Hi, I am Safinah. I am a graduate student at the Personal Robots Group at MIT Media Lab. My research focus is child-robot interaction for behavioral learning, creativity support robots, creative AI, and AI literacy for k-12. I like making art and robots. I teach k-12 students about robots and making games.



Reach out at safinah@mit.edu

Work

Creative AI Education

Curriculum Design, GANs, Creativity

DAILy Curriculum

AI Literacy, k12

Embodied Creativity

Child-robot interaction for fostering creativity

Robot Mindset and Curiosity

Social robots, curiosity, growth mindset

Robotic AAC for Autism

Social robots, assistive technology

How to Make Almost Anything

Physical prototyping, electronics

Sonify - Bloomberg

Interaction Design, Accessibility

DoodleBot

Physical Prototyping, AI Education

Amazon

User Experience Design

Fractal Ink Design Studio

User Experience Design

Techniche 2014

Branding, Publicity, Graphic Design

MIDA - Car as an IoT

Service Design

Names & Faces

User Experience Design

University Health Services

User Experience Research

The Cracked Egg

Product Design, Furniture

Spark

Magazine Design, Math

Human Robot Interaction

Robot Ethics, HRI, Psychology

Gender Gap

Information Visualization

Explorations

Interactive Art

Computational Design, Data Visualization

Motion Graphics

Animation, Kinetic typography

Visual Design

Graphics, Illustrations, UI

Art

Painting, 3D, Macrame

Physical Prototyping

Installations, electronics, 3d printing, molding

Skills

Research

3 years of experience with User Research, Contextual Inquiry, Games Research, Usability Evaluation, and Data Analysis. Published author in India HCI, UX India, Meaningful Play, and DiGRA.

Design

4 years of experience in Visual Design, primarily focusing on User Interface Design. Designed and shipped 15+ products. Skilled at design and prototyping tools.

Develop

High fidelity prototyping experience with HTML, CSS, Javascript & Coffeescript. Programming experience with Python, Java and C/C++. Basic familiarity with iOS development.

Journey

It has been an adventure!

  • 1993-2011

    Grew up and schooled, Nagpur

    Grew up in a beautiful small town. Learned the art of terrible jokes. Sang my first songs and read my first books. Developed a liking for comics.

  • 2011-2015

    Bachelor's in Design, IIT Guwahati

    Learned to design a thing or two. Met the smartest people. Built stuff. Broke stuff. Learned to fix stuff. Designed my first product.

  • Summer 2013

    UX Design Intern, Fractal Ink Design Studio

    Kept my eyes and ears open. Got my hands dirty trying a range of UX practices. Took ownership of my projects. Worked directly with clients. Was guided by amazing mentors. Designed beautiful interfaces.

  • August 2013 - September 2014

    Creative Lead, Techniche

    Joined Techniche (the annual techno-management festival of IIT Guwahati) as a designer in 2012. Led a team of 12 designers to strategize branding and overall design requirements of the 2014 edition of Techniche.

  • Summer 2014

    UX Design Intern, Amazon.com

    Practiced User Centered Design. Worked in a diverse team. Learned from the experts. Observed how the corporate giants work.

  • January 2014 - May 2015

    HCI Research Student, Embedded Interactions Laboratory

    Worked in health and tech. Worked with the users. Built some more stuff. Analyzed data. Wrote my bachelor's thesis.

  • August 2015 - August 2016

    Masters in Human Computer Interaction, CMU

    Embraced challenges. Acquired a spectrum of skills. Transpired ideas to products. Explored new cultures.

  • August 2015 - February 2016

    Interaction Design Education Summit 2016

    Worked with the IXDA team to organize the IxD Education Summit. Designed the logo, and handled the website and schedule for the summit.

  • January 2016 - August 2016

    MHCI Capstone Project, Bloomberg

    Conducted a research study on accessibility in desktop computers. Designed an app to make stock price charts more accessible.

  • September 2016 - March 2017

    Games Research - Twitch

    Project management, analyzing user data, running studies, and designing games on Twitch. Working with an amazing team of Game Designers, and Researchers.

  • March 2017 - August 2017

    Product Designer, vArmour

    User Experience for several vertical products delivering data center and cloud security through micro-segmentation.

  • September 2017 - now

    Research Assistant - MIT Media Lab

    Human-robot interaction, AI education, Embodied creativity

  • Summer 2021

    Research Intern, Facebook AI Research (FAIR)

    Designing creative human-AI interactions.

  • More
    to
    come!

Reach out

I would love to hear from you!

safinah@mit.edu

MIT Media Lab | Cambridge, MA