Featured Work
The Industrial Design Pathways Project
Bhattacharya, K. (2025). Industrial Design Pathways: Storytelling from Recent Graduates [Visual Paper]. Learn x Design | The Design Research Society.
A visual paper of the narrative research and AI ideation sessions was presented at the Design Research Society’s Learn x Design Conference in Aveiro, Portugal, in September 2025.
Women in Design Panel
ID Pathways was presented alongside an inspiring panel of women design professionals at MSU Denver on March 6, 2026. This event was organized as part of the IDSA Deep Dive: Be Unconventional, hosted by Women in Design.
Learn more about the the ID Pathways Project in the portfolio project.
Text to Tangible: Build your own AI Companion
At the ACM TEI Conference 2026 in Chicago, participants who attended this studio workshop prototyped the future of AI companions using micro:bits, interactive components, and craft materials.
Read more about the studio workshop in the ACM Digital Library.
Leveraging Neurodiversity for Inclusive Design Education
Bhattacharya, K. & Khan, S. (2025). Leveraging Neurodivergent Design Students to Co-Design Education [Full Paper]. Learn x Design | The Design Research Society.
A full paper of the co-design research and user studies was presented at the Design Research Society’s Learn x Design Conference in Aveiro, Portugal, in September 2025.
The award-winning thesis was featured in the Georgia Tech-hosted and internationally based 3 Minute Thesis Competition, challenging current graduate students to explain their thesis in three minutes or less to a panel of non-specialist communication experts.
The work was also published in the Georgia Tech Libraries as a Master of Industrial Design thesis. Learn more about the research process in the portfolio project.
Industrial Design and Cold War Consumer Politics
Bhattacharya, K. (2023). The Politics of Design and Capitalism: from Historical to Contemporary Perspectives [Education Paper]. Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Education Symposium.
A synthesis of the historical study, incorporating contemporary perspectives, was published and presented at the 2023 International Design Conference (IDC) and IDSA Education Symposium. The Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design published a featured article.
“Design Practice” was the first undergraduate Honors College Thesis by an Industrial Design major at the University of Houston. It was published in the UH Libraries.
It was awarded Outstanding Honors Thesis by committee nomination and selection by the Honors College. The Hines College of Architecture and Design recognized the project’s award in an article.
As an Honors College minor in Phronēsis, an academic program in Politics and Ethics, I presented on the Phronēsis Research Panel in 2022, detailing my experience researching and writing a thesis on industrial design and the Cold War.
Learn more about the academic journey of the project in the blog post.
Pediatric Mobility Project
Bhattacharya, K., Wu, X. (2024). Research and Retrofit of Powered Toy Cars to Develop Low-Cost Pediatric Mobility Devices [Mainstage Presentation and Poster]. Southeastern Pediatric Research Conference.
Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA) project focused on creating DIY “do it yourself” instructions, empowering parents/guardians to retrofit powered toy cars for their children with mobility issues.
Co-Design and Tangible Computing
Yu, J., Bhattacharya, K., Yan, J. (2022) Co-Design using Methods of Tangible Computing with K-12 students [Showcase Presentation and Poster]. Georgia Tech GVU Center Showcase.
Group-led in-progress presentation at Georgia Tech exploring co-design methods and educational kits for tangible computing.
3D-Printed Hand Prosthesis Design
Bhattacharya, K. (2022). Body-powered Prosthesis Design for a Patient with a Partial Hand Amputation [UH Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship]. University of Houston Undergraduate Research Day.
Summer research project to design and 3D-print functional fingers for a partial hand amputee patient. The prototype was developed with occupational therapists from the Harris County Health System.
VR Spatial Navigation Experiment
Bhattacharya, K., Shroff, V., Crosby-Walton, N. (2019). Reducing Disorientation in Virtual Reality: Improving Navigation in Virtual Reality [National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU)]. Iowa State University Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Human-computer interaction experiment testing spatial navigation interfaces in virtual reality (VR), where I contributed to experimental design and co-authored a research manuscript.
Health Wearables and Cybersecurity
Bhattacharya, K., Bhattacharya, D. (2018). The Design of Secure Wearable Devices [Workshop Presentation on Wearable Tech, Product Design, and Cybersecurity]. High-Impact Technology Exchange Conference (HI-TEC).
Presentation and literature review assessing the security of health wearables on the market.
Karina Bhattacharya 