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[Expert Roundup]: 16 Design Experts share how you can become a Successful Designer

Design experts from Times Internet, Ola, Google Pay, Rebel Foods, Vedantu, Lenskart, Microsoft, Cred, Flipkart, Paytm, BigBasket, Swiggy, Mosaic Wellness, India Today. PharmEasy, BYJU's shares how you can become a successful designer. Find insights Shayak Sen, Ramanik Pevekar, Asad Rabbani, Rishiraj Bose, Parinishtha Yadav, Atul Khola, Tushar Kumar, Shubham Singh, Mehar Ejaz, Raghavan Vasudevan, Aditya Shrivastava, Leena Jacob, Anirudh Palaskar, Avinash Tripathi, Mana Majboor, Himanshu Gupta!


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Sourabh Kaushik

3 years ago | 34 min read

Apart from knowing the ins and outs of the principles of design, or the never-ending list of tools in the Adobe Suite, there are a few things to know as a designer that will add to your success.

We've spoken to the design experts in India and have compiled their tips and advice to help you survive and thrive as a designer.

A huge shoutout to Shayak Sen, Ramanik Pevekar, Asad Rabbani, Rishiraj Bose, Parinishtha Yadav, Atul Khola, Tushar Kumar, Shubham Singh, Mehar Ejaz, Raghavan Vasudevan, Aditya Shrivastava, Leena Jacob, Anirudh Palaskar, Avinash Tripathi, Mana Majboor, and Himanshu Gupta for sharing such wonderful insights.

Continue reading to find out answers to:

  • What organisations expect from designers
  • Mistakes to avoid as a designer
  • The day-to-day role of a designer
  • Non-design skills that would make you a successful designer

Avinash Tripathi- Head of Design, Times Internet

Avinash Tripathi, Times Internet
Avinash Tripathi, Times Internet

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

While design principles remain the same, it’s the process that may vary from company to company depending upon the domain they serve and the way a business operates overall.

For e.g., at Expedia, we’d research and validate a lot prior to shipping multiple experiments with live users. At Times, we’d quickly experiment on live environments and validate with users digitally.

Most teams have set processes in design where we were taught to first articulate via user flows, wireframe, validate, mock-up, validate, ship and eventually iterate again, but this can be different at different stages of a product lifecycle as well what stage the company is in.

Designers need to be flexible in given situations out of their experience and should try to bring more clarity via design in unstructured environments. Design has this inherent visual output that helps stakeholders and users respond correctly to unearth many hidden use cases.

When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel underwater. How did you deal with it?

Transitioning into a senior role brings a lot of responsibilities. Along with more business and system knowledge, one needs to become good at people management with one's own team as well as other teams.

It may be emotionally draining sometimes and that’s where your own support system, your FAMILY comes into the picture, which in my case helps me recover.

Sometimes even colleagues with whom we have good bonds can help us through good feedback, especially the peers who may be in a similar role (could be a different function) can help us gain some perspective by sharing their own experiences.

Can you please share how you got into the field of design?

It is an interesting story :). In 1998-1999, I was preparing for my chartered accountancy since I come from a commerce background, fulfilling my parent’s dream. It’s around that time a friend of mine was running a design institute himself and I used to visit for evening chillouts using the internet while sipping coffee.

It’s there that I got hooked onto Photoshop and saw what others were doing and I enrolled myself. By the end of the year, I was doing freelance assignments for creative agencies building flash presentations and websites. Around 2003, I started learning more about UX and UI design and that’s where I enrolled myself again with training from HFI and started enjoying this aspect of design more.

I am grateful over the years of the choices and learnings out of whatever has come through and parents haven’t been complaining now too, LOL!

What do your team expect from a designer joining your organisation, in terms of generic skills?

In general, what I personally look for in a designer is how deep a person can go into problems at hand and then come up with a design hypothesis that’s backed by some kind of validation (whether it’s existing data or if someone took pain to actually test it out).

And finally, of course, a certain quality of visual and interaction design which is adhering to current standards so we are able to scale those skills any day easily. Ultimately, design is a visual outcome of a solution.


Aditya Shrivastava- Lead Product Designer, Ola

Aditya Shrivastava, Ola
Aditya Shrivastava, Ola


Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

From a product design perspective, Figma is becoming the standard. So it helps to keep some shortcuts at hand to fasten the design process. Other than that, it's good to have expertise in some prototyping tools for getting your ideas across. This can be anything — Principle, Protopie, or even Figma.

