Vikram received his PhD in Industrial Design Engineering from the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands on “Design Framework for Developing ICT Products and Services for Rural Development”. He did his masters in Industrial design from IIT Bombay, India, and bachelors in Architecture from the Institute of Environmental Design, Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat. 

Before joining NTNU, he has 15+ years of design leadership expereince at Technical University of Delft (TU Delft), VentureStudio: Center for Innovative Business Design - Ahmedabad University, Media Labs - IIT Bombay, and National Institute of Design (NID)

He designed and implemented two projects at NID namely, UP 100 (emergency service that has been launched in Uttar Pradesh), and the Smart Police Uniform for BPR&D. 

He has a decade of experience in teaching, researching and consulting in the European and South Asian Sector in the area of developing products and services for emerging markets. Particularly in the area of “Design for behavior change” in the domain of healthcare and waste management. He is a designer with administrative experience of building design institutions focusing on producing investable start-ups in India.

His design research work involves conducting research in the domain of Venture Design and entrepreneurship, design for reducing information poverty, design for sustainable living, shaping consumer behavior for social change, capacity development for rural communities, affordable toilets, smart and sustainable ambient environments, medical devices for affordable health, grassroots innovations in agriculture, water, and education. He has published in the area of persuasive computing, behavioral change in rural healthcare, capacity development and ICT for development. He has taught subjects such as integrated product design, Interaction and Electronics, Research and Design, Usability and Re-design, Design Manifestation, and Advanced product design.

Design specialization: Industrial Design and Engineering

Integrated new product and service development in the area of rural healthcare for applications such as diagnostic care, preventative information system, pre-referral services and digital health identity.

Behavior change and communication in healthcare.

Human Computer Interaction design (HCI)- specific areas such as Tangible user interface, persuasive computing.

User centered research and design methodologies.

Social and Contextual Interaction Design.

Journal and Conference Papers

Mink, A., Parmar, V., & Kandachar, P. (2015). Approaching Design for Development from a Capability Perspective. Current Science (pp 1639-1649).

Parmar, V., D. Keyson and C. deBont (2009). Persuasive Technology to Shape Social Beliefs: A Case of Persuasive Health Information Systems for Rural Women in India. Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) 24: 427-454.

Parmar, V. (2009) A multi-disciplinary approach to ICT development, Journal of Information Technologies and International Development, (ICT4D), MIT press, 5(4), pp.89-96

Parmar, V. & Sai. Krishna Inkolu (2017). Designing Smart Shoes for Obstacle Detection: Empowering Visually Challenged Users through ICT. R. Bernhaupt et al. (Eds.): INTERACT 2017, Part III, LNCS 10515, pp. 258–266, 2017.

Parmar, V (2017). Design Approach to Increase ICT adoption in developing countries. ICEGOV-2017. ACM Digital Library, pp. 272-275.

Mink, A, van der Marel, F., Parmar, V., & Kandachar, P. (2015). Using the Capability Approach to Detect Design Opportunities. Conference Proceedings of the Design for Sustainable Well-being and Empowerment Conference, Bangalore, India.

Mink, A., Parmar, V. S., & Kandachar P. V. (2014). Responsible Design and Product Innovation from a Capability Perspective. In J. Van den Hoven, N. Doorn, T. Swierstra, B.-J. Koops & H. Romijn (Eds.), Responsible Innovation 1. Innovative Solutions for Global Issues. (1 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 113-148). Dordrecht: Springer.

Mink, A., Parmar, V. S., & Kandachar, P. V. (2014). Exploring the Role of the Capability Approach in Design for Well-being. International HDCA Conference 2014, Athens, Greece.

Sonalkar, N, Mabogunje, A, Parmar, VS , Cannon, D & Leifer, L (2012). A testbed for studying venture design teams in emerging markets. In D Marjanovic, M Storga, N Pavkovic & N Bojcetic (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th international design conference 2012 (pp. 561-568).

Parmar, VS , Diehl, JC & Kandachar, PV (2011). Influence of BOP Strategy on the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. In P Marquez (Ed.), C.K. Prahalad’s Legacy: Business for Poverty Alleviation (pp. 1-18). University of San Diego.

Parmar,V. (2010) Disseminating maternal health information to rural women: Longitudinal study from the Field deployment. American Medical Information Association (AMIA),Washington DC, Nov 2010.

Parmar, V., D. Keyson and C. deBont (2010). Analyzing ICT projects from a design perspective: A case of Rural India. DESIGN 2010, Croatia, May 2010.

Parmar, V., G. Groeneveld, Jalote-Parmar, A. and D. Keyson (2009), Tangible user interfaces for increasing social interaction among rural woman, Tangible Embedded Interaction 2009, ACM digital library, pp. 139-145.

Boeijen, AGC van & Parmar, VS (2009). The importance of 'educated naive' in BoP. In PJ Stappers (Ed.), Designing for, with, and from user experiences (pp. 69-71). Delft: StudioLab Press.

Parmar.V (2008), Persuasive technology for shaping social beliefs of rural women: Development of group based health information kiosk. In AISB convention'08 (Communication, Interaction, and Social Intelligence), University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Parmar, V., D. Keyson, and C. deBont (2007). In IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Shaping social beliefs: A community sensitive health information system for rural India. In Home Informatics and Telematics: ICT for the Next Billion. 2007. IIT Madras, Chennai: Boston- Springer.

A Joshi, A Ganu, A Chand, V Parmar, G Mathur (2004). CHI’04 extended abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Pages 928-942, Vienna, Austria. ACM NewYork, USA@2004.

BOOK CHAPTER

Mink, A., Parmar, V. S., & Kandachar, P. V. (2014). Responsible Design and Product Innovation from a Capability Perspective “Responsible Innovation: Innovative Solutions for Global Issues. (pp. 113-148): Springer.

Parmar, V., D. Keyson, and C. deBont. (2008) Persuasive Technology for Shaping Social Beliefs of Rural Women in India: An Approach Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour. H.Oinas-Kukkonen et al (Eds.): PERSUASIVE 2008, LNCS 5033, pp.104-115, 200, Springer- Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008

EDITED BOOK

Kandachar, P., Deihl, J.C,. Parmar, V., Shivrama, C (2011) Sustainable Healthcare for the Base-of-the-Pyramid- Research and Design (2008-2010). ISBN 978-90-5155-074

Kandachar, P., Deihl, J.C,. Parmar, V., Shivrama, C (2011) Designing with Emerging Markets:Design of Products and Services (2011 Edition). ISBN 978-90-5155-077-1

PhD THESIS

Parmar, VS (2009) Design framework for developing ICT products and services for rural development - A persuasive health information system for rural India. Publisher: TUD

Technische Universiteit Delft (online access http://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid:99260bf4-7d83-41f0-92c6 cb65ba7c7700?collection=research ) (PhD thesis)