I learn through moments, not milestones.
Over the years, my work and my life have become intellectually inseparable and continue to cross pollinate daily. This page sheds honest light into who I am as a designer, a thinker and a human.
Who I am
Every day brings a chance to better myself. I embrace it by aligning myself with people who thrive on growth and change.
Sometimes the process is more valuable than the outcome. Every effort I make pays off later in often unexpected way.
A thrive in a collective of minds united by a well-defined purpose. I invest in partnerships that lead to lasting impact and often turn into equally lasting friendships.
I treasure details and never cut corners. In the end, they define the authenticity of everything I make.
I center all my efforts around the clear outcome. I ask hard questions but know how to compromise sensibly.
I help others to never lose sight of the ultimate goal, despite the often erratic and entrapping nature of our work and our lives.
How I design
Throughout my architectural studies, I delved into a diverse array of concurrent disciplines. Among these, Furniture Design particularly captivated my curiosity. Designing a piece of furniture is not very dissimilar of designing a building, as it encapsulates the equal number of considerations at a friendlier scale. This one example serves as a compact illustration to my design philosophy and illuminates my approach to tackling multifaceted design challenges.
Requirements
To design and build a piece of full-size seating surface the meets the following:
- Able to hold an adult up to 300lbs
- Be collapsible
- Be lightweight and portable
- Be weather-resistant
- Using the least amount of materials possible
Solution
Full-size ergonomic lounge chair made of all natural materials (organic sisal twine overlocking the structural plywood frame.
Harmonize form and function wherever possible.
I found a way to limit materials to just two: marine-grade structural plywood and sisal twine.
Use smallest number of parts.
No glue, screws or any type of fasteners had been used. The fewer the parts, the lower the costs and risks.
Employ things that are free and readily available.
Assembly and positioning is achieved with a simple interlocking method using tension and angular friction. As the weight is placed on the back of the chair, it firmly fixes the position in place. This was my way of monetizing gravity.
Innovate by creatively applying traditional methods.
I used the mortise and tenon joint that dates back to Neolithic times. The joints are held together by hand-tensioned twine, which doubles as a a structurally sound, non-stretching and aesthetic seating surface.
How I work
“What does it mean to be a great product designer?”
The ability to sensibly balance the empathy for user with the empathy for business objectives. It’s the Art of Balance that drives my never-ending cycle of iteration, testing and refinement.
“Describe your product design process and what methods you follow? Name the steps you take on your design journey”
- I ensure the clarity of the goals and the validity of the problems they aim to solve.
- I collect all data that substantiates the goals. If no data is readily available, I look at recent industry-level history and practices. Depending on the findings, I ensure that we allocate additional time for foundational research.
- I align the team on measurement metrics and the checkpoint cadence. This allows the team to remain adaptable and prevents confirmation bias.
- I establish POCs and responsibilities. XFN leads serve as key points of reference to prevent conflicting directions and to minimize communication churn.
- I map out the broader context which our solution will have to fit. I engage leads from adjacent or co-dependent experiences to cross-check my decision-making trail.
- I keep User Research engaged at all decision-making points. This allows researchers to contribute their historical perspectives and while building intimate understanding of the product’s evolutionary vector.
“Sometimes we have to move fast and may have to bypass a thorough study and research. How do you balance speed with quality?”
At times, it becomes necessary to quickly experiment our way to quantified insights. That said, I always separate speed from recklessness by aligning on a firm set of rules beforehand:
- I align the XFN team on how we will measure success and how quickly we would identify failure. Metrics do not lie and leave little room for for ambivalence.
- I lock down checkpoint cadence which will allow for a continuous string of thorough and metrics-driven correction of our course.
- I continually adapt by developing alternative, competing solutions based on incoming insights. This makes for a great set of brakes that stop us from inflicting harm on our users and a loss to our business.
“What are some of the biggest trends in Product Design today?”
Emerging Generative AI and LLMs are disrupting established norms in Product Design. The AI’s ability to juggle large datasets presents a plethora of advantages. Faster time-to-market, enhanced customization by factoring in users’ mental models, and accelerated innovation by efficient identification of market gaps, to name very few. Much less celebrated are the challenges, such as integration of AI into existing workflows, legacy code stacks and subpar data quality.
It is also crucial to recognize that there are currently no AI experts who specialize specifically in product design. While there are numerous AI experts and an equal number of product design experts, the intersection between the two fields is not substantial enough to establish a clear direction.
The argument that AI is on the brink of replacing product designers is one-dimensional at best. AI and Product Design are about to embark on the most epic of journeys together, a journey of mutual teaching and symbiotic progress. And it will be product designers who will be tasked with seamless integration of AI into platform-level product landscape. It is the emerging privilege of product designers to wield the immense power of AI and to direct it towards the well-validated, carefully prioritized set of user-facing problems.
“What is your definition of bad product design?”
The main reason for bad design is rarely bad designers or faulty design processes. More typically this is owed to the user research that did not get funded, the features that did not get released, the internal testing and the code cleanup that was waved off.
Product Design alone stands little chance in the absence of engineering, product and business truly prioritizing great design by aligning their motivation across the organization.
“Give me an example of when you received criticism. How did you respond to the information?”
I view criticism as a chance to improve proactively. On one occasion, I received feedback that I had taken an inflexible stance with a product team. The proposed course of action didn’t align with my definition of empathy-driven design. Specifically, this related to how performance data would be accessed and downloaded by cross-platform sellers. Relying on my knowledge of user expectations, I was convinced that the proposal would lead to additional operational pains for our users and eventually erode their trust. With that, I blocked the design process pending a Director-level review. Despite acting in the users’ best interest, and despite “doing the right thing”, my actions led to a situation that needed significant remediation.
The mistake I made was to assume that my partners possessed the same depth of understanding about the subject as I did. I wrongly assumed that their choices were driven by a conscious decision to prioritize ease over doing what was right. However, I failed to consider alternative scenarios where they might have been under-informed on crucial qualitative aspects or lacked relevant knowledge. Having processed the criticism, I recognized that this conflict could have been avoided had I invested more in well-structured, fact-driven communication.
After resolving our differences, I implemented a new operational step in our design delivery process. In this step, opposing parties would present their arguments in an informal peer forum and collectively analyze relevant insights. I termed this approach ‘arbitration by facts,’ which effectively preempted conflicts from escalating.
“Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a challenging problem.”
I have spent most of my design career dealing with large data sets and granular performance interfaces. In such environments, perhaps the biggest user-facing problem is efficient derivation of insights. As interfaces become increasingly saturated with reporting functionalities, the more laborious and time consuming it becomes for users to draw the right conclusions. Over the course of numerous immersion sessions I paid closer attention to what users were trying to accomplish, rather than how they went about accomplishing it. By doing so, I’ve realized that more almost half of the users were spending considerable amount of time triangulating metrics summaries for a very simple reason: they were looking for a high-level status of their ads performance and to confirm that their campaigns were running as intended. The amount of time (read: money) they were investing was in no way commensurable with such trivial accomplishment.
With that, I proposed a lightweight system of high-level status messaging that would provide sellers with periodic green/orange/red updates on both mobile and web. The same status signaling would be placed above detailed performance summaries, prior to sellers getting entrapped in the dissection of incoming metrics. Together, this simple signaling saved C2C/SMB sellers around 45 minutes per week, making every 3rd user session no longer necessary. The minutes that they would now be able to put to better use elsewhere in their daily selling journeys.