i work in ambiguous environments, helping people realise (give form to) just intentions. in the past, i have operated as a researcher, product-manager, artist and engineer; while being primarily hired as a designer. currently, i'm a graduate student at the interactive-telecommunications-program at new-york-university, on a near-full scholarship.
worked 3 days / week, as part of a small product-design team, for an observability platform that financial institutions use to identify, diagnose, and resolve errors across their distributed components. i was brought in to work on ambiguous asks; did so with curiosity & rigour; and:
synthesised siloed work done over the past 3 years by different engineering & product teams, to propose a new system for people to efficiently consume alerts — which makes up 1/4th of the product's job. did design-research; made design, engineering, and product recommendations; led validation studies; and worked with engineers to plan for deployment.
proposed a contextually-aware search-bar — deployable across the platform — to help people find specific items quicker, and write complex queries without previous knowledge of the query language. also presented a javascript-prototype to demonstrate technical feasibility and digital tactility.
proposed a wyswig-editor to configure different kinds of alerts, which is a fundamentally new approach in the industry.
spotted platform-wide copy inconsistencies, and proposed a system for writing action-oriented descriptions across the platform, to help people better understand what different modules (and sub-modules) do.
nudged a platform-wide change from card-based-layouts to list-based-layouts, by demonstrating how taxing it is for the eye to scan for an item in both layouts, using a self-programmed webcam-based eyetracking tool.
reimagined what dashboards on the platform could look like, and nudged front-end teams to move towards independent ui-elements (and away from frameworks), by proposing a customised landing-dashboard for cxos, it-heads and reliability-engineers.
resigned to pursue graduate education.
2024, 3 mos.
senior lead, products @treemouse
moved to another behaviour-design consultancy — chasing depth & impact at scale — and:
led design research for digital-green, identifying barriers against the adoption of their farmer-facing chatbot in jharkhand.
designed a proof-of-concept for a conversational-interface that is to be deployed in areas with high substance-abuse rates.
ran the inaugral design track for the code-for-gov-tech program, helping contributors from around the country to design more usable digital-public-goods.
resigned to grow my own practice.
2022 - 2024, 1yr. 11 mos.
design researcher @tinkerlabs
worked at a behaviour-design consultancy, with a desire to bring change into the world, and:
led design-research, ideation, prototyping & testing for private investors, to help them design a new chain of k-12 schools that aimed to revolutionise education in the country.
conducted primary research & led conversation-design for the
just-ask chatbot, launched by unfpa, enabling 25,000+ adolescents in rural madhya-pradesh to get accurate social & sexual health information.
led ethnographic-research for udhyam-foundation, identifying enables & barriers for nano-entrepreneurs to achieve business growth.
led design-research & a ux-redesign for nayi-disha, enabling caregivers for p.w.d. to swiftly access appropriate resources.
led an appreciative-enquiry for vipla-foundation, identifying transformative practices at play for a training program that upskilled women from marginalised communities.
helped redesign resources developed by international-justice-mission, enabling different stakeholders to use them more effectively.
designed, tested, and helped re-design an intervention for project-concern-international, aimed at increasing contraceptive usage for women in rural-bihar with migrant husbands.
facilitated 15+ behaviour-design workshops for organisations & higher education institutes in india, such as iim and mica.
resigned in pursuit of depth, impact at scale, and to move out of bombay.
2022, 7 mos.
xperimenter @science gallery bengaluru
helped develop transdisciplinary public-engagement programmes for young adults to interface with the sciences, as part of the four-person xperimenters cohort, and:
programmed
in between life & death
— a web-game for young adults prompting them to question human needs.
led graphic design for
earth 2052
— a speculative climate-vision workshop, presented at the 2022 science gallery youth symposium.
conducted various public engagement activities with college-students, to help them interface with the gallery.
2021, 5 mos.
product design intern @canonic
worked as a summer intern at a low-code backend development platform, helping them come out of beta, and:
led design-research and testing for various product features.
proposed a keyboard-first prototype for the entire platform, and designed micro-animations to make the platform feel nicer.
2020, 2 mos.
design intern @whitenoise design
worked virtually as a summer-intern in a design studio, and:
contributed to identity, graphic and interface design projects.
proposed and designed whitenoise bridge: an internal project-management tool to help employees better manage their work in the studio.
2020, 2 mos.
identity designer @farmtheory
worked virtually with a startup in bengaluru that wanted to reduce food-waste by matching local farmers with businesses that don't mind purchasing 'poor-looking' vegetables, and:
proposed a dynamic identity system.
developed marketing strategies & advertising tactics.
helped them design the interface of their ordering application.
teaching:
2022 - 2025, 3 yrs.
faculty & mentor @and academy
taught postgraduate-diploma-students at a remote design school that wishes to make design-education accessible, and:
taught & evolved
think lab
— an experiential learning module, originally developed by prachi mittal, to foster the creative & critical thinking potential for new design students — to graphic-design students.
mentored ux-ui-postgraduate-diploma-students on their capstone projects.
ran a guided 5-week-long preparatory project to help students realise an end-to-end-digital solution for a local business vendor, as a precursor to their independent projects later.
2024
giving up control; workshop @o.p. jindal university
Made students feel comfortable with the idea of giving up control to variables to make their storytelling dynamic, reactive and/or interactive.
2024
in between life & death; talk @cc santè creative-coding community conference
Broke down the process used to develop
In Between Life & Death
— a web-game that prompts young adults to question human needs.
2024
what to do when adobe fails you; talk @s.p.a. bhopal
introduced graphic-design students, virtually, to creative-coding as a medium to make their own hyper-specific creative tools.
2024
Evolving Your (design) Portfolio; talk @iiad, delhi
spoke to undergraduate students virtually, reflecting about the evolution of my portfolio over the years.
for sumitra — a chatbot to help small businesses in rural india fill extensive applications for government schemes quickly; by scraping data & recommending relevant schemes.
2021
dcdc-3 communication-design winner, at d'source corona design challenge