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Me & My Journey

I grew up dreaming of becoming an Architect. A novel 'Fountainhead' added fuel to my dream and I joined IIT (Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee) to do my graduation in Architecture. After 5 year of studying and freelancing for 3 years I realized that in 'real life' the field is very different from my dream. There is every thing but 'Design' (in India at least).

This lead me to change my field to Design and my interest and experience in Virtual Architecture took me to one of the most renowned Design Schools in India - NID (National Institute of Design).

I still don't remember why; but somehow I picked up a book on HCI...and then it was no turning back...I liked it because it was something as an Architect I can relate to - Understand and Design for PEOPLE.

Now that you know my journey, let me introduce myself - I'm Abhishek Kumar. I'm now a Post Graduate (Masters) in New Media Design and this web site showcases some of my works that I did during and after my Masters.

Yahoo!

Currently I’m working as a Senior Interaction Designer. The role is to handle and own complete products from UI design perspective. I was managing two properties currently – Y! India Maps and Y! India Local. Y! India Maps was released around Mar 2007; while Local got released recently. After Map's successful release I moved to Yahoo! Search & Social Media. I worked with the US teams on various next generation Y! search products.  Was involved with video search (video.search.yahoo.com) team and helped releasing that product in  Nov 2007. We also released the inline player for video search.

Now I work with the Strategic Data Solutions group and working on redesigning of the Web Analytics application.

I have also taken up various design research projects/works. Design research has two aspects – one is more to do with Usability Practice; other is to help the technical research teams through User Research. Currently I’m mentoring a Design Research intern for a project on Vertical Search Experience. I have also been involved in hiring process for Yahoo! Bangalore UED group.

Achievements

• Patent filing is done for my final project at Yahoo; I’m one of the 3 inventors. IDF has been filed & Patent process is underway.
• 2^nd Prize in “Yahoo! Bangalore Hack Day” Competition held on April 2006. Awards given by Terry Semel and founder Jerry Yang. The idea was a concept for a new Yahoo! product called "Yahoo! Snip".
• IDF filing for the winning ‘Hack Day’ product concept "Snip".
• ‘U Rock’ Award (UED Team) for Living Yahoo! Values, Going beyond “Call of Duty”, Best Customer feedback, Best idea/design/initiative/practice (in 2006).
  
• 3rd Prize in "Yahoo! Bangalore Hack Day" held on 13th Dec 2006. The idea was a feature addition to an existing Yahoo! product "Avatar Voice".
• Designed and launched Yahoo! India Maps
• ‘U Rock’ Award (Maps) for Best idea/design (in Q1 2007).
• Helped design and launch Yahoo! Video Search. Also helped subsequent releases along with the inline player on SERP.
  
• SPEAKER at:
  • 2nd Web Developers' Conference at Yahoo! on UI design. The presentation titled "Backend of the Front End: A design perspective"
    
  • National Conference on Web 2.0 organized by Computer Society of India (Bangalore). The presentation titled "Designing for the New Age Web".
  • Site Integrity Seminar ‘08 at Yahoo!. Presented on behalf of Larry Tesler on ‘User Perceived Performance’.
    
   

Hack Day Award