All Posts

Organization: Infoedge (99acres) Role: Head of Design Duration: ~1 year Team Size: ~12 designers Context Infoedge (99acres) is a large, highly valued Indian technology organization with strong engineering capability and multiple product lines at scale. I joined to lead the design function at a point where design quality was not the concern, but design velocity and decision confidence were increasingly under scrutiny. Initial Team Structure Flat hierarchy 12 designers wit

Context A cross-company initiative was formed to unify voice experiences across Microsoft. At the outset, there was no single product, roadmap, or interface. Seventeen independent voice implementations existed across the ecosystem, built on three distinct code stacks. Each had been developed with care and strong ownership by experienced teams. Problem The challenge was not visual or interaction design. It was alignment. Consolidating voice required coordination across mature

Observation Effective design often goes unnoticed. Not due to lack of ambition, but because it fits seamlessly into the user’s context, space, time, habits, and expectations. It does not interrupt or demand attention. It performs its function and recedes. Situation Design that fits is frequently misread as ordinary. This perception is incorrect. Ordinariness in this case is the outcome of deliberate judgment, informed by context rather than novelty. Standing out is relatively

Shift in Practice Over time, the focus moved away from novelty and mass replication toward durability. Priority shifted to tools that do not overstimulate, interfaces that respect attention, and systems that improve daily life in small, reliable ways. The work became less about addition and more about judgment, what to remove, what to keep consistent, and when to stop. Observed Patterns Certain patterns recurred across projects and contexts: nature, repetition, wear, and resi