I attended the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad from 1997 till I graduated in 2002, with a degree in product design. My NID days were spent in the workshops, library, and studios - experimenting and developing, in an intellectually stimulating environment of the best instructors and young design talent in India. Given that exposure, it should come as no surprise that in the twenty years since NID, I have worked in industry and entrepreneurship in nearly two dozen sectors, with my work ranging from aeronautical, automotive design and consumer products to UX and digital product design.

I started my career post-NID dreaming of designing cars and developing video games. But in the early 2000s, the world was changing fast and I took up a job in UX and usability design - which was where all the world-changing ideas were coming to life. These were early years for digital design in India when we were literally writing new standards for all manner of things. I ended this phase of my design journey at a conference in Las Vegas in 2005, presenting a paper I’d written on how to design Interactive Voice Response Systems for multi-language markets like India.

After two years of incredible new digital product development work, I wanted to explore the design discipline further to build a deeper understanding of human-machine and human-environment interaction. So I started my own design practice partly to fuel my curiosity and do a variety of work but also to specifically explore experience design beyond screen-based interfaces. The agony and ecstasy of running Kiba Design for fourteen years helped me become a self-driven designer while allowing me space to indulge in research and hone my skills beyond product design - to visual, furniture, spatial and typographical design, and learning how to work with craftspeople and government officials. It taught me how important it is to think in terms of integrated design solutions across digital and physical mediums, while keeping in mind strategic and systemic frameworks that ensure the successful adoption and implementation of these design artefacts in the real world.

Then in 2012 I got the opportunity of a lifetime when Sam Pitroda and the late R. Gopalakrishnan selected me to work with them on the Government of India’s design education policy at the National Innovation Council (NInC), Planning Commission. My proposal was turned into India’s new design innovation policy in 2013 and has since been widely implemented and continues to grow in scale and impact. The whole experience gave me insight into how government works.

My considerable experience as a design educator certainly came in handy while working for NInC. Education has always been a passion. I’ve taught design courses, written curricula, advised on new design programs and mentored dozens of students and professionals - which has given me insight into the challenges young designers are facing nowadays with gaps in their training, and the problems of hyper specialization. My work with my students has helped me create plans of action to upskill and manage my design team members career progression and growth.

Professional advantages aside though, I truly believe that India can be a design leader given the sheer talent, skill and ability to produce quality goods and innate propensity for empathy and service. But for this to happen, we have to foster an innovation mindset and design awareness from a young age. You can’t just expect kids who have been raised to memorize things by rote in place of free-thinking, to never disobey their elders, and conform to every social expectation, to suddenly begin to think outside the box. Education is the key to critical thinking. And critical thinking is key to good design, especially socially good design.

This might be a good place to bring up the birth of my children, Uday in 2013 and Noor in 2018, that changed my life. Being a father has been great for all the predictable reasons but also because our home (if our much-scribbled-on-walls are an indication) is a laboratory for raising design thinkers! Uday is already well-versed in typography and elevator design (his passion) and Noor is into rainbows of all shapes and forms. My children have also got me interested in different learning styles and in the accessibility of our digital worlds for people of all ages and abilities.

After working on my own studio for 14 years, I was ready for my next challenge. I joined BCG Platinion in 2019 to head Strategic Design in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region. Over the next ~3 years I worked on digital transformation for dozens of clients, and led teams of dozens of designers in various countries across the region. I have seen the tectonic shift in Indian industry in the last 2 decades - from design being seen as a cost center, to companies investing in design for competitive advantage. I have invested many years and dozens of projects in helping my client partners see the value of design as a strategic partnership, and am glad to say I’ve contributed in some small way myself to this shift.