You would have expected an answer like, “tools don’t matter to a good designer”, which I also strongly believe in. These skills are easily transferable and the tools are easy to use. A person good in Sketch or XD would need just a week and some YouTube videos to become an expert in Figma (but can't say that about becoming an expert in design).

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

I think these are the skills that you would also expect in a seasoned salesperson or a mediator such as being able to hold your ground convincingly, justifying decisions through logic, laws, experiments, and experience.

Also, it's getting increasingly important to be good at communication and writing. It’s not about being able to write flowery poetry and prose, but more about getting your point across in clear concise sentences.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

Don’t let creativity die. Don’t restrain yourself within the realms of laws and guidelines. It’s totally fine if you don’t know the exact definition of some Law of Prägnanz as long as you are churning out designs that are in tune with it.

Don't always let metrics and data drive your design. Sometimes it's good to have fun, taking a not-so-safe route, breaking some norms, and creating some new ones.

Strive for designing not only what works well, but go that extra mile and try out that crazy idea which nobody believed in. Give it shape, and validate it. Don't forget, user delight is also a part of the user experience.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

Design education has become democratic like never before. One downside of this is that a lot of good content gets lost in the sea. While seeking guidance, it’s important to look through the first layer of social media presence, followers, and ‘brand’.

Some of the best designers(and the most helpful ones) I learned from are rarely active in the online world. It sure does help to get advice and opinions from industry mentors and senior leaders. At the same time, it’s not to be trusted blindly.

In a dynamic world, what worked for someone at some point in time, might not work word-to-word for everyone else.


Leena Jacob- UX Lead, Google Pay India

Leena Jacob, Google Pay India
Leena Jacob, Google Pay India

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

I don’t have regular or typical days anymore! Sometimes my day begins with meetings as early as 6: 30 am, on others, it’s usually 8: 30 or 9 am. My most productive days are when I’ve had fewer reviews and meetings, with more heads downtime to work. I like to keep meetings short and unless they’re ad hoc to discuss something that needs to be unblocked, I like to have an agenda beforehand or no meeting at all.

Most of my time goes into:

  • Aligning cross-functional stakeholders and leaders (in 1 on 1s or in groups)
  • Making sure my team feels supported and have everything they need
  • Making sure all workstreams are running smoothly and progress is communicated
  • Prioritising short term asks and planning for long term
  • Collaborating with other design leads on common problems and objectives.
  • Working with cross-functional leads on the product’s long term vision
  • Staying on top of trends and competitors in the space

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Sketch, Figma or any vector-based tool. If you know one of these, you can easily pick up the others. These days, online collaboration is key and the answer to that is usually Figma. I would also highly recommend a presentation tool like Google Slides or Keynote.

Over the last couple of years, I have learned the importance of designing presentations to present context, deeper thinking and communicate our work as designers. And last but not the least, pen and paper or a marker/whiteboard. We don’t have to be fine artists, but to be able to communicate using a combination of words, doodles or sketches is one of the most powerful tools a designer can have.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

To observe and learn from others. Most of what I know today in terms of my craft is what I learned from other designers with specific strengths. Look for opportunities to work with designers from other countries - there is so much to learn.

As designers, we are the custodians of the user’s experience. It’s important to develop our empathy skills because very often, we are not the user.

Another piece of advice I would give myself is to network and meet more people from other teams in your company. As designers, a lot of us tend to get very comfortable in our roles or what we’re tasked with. I found that meeting more stakeholders, leaders and peers really boosted my confidence in selling my skills and work. This pushed my career into a completely different trajectory.

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

Storytelling and communication. I cannot emphasize this enough - there are so many brilliant designers out there but the ones who grow in their career are the ones who can tell a great story!

It takes a lot of skill, practice and even failure to get this right. I’m still learning this myself. It’s really important to be able to clearly articulate the right amount of information to the audience you’re presenting to, keeping them engaged and doing this confidently.


Anirudh Palaskar- Lead Product Designer, Rebel Foods (formerly Faasos)

Anirudh Palaskar
Anirudh Palaskar

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

Being a Lead Product Designer has its own perks and downsides, which indeed is both fun and exciting to deal with. Usually, my day starts with a small “Plan for the day”, which is going through the calendar for scheduled calls and meetings, tasks in hand, so that I can plan my day efficiently, which is then followed by a Design Standup.

The work culture here is more of a collaborative one and the hierarchy or a role does not ever come into the picture. But as a lead, I do have to take complete ownership of the product that I work on with the team.

