Designing and building digital products for over six years

How I got here

I started in design over a decade ago, studying UI/UX at SIIT Tech and completing a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology at Gujarat Technological University. The engineering background still shows up in how I work - I tend to think about constraints, edge cases and what is actually buildable rather than designing in a vacuum.

My first design role was as a mobile app designer between 2017 and 2019, working on consumer apps where the brief was usually "make this easier to use" rather than "make this look nicer". That is where I learned that most design problems are really structure problems wearing a visual disguise.

From 2019 to 2022 I led the UX/UI design team at Crest Infotech as Head of Design. Managing a team changed how I work: I had to be able to explain why a design decision was right, not just feel that it was, and I had to build processes that produced good work consistently rather than occasionally.

Since 2022 I have been freelancing full time, mostly through long-running engagements on Upwork with clients in the United States, the United Kingdom and India. That adds up to 88+ completed projects and six years of experience, across SaaS platforms, financial services, e-learning, travel, ecommerce and advertising technology.

How I work

Every project runs the same shape regardless of size: understand the problem, agree the structure, then design the interface. Skipping straight to visuals is faster for about a week and slower for the rest of the project, so I do not do it.

I share work at each stage rather than disappearing and returning with a finished thing. That means feedback lands while changes are still cheap, and it means you are never surprised at the end. Most of my engagements involve a short weekly call plus written updates, which keeps momentum without turning the project into a meeting schedule.

I am direct about trade-offs. If a request will make the product worse, or if there is a simpler way to get the same outcome for less money, I will say so. That has occasionally cost me work in the short term and earned me long-running clients in the long term.

Working with a designer based in India

I work from India and collaborate with clients worldwide - remote has been the normal mode for my entire freelance career, not something adopted reluctantly. We agree overlapping hours at the start of an engagement, usually a few hours a day with UK or US Eastern time, and everything important gets written down so progress is visible without depending on being in a call together.

Rates for senior design work in India are meaningfully lower than in the US, UK or Australia for the same standard of output, which is why the majority of my clients are overseas. What you should be evaluating is the work itself: the case studies on this site set out the problem, the reasoning and the result for each project, which is a better basis for judgement than a rate card.

What I am good at, and what I am not

I am strong on product thinking, interface craft, design systems and getting a design built correctly. I have shipped enough work to know which details matter and which are preference dressed up as principle.

I am not a brand identity designer, an illustrator or a copywriter. Where a project needs those, I will say so and work alongside someone who does them properly rather than stretching to cover ground I am not the best person for.