L2 Fat marker sketches 4 minutes read — 27 Sept 2025

What's the best level of detail one should use to communicate an idea? Let's take the most simplest, benign format: the humble paper napkin sketch. It makes the representation of the idea too crude, but on the flip side, it actually welcomes the audience, offering them a safe space to critique the idea. It suggests them to provide constructive feedback without any hesitance. I would call this as...

Poetic License of Design 3 minutes read — 12 Jan 2025

Let's say you have to make slides for tomorrow's big meeting. Your boss wants five strategy points on one slide. You know that's too much to be put on one slide, but it's being insisted. "This gives a complete picture of our strategy". "We can't split it up." You think there is another way. You spread these points across five clean slides, one point per slide, and you still receive a pushback....

Brand treatments, Design Systems, Vibes 4 minutes read — 20 Sept 2024

The usual approach to building a design system often involves compiling a list of font families, typography guidelines, color palettes, patterns, and similar visual elements. Take Gumroad, for example, one of the best open-source design systems out there. It seemingly covers everything a company might need—color schemes, icons, font selections, even sticker packs, and more. When examining...

How does AI affect UI? 7 minutes read — 12 Aug 2024

Intended Audience — For conversational UI designers in healthcare industry curious about various UI affordances/design patterns in vogue right now Our online conversations have been increasingly life-like, but yet life-less at the same time. The UI of apps have become more conversational and chat-like in nature. Not just apps, even websites have their own chat-like interfaces on the side. And all...

Design that's so bad it's actually good 3 minutes read — 16 May 2024

Recently, a relative sought my help to tweak a badly designed poster on Microsoft Paint. This was meant to be circulated on Whatsapp as an advertisement for the handyman services his friend was offering in his locale. He wanted to ‘jazz’ it up and asked if I could help. I quickly fired my Figma and started working towards revamping the layout. Before pushing some pixels, I took a brief pause—What...

The role of taste in building products 6 minutes read — 24 Jan 2024

Take Marc Lou, a familiar figure within the Twitter Indiehacking circle. He's garnered attention for openly sharing his journey as a product builder. This transparency has piqued interest in his projects well before their launch, as followers have grown to appreciate his distinctive approach. A notable instance of this was the excitement around his AI logo generator, which swiftly climbed to the...

Products need not be user centered 6 minutes read — 23 Jan 2024

Putting the user first has always been the golden rule in design. It’s so common that nobody really questions it anymore. We’re told, ‘The user knows best. Listen to them.’ I’ve had my skepticism about the framing of the term — user-centered design. I’ve kept myself from voicing this apprehension, afraid of being dismissed as an outright blasphemy in the design circles. However, having shifted...

Pluginisation of Modern Software 2 minutes read — 22 Jan 2024

Transitioning from Adobe to Figma was a big change for me in my design journey. At that time, the whole design ecosystem was revolving around Adobe. For image manipulation, you had Photoshop, Illustrator for vector graphics, Indesign for reports, XD for website or app prototypes and so on. When Figma first started it was competing to disrupt this ecosystem for UI/UX Design. As the adobe ecosystem...

Making Nielsen's heuristics more digestible 2 minutes read — 09 Jan 2024

Jakob Nielsen's heuristics are probably the most-used usability heuristics for the design of interfaces. If you go to their website, you might encounter these dry prescriptive statements as shown in the image. Recently came across this blog by Michael Prestonise and loved the way he had repurposed the old wine in a new bottle. It converted a boring user manual into an engaging flashcard format...

Insights are not just a salad of facts 4 minutes read — 06 Jan 2024

What is an insight? An insight for Elon was: "The most entertaining outcome was the most likely'. His tweet suggests that he believes in taking risks and embracing the unknown, rather than playing it safe. For Maya Angelou, the renowned poet and civil rights activist, it was: "People will forget what you said, but people will never forget how you made them feel". A perspective on the impact of...

Minimum Lovable Product 3 minutes read — 02 Jan 2024

We might have to rethink on the definition of the 'Minimum Viable Prototype'. Especially since the bar for what's viable keeps rising up, with the likes of Gumroad, etc being built in a weekend. Notion, Figma, Airtable, Superhuman and Discord with their extremly high quality user experience has led to a highly devoted user base among tech Twitter. It would be foolish to think of the MVP of Notion...

How to arrive at on-brand colours? 9 minutes read — 14 Dec 2023

While creating a brand, one of the hardest things to do is to arrive at the right set of colors. Colors are a tricky subject—when done incorrectly, the emotions get mismatched, and in the worst of situations, the brand might just seem all over the place. Think of the last time you went to a fast food joint. What was the color of the brand? Most probably, it might be a combination of red and...

Personal Observation Techniques 2 minutes read — 12 Sept 2023

When I first started doing design observations, there was ABSOLUTELY no structure. I just went ahead to observe the surroundings and talking to as many people as I can. Although I did get some insights from this process, I realised that there could be a better way. There are three major steps you could follow. Step 1 — Noting down the key assumptions concerning the user. Listing them down...

Design is a confusing word 2 minutes read — 06 Sept 2023

As designers, we’re always asked to vouch for the user’s needs above anything else. But if the company takes a hit, all of our efforts might end in vain. To solve this dilemma, this note from Dan Winer comes in handy— Designers, don’t forget: You were hired to build a business. Show your value using the benefits over features method: Don’t talk about the “quality” of your design. Talk about its...

A Primer to Service Design Blueprints 3 minutes read — 22 Aug 2023

When someone asks me what is service design? I usually explain them what this means with an example: Let's say you're heading to the airport to catch your next flight. You head to the entrance, show your passport, enter the hallway, are guided to the service kiosk, you get your boarding pass, check your luggage weight, and then all you know, you've reached the gate for boarding your flight. Don't...

Rapid Journey Prototyping 4 minutes read — 15 Aug 2023

As a product manager who also pitches in as a service designer at Noora Health, i sometimes do wonder how I could use most of the design methods I'm applying at my day job for myself. Let's take the methodology of Service Design Blueprinting for example. It involves outlining the front stage and back stage elements of all the actors involved in a system to make it lead to the intended action. For...

Do's and Don'ts of User Research 1 minute read — 21 Jun 2023

Some principles which I follow while doing user-centered design: 1. Involving users early in the product development process makes products intuitive and fosters loyalty. It is essential to zoom out and follow a constant process of hypothesis testing, MVP development, review, and refinement. Preparation of research requires a clear goal and involvement of the research team. 2. Utilize both...

Design Manifesto 11 minutes read — 10 May 2023

This thought was inspired by the book Design Expertise (Lawson & Dorst, 2009) which includes an interview with the architect Ken Yeang where the author mentions: “I give every new member of staff the practice manual to read when they join. They can not just see past designs but study the principles upon which they’re based”. In other words, what would be the ethos behind your own unique design...

The soul searching years 12 minutes read — 15 Aug 2019

There are choices we make because we desire them deeply, and there are choices we make because the inertia of the world carries us into them. In the small towns and cities across India, engineering had quietly become not a profession, but a rite of passage. It wasn’t a decision that needed questioning; it was a given, like gravity. By the time I finished 12th grade, I, like so many others,...

Design education amidst social tribulations 5 minutes read — 21 Jul 2019

The Lead By Design program started about 5 months back in Auroville, Pondicherry for a group of 11 students from two different communities, the edayanchavadi and kottakarai village communities. It was in the initial phase difficult to get these communities together, especially the parents to allow their children to learn with each other owing to their varied social backgrounds. There were certain...