Mostly, a regular day at work depends on what time of the quarter it is. The start of a quarter is full of OKR discussions, planning timelines, documentation, a good amount of research work, brainstorming features and ideas, designing solutions, collaboration and presentations to stakeholders for design approvals. On the other hand, towards the end of the quarter it’s more like hurdling between calls and meetings to design tools to dev handovers and design support, basically a small amount of everything, right from product to design to tech :)

Irrespective of the workload or deadlines, any regular day has enough challenges and problems to solve, a good amount of collaboration and a proper Work-Life balance :)

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

An approach towards design or solving customers problems definitely varies from company to company and are somewhat direct outcomes of its core values. Rebel Foods as an organisation has 6 core values, one of which is “Customer First Thinking.” which we internally refer to as “Crazy about Customer Experience.” and that is why our approach is always Customer First Thinking.

Ad collaboration is the key at Rebel Foods and we collaboratively work towards making sure that the customer experience is given the highest priority and not just the business needs.

Through this, our primary focus is always on creating delightful experiences for all our existing and potential users at every touchpoint, be it our digital products or physical stores.

Not just the design team but also the Product Team (having experienced product managers) to highly skilled Front End Developers to Industry leaders as our Execom members, work together to reflect that Customer First Thinking in all our products.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

A good designer should never depend on tools, as the industry is changing rapidly and the tool that is a market leader today can be a tool to be remembered tomorrow. So the major focus should be more on learning and expanding the knowledge base.

Also, major organisations are now flexible with designers using their own choice of tools.

But yes, the following are a few of many tools that will help you become an efficient designer:

  • Figma for design and prototyping
  • Miro or Figjam for collaboration and brainstorming
  • Google docs or Notion for documentations
  • Principle app or After Effects for micro animation
  • Zeplin for dev-design handoff and support
  • Jira, Trello or basecamp for task management

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

Just like the tech domain, a need for full stack designers is emerging in the design industry too. Being from an engineering background, my understanding of how technology works has helped me grow 3x in my career, as it directly helped me tackle and overcome tech-design limitations easily and efficiently in the early stages of the product cycle.

Apart from this, understanding Analytics and leading tools like Inspectled, Clevertap and Google analytics is a cherry on the cake, as Data-Driven Design is highly appreciated across the globe.

The most important non-design skill to have is communication and collaboration because at the end of the day, it is very important how well you express your ideas and solutions to the management, rest everything else can be managed with the right attitude :)

Shayak Sen- Head of Design, Vedantu

Shayak Sen, Vedantu
Shayak Sen, Vedantu

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

A regular day starts with sync-ups. In the morning, the sync-ups are either with design pod teams or with stakeholders like the product head, product directors of individual verticals, HR team members, marketing or tech counterparts.

With product pod teams, I go through a project tracker and take a stock of the status of different projects. With product stakeholders, I discuss key projects, blockers and about product and design process of working. HR discussions are around staffing needs, performance reviews and other people initiatives for the design team. This is usually followed by some working sessions, reviews or project-specific catch-ups to discuss feedbacks, directions, timelines etc.

Post lunch I have meetings as per need, ranging from project-specific reviews and discussions, new projects initiation, or with HR to discuss people-related work. I also set aside some focused time to finish personal work. Evening there are often Org level staff meetings or general catchup with part of teams or team members. Else I spend some time on a few projects myself. Also, interviews of candidates.

Can you please share how you got into the field of design?

It's been a meandering journey and a very organic foray into design space. I wanted to be a physicist in school, prepared for engineering exams, joined IIT Roorkee and took up Architecture as a field of specialisation. I got interested in graphic design and worked as an intern in a startup in Bangalore in my final year.

In campus placement, I got a job in TCS as a software developer, sacrificed that to join as a Visual Designer in a design agency in Bangalore. Deeper questions around the role of design in changing human life led me to explore movie making and product design.

I joined IDC, IIT Bombay to make movies and delve deeper into design. My specialisation was Visual Communication. By the time I was graduating, interaction design was picking up and so I co-founded my design company right out of my college which focussed on User Experience and UI. That’s how I got into design.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

To start with, essential design tools are necessary. These can include as per the need of the times, Figma, Sketch, Adobe suite, Collaboration tools like Mural, Project management tools like Asana, Confluence, Trello, Org tools like Slack, Complete G-Suit, Data Analytics tools like Clevertap, Hotjar, tech tools like Storybook, Github, Lottie, prototyping tools like Principle.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

If I had a chance to tell something to my younger self, then it would be to find a mentor early in my career and reach out for help to seniors and more experienced designers in the industry.

