Vandana Rajesh
Product designer, New York CityShip cycles dropped 40% and task completion time dropped 60% on the redesigns I led with real research behind them. The last brand relaunch I worked on took Instagram followers from 15 to 50.
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I studied computer science, was a founding designer at an AI startup, and rebuilt a nonprofit's brand and website by hand. Right now I'm working on product at a healthcare AI company, and it's honestly the work I care about most, since the decisions actually matter to real people. Outside of work I'm a night owl who's usually sketching, taking landscape photos on my phone or a film camera, cycling around the city, or playing badminton with friends. I can rewatch Shrek, Ice Age or Interstellar on a loop and never get bored of them.
I don't like guessing, so I run real interviews and usability tests before making decisions. One redesign I led this way cut task completion time by 60%.
I try to build systems that don't fall apart once I'm not the one using them. The design system I built at Pomu let three engineers ship new surfaces about 40% faster on their own.
I prototype in actual code, not just Figma, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I use AI tools a lot too, for scaffolding components, debugging, that kind of thing. I've hand-coded and deployed full sites before, this one included.
Every team I've joined, I've ended up as the only or one of super small team designer. I'm comfortable owning something from the research all the way through to shipping it.