About Me
Designer | Writer | Researcher | Amateur Sailor ⛵️
Grishma Rao (IDEO bio):
With over 13 years of experience in the design industry, and currently working as Interaction Design Lead at IDEO's San Francisco studio, Grishma Rao leads multidisciplinary teams and inspires clients toward shaping innovative futures grounded in human needs and purpose.
She has a strong focus on future vision and emerging technology work, and is fascinated by how humans relate with unfamiliar technology and systems. Leveraging her interest in mixed reality, speculative design, and creative applications of machine learning, she is committed to uncovering ways to bridge the human-technology divide.
Grishma's eclectic background gives her a particular deftness when it comes to discovering solutions to small, actionable challenges within bigger questions, especially when it comes to emerging technology. Her strength lies in distilling simplicity out of complex systems, and having worked across Asia, Europe, and the US she brings a unique global perspective to projects.
Prior to IDEO, she started the music blog, The Knife, and was a founding member of the music magazine NH7, a digital platform showcasing independent Indian music. She co-founded a digital payments startup, and has taught postgraduate courses on UI/UX design in Mumbai and given talks on humanizing technology at various technology conferences in Copenhagen.
Her work has been featured in international publications including Fast Company, Forbes, Vice, and recognized with awards including Core77 Design Award, and frequently shortlisted for the IxDA Interaction Design Awards. Grishma is also a prolific writer. She wrote more than 300 articles over the course of her music journalism career and is a recipient of the Elle Fiction Award. She loves reading poetry and sci-fi, playing piano, and being near the sea.
UPCOMING TALKS
IDEO + MIT Media Lab: AI Panel Discussion
SF Design Week 2022
Creators Conference DSxD (UCBerkeley)