I initiated many things all by myself. I co-founded a design company leading the design charter, joined frog, and then later played the role of Head of Design in various companies. I made innumerable mistakes and learnt from my own experience. I could have made my journey a bit easier and accelerated my learnings if I had mentors to work with early in my career.


Himanshu Gupta- AVP Design, PharmEasy

Himanshu Gupta, Pharmeasy
Himanshu Gupta, Pharmeasy

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

I like to start my day physically and mentally charged. I wake up at 7 am to go for a morning run. Post which, I have my breakfast with a morning coffee before starting my workday.

At the beginning of the week, I review my calendar & prioritize my week. Let me take you through how a typical workday looks. A day’s activities comprise of the following:

Workday Beginning: My day begins with checking over my previous day's notes and going through the emails/hangout chats and calendar to get a sense of the day.

Catch-ups/Team Syncs: This comprises 1:1s, team catch-ups, catch-up with other stakeholders. Catching up with the design team is the favourite part of my day. Team catch-ups involve understanding what my team members are working on, project progress, blockers, discussing research findings & insights and brainstorming with the team and helping them.

Recruitment: These days, I spend 35-40% of my time on recruitment activities as we are hiring for various levels and positions. Recruitment activities generally comprise looking for potential candidates, interviewing, and other activities to add people to the team. 

Design Ops and Processes: PharmEasy has grown substantially over the last few years. We are at a stage where multiple projects are running simultaneously, systems and team structures are becoming complex. These days, I am working on setting up the "Design Ops" function to scale design processes and create an effective design org. 

Learning from the experience of others: I spend some time reading and listening to Product & Design podcasts. Some of the podcasts I am listening to these days are:

  1. The Design Better Podcast
  2. Users First - a UX Design Podcast
  3. Clever - A Podcast about Design

Networking: This involves meeting and interacting with people in the start-up industry. This helps me learn from other peoples' work and experiences and share my learnings with others as a part of panel discussions, start-up mentoring, etc.

Workday closing: I close my workday with planning for the next day's schedule as per new developments which happened in the day.

What do your team expect from a designer joining your organization, in terms of generic skills?

There are different skills & experiences required as per the position and the role. However, some common characteristics are a must for the designers whom we hire:

  1. Curiosity
  2. Doers attitude
  3. Inclination towards both qualitative & quantitative insights

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

1. Technology: A fundamental familiarity of front-end programming and HTML-CSS, as well as a concept of what an API is and how APIs and integrations function is important. Inefficient back-and-forth due to a lack of grasp of the technology might lead to unplanned development rework if not managed properly.

As Aarron Walter rightly said - "An architect would understand the properties of concrete, so why wouldn't a designer understand the properties of code?"

2. Business: Inclination towards and understanding of business goals and design for business success.

Understanding business goals and business language make it easier for designers to create more relevant solutions and easier to convince non-designers into user-centric ideas.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

This Product tech industry is reaching a point where design is becoming a huge piece of the creation & maintenance of a product. Tools won't make an individual a better designer but some tools are essential facilitators and enablers which help in efficient work delivery, structuring and collaboration. I will list down the different aspects of the designing process which are improved with the usage of tools:

Wireframing - Miro, Figjam

Designing - Figma, Sketch App, Adobe XD, Invision Studio

Prototyping - Figma, Invision, Marvel App

Collaboration/file-sharing - Figma, Abstract, Sketch Cloud

User insights - for in-app experience analytics and focus on why along with what (UX Cam/Hotjar), for Click-stream analytics (Clevertap/GA)


Ramanik Pevekar - Head of Product Design, Lenskart

Ramanik Pevekar, Lenskart
Ramanik Pevekar, Lenskart

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

In daily routine, it’s very important to keep the team motivated and constructive feedback. That’s the way which will bring in improvement and growth within the team, and when the team performs you perform!

We have daily DSMs which helps the team to know what other team members are working on and we have quick - interactive feedback sessions for everyone’s work which again helps the team involved in decision making.

We have weekly Design Unwind sessions where each designer creates something which is not possible during the usual day due to tight timelines and tech constraints. It gives them an opportunity to think beyond and create something innovative yet feasible with current tech in the industry.

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

In Lenskart, we approach design with a different perspective. We don’t have strict guidelines to follow any process. Sometimes, we use lean methods to get to the roots of the problem to understand it faster and execute it with tech feasibility.

