Our Team

We pride ourselves over the unique set of talents who work with us. Each team in the organization collaborates effortlessly with others in a dynamic work atmosphere, bringing the best of their expertise to solve any challenge be it creative or administrative. A constant induction and training cycle enhances our team’s ability to synthesize visual, quantitative, qualitative, and systems data to create innovative solutions. It also keeps alive our commitment to transfer these capabilities over to the client.

Founder

Aditya Dev Sood is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS). He has doctorates in Anthropology and in Sanskrit Philology from the University of Chicago. He has an extraordinary range of disciplinary competencies, gained through a long and diverse education, including Architecture, Art History, Critical Theory, Comparative Literature, Sanskrit Philology, Philosophy of Language, Logic, Social Theory and Cultural Anthropology. He is a former Fulbright Scholar and has received numerous academic fellowships, awards and distinctions. At CKS, Dr. Sood has directed a number of projects involving user research, new product/service concepting, user experience and service design. He takes a keen interest in ethnographic research, understanding aesthetic forms and designing innovative research and analysis techniques through which users as well as products and services can be imagined in new ways.

Head of Delivery

Ekta Ohri is the Head of Project Operations at CKS. Trained in Architecture (Sushant School of Art and Architecture, New Delhi), Visual and Critical Studies (California College of Arts, San Francisco), and Anthropology (Northwestern University, Chicago), she has experience in both design and business applications of ethnography. Given her multi-disciplinary background, she is interested in exploring links between design, culture, and lived experience. At CKS, she is currently involved in supervising projects in multiple domains, such as health care, m-commerce, telecom, and luxury. She directs the delivery team in application of user-centered design principles for addressing the challenges identified through ethnographic research.

Ethnographers

Our skilled User Research team conducts ethnographic, qualitative, psychographic and future-casting work. We constantly refine our photography and videography techniques, along with usage diaries and cultural probes, utilized in ethnography research. The team thrives on being close to end users, in working in difficult work conditions and continuously engaging users with new and interesting research tools that are developed in-house or spontaneously on – field.

Designers

Our interaction and experience designers are alumni of India’s leading institutions.  Our Design team, with its specialists in industrial, interaction and graphic design, conducts field investigations on innovative user practices or ‘hacks’. These help us to conceive and implement novel products and services.

Business

Our Business team analyzes the viability and possibilities of potential opportunities, and helps in the implementation of market engagement plans. We work not only for you, but with you, offering constant support at every step of your project. Always available and representing the client and market perspective, the Business team keeps us competitive and on the lookout for new possibilities that will help us grow from where we are today to what we want to be tomorrow.