Vidhi Raghvani — Research Portfolio

Research Portfolio · 2026

Vidhi
Raghvani

UX Researcher · they/them · PhD Aspirant

I study how digital platforms shape the conditions of identity — who gets to be visible, on whose terms, and at what cost. My work sits at the intersection of feminist HCI, queer theory, and intersectional design, grounded in the belief that the most urgent design problems are not usability problems. They are dignity problems.

Read my thesis → PhD direction

Central Research Interest

How do queer users navigate identity disclosure across digital spaces — and what does interface design assume about who needs to hide?

Feminist HCI Queer Theory Critical Design Intersectional Research Inclusive Design Healthcare UX Gender & Technology Neurodivergent Design Automotive UI

MScUX Design, THI

B.TechComputer Science

3Publications

2.5+Years Industry XP

About & Research Statement

I am Vidhi Raghvani (they/them) — a UX researcher and designer with an MSc in User Experience Design from Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt and a B.Tech in Computer Science from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune. I came to academic research through practice — noticing, repeatedly, that the design problems that matter most to marginalised people are rarely the ones the field prioritises.

Before my MSc, I spent about two years as a UX Designer & Lead UX Researcher at Monsoonfish in Pune, conducting research with over 250 users across India — spanning healthcare, IoT, and rural marketplace domains. That industry grounding shapes how I approach research: I am interested in rigour, not abstraction, and in knowledge that can be acted on by the communities it concerns.

My master's thesis, Optional Visibility: Designing Disclosure-Sensitive UX for Queer Users Facing Identity Anxiety (thesis grade: 1.3), examined how digital interfaces shape the conditions under which queer people navigate identity disclosure. It produced the Optional Visibility Framework — drawing on queer theory, intersectional methodology, and participatory design — and opened more questions than it closed.

Those open questions are what I intend to pursue at PhD level. I am particularly interested in how race, caste, disability, and gender compound the experience of queerness in digital spaces — a dimension that mainstream HCI research has underexamined, and one I am positioned to investigate as an Indian queer researcher working in a European academic context.

Master's Thesis

MSc Thesis · Grade 1.3 · THI Ingolstadt

Optional Visibility:

Designing Disclosure-Sensitive UX for Queer Users Facing Identity Anxiety

Digital platforms encode assumptions about who users are and what they want to share. For queer users navigating hostile or ambiguous social contexts, this creates a specific form of cognitive and emotional labour — the constant management of identity visibility across different audiences, platform contexts, and risk profiles.

This thesis developed the Optional Visibility Framework: a design approach that treats identity disclosure not as a binary choice but as a contextual, dynamic, and risk-sensitive practice. Drawing on feminist HCI, queer theory, and intersectional methodologies, it argues that existing UX frameworks systematically fail to account for this labour — and offers principles for more dignifying interface design.

Solutions Framework: Disclosure-Sensitive Design Principles — from the Optional Visibility thesis

The Problem

Identity disclosure anxiety as a UX problem — how platform design shapes the conditions of visibility and concealment for queer users.

The Framework

Optional Visibility — design principles for disclosure-sensitive UX that respect contextual, dynamic identity management across audiences and risk levels.

The Contribution

A critique of existing HCI assumptions about identity and a new methodological grounding for designing with queer and marginalised communities.

Published Work

ACM SIGCHI · Extended Abstract

Inclusive Vehicle Dashboard Design: Supporting Neurodivergent ADHD Drivers Through Visual Simplicity

Vidhi Raghvani, Michael A. Gerber, Andreas Riener

AutomotiveUI Adjunct '25 — ACM Digital Library · 2025

This paper investigates how ADHD drivers experience cognitive load in contemporary vehicle dashboards and proposes visual simplicity as a primary inclusive design axis — not aesthetic reduction, but a principled approach reducing cognitive demand without sacrificing functional completeness.

HCI · Automotive UI Neurodivergent Design Inclusive Design

2025

View on ACM →

IJCA · Journal Article

User Survey about Exposure of Hate Speech among Instagram Users in India

Vidhi Raghvani et al.

International Journal of Computer Applications (IJCA) · August 2021

An empirical survey examining how Indian Instagram users encounter and experience hate speech — investigating exposure patterns, demographic variation, and platform design factors that shape vulnerability to harmful content online. Directly relevant to my research on identity, harm, and platform design.

Social Media Online Harm India · Survey Research

2021

View Paper →

Note on publishing trajectory: These publications span HCI, inclusive design, and platform studies — reflecting a research arc moving from technical computing toward critical, human-centred inquiry. My PhD will allow me to deepen this into sustained theoretical and empirical contributions at the intersection of queer identity and digital design.