Sometimes the approach is to innovate and disrupt, for that we get into the details which helps us to understand prototype-test-iterate. The idea with this approach is don’t think about current tech feasibility, look at the bigger picture and achieve those results for long term impact.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

Design is a vast industry, you need to be super clear on what you want to pursue as a career. Once that’s defined, then you can narrow down your research and learn better practices for that.

Creating a relevant portfolio will increase your chances to get hired. Attend webinars, workshops and learn from industry mentors. There’s a lot of content available online

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

All UX methods aren’t mandatory to follow. They are there to help you understand what’s the problem, where it’s happening, and why that’s happening. Trying to get these answers would help you do a better job on your solution. Please don’t just do UX evaluation of any product, go deep to understand the main problem statement


Parinishtha Yadav- UX Designer-II at Microsoft Teams

Parinishtha Yadav
Parinishtha Yadav

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

Working at the Microsoft Teams design studio, I get to kick off my day using the very product I’m designing for - by checking my messages on Teams and organising my tasks and calendar.

A typical day at work starts off with this, followed by a few hours of head down deep work. I am mostly on Figma or writing/sketching on my pad during these hours, devoted to projects that require creative thinking.

This is usually followed by a series of meetings with different stakeholders from product, engineering and research. These are either discussions on project work or huddles/crits where I am sharing my work with peers for feedback or am providing feedback to peers on theirs. This ensures a constant stream of communication stays on.

The last few hours of the day are devoted to more hands-on work like preparing design specs or iterating on designs. Around 5-6 PM, I wind off and often spend a bit of time on the more fun side-projects.

Being a 3D enthusiast, this usually involves spending time on blender cooking up visuals for branding or team activity. Given our team is spread across geos, I often have a few meetings post-dinner where I am catching up with overseas peers to share updates.

One thing I’ve developed over time is to structure my day in such a way that I tackle vision projects requiring my reflective mind during the morning hours when the mind is fresh. Executional projects are kept for the evening time post-meetings where more of my behavioural mind is doing the job.

What do your team expect from a designer joining your organisation, in terms of generic skills?

We are big on designers who have a strong skillset in interaction and visual design, coupled with understanding/empathy and great communication skills.

A lot of the work we do as designers in a company as large as Microsoft is to align stakeholders on a design vision- and that requires powerful storytelling and the ability to paint a picture. We also work with cross-functional and cross-cultural stakeholders. Having people who are inclusive and value diversity is a must.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Figma trumps it all when it comes to: brainstorming or mapping user journeys (FigJam), creating high or low fidelity UI, prototyping, maintaining and using design systems, and dev handoffs/ design spec creation. This is the tool that suffices for most day-to-day work. Everything else is an add-on.

For running user research, Usertesting.com has proven to be a good platform.

For those who are looking for advanced prototyping, Principle for mac and ProtoPie are great options. For exploring motion and micro-interactions, Aftereffects is the go-to place. And if someone is looking to explore and add 3D to their toolkit, Blender is the best place to be.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

Don’t just look for inspiration within the design world and be open to including stakeholders outside design into the design process. The best ideas come when you’re not even looking, but you have to go to a lot of different places to be able to see them.

For e.g., I’ve gotten moments of UX inspiration while playing indie video games or have stumbled upon a deep insight into user behaviour while reading philosophy. It is also important to break away every once in a while, to keep yourself inspired, and regain that healthy state of flow when you’re designing.


Atul Khola- Senior Product Designer, CRED

Atul Khola, CRED
Atul Khola, CRED

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

Design has pretty much the same standard approach in all organizations:

Analyze - solve - align - execute - implement - learn - optimize

The difference at CRED is once we create a seamless solution that works well, looks beautiful, and where most are happy to ship, we take a step back and make it 'larger than life, the CRED way of designing. This freedom & power has been possible because Kunal Shah truly values design & we have a superstar CDO, Harish Sivaramakrishnan, who always has our back.

When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel underwater. How did you deal with it?

As I grew as a designer, I realized there's only so much value you can provide in a 24 hours day. The only way to increase this value exponentially is to mentor the younger designers to become better for themselves and the org. But all of this listening, thinking, suggesting, indulging apart from daily mammoth tasks takes a toll on your mind space & personal life.

'Working out' has been a boon in my life. It started as an aesthetic goal in NIFT, Mumbai.

But over time, it has become more like meditation for me. It's my safe space where I exert myself, clear my head, untangle my thoughts, socialize with people who have nothing to do with design & startups (this was much better in Mumbai). So refreshing! each day, every day!

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

I believe that designers should come up with the best solution & then look for the tools that can help them execute rather than looking for the best solution a tool can create. Tools should enable, not limit.

