as a function of peripheral imagery (Capstone 2006, Indiana University)
  • Designer - mPath, the activity network to facilitate human connection (CHI 2005)
  • Prototyper, Usability Specialist - Comparative analysis of low and high fidelity mobile prototypes (NordiCHI 2006)
  • Concept Designer - Mitigating the AIDS stigma through personification and public space displays
  • System Designer - Emotion sensing and affective computing in pervasive environments

Education

  • Master of Science Human-Computer Interaction, Indiana University Bloomington. June 2006
  • Bachelor of Engineering Information Technology, Mumbai University. June 2004

Skills

  • Design Methods / Tools. Ethnography, surveys, interviews, focus groups, contextual inquiry, card sorting, storytelling, interaction sequencing, body-storming / Design comps, personas, storyboards, interaction flows, taxonomies, wireframes, experience prototypes
  • Software. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Visio/OmniGraffle

Honors, Awards

  • Jon Barwise Scholar. Indiana University School of Informatics 2004-06. Full scholarship awarded for HCI Master's Degree
  • 1st place, International Student Design Competition, CHI 2005 held by ACM SIGCHI

Stuff people say word on the street

.. perceptive, empathetic and creative user experience designer, with never-ending energy for finding the best solution and solving the problem, whatever it might be.

Gary Buck, Exec. Director, Green Boomerang

Instead of hiding in a creative studio, Apurva is out in the real world, managing client expectations, mentoring non-designers to produce great work, and actively building camaraderie by hosting dinners at his house and celebrating team birthdays and other milestones

Bryan Clark, Deloitte Consulting

He brings maturity and professionalism, and an eagerness to tackle difficult problems.

Aya Takeuchi, Walmart

.. evangelist of good User Experience design. His enthusiasm for the field is tangible and gives his efforts a clarity that frequently proves enlightening and tremendously useful.

Alexander Samodurov, LiminalUX / Bio-Rad Laboratories