Designer (Small-Medium-Large-XL)
Bangalore Area, India
- Current
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- Principal Designer at Tabula Rasa
- Past
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- Staff Manager, Human Factors Engineering at Kyocera Wireless India
- Senior Human Factor Engineer at Kyocera Wireless India
- Human Factor Engineer at Kyocera Wireless India
- Principal Architect at Tabula Rasa (Self-employed)
- Principal Designer at MAYA Furniture Studio
- Education
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- School of Architecture, Centre for Environmental Planning and Training
- Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
- Connections
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87
connections
- Industry
- Design
- Websites
Nikhil Varma’s Summary
A practitioner of design, and a quick, motivated learner, I have over eight years of professional experience, the most recent three years of which were dedicated to leading and mentoring UI 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 as a natural extension established a furniture design company with a business partner.
A large part of my earlier work 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.
• Mobile phone UI design, design leadership and process innovation, 2004 to 2007
• Design and Architecture, multiple locations in India, 2001 to 2007
• Archaeological documentation and preservation, multiple locations in India, 1998 – 2007
Nikhil Varma’s Specialties:
TOOLS:
• Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks 8 , Flash (basic), Javascript (beginning to explore), PhotoShop6
• Ms Word 2007, Visio, Pagemaker7, QuarkXpress5, CorelDraw11
• (PowerUser) 3D Studio DOS, MAX 1 to 9, Lightscape, VIZ4, Architectural Desktop (ADT) ver.2, AutoCAD (rel.10 to 2004), FormZ, Revit2008
• Traditional Drawing and Drafting, Painting, Clay modeling, Sculpture, Print&Graphics (mono-print and lino-cut), Photography (possess a B/W home-darkroom)
Nikhil Varma’s Experience
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Principal Designer
Tabula Rasa
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Design industry)
June 2007 — Present (2 years 2 months)
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Staff Manager, Human Factors Engineering
Kyocera Wireless India
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Telecommunications industry)
April 2006 — May 2007 (1 year 2 months)
I was deeply involved with the creation, evolution and 90% corporation-wide ownership of the Human Factors function at the Bangalore office, managing and mentoring a team of 7 designers.
DESIGN: Generated and developed the "Phone-being" concept for Kyocera mobile phones; setting up a UI-design roadmap
PROCESS: Innovated design idea generation processes and projects, phone assets (graphics and sounds) management tools, text (tech writers) guidelines and processes, and team management tools.
ANALYSIS: Introduced UI-Spec clean-up exercise after scoping the needs of the stakeholders with a modular document design, to ease effort for requirement changes for the UI designers. -
Senior Human Factor Engineer
Kyocera Wireless India
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Telecommunications industry)
December 2004 — March 2006 (1 year 4 months)
• Lead 5 Phone (Targets) UI Design projects including low end bar phone, clam-shell color phone and high-end color OLED phone
• Lead feature design of Camera, Media Gallery, Memory Card, Games, Hybrid mode UI (EVDO) -
Human Factor Engineer
Kyocera Wireless India
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Telecommunications industry)
October 2004 — November 2004 (2 months)
• Created a html low-fi prototype for and conducted usability testing of Hindi text entry
• Delivered complete delta UI Spec for Prisma (a low end phone with a constrained screen size. Acquiring fonts was expensive, so the entire UI was changed, including all screen layouts, message alerts, games, annunciator rows and icons) -
Principal Architect
Tabula Rasa (Self-employed)
(Self-Employed; 1-10 employees; Architecture & Planning industry)
April 2000 — October 2004 (4 years 7 months)
Currently based in Bangalore, India. The design firm is engaged in design, implementation of residential and retail projects, museums and interpretation centres having also delivered a mini-hospital, motel and condominiums and several interior design projects. It provides research and design services for Interpretation Centres and Museum design, especially for archaeological museums. The firm also takes up regularly Heritage documentation projects using its developed expertise in the area.
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Principal Designer
MAYA Furniture Studio
(Partnership; 1-10 employees; Furniture industry)
September 2003 — October 2004 (1 year 2 months)
MARKET: Looking at the unavailability of useful (aptly designed for usage than mere looks), tastefully detailed and reasonably priced furniture, ventured into a furniture company to target this need.
DESIGN: Designed with focus was on contemporary “style” for the young generation shifting places and settling in smaller houses. Designs were thus optimised, constructed for assembly-disassembly and made modular to allow multiple combinations.
IMPLEMENTATION: Set up a production unit at Ahmedabad
Nikhil Varma’s Education
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School of Architecture, Centre for Environmental Planning and Training
Dipl. Architecture , Architecture , 1992 — 1999
Research thesis explored the concept of “place” in the Indian context, psychologically and culturally.
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Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
Urban Design , Urban Design Studio , 1996 — 1997
One-year Urban Design Studio of Nasrine Seraji at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
Nikhil Varma’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