But if I had to name one, I'd say get your hands dirty with Figma. It's growing very fast; the sooner you get acquainted, the better. This drift in the product design community to Figma is very similar to the 'photoshop to sketch app' one in the past.

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed?

Comprehension & communication, It's timeless. Designers have to decipher conversations into opinions, problem statements, pain points, prescriptions every day.

Once we have the solution, we need to convince, onboard, inform, share, debate with the same set of people. All of this while maintaining excellent relationships. Yup, not easy.


Mana Majboor - Product Designer, BYJU’s

Mana Majboor, BYJU’S
Mana Majboor, BYJU’S

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

Our company has a customer-first approach and It's the whole mindset of our business model. We have a separate research team that does extensive primary research on an existing or a visionary product/ feature.

This extensive document is supported by the large database that we have and is supplemented by multiple interviews with kids across age groups. With all the research and data, we as product designers with the PM devise the best possible solutions to cater to the ever-evolving user needs.

In my experience, it greatly ranges from company to company since the core values, purpose and intent of every business or product could vary largely. It makes an organisation customer-first, business-first, tech-first or a combination of some.

When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel underwater. How did you deal with it?

One thing that I have realised over time is it is very important to speak your mind. Being a woman, we are trained to not speak our minds and not occupy space. As I transitioned to higher roles and got more responsibilities I felt intimidated in the beginning.

But slowly, I learned how to occupy space in the meetings, organise my thoughts and speak them aloud. To be organized is an art every designer should imbibe.

Being organised and documenting my entire workflow with my team has helped me to cope with a plethoric workload and efficiently distribute the responsibilities within our team. This also helps you confidently deal with your juniors and skill train them efficiently.

How’s the role of a (product/UI/UX) designer at a startup different from that of a large company?

I have had the opportunity of working with a medium-size and a unicorn startup. One thing that I have learned while working as a product designer at a startup is that you get a lot of opportunities to experiment with your own process, own it and develop it.

Startups in their nature are very dynamic and experimental hence giving designers immense room to develop and up their skills, mould the process of the organisation as opposed to a large company that has fixed roles, vision and methodology.

While working with a startup you might have to wear multiple hats and go a little above and beyond your role, but it helps you to push your boundaries and always put yourself to test which is unlikely to happen at a larger organization.

Can you share some design practices you carry out within the organisation to make sure that the creative juices of people within the team don’t stop flowing?

Every month we have design brainstorming sessions where about 20-25 designers, product managers from all across teams and pods come together to brainstorm on one feature or product. These workshops are generally 1-2 weeks long and help people deal with creative blocks.

Working with people from different teams on totally new and visionary concepts helps the designers to break the barrier of the restraints of an actual product. It helps them go wild with their imagination, exactly what a designer needs to keep his creative juices flowing.


Tushar Kumar- Director, Product at Mosaic Wellness

Tushar Kumar, Mosaic Wellness
Tushar Kumar, Mosaic Wellness

How do you approach design at your organisation? In your experience, does it range greatly from company-to-company?

Approach to design greatly varies from company to company as well as within the same organisation as it scales.

A 0-1 journey where design needs to be mostly about experimenting and breaking many hypotheses while being extremely fast, does not benefit highly from creating design systems or processes, or from validating multiple user researches before a go-live. The path to success is how fast, lean and agile the entire process is.

On the contrary, at a scale that reaches millions of people a day, the team needs to be super critical of the approach at every stage - hypothesis, execution, testing, validation, launch.

On the other hand, products vary heavily across the same HEART framework. A company whose sole product is heavy on engagement will have a very different focus than an organisation whose products will focus on a transaction.

When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel underwater. How did you deal with it?

I don't think any designer hasn’t gone through an impostor syndrome at some point in their careers. I’d say just sheer hard work and willingness to learn as much as you can from your peers, understanding each and every facet of the tasks you pick up, and really understanding the ‘why’ of doing what you're doing are the only ways out of it.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

As design becomes more and more important as well as critical to success for an organisation, designers need to be more diverse and grow beyond execution.

No-code is something designers need to start grasping really well in order to run experiments, create their own hypothesis, move things faster between marketing and product, and overall, really create a better understanding of digital products for themselves.

Figma and webflow are pretty much a must for every designer to have a good hang of now.

Familiarity with prototyping and wireframing across any tool is a must.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

There's a huge amount of difference in getting to the right solutions through iterations as opposed to chasing the one perfect solution. Even though in some cases, the end result might be the same, the amount of learnings you'd get from an iterative process are going to be far more beneficial than doing what you think is right.

