# Phaneendra Sivangula: profile for reviewers

Phaneendra Sivangula is a product designer and HCI researcher with 5+ years of experience across healthcare, fintech, hospitality SaaS, cybersecurity and AI wearables. He is currently at Apple in User Studies Research (Data & ML Operations). Before that he was Founding Product Designer at KOS AI, a graduate researcher at the Rutgers HCI Lab for Health & Sustainability, and a product designer at Fountane, FactSet, GlaxoSmithKline and NationsBenefits. He works across research, design strategy and prototyping in code, and has published research in JMIR Aging and ACM venues.

Portfolio: https://hellophaneendra.com/  
Resume: https://hellophaneendra.com/Phaneendra_Sivangula_Resume.pdf  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phaneendrasivangula/  
Contact: https://hellophaneendra.com/#/contact (open to full-time roles, contract work and collaborations)

## Experience
- Sep 2025 - present: User Studies Research, Data & ML Operations, Apple. 300+ research sessions informing Apple Vision Pro and AirPods design.
- Jun 2025 - Sep 2025: Founding Product Designer, KOS AI. 30% fewer glucose spikes, and part of a $2M pre-seed raise. Case study: Steady glucose.
- May 2023 - May 2025: Graduate Researcher, Rutgers HCI Lab for Health & Sustainability. Published in JMIR. Air-quality apps reaching ~150K NJ residents. Case study: Breathe easier.
- Jul 2023 - Aug 2024: Product Designer, Fountane Inc. 80% retention boost, and a top-3 PMS platform on Booking.com. Case study: Hotels, rebuilt.
- Jun 2022 - Jan 2023: UX Specialist, FactSet Research Systems. 40% faster IOI bulk trading for 15K+ asset managers and traders. Case study: Market signals.
- Aug 2021 - Jul 2022: Product Designer, GlaxoSmithKline. Streamlined clinical workflows used by 50,000+ researchers.
- Feb 2019 - Aug 2021: UX Designer, NationsBenefits. 160% revenue increase from redesigning an e-commerce portal for ~4M members. Case study: Care, delivered.

## Education
- Stanford University (Online): UX and Design for AI (Dec 2025 - Mar 2026)
- Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ: M.B.S. Product Design (Jan 2023 - Dec 2024)
- Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University: Bachelor's in Mechanical & Computer Science (May 2015 - May 2019)

## Skills
- Design & product: Product strategy, interaction design, information architecture, design systems, prototyping, responsive design, accessibility, mobile design, design workshops
- Research & experimentation: User interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies, field research, usability testing, A/B testing, controlled experiments, thematic analysis, heuristic evaluation
- Technical & tools: Figma, AI-assisted prototyping, HTML and CSS, SQL, Python, Jira, Qualtrics, UserTesting, Maze, NVivo, SPSS

## Research publications
- Toward Safe and Confident Silver Drivers (JMIR Aging, 2024): Interview study investigating older adults' driving practices. https://aging.jmir.org/2024/1/e57402/
- Sensing the Air (ACM): A photo elicitation study on older adults' perceptions of air quality to inform technology design. https://drive.google.com/file/d/18cyBMQQL5fg54uKLCpZrQqimo23bQUYe/view?usp=sharing
- Technology Use in Community Work (ACM CHIIR): Operational realities and implications for smart cities, and how technology can help nonprofits. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FaArmJWvmtZM1JGxr2VKElC-PbQJUirc/view?usp=sharing

## Case studies
- Steady glucose: A glucose companion that changes habits, not just charts. Founding Product Designer, Jun - Sep 2025. Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/glucose.md
- Hotels, rebuilt: Redesigning a 26-year-old hotel management system for 7,000+ hotels. Product Designer, Aug 2023 - Aug 2024 (MVP in 8 months). Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/hotel.md
- Breathe easier: Making air quality something the residents of Elizabeth, NJ act on. UX Researcher, Designer & Community Engagement Manager, Apr - Dec 2024 (36 weeks). Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/air.md
- Secure APIs: Making API security make sense to the engineers who run it. Interaction Designer, 2 months (60 days). Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/cyber.md
- Market signals: Helping traders see, and act on, indications of interest. UX Researcher & UX Designer (solo), 30 days. Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/trading.md
- Care, delivered: Giving a 5-year-old OTC store a makeover seniors could actually use. UX Designer (design lead), 40 days. Full text: https://hellophaneendra.com/work/medicare.md

