Hi! I'm Ruchin Shah
Co-founder at an AI-native product design and development company.
Previously, Principal Designer at frog Design, Lead Designer at Atlassian, Globant and fractional VP-Design at the National Digital Livestock Mission through the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Govt. of India and iSpirt.
The entrepreneurs and executives who select me to be part of their journeys, pick me to be their sparring partner, user advocate, occasional drinking bud and TV series recommender. In turn, I offer a safe space for them to think aloud on their challenges, and help them get to a solution. I have worked with a range of founders and teams across many sectors, geographies and problem spaces, giving me the ability to apply what's worked well and to avoid known pitfalls.
My work has won international awards, has been featured in the news and displayed at international conferences while creating value for organizations and their users. Many of my projects involve designing experiences that disrupt markets and influence future user behavior, therefore they remain confidential. Happy to share more when you get in touch!
🧱 Now
Co-founder
Emerging Technology Company
⌛️ Previously
Lead Designer
Founder
Fractional VP-Design
Bharat Pashudhan, Govt. of India
Principal Designer
Lead UX Designer
Design Associate
Cognizant
📙 Writing and Books
I am pretty shy but I've started expressing my thoughts on Design and experiences on my blog, Substack and on social media. I've also designed experiential books for heritage walks and temple experiences.
📣 Talks & Engagements
Speaker • Design Education Festival 2024
Shared my experience and work related to systemic and strategic design to 200+ attendees.
Speaker • UX Lighthouse 2024
Conducted a workshop on Futurecasting for 20+ delegates attending India’s largest UX conference.
Volunteer • iSpirt 2021 - 2022
I was involved in innovating for a couple of projects with nationwide impact on rural livelihood and animal husbandry.
Chapter Head • IITBAA BLR Design Track 2019 - present
I lead initiatives for IIT Bombay’s Bangalore Alumni network interested in Design. We conducted an in-person meetup in 2019 and a series of webinars in 2020.
Designer-in-Residence • ownpath 2021
I developed a course for senior designers and mentored professionals as part of my residency at ownpath.
Speaker • Shrishti Manipal ACM SIGCHI 2019
Presented my talk on Smart homes to about 50 students.
Speaker • Strate School of Design 2020
Held an Interactive session on Design careers for about 20 students.
Speaker • Design Drives Podcast 2019
Spoke about my experience of leading interaction design in India.
Speaker • UX India Conference 2019
Conducted a workshop on smart home living for 100+ delegates attending the international conference.
Organiser and Speaker • World IA Day Conference 2019
Organised a full day event to celebrate World Information Architecture Day. Presented my talk on Smart homes to about 20 participants attending the conference.
Speaker • IndiaHCI Conference 2016
Conducted a full day workshop titled ‘Improving Services by Design’ for 15 delegates at the conference.
Speaker • Quasar Design Degree Show 2016
Conducted a full day workshop on Service Design for 10 students.
Speaker • Rang Conference 2016
Presented a talk on the Design profession to 80+ students.
Visiting Faculty/Invited Jury Member • 2015–present
I’ve been teaching at design and architecture schools (MIT-ID, Pune, SID-Pune, DES-Pune, IPSA-Rajkot, etc.) since 2015.
Co-ordinator • IndiaHCI, Designing for Children, In-a-World-of-our-Own, Design Degree Show 2009–2011
I held positions of responsibility for various international conferences as a student at IDC, IIT Bombay.
Key Programs and their Impact
The following examples illustrate the wins end-users, teams and businesses have gained through my strategic approach, leadership and management style.
Leading Cross-JIRA Product Experiences
Future of Work • Productivity • Business Growth
Role: Lead Designer, Atlassian
1 year
Please reach out for access.
🎉 Purchases are above target
Our strategy has paid off. The team's effort in reactivation, onboarding and upgrade purchase experiences have helped Jira exceed its business targets in FY24.
We've been recognised as a ‘Leader’ in The Forrester Wave: ESM, Q4 2024 for Strategy.
🛣️ Continuous research
Speaking to customers is a weekly habit we've established in the team.
🛣️ Influencing roadmaps
Influenced roadmaps across GTM, Product Marketing Discovery, Product onboarding, and product feature teams.
