I focus on a human-centered approach to solving business problems by activating customer insights and translating them into thoughtfully designed products and experiences that harmonize the needs of all stakeholders.
I co-create solutions with multi-disciplinary teams, including executive leadership, product management, strategists, researchers and technical architects. Fostering collaboration and team-spirit is essential to my work-ethic.

AppDynamics
(a Cisco company)

Director, Design & Experience, India
Product Design, Application Performance Management & Observability for IT Teams.

Bengaluru | Oct 2021 – present

 

As part of the global design leadership at AppDynamics, I led a team comprising of Product Design, Design Research, Design Ops and Information Development. My focus was on building a robust design practice, formulating a comprehensive understanding of our niche user base, developing strategic alignment with Product and Engineering teams, and nurturing a culture of creative collaboration.

AppDynamics is a tool for IT Teams that helps visualize their entire application infrastructure at a glance, making every tech decision a business decision. Evolving a design practice that serves this combination of highly technical users in a complex domain is a continuous learning experience.

How might we constantly encourage focus on the customer over the technology? How might we embed human experiences into the complex non-linear workflows our users deal with? How might we build a deeper understanding of our niche user base? These are goals we work towards every day, as we navigate this space that is relatively underserved by design intervention.

I designed a Critique framework to help designers share work early and often. I piloted and ran a Share & Critique ritual that not only empowered the design team and improved the quality of work but also fostered collaboration across interdisciplinary and remote teams.

Salesforce

Design Director, Ignite
Strategic Innovation for Salesforce’s key customers.

Mumbai | Aug 2017 – Feb 2020

 

I was part of the customer-facing Innovation team, Ignite, where I collaborated with cross-disciplinary teams to address some of the most interesting challenges of Salesforce’s largest customers. I applied a holistic design approach to problem-solving in the Indian context. I led design research, articulated design solutions and co-created innovation strategies for leveraging the best of the Salesforce platform towards creating meaningful experiences for our customer’s customers. Some projects -

  • A micropilot to accelerate two-wheeler loan approvals with human-centered, digital interventions enabling an automotive-associate NBFC to better serve their rural customers 

  • An engagement framework to nurture a relevant and meaningful relationship with their GenZ target audience for a leading SUV automotive brand.

  • Redefining student-centric learning experiences to help a competitive test-prep leader transform their role from ed-tech/online test-prep services to career success partners.

I ran a pilot called “Ignite Office Hours” aimed at democratizing and evangelizing Ignite's innovation approach across the Sales team.

I facilitated a panel discussion at Basecamp 2019 ( customer conference ) with trailblazer customers Titan and Redbus about their transformation journeys.

Autodesk

Principal Experience Designer,
A360 & Fusion 360 / Team
Product Design, Cloud-based project collaboration

Hyderabad, Oct 2012 - Jul 2017

 

I played the roles of product designer, product owner & design communicator with a dash of user-research. I worked with globally-distributed design and development teams on building a project collaboration platform for design, engineering, manufacturing and construction projects.
Awarded a special CEO Award in 2015, for outstanding performance.
Selected twice as a Speaker at XSummit, Autodesk’s Annual Global Experience Design Summit, at San Francisco.
Some key modules I worked on -

  • Designing complex, domain-specific features like public/private sharing, conflict management, cross-referencing, commenting, markups, AnyCAD and version control for multi-user, multi-project collaboration workflows.

  • Workflow, wireframes and interface for transitioning from Free to Paid Subscriptions - focussing on key customer touch-points across product , marketing and purchase interfaces, abstracting technical and legacy constraints.

  • A WYSIWYG print feature for the 3D viewer in the browser, that included comment/markups, to accommodate and improve existing design-review workflows.

  • Leading user-research sessions at Autodesk University for testing key features in each release with participants at the conference.

Pramati Technologies

Senior UX Designer, Qontext
Product Design, Enterprise social collaboration

Hyderabad, Nov 2011 — Oct 2012

 

In a refreshing, yet challenging shift from UX design consulting to scrappy start-up, I worked on conceptualizing, wireframing, content and basic visual design of various modules in the platform like Task Management, On-boarding, Goals & Performance etc. within the enterprise social collaboration context. My key role was to co-create features and modules, critical to the business roadmap, with the leadership team.

Qontext was subsequently acquired by Autodesk.

Infosys Technologies

Senior UX Designer, Communications & Design Group (now Digital Studio)
UX Design & Usability Consulting

Bangalore & Hyderabad | Sep 2005 - Oct 2011

 

This was a classic UX and usability consulting role with short and medium term projects in a variety of domains and devices conceptualizing and designing interfaces for desktop, mobile & tablet in domains ranging across enterprise, banking, retail, logistics and E-commerce solutions.
Some key examples -

  • Cox Mobile Connect, designed a mobile app to help customers manage their phone, TV and mobile accounts - for Cox Communications, digital cable television, telecommunications provider in the UnitedStates;

  • IMPACT for Sears Holdings Corporation - I worked with domain experts in Sears to interpret their Annual Promotional Planning and associated processes into a digital solution. I designed a workflow based application for marketing, advertising and promotional planning.

In another lifetime, before discovering design as my vocation, I worked as a developer at Finacle - an industry-leading digital banking solution suite, a product subsidiary of  Infosys Technologies. Writing Python scripts and complex interest-calculation code in C may not have been my jam, but it left me with a deep respect for the engineering mindset. This phase of my career influences and informs my choices as a designer even today - prompting me to look under the hood and better appreciate the significance of design constraints.