About
Varedh Nigam is a design and CX leader with 15+ years of experience helping organizations navigate digital transformation at the intersection of customer experience, business strategy, and emerging technologies. As Associate Director, Product Experience & Design at Nagarro, she has led global initiatives across banking, aviation, telecommunications, and enterprise ecosystems, partnering with executives, product teams, and technology leaders to turn complex challenges into measurable outcomes.Her work spans CX consulting, service design, innovation programs, large-scale design thinking workshops, and Human-Centered AI initiatives. Known for connecting systems thinking with practical execution, she focuses on designing trust, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring that AI-enabled experiences create value for both people and businesses. Varedh is passionate about advancing the role of design from a delivery function to a strategic driver of transformation, helping organizations shape what could possibly go right when design leads.
Workshop details
Designing AI That Cares: A Hands-On Workshop on the HCAI Framework
About this workshop
I created and have run HCAI as a hands-on workshop that teaches teams to design human-centered AI. Teams form, create an end-user persona, and empathise, goals, problems, expectations. They define a North Star and a clear challenge, then ideate AI-driven solutions. The core of the workshop is the HCAI tool: a matrix where every proposed feature is placed on two axes, computer automation and human control, so teams decide deliberately what the AI should own. They then pressure-test ideas for necessity, risk, and potential harm, prioritise for an MVP, and check it against five attributes, Reliable, Trustworthy, Unbiased, Auditable, Compliant. Teams finish with a named product concept and a sketched primary flow. What I've learned running it: the matrix is where the real debate happens, and teams need firm time-boxing or they over-discuss the persona and rush the prototype. What I'd do differently: protect the ideation-to-matrix transition; that is where the framework earns its value.
Workshop key takeaways
- The HCAI framework end to end - how to take an AI product idea from user empathy to a prototype concept in one structured session.
- The HCAI matrix as a working tool - placing every feature on automation and human-control axes to decide what the AI should own.
- A way to pressure-test AI features for necessity, risk, and potential harm before they reach a roadmap.
- The five human-centered AI attributes - Reliable, Trustworthy, Unbiased, Auditable, Compliant, as a checklist your team can reuse.
- A repeatable workshop format you can run with your own team or stakeholders to align on human-centered AI.