Apala Lahiri Chavan

Apala Lahiri Chavan is Co-Founder, Human Factors International (Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia) and Global Chief of Technical Staff. Her passion is to envision how user experience can be a change agent by being inclusive and increasing people’s capabilities. She is also fascinated by changes in user experience across time and space. Apala is an award-winning designer (International Audi Design Award 1996).

She co-edited the book Innovative Solutions: What Designers Need to Know for Today’s Emerging Markets and her TEDx talk is Three Laws of User Experience. She was invited to speak on User Experience Design and AI at the AI for Good conference, 2017 organised by the United Nations. Her articles ‘User Research vs Market Research’ and ‘The Washing Machine that ate the Sari’ regularly appear in top 10 UX articles related international lists.
Apala is also the Chair of IAMAI’s National Design and Innovation Committee and is a well known international speaker.

Apala also heads Institute of Customer Experience (ICE). This is the non profit org that is run by HFI. ICE looks at the future of design and applies a critical design lense to envision a future where design can help make the world a better place for all.