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Ayush Chauhan is the Managing Partner and co-founder of Quicksand, a design strategy and innovation consultancy. At Quicksand, he promotes design for social and business impact by connecting the best practices of design with development programs to address the pressing and complex issues of social equity, public health, education, financial inclusion and humanitarian aid. In this capacity, he has worked with global organisations such as Unilever, World Bank, International Rescue Committee and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to design products and services that promote sustainability and quality of life for low and middle-income communities in emerging markets.

An entrepreneur, educator, and mentor, Ayush is also the co-founder of UnBox, the first interdisciplinary festival in India bringing together leading voices from across the world for inspiration, debate and reflection. In 2012, Ayush was selected as a Yale World Fellow from India, one of Yale University's flagship global leadership programs bringing together emerging leaders from across the world for a semester long immersion in the academic and leadership discourse at the University. He currently serves on the board of William J. Clinton Foundation in India.

He believes that interdisciplinary, creative practices hold out a promise for a more purposeful pursuit of growth by adequately balancing the needs to create impact at a business, societal and personal level.

Event role
Keynote speaker

Keynote

'Navigating an inclusive digital economy'

As a generation of new internet users come online in India and other emerging markets, in what ways does the discipline of design research and user experience need to evolve in order to respond to consumer behaviours that do not have a precedence in the developed world? 

With a rich experience of working in emerging markets in domains of business, governance and civil society - both in India and fast digitising markets of SE Asia and Africa - Ayush will provide insights around understanding user experience as a much broader domain of research than merely its application in the design of technology products and interfaces. This becomes crucial when you consider the next billion users for whom the experience of a service or product is only partially fulfilled by technology interventions - a large part of the user journey in fact lies outside digital interactions. Ayush would speak to issues of digital literacy, community participation, and a variety of other challenges which the design research community must equip themselves to answer.


Scheduled
Thursday, September 10, 10:45 - 11:15

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