Hello!

I am a strategic design leader who leads product teams to produce scalable experiences, that drive organizational and customer success. I specialize in building highly effective teams and in setting up and scaling systems.

Currently I am a divisional head of design at a global product design team in a multi-national technology enterprise. I am responsible for defining and executing the product design strategy for the division.

Though my primary background has been design, design operations and design systems for the most part of my career, I also have wide and extensive experience in software development, product, project, and program management. I am a certified Professional Scrum Product Owner from Scrum.org.

My work More about me

Double Diamond Process

The key lies in narrowing and widening the focus as and when needed

This depiction of the design process strongly resonates with me, because it faithfully captures the ebb and flow of the whole design process. I believe that the design process is a synthetic process - in that, while on one hand it requires the designer to examine things in their totality, and synthesize together seemingly different ideas to create totally new ideas, and on the other, it provides for analysis of concepts, ideas and data to break things down into easily manageable chunks. This depiction of the User Centered Design (UCD) process is also something that I like.

Picture depicting design process

DESIGN MINDSET

Design is a problem solving mindset, more than the tools, processes and the methodologies it entails.
Discover

I believe that best discoveries happen when there's no fear of being proven wrong. Use of suspended judgement, keeping an open and curious mind, and objectively recording observations constitutes the right mindset that can fuel amazing discoveries.

Explore

Diverging into disparate scenarios helps tremendously in generating a large number of ideas and possible solutions. Big picture thinking and pattern recognition or connecting the dots helps identifying different hypothesis about the problems and their solutions.

Define

In my view, in most situations, defining the extent and nature of the problem is half the job done. Examining all the possible ideas, and discarding the least workable ones requires a dispassionate approach to one's own ideas and work. Laser sharp definitions of the problems to be solved keeps everyone on the team honest about the goals that lie ahead.

Develop

Showing always trumps telling. Tangible artefacts beat theorized, half-baked ideas hands down all the time. I believe that making the prototypes and mockups as realistic to the final product as possible makes the solutions, and any hidden problems more obvious and tangible.

Test

One of the things that really matters in design is to get oneself out of the equation as early as possible and as much as possible. Individual biases and preconceived notions inject unwanted complexities and deviations into the progress towards the goals. I strongly believe in the role of the holy trinity of data-information-insight in the design process. Test and data driven design has the best chances of validating what the end users need.

Deliver & Listen

Keep an open mind, and an open ear to what the users say about your design. Figure out ways of constantly reaching out and partnering with them in the design journey.

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