Clients & Collaborators
Product Designer
Product & UX designer and facilitator — creating experiences that help people focus on what truly matters to them.
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Trained at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad and holding an MSc in Digital Design from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, I bring over eight years of experience designing digital products across education, media, AI, and smart home systems.
My practice bridges rigorous craft fundamentals with a research-driven, human-centred approach — spanning interaction design, visual systems, motion graphics, and facilitation, with a particular focus on accