Summary:

·  Senior leader UX Design: 18+ years of seasoned design practice for user-centered design and management. Lead by example with hands-on execution for complete UX process and management with agile /scrum methods.

·  Followed a result-driven approach with excellent creative problem-solving skills and design thinking for innovative solutions to grow the business by measuring success and aligning KPIs to design objectives for translating vision into UX roadmap.

·  Built multidisciplinary design teams from the ground up to deliver excellent quality design solutions across multiple platforms and domains. Motivated 10-member, multi-disciplined team by challenging them to innovate and ‘make it work’ with cross collaboration teamwork methods and empowering them to be better than me.

·  I believe in Design follows desires of user and empathy is key to delivering simple and better design solutions.

Work Experience

Employer- Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corp.

Experience Director- UX Design | May 2015 -till date

Cisco Systems Inc. | Principle UX Consultant | May 2020- till date

·  Cisco’s sales organization wanted to strengthen relationship with their sales partners across the globe by digitizing their partner platforms using the salesforce’s custom enabled tools. Project was expected to launch in 6 months including 2 MVP releases with in $300K for UX budget. Internal sales leaders and external partner account managers were key stakeholders. I played the role of Lead user experience consultant with a team of 4 (located in two countries in different time zones) designers.

·  I planned whole UX engagement by studying requirements and doing user research to put a strategy in place for multiple module releases. We delivered personas, user research reports, task flows, interactive prototypes, and final visual design in Figma for developers to use. Figma being an excellent collaborative design tool, it helped us fast track the iterations as teamwork and establish a process for such challenges to deliver delightful quality.

·  To overcome the challenge of fast paced design releases for new platform like salesforce, we leveraged ‘lightning design system’ guidance and worked with developers right from initial task flow models, by pro-actively seeking cross-functional team collaboration. This resulted in the launch of the Partner Experience Portal in Nov 2020, covering 10k+ users globally. Now users can get to know what are their KPIs and how sales data can help them achieve their goals.

·  Currently, we are evaluating our design feedback through usage data tracking, one of the HEART methodologies.

Client: Groupon Inc. | Sr. UX consultant | Jan2020-April2020

·  This was developer portal project to onboard and test the integration of deals on Groupon portal. I conducted user interviews to understand current process and pain points of deal testing by partner developers without online simulator.

·  Based on user’s pain points, I created task flows to help product managers to understand design intentions and to further create visual interactive prototypes for Ghost CMS platform.

·  One of key challenge was to solve completion feedback for list items cancellation tests and tracking for user’s confirmation. I did multiple task flow models to test and review with sample users (developers) solved this in 1 week.

Gilead Sciences Inc. | UX Design Manager | Sept 2019- Dec 2019

·  Conducted the workshop with stakeholders to get this project for Cognizant and managed with a five-member team of designers and copywriters located in 2 countries.

·  Enterprise users were having difficulty in finding the needed information quickly, after being exposed to multiple enterprise platforms. We analyzed the content (close to 120 use cases) with help of card sorting and stakeholder discussions to create IA for all platforms, and delivered modular UX templates which can be used for any future projects. It saved the dollars for client by creating a modular template of one enterprise platform for Salesforce, SharePoint and Mobile. Now, client is sharing those templates within business units, so that they can quickly develop and implement their individual portals in enterprise ecosystem.

·  This project was squeezed to 3.5 months duration and had only $250K budget. This project was meant to convince CIO for higher investments needed to assess and redesign other portals using similar method in Year2020. I empowered my team in India by providing insights from regular discussions with internal stakeholders and supported them with quality reviews of their deliverables using Adobe XD and InVision tool for collaborative design.

Cisco Systems Inc. | UX Design Manager | Sept 2016- Aug 2019

·  During 3 years, I grew this project from 2 to the 7-member team of researchers and designers. We designed multiple enterprise applications and my design team was providing UX solutions for these applications on connected devices, web applications, task bots, chatbots, and collaboration platforms. This was annual $1Mil budget project for quarterly release cycles of MVP features in SAFe framework of delivery.

·  Amongst multiple projects, key project was redesign of ACE toolbox, an application used by onsite salesperson to demo products and services of Cisco to customers. Many UI elements in this app were designed for comprehensive reading and task actions from users. This use to consume lot of time by busy user (salesperson) and there were numerous support tickets even for simple device provisioning tasks on ACE toolbox. There were quarterly charges paid by every user, so they wanted really valuable experience which can boost their productivity.

·  Our user research through interview, surveys and usage data analytics helped us to create user personas. Our discussion with key stakeholders (sales leaders) helped us understand KPIs, objective of this initiative within business goals. These efforts shaped UX strategy aligned with business goals.

·  We delivered heuristics reports, interactive prototypes, user research reports, task flows, and final visual design using Sketch and inVision tool for design delivery.

·  One of the key challenges in this engagement was diverse set of stakeholders asking for variety of application redesign requests. I established lean design framework with cross-functional team collaboration to fast-track innovation and reuse the components standardized in central UI kit repository.