🔬 10+ experiences shipped
While we keep adding ideas to our backlog, we've already done over 10 experiments, shipped a couple of features and done a bunch of user research in FY24.
This Is a Title
Making Homes Smarter for the Many People
Consumer IoT • Well-being • Smart Homes • Home Furnishings
Role: Principal Designer, frog
2+ years
Please reach out for access.
💯 Increase in ratings: ~90%
App ratings went from 1.8 to 3.9 on Android and from 2.4 to 4.1 on iOS in a span of 2-3 months.
📦 16+ smart products launched
Launched 16 new products and many features over the course of 2 years.
🎉 Failure of integrations reduced from 60% to 4%
We identified and solved a major customer pain-points regularly.
📈 Growth in team and projects: 2x
Consistently won more work across verticals and expanded the team to double the size.
👏 Awards and Recognition
Contributed to the winning of several awards - from the prestigious Red Dot to client's yearly Best Innovation and frog's Make Your Mark awards.
This project requires a password. Message me to view and learn how we achieved these outcomes.
Optimising Caregiving for Nurses
💯 Meeting Utilization: 95%
Meeting target turnaround times increased to 95% for utilization management.
📈 27% Increase in engagement
Customer engagement improved by 27%. Specifically for chronic disease management, it improved by 38%.
🎉 Customers gained: 18%
Net new customers increased in a year after the new design direction was launched.
🎖️ Client love: 91 CSAT score
The client enjoyed working with us (and vice-versa). We got some great work done.
🗣️ 66 interviews in 5 US cities
We conducted interviews and conducted ideation 3+ workshops with nurses, doctors and medical staff in a month.
This Is a Title
Transforming the Animal Husbandry Sector in India
Public Sector • Impact Sector • Animal Husbandry
Role: VP-Design, NDLM
Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Govt. of India
2+ years
📈 155 million transactions YTD
1.6 million transactions are done on the NDLM system per day. 4335 mobile vet vans sanctioned. Support center operational.
🎉 NDLM launched by India's PM
In March 2024, Bharat Pashudhan (NDLM) was launched by Prime Minister Modi.
🎓 Influenced India's top scientists
Priviledged to have influenced the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Govt. of India, India's Animal Husbandry Commissioner and the top scientists in this sector.
🏬 Established a first-of-its-kind Service Design Lab
Responsible for setting up a Service Design Lab for the Ministry of Animal Husbandry; right from selecting the location of the lab to specifying software and hardware required for service prototyping. I also created job descriptions, defined hiring criteria, ways of working (🙋♂️prototyping) for the design + research team.
View Project
Belief
"Design makes futures. Designing that does not Speculate, Criticise, Provoke, Discourse, Interrogate, Probe, Play is inadequate designing." – Cameron Tonkenwise
Thinking that all these things are additional or optional to the process of design reinforces the mistaken belief that Design is just an instrumental technical task — styling. By extrapolation, organisations have to acknowledge that designing is a collective enterprise that involves many hours of many people in messy debates, asking hard questions, making iterations to product and process to deliver value.
Inspiration
I get fascinated by a lot of things around me but here are some that have influenced me a bit more:
Monocle, Diablo, Semiology of Graphics, Tromsø, Westworld, Cuckold, Death Note, Italy, Arcane, Travelman, Orchestral Qawwali, The Art of Looking Sideways, Coldplay, Baraka, Unflattening, Black Mirror, E.H. Gombrich, Indian Mythology, Rebecca, Joe Hisaishi, Sandalwood Incense Sticks, The Economist, Thesis, Kashmir, Strawberries, Lord of the Rings, Rajasthan, Wallpaper, FKJ, W+K, Bhutan, Braid, Hugh Jackman, Cantina OK, Hans Zimmer, Hampi, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Mumbai, Gujarati Thali, Godel-Escher-Bach, Age of Empires, Ferrero Rocher, The Weeknd, Frutiger, The Fall, Domus, Rotis, Old Fashioned, Kohei Sugiura, DragonAge Origins, Kumbakonam, QAF, The Last Samurai, Inception, Ulhas Moses, Edward Maya, Pune, Shankar Tucker, Dario's, Gorgonzola, IDC, Candies, Ittar...