Research & Design Projects

Featured · MSc Thesis

Optional Visibility Framework

Disclosure-Sensitive UX for Queer Users

Feminist HCI · Queer Theory · Framework Design

Identity, Anxiety, and the Design of Visibility

Developed the Optional Visibility Framework — a design approach treating identity disclosure as a contextual, dynamic, risk-sensitive practice. Examined how digital platforms implicitly encode assumptions about identity openness and what it costs users who don't fit those assumptions. Thesis grade: 1.3.

Qualitative Research Intersectional Methods Framework Development Queer HCI

Healthcare UX · Mission-Critical Design · Monsoonfish

Next-Gen Endoscopic Surgical Device UX

Led end-to-end UX research for a next-generation surgical device, optimising workflows for surgeons and technicians in high-stakes clinical environments. Used OR observations, contextual inquiry, and task analysis — synthesising with IEC 62366 and IEC 60601 regulatory frameworks.

Lead UX Researcher · Nov 2022 – Apr 2023

Contextual InquiryHealthcare UXRegulatory Compliance

View Case Study →

Rural B2B Marketplace · Community Research · Monsoonfish

DGV Connect: Digitising India's Rural Cattle Market

Co-owned zero-to-one product design for a rural mobile marketplace serving low-literacy, low-connectivity communities. Conducted user research with rural buyers and sellers, designed multi-role user journeys, and built a scalable Figma design system adopted across the full product.

Interaction Designer · Feb – Apr 2022

Community ResearchRural UXDesign Systems

View Case Study →

Health Tech · Usability Research · Monsoonfish

Tobacco Cessation App — Usability & Architectural Pivot

Led large-scale usability study prior to product launch. Uncovered major flaws in information architecture that drove an immediate pivot from chatbot interface to high-utility user dashboard — a structural redesign that directly shaped the product roadmap.

Lead UX Researcher · Sep 2022

Usability TestingInformation ArchitectureHealth Tech

View Case Study →

Autonomous Systems · Cognitive UX · THI Ingolstadt

Enhancing Teleoperator Performance via Auditory Feedback

Led UX research optimising interface feedback for teleoperation of autonomous systems in dynamic, high-pressure environments. A/B testing and ANOVA statistical analysis proved specific auditory cues significantly reduced visual cognitive overload and accelerated operator response times.

Student Lead UX Researcher · Oct 2023 – Feb 2024

A/B TestingANOVA AnalysisAutonomous Systems

View Report →

Methods & Skills

I approach research with a qualitative, participatory, and critically informed sensibility — interested in methods that centre participants rather than extract from them.

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Qualitative Research

Semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, discourse analysis, grounded theory approaches to identity and experience.

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Participatory Design

Co-design workshops, community-led inquiry, designing with rather than for — especially with marginalised communities.

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Intersectional Methods

Research design that accounts for compounding identity factors — race, gender, class, disability — and their interaction with technology.

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Speculative & Critical Design

Design as inquiry — using speculative artefacts and critical framings to interrogate assumptions and open alternative futures.

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UX Research Methods

Usability testing, contextual inquiry, experience prototyping, A/B testing, ANOVA analysis, user journey mapping.

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Mixed Methods

Combining qualitative depth with quantitative breadth — surveys, interaction analysis, diary studies, statistical analysis.

Research Tools

Survey design Interview facilitation Workshop facilitation Statistical analysis (ANOVA)

Design Tools

Figma Framer FigJam Miro

Theory & Frameworks

Feminist HCI Queer theory Critical race theory Value-sensitive design

Languages

English · IELTS 7.5 Hindi · Native French · Conversational German · A1, upskilling

Reading & Intellectual Influences

A PhD is built on intellectual lineage. These are the works and thinkers shaping how I approach my research — where my thinking comes from, and the conversations I want to continue at doctoral level.

Foundational · Queer HCI

Human-Computer Insurrection

Os Keyes, Josephine Hoy & Margaret Drouhard · 2019

A key provocation — arguing that HCI's relationship with trans and queer users has been extractive and normative. Shapes how I think about what research owes its participants.

Foundational · Intersectionality

Mapping the Margins & Demarginalizing the Intersection

Kimberlé Crenshaw · 1989 / 1991

Crenshaw's foundational theorisation of intersectionality — that race, gender, and other identity axes compound rather than simply add — is indispensable to how I frame the experiences of queer users of colour in my research.

Critical Computing

Algorithms of Oppression

Safiya Umoja Noble · 2018

How platforms encode and reproduce bias — particularly around race and gender. Grounds my understanding of how interface design is never neutral.

Feminist HCI · Current

ACCESSTECH Research (ERC)

Katta Spiel, TU Wien · Ongoing

Spiel's framing of critical access and the shift from identity-centric to solidarity-centric design is the closest existing work to what I want to pursue at PhD level.