Failing at 10 things to succeed at one is far better than doing one and gambling on that.


Shubham Singh- Product Designer, Flipkart

Shubham Singh, Flipkart
Shubham Singh, Flipkart

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

On a regular day in my current role, I interact with the Project Manager, developers and business folks on google meet. Apart from the meetings, I work on the requirements gathered from these meetings based on the information gained from these folks.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Figma is the industry standard these days, so Figma is a must for designing the UI. Some companies use Sketch or Adobe XD, but they are quite similar, Figma being the most powerful with its collaboration, FigJam and Plethora of plugins. Knowing anyone (or all) is good to go. If you know Principle or After Effects, you will have an edge in terms of micro-interactions and other animations.

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

The non-design skills to succeed as a designer would be communication as designers have to present and defend designs to other designers, leaders, and developers.

Some sense of business and development also helps because, at the end of the day, we have to fulfil business goals and coordinate with developers.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

I had started as a UI designer and transitioned to UX/Product Design. If I had a chance to tell something to my younger self, I would tell him to have a strong grip on the scientific side of design (persuasion, psychology, UX laws) and not on the art side so much. The second thing I’d tell him to focus seriously on the portfolio.

Mehar Ejaz- Graphic Designer, Paytm

Mehar Ejaz, Paytm
Mehar Ejaz, Paytm

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

The first and the foremost thing as part of my daily routine at work is to look out for the current trends, designs and happenings in the market looking for something new, exciting and out of the box.

When I have to work on something, then I start with the design brief like what the product is all about, where do we have to promote it, what kind of users do we have, what our users are most comfortable with, current trends in the market, what is our copy and then I start with researching few things on Pinterest, dribble, Behance. And with this research and market study and some pencil sketch, I crack a new idea.

Creativity is mostly abstract and often unprompted ability of the mind to discover the meaning behind seemingly unconnected elements that has the ability to create a shift in the minds of the audience.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Designers should practice sketching. Photoshop and Illustrator are a must as a tool because these are the softwares that are mostly used in any design.

After mastering these tools, designers can try their hands on other softwares too because it gradually creates your interest to learn more about new softwares and try something new.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

I would advise myself to practice, explore and research as much as I can which would sharpen my creativity. I would advise my younger self to think out of the box ideas and to avoid traditional ideas.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

Running behind money from day one proves to be one of the major roadblocks in the overall growth of a designer. Another important factor for limited growth is the tendency to follow a particular pattern and not explore much.


Raghavan Vasudevan - Product Designer, Bigbasket

Raghavan Vasudevan
Raghavan Vasudevan

Take us through a regular day designing/leading a designing team based on your current role?

All my days aren’t the same but there are certain things I do every day. My day starts at 9:30 am going through emails, calendars and to-do lists (which I always prepare the previous day). I also do some light reading of Design essays and go through Muzli for some inspiration.

At 11 am, our team has a catch-up call where we try to answer simple questions like “what are we going to do today?”. If there aren’t any meetings, I get in an hour of deep work (currently iterating on new ways to represent information in a feature).

I have my lunch break between 1 to 2 pm. At 2 pm, I have a call with the interns to understand their progress & help them with whatever they’re working on. From 3 to 4 pm, I align with the stakeholders of the project to ensure we’re on the same page and in the right direction.

Sometimes, I also receive and share feedback during these calls. At 4 pm, I take a small walk and have coffee. I usually wrap up my day by 6:30 - 7 pm. I try to complete all my remaining tasks on the to-do lists by that time.

Can you please share how you got into the field of design?

I started out as a Graphic Designer designing Brand identities, Posters, etc. as a freelancer. After a year or so, I got a chance to design a website for a friend of mine and I fell in love with the process. I spent some months deep-diving into the world of UX and the more I learnt, the more I wanted to take it up as a career.

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Figma is more than sufficient to communicate your design and is the industry-standard tool. Being familiar with components, variants & auto-layout has become a must.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

Ignoring research, following trends, copying design patterns without understanding context, lack of communication, designing only the “happy paths”, ignoring use-cases, and being afraid to ask feedback are some of the most common mistakes designers make.


Asad Rabbani- Head of Design at India Today Group

Asad Rabbani, India Today Group
Asad Rabbani, India Today Group

When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel underwater. How did you deal with it?

