Life & Writing
What I think about when I'm not designing — and occasionally, what I write down.
Outside Work
🌮 Cooking
I'm most creative when I'm cooking. I don't follow recipes, and I don't write them either — I wing it, mixing experience, cuisines, and flavors to maximize protein while keeping my meals meat-free. My friends and coworkers know me for my cooking. I didn't even know I was good at it — I just kept surprising every person I hosted. People say I'm gifted. I won't deny it.
🚴♀️ Pilates & Spinning
When I first moved to Seattle three years ago, Soulcycle and Solidcore gave me community and survival instincts for the grey. I've never looked back — to the old life or the old cardio. And yes, my best design ideas happen mid-class. I consider it a very expensive thinking chair.
🎨 Painting
My dad — a doctor who somehow always carved out time for play — taught me that all work and no art makes anyone a dull human. So I picked up oil painting, graduated to watercolors, and now I can zone out for hours staring at a canvas and call it meditation. Namaste, but make it turpentine.
📖 Reading
Psychology, personal growth, and poetry — that's my reading diet. Audible and Substack count too. Currently listening to Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks.
🌮 Cooking
I'm most creative when I'm cooking. I don't follow recipes, and I don't write them either — I wing it, mixing experience, cuisines, and flavors to maximize protein while keeping my meals meat-free. My friends and coworkers know me for my cooking. I didn't even know I was good at it — I just kept surprising every person I hosted. People say I'm gifted. I won't deny it.
🚴♀️ Pilates & Spinning
When I first moved to Seattle three years ago, Soulcycle and Solidcore gave me community and survival instincts for the grey. I've never looked back — to the old life or the old cardio. And yes, my best design ideas happen mid-class. I consider it a very expensive thinking chair.
🎨 Painting
My dad — a doctor who somehow always carved out time for play — taught me that all work and no art makes anyone a dull human. So I picked up oil painting, graduated to watercolors, and now I can zone out for hours staring at a canvas and call it meditation. Namaste, but make it turpentine.
📖 Reading
Psychology, personal growth, and poetry — that's my reading diet. Audible and Substack count too. Currently listening to Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks.
Writing
Articles & Essays
Problem-solving with design in complex systems
Dec 2018On designers as participants, wicked problems, and why everyone should be involved in problem-solving.
Design Featured on Prototypr Blog ↗
How I saved Opto from becoming a feature factory
Mar 2026I was a designer. It wasn't my job to fix how the product team worked. But the users' frustration cut me too deep to look away.
Leadership Product
UX and interior design are solving the same problem
Jan 2026One is pixels. The other is cubic feet. But both are asking: how does a person move through a space, understand it, and feel at ease inside it?
Design
The design-engineering problem nobody has actually fixed
Apr 2026It was not a communication problem. Everyone kept calling it that. The problem was the system itself. On bridging design and engineering at Opto.
Systems
On judgment, grace, and showing up anyway
Mar 2025Before judgment becomes a thought, it begins as a sensation in the body. On what a SoulCycle class taught me about shame, grace, and the nervous system.
Psychology Self-reflection Growth
Cracking the code for employee retention
Mar 2020A message to leadership — why retention isn't about perks, and why the concept might be obsolete.
Leadership
The top UX principles and where they quietly live
Nov 2018Seven principles that feel invisible in great products because they are working exactly as intended. You only notice them when they are gone.
UX
Things that are different in New York from India
Dec 2018Culture shock, observation addiction, and the New York Moment that compelled me to write again.
Life
Switch from Android to iOS — Muscle Memory in Denial
Mar 2018A UX designer's unfiltered take on switching platforms. Spoiler: muscle memory doesn't forgive.
UX
My Medium article that got Dunzo app funding from Google
Jul 2017A love letter to the app that replaced my mom, my best friend, and my personal assistant. Almost.
Life