About — Manasi Vaidya

Hello!

My name is Manasi Vaidya. I am currently a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in MA, USA. I am working towards a Master of Science in Integrated Design Management. This is a collaborative degree between the MIT School of Engineering and MIT Sloan School of Management. Before going back to graduate school, I was working as a Senior User Experience Design Consultant at IBM iX in Bangalore, India.
My areas of interest are Product Management and Design, User Research, Virtual Reality and Immersive Experience Design, Designing for Accessibility, and Healthcare Design. I enjoy being on the field conducting research to generate interesting insights and coming up with design solutions. My interest in game design helps me to generate research through participatory methods and by creating engaging research activities for understanding the users. I also have good skills in creating different scenarios and personas, creating sequences, and storyboards for the same.
If you don’t see me stuck to my Miro ideation board, you will probably find me in the workshop making something out of wood or preserving flowers in resin/ building something cool out of Lego!

Key traits

Empathetic

I can easily put myself in other people’s shoes and think from their perspectives. I am easily able to keep my emotions, biases I may have, etc. aside and solve problems that a product and its users may face. My empathetic nature allows me to understand not only users, but even my team mates who may not be able to do tasks they’re asked to because of certain reasons, in such cases I always extend help to anybody that approaches me with their problems.

Articulate

I am comfortable with various mediums of communication. Be it physically prototyping what my research and analysis points towards, conducting interviews remotely where my verbal skills are tested. I have amazing skills in keeping up conversations. If you ever happen to meet me, there will never be that awkward silence where you will have to think hard about what to talk about next. This helps me gather the required information and move towards actionable steps quickly and confidently.

Punctual

I am a morning person and believe that the quote, “Early to bed, early to rise, keeps a person healthy and wise!” holds true, which may be very well considered unpopular in today’s world. Whether it is my work or personal life, I have always been punctual. If I have committed to delivering something by a particular date or time, I will keep to my word irrespective of the circumstances and hurdles I may face.

Lateral Thinker

I have been formally trained in design thinking and systems thinking for 5+ years. My education and experiences allow me to look at the wholistic view along with micro level concerns while solving problems or improving experiences. There’s a constant zoom-in, zoom-out perspective or approach that has to take place when I am trying to solve complex problems. I strongly prefer working in agile over the waterfall methodology.

Accessibility Advocate

Right from creating a differently-abled persona while in the ideation phase of designing an experience, to practicing activities like body storming. I practice designing for accessibility on a daily basis. I have conducted campaigns, done several certifications in improving web-accessibility through design and conducted sessions that enabled people to experience simulations regarding how the differently-abled consume content on the internet.

WIP

Polishing and making my own work better all the time. I continuously try to make current and past projects better. I’m very frank and candid and keep my biases and emotions aside when it comes to giving feedback. The importance of keeping a process iterative and working in an agile manner so that changes can be incorporated at various steps of the journey is key towards building user-centric products and services.