Being a senior person with more responsibilities, this is really a big thing to be answerable for everything, and taking the right decision for the product. To deal with the pressure, I do work on the data so that everything should be calculated

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

A non-designer should have the ability to understand and define the “User journey” that how the experience should be built to engage user with the product and how their life can be made easier to achieve the goal, for what he has come to the product (website OR App)

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

Accept the negative feedback from the stakeholders in a positive way, because the negative feedback will encourage you to learn more and learn the right things

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

They build emotions with their designs (whatever design they create), I would advise them not to be emotional with your designs because they are not making designs for themselves, rather they are creating things for the users.

Can you share some design practices you carry out within the organisation to make sure that the creative juices of people within the team don’t stop flowing?

Gather the requirement > Do research > Empathise the Design > Create Wireframes > UX Validations > Tech collaboration > Then create design


Rishiraj Bose- Senior Designer at Swiggy

Rishiraj Bose, Swiggy
Rishiraj Bose, Swiggy

Which tools should every designer know about and use to become a better designer?

Creativity needs no tools. The world is an open canvas. If a designer puts enough hard work, practice and their mind into it, they can become better.

More and more designers are moving to a wide variety of mediums to showcase their talents. With brands trying to differentiate each other from everyday creative work, they are also on the lookout for clutter-breaking stuff. With that being said, it always helps to have softwares that can enhance your work and take it to the next level.

The adobe creative suite has been the benchmark in the industry for a decade now with no signs of stopping. Photoshop, illustrator and fresco are great tools for illustrations and photo manipulations. After effects and premier and wonderful additions to your arsenal if you are looking to get into video editing, motion graphics and animations.

Indesign is great for publications and page layouts. Adobe XD can help you create amazing UIs, link them together and make a working prototype of your app.Figma is taking the world by storm as well. It can be a great tool to harness if you are a budding product designer.

Apart from the above-mentioned tools, it always helps to have additional skills. The ability to tell a visual story and have great ideas which you are able to communicate through your art is great. Start with a simple pencil and a piece of paper, then let your mind wander and your hand glide as you create something amazing.

If you had a chance to tell something to your younger self starting out as a designer, what would you say?

Take chances. Take any and every chance that you get.

I have always been my own biggest critic. I have been shy of putting my work out there in the past with the fear of being judged. One thing I have learnt is to never hold back on your creativity. That’s the worst thing you can do to yourself. Keep a small notepad and a pen with you.

Whenever inspiration hits, write it down. I have found this to be more productive than digital notes. The feeling of touching paper and physically turning it where every bit of inspiration is written down helps motivate me. You may also scribble doodles related to the idea and further build on it.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see designers making in their initial years?

  • Not having a good portfolio.

More often than not when a designer starts out, they are unsure of what people want to see for them to get hired. This leads to them stacking their portfolio with everything they have done so far. This leads to a lot of clutter and some of their best work gets lost in the shuffle.

Advice for them: Prioritise and Showcase. Put your best work forward. Work that you are proud of. Work that you want people to see first. Choose 4-5 such pieces and have them as the main attraction.
  • Lacking consistency/too much consistency

I know. I know. Contradicting. Hear me out...

Consistency is good. Doing the same thing over and over again and not experimenting is not. As designers, it’s very important to keep practising and practice a wide variety of styles, layouts, etc. Try. Try. Try. Try new styles, try old styles, try vintage styles, try modern styles, try gradients, try typography, try black and white. Try illustrations, try video editing, try motion graphics, try product design, try interior design, try something new whenever you feel like. Don’t stick to your comfort zone. That’s not how you grow.

  • It’s ok to fail.

You got this! Don’t be afraid to fail. Keep learning. Keep practising. Keep at it. You are on your way to becoming a great designer.

What are the most important skills (non-design) to have to succeed as a designer in 2021?

Willingness to learn. Patience. Be a creative sponge.

Willingness and not eagerness. You’re eager to learn how to skydive. But you pass out the moment you think about it. If you’re willing then you’ll carry on even if you pass out. Be open, take in criticism and keep creating.

Succeeding as a designer is a process. Processes take time (unless you’re cooking maggi). Patience is really important when you are a part of something which takes your entire life. It slowly grows and grows. You’ll be amazed at what you are capable of even after you have reached your peak.

Absorb everything like a sponge. Like a certain poster that you saw on the road? Click a picture. Loved a certain movie? Watch behind the scenes. Can’t get enough of a new song that just popped up on Spotify? Listen to it 50 times! Take in everything and let it out on a canvas. Create and Inspire.


Let us know what’s your biggest takeaway from this compilation.

Check out our compilation of top Product Managers here!

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