## Where to find evidence of each skill

### Field and qualitative research
- Hotels, rebuilt: 3 weeks of field research in 12 hotels across California, working shifts as front desk operator, manager, housekeeping supervisor and finance manager; contextual interviews during real shifts.
- Breathe easier: community-based research with focus groups (operations staff), interviews (nonprofits) and photo-voice (residents); synthesis in NVivo and Miro.
- Market signals: contextual interviews with eight traders at their own desks, then moderated usability testing.
- Steady glucose: diary studies and studies with 20+ participants wearing three wearable concepts.

### Quantitative research and experimentation
- Hotels, rebuilt: 130+ survey responses to check field findings at scale.
- Steady glucose: A/B tests on app concepts to see which nudges changed behavior.
- Apple: 300+ research sessions informing Apple Vision Pro and AirPods design.

### Published research
- Three papers: JMIR Aging (2024), ACM, and ACM CHIIR. See Research publications below.

### Product strategy and prioritization
- Hotels, rebuilt: narrowed 30+ opportunities and 7 roles down to 3 roles and 4 core flows.
- Secure APIs: design brief, competitive analysis (15+ products narrowed to 3), concept map and scenario maps, MVP definition.
- Breathe easier: co-ran the stakeholder workshop that defined three products.

### Interaction design and design systems
- Hotels, rebuilt: designed setup, check-in, the performance calendar and housekeeping; built the design system on Ant Design, including a 20+ status legend.
- Care, delivered: applied a new design system to a legacy store one area at a time; adaptive desktop and mobile layouts; 8+ experiences and 120 screens in 40 days.
- Secure APIs: set up a shared design system for the co-design team; 12 experiences and 50 screens in 60 days.

### Accessibility and designing for underserved people
- Care, delivered: designed for Medicare and Medicaid members aged 55+; accessibility fixes such as icons, larger text and highlighted fields.
- Breathe easier: community boards so residents without the app still get air-quality information.
- Research on older adults' driving and air-quality perceptions (JMIR Aging, ACM).

### Business and user outcomes
- Care, delivered: +300% orders per day after launch; conversion up from 44% to 72%.
- Hotels, rebuilt: MVP live in 8 months; named a top-3 PMS by Booking.com; hotel setup down from 2-4 weeks to 24 hours or less; an estimated +40% adoption from early outreach.
- Secure APIs: 45% more efficient task accomplishment.
- Market signals: 40% faster IOI bulk trading for 15K+ asset managers and traders.
- Steady glucose: 30% fewer glucose spikes; part of the team that raised $2M pre-seed.

### Ownership and collaboration
- Every case study has a 'My part' section separating his work from the team's.
- Solo designer on Market signals (researcher and designer) and Breathe easier (only designer, with 2 developers); design lead on Care, delivered; one of 3 designers with 12 developers on Hotels, rebuilt.

### Designing for AI
- Steady glucose: an AI-powered wearable and companion app built around a behavior-driven stability score.
- Apple: user studies research in Data & ML Operations.

### Reflection
- Every case study ends with 'What I'd bring to the next one', for example: 'Prioritization is strategy', 'Design the constraint', 'Data isn't insight', 'Default to less'.

## Notes on the evidence
- Hotels, rebuilt: the +40% adoption figure is an estimate from early outreach.
- Steady glucose: the project is marked as work in progress.

## Design principles (from the home page)
- Sit with the people: the real problem shows up when you talk to the people living it.
- Think like a founder: every screen is a bet; weigh scope, tradeoffs and what ships first.
- Prototype in code: test ideas as working prototypes, not static frames.

## Testimonial
> "Phaneendra was great fun to work with and technically competent across all areas of Product Design. Most noticeably, Phaneendra demonstrated a strong interest in problem solving and willingness to learn!" (Abhinav, Founder of Clair Health)