Platform Studies

Context Collapse & Social Media

danah boyd · Multiple works

Boyd's concept of context collapse maps directly onto the disclosure anxiety my thesis examined. Essential empirical grounding.

Design Justice

Sasha Costanza-Chock · 2020

The framework that most directly challenges me to think about who leads the design process — and what it means to build knowledge with communities rather than about them.

Intellectual Currents Shaping My Work

Feminist STS Crip Theory Postcolonial Computing Participatory Action Research Critical Race Theory Queer Phenomenology Design Justice Speculative Design Affect Theory Digital Ethnography

PhD Direction

"My master's thesis closed one question and opened four. I am now looking for a research environment where those questions can become a doctoral project — one that takes seriously the intersection of race, queerness, and digital design in ways existing HCI scholarship has not."

Platform-Specific & Contextual

How do queer users navigate identity disclosure differently across platform contexts — and what does this reveal about the assumptions embedded in platform design?

Intersectional & Structural

How do race, caste, disability, and gender compound the experience of disclosure anxiety — and how do existing HCI frameworks fail to account for this?

Design Methods & Participation

What participatory and speculative design methods are most appropriate for identity research with queer communities — and how can the research process itself avoid reproducing harm?

Resistance & Agency

How do queer users develop workarounds and vernacular design practices in response to platforms that weren't built for them?

Optional Visibility — Thesis Overview

Master Thesis · UX Design · THI Ingolstadt · Grade 1.3 · 2026

Optional Visibility

Designing Disclosure-Sensitive UX for Queer Users Facing Identity Anxiety

1.3 Thesis Grade

9 Participants

33 Features Audited

3 Design Principles

Prof. Dr. Sturm & Nestler Supervisors

Core Argument

Mainstream platforms — Instagram, X, Tinder — produce chronic identity anxiety in queer users not through isolated bugs, but through structurally entangled design failures. Identity anxiety online is not a psychological problem. It is a rational response to an irrational infrastructure — and it can be redesigned.

The Harm Cascade Model

Three structurally distinct but interconnected ways that platform design produces harm for queer users — not as edge cases, but as predictable consequences of mainstream UX defaults.

Pillar 1

Identity Erasure

Binary gender fields, missing pronoun options, and rigid name requirements force queer users to misrepresent themselves simply to access services. "Which lie is safest?" becomes the first platform interaction.

Pillar 2

Forced Exposure

Default-public profiles, visible likes and follows, and algorithmic amplification make queer identity legible to unintended audiences — family, employers, hostile actors — without users' knowledge or consent.

Pillar 3

Persistent Vulnerability

Weak reporting tools, data that outlives account deletion, and device fingerprinting mean users cannot escape or recover from harm. Even attempts to start over are blocked by the platform's memory.

↓↓↓

The DS-UX Framework — Three Principles in Response

Each principle directly counters one harm pillar. Together they constitute the Disclosure-Sensitive UX framework — a set of interaction-level design principles for platforms that take queer users seriously.

Principle 1 · counters erasure

Affirming Identity Representation

Self-defined, multi-select, revisable identity options
Custom labels as first-class — not "other"
Affirming language throughout all UI copy
Strategic opacity respected as a valid choice

Principle 2 · counters forced exposure

Optional Visibility & Contextual Consent

Skip/defer at every disclosure point, without penalty
Audience-scoped, per-feature visibility controls
Reversible disclosure — retract past decisions
Transparent consent: explain use before asking

Principle 3 · counters persistent vulnerability

Safety by Design & Repair

Private-by-default for new accounts
Queer-specific reporting: deadnaming, outing
Fast-track reports + transparent timelines
True account reset; anti-deadname filters

Method

Research-Through-Design · Critical-Interpretivist · Modified Double Diamond grounded in Value-Sensitive Design × Design Justice

Platform Audit — 33 features across Instagram, X & Tinder; scored on Inclusivity, Flexibility, Safety. No platform exceeded 3/5.
Interviews — 9 queer participants, India & Germany; reflexive thematic analysis
Synthesis — Personas, journey maps, harm cascade model

Three Research Personas

Quinn — The Selective Discloser Non-binary, Berlin. Needs audience separation without outing to family.

Ari — The Stealth Navigator Trans man, Amsterdam. Needs deadname protection and true account deletion.

Priya — The Visible Activist Queer activist, Mumbai. Needs to stay publicly visible while managing targeted harassment.

Core Contribution

The Disclosure-Sensitive UX (DS-UX) framework — the first interaction-level design framework to treat queer users' control over identity disclosure, visibility, and repair as foundational platform requirements, not edge-case enhancements. Includes concrete patterns: inclusive gender flows, granular engagement privacy groups, and queer-specific reporting workflows.