Usability engg professionals grow in Pune

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Pune could emerge as a big hub for usability professionals with the community of usability engineering professionals growing in the city.

Jhumkee Iyengar who heads usability engineering in Pune at Persistent Systems is also a MS in Human Factors Engineering from the Tufts University, Medford MA, USA and product design from IIT Bombay’s IDC. Nine of her 14 years experience has been in the US.

Samir Chabuksar, technical manager, Usability Engineering with Persistent Systems, is a MS in Human Factors from Clemson University, South Carolina and has experience in developing usable software interfaces in the US with six years experience in usability.

But Persistent is not the only one in this business. Dr Dinesh Katre looks after the ‘Human Computer Interaction Design’ at C-DAC’s National Multimedia Resource Centre at Pune. There is a User Centred Design Group at Symantec Corporation with Ganesh Gayakwad, Shashank Deshpande and Sandeep Datar giving Symantec;s products a user centered design.

There are independent companies emerging in this field. There is Jaya Deshmukh’s ‘Pure IT Group’ that offers solutions in usability in the internet and telecom Sectors.

Atul Manohar is a usability expert and a graphical user interface design consultant who runs Genesis Usability in the city.

Chabuksar says 10% of any project now involves usability so if outsourced product development market is going to be in the region of $10 billion then 10% of this is the potential of the usability engineering segment.

According to a Jacob Neilson survey there is a need for 60,000 usability professionals but there are only about 1,000 in India. This is because there is lack of formal education in Usability Engineering, says Chabuksar.