·  We established a practice of using persona as a tool for design validation and established HEART framework for measurement of UX along with delivery templates.

·  As a UX design manager, I have implemented UX to UI handover framework for seamless delivery of design and saving of licensing cost within multi-vendor delivery team.

Apple Inc. | Sr UX Consultant | Mar 2016- Jun 2016

·  The challenge was to access various web services and its components available for apple developer community to manage their development activities.

·  I provided strategic guidance and established an initial template with UX roadmap. Delivered UX design sample through wireframes and visual design. After reviewing with client leadership, I handed over the next phase work to team of three designers. I was overseeing the performance of the team remotely after June 2016, to solve any delivery challenges of team members. I empowered them by establishing connects and trust with key stakeholders and UX guidance check points which I reviewed monthly for 6 months.

eBay Inc. | UX Design Manager | Sept 2015- Dec 2015

·  eBay wanted to launch B2B portal for marketplace community for wholesale / retail ‘Buy-Sell-Manage’ of IT assets. It was greenfield project. I conducted user workshops for persona creation and created UX strategy. We proposed to launch portal in one year with ability for any user to list their assets in bulk and get statuses about bids to close the deals in their account with notifications.

·  I was leading and managing team from San Jose office with help of 2 designers from India. We used low fidelity wireframes for moderated usability testing, to derive faster initial feedback for design revisions. I delivered UX strategy document with key user journey of listing and deal closing, wireframes and visual style guide for next phase of project.

·  Supply chain web portal: This was 2^nd project which I was delivering simultaneously. I created navigation models based on initial inputs for inventory report creation and visual status dashboard for data analytics.

World Bank | UX Design Manager | May 2015- Aug 2015

·  Whole engagement was to redesign applications for enterprise platforms. 20 designers (UX / VD/ UI Dev) equally divided in USA and India location. I established collaborative and agile UX delivery framework for multiple application design requests by service units within World Bank.

·  I guided the team of designers by demonstrating best design practices and ensuring quality of UX design deliverables reports for web and mobile platforms. Helpful initiative, was to deliver seminar on latest UI/UX trends and its possible applications for project, which captured lot of attention in world bank.

Employer- Infosys Ltd.

Manager- Human Factors Design Group | August 2008- April 2015

Infosys has a product design and engineering services business unit for automotive, aerospace, health care, and electronics industry. These businesses were supported by my multi-disciplinary design team, which I built from the ground up, using internal resources to start with, and have grown to deliver best in class quality design solutions. Team size was varying from 2 to 10, while delivering multiple client projects running simultaneously.

Clients:

Comcast, Toyota, Harley Davidson (HD), Chrysler, Boeing, Becton Dickinson (BD)

Notable projects:

·  Usability testing of the integrated mobile application for media streaming to the TV through STB.

·  UX design for safety and comfort in the automotive interior:  Kinect device assisted prototype on WPF framework, for demonstration of gesture-controlled multi-user experience, for the use case of collaborative MAP navigation for changing destination during travel. (Exhibited at CES2014)

·  UX benchmarking and design for bike rider’s helmet and goggles (Recon jet-cloud-based app by HD).

·  Responsive web design for car insurance company’s customer portal application on mobile devices. I solved the challenge of MAP fencing for counting points to decide premium charges and its confirmation with the user base.

·  UX design for dynamic digital experience and branding, inside the customer experience center of Boeing. This involved doing the 3D layout of space and placing digital displays along with content on digital displays.

·  Futuristic UX concept design for luxury car in-vehicle infotainment system prototype on android tablet. This project was based on user research, benchmarking and NHTSA guidelines for car navigation system.

·  3D HMI design for car infotainment system design project using 3DS Max and NVidia UI composer.

Employer- Force Motors Ltd, Pune, India-R&D Division

Role- Deputy Manager- Industrial Design I Feb 2006-May 2008

Force Motors is pioneer of automobiles in India. This company designs and manufactures MUV and LCV range of products for Asian markets. I was leading Industrial design team of 3 designers, 3 model makers and 2 illustrators, in studio team of research and development unit. My key contribution was into Interior styling design and interior interaction framework of cockpit of multiple automotive products.

Employer- Ashok Leyland Ltd, Chennai, India. – Technical center

Role- Assistant Manager– Industrial Design and Research I May 2004-Feb 2006

Ashok Leyland is 2^nd largest CV seller in India. My key contribution was into user research for future truck cabin and interaction design for GPS navigation system tactile UI module along with interior interaction framework modeling for ergonomics of driver cockpit and testing bench prototype for validation with government regulations for safety.

Employer- Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd, Bangalore (Toyota, India).

Role- Product Designer- Product experience design and planning I Sept 2002 – April 2004

As a product experience designer my key contributions were into user research group for -INNOVA (Flagship model and largest selling MUV in India) and vehicle concept planning including experience design details for product planning specifications. Data collection and trend analysis for color and fabric, using market observation method and magazine data.