Hey! I’m Tara. I’m a design researcher who makes products that create joy, beauty, and ease in the moments that matter.
Let me take you through some of those moments.
A MOMENT OF JOY CREATING YOUR FIRST COMIC BOOK
Generative AI for young creators
How I created Adobe Express’ GenAI strategy for people under 18
WHAT I DID:
Led a series of research studies that took us from no strategy to live features - including a 3-day GenAI summer camp with 50 high school students in Taiwan, classroom observations across the US, UK and India, and prototype evaluations of new GenAI concepts.
Designed a complete vision for what our product should look like in 5 years, and in 6 months.
Partnered with design and product to turn insights into reality.
DESIGNING A MOMENT OF JOY: In our summer camp study, one participant used text-to-image to generate a picture of cats taking over the world. His friends loved it. Together, they made a whole comic book about world-dominating cats, learning new creative skills along the way. We designed a tool to make such moments of creativity and learning magical - by allowing people to generate starting points for creative projects based on their intrinsic motivations, whether that’s making their first comic book or their first fandom website.
A MOMENT OF BEAUTY IN CREATING FOR CULTURE
Design tools made for India
How I re-imaged Adobe’s tools for India’s creative economy
WHAT I DID:
Conducted 5 months of ethnographic research across India, including product analytics, longitudinal studies, and visual/linguistic analysis of local content.
Led a team of 4 researchers with a range of linguistic and research skills to create high quality, mixed methods results.
Designed vision and defined research-based requirements for product and marketing across GenAI, stock, templates, editor, mobile, fonts, monetization, and more.
Presented my work as a Keynote at the Adobe Design Summit in San Francisco, to a global audience of over 600+ people.
DESIGNING A MOMENT OF BEAUTY: A college student in Varanasi told me she felt empowered when she used web-based design tools to make packaging for her mom’s local drink business, and totes for her brother’s wedding. But she found it hard to create with local nuance. We made a culturally sensitive AI design assistant to help the many people we met like her. (That’s a picture of me presenting at Adobe Design Summit!)
A MOMENT OF EASE PUTTING KIDS TO BED
Sleep stories to raise confident, happy kids
How I helped a media startup build their first digital product
WHAT I DID:
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls is a beloved bedtime book that instills confidence in girls. The company wanted to build an app to grow their audience - but they weren’t sure what to build. In 8 months as Lead PM, I conducted research, defined the product strategy, and led a team to design, produce content, develop, launch, and grow the app that won an Apple Design Award and Webby Awards.
Presented my work weekly to the executive team, and contributed to investor decks.
Built a research & development practice from scratch - including surveys, prototype evaluation, a customer board for regular feedback, and creating new co-design methods for kids.
Created content guidelines and wrote content samples to guide audio producers
DESIGNING A MOMENT OF EASE: In many homes, putting kids to bed with a bedtime story is a cherished routine. But sometimes, putting kids to bed can be a challenging experience for busy, tired adults and hyperactive, night-fearing children. We created a bedtime app with audio drawing and mindfulness activities to help kids wind down, conversation starters to help busy parents bond with their kids, and confidence-boosting audio stories about amazing women to lull them into sleep.
A MOMENT OF EASE CATCHING THE BUS
Public transit you can rely on
How I evaluated visualization methods to help people navigate transit
WHAT I DID:
Designed a new version of Seattle’s most popular transit app, OneBusAway, that displayed the range of possible bus arrival times with different visualization methods.
Wrote code to create a model of the probability different buses would arrive at different stops for all buses in Seattle
Created and ran a quantitative study with over 500 participants to evaluate different visualization methods.
Conducted ethnographic research at bus stops across Seattle to understand how people make decisions around unpredictable public transit.
Published our findings in CHI. We found that dot plots are the best way to show uncertainty!
DESIGNING A MOMENT OF EASE: Many people rely on public transit. What happens if a big city - like Seattle - doesn’t have accurate predictions for when a bus will arrive at a stop? This makes it hard for people to make critical decisions. Should a young woman standing alone at a bus stop at night wait for a bus that is already 20 minutes later than predicted, or should she call a friend for help? We designed for people like her, who need more information in an imperfect system.
Some highlights from our CHI paper! Read the full paper here.
ABOUT ME
Hey! I’m Tara.
I am a design researcher with over 10 years of experience. I have a research background in both qualitative methods (MA in History/Anthropology) and quantitative methods (BS in Computer Science). I have experience working in big companies (e.g. Adobe), and small startups (e.g. Rebel Girls). I’ve consistently found product-market fit and taken products from 0 to 1 in different organizations. I also love culturalizing products - including in the United States, India, and China. I’ve worked in a range of domains — but my true passions are education, media, and creative tools.
I also run a community storytelling summer camp called Camp Kahani for South Asian girls and women.
I am currently based in New York City.
My work focuses on…
People + Places
Young People & Education
Designing products for younger audiences requires a specialized research toolkit - from co-design, to naturalistic observation. Much of my work has focused on young people (under 18), how they consume and create digital media, inside and outside the classroom.
The United States, India, & China
Building any product for any audience takes cultural sensitivity sensitivity. I have 10 years of experience conducting deep ethnographic research across the US, India, and China, as well as short projects involving the UK and Brazil.
Creative Teams
How do small businesses work with a freelance designer? How do large Hollywood movies get made with hundreds of creative professionals and thousands of little reviews? I studied how organizations and teams collaborate to make creative work come to life in order to help Adobe design its collaboration offerings.
Girls & Women
I am passionate about creating media, creative tools, and experiences that help girls and women tell their stories. I founded Camp Kahani, a summer camp for South Asian girls and women, and managed a team of 35+ people to design a research-based curriculum and program materials. I worked at Rebel Girls to research, scope, build, launch, and grow an app in 8 months that helps girls with emotional regulation and sleep. I created a gripping 20-minute story about the global history of abortion based on my academic research that was shared at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco.
Areas of Focus
Media Insights
Creative Tools
Education
Marketplaces
INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME?
I can work with your team!
I first understand your hopes for your business, and what you want to build.
I conduct user research with both qualitative and quantitative methods to define who the users are, and what they truly need.
I design a prototype of your product that sits squarely inside your product-market fit, and test it iteratively.
Storytelling is where it all comes together. I share the findings in a way that will keep everyone at the edge of their seat, and ready to take action.
My job is done when I’ve worked with a team to bring findings and prototypes into reality in a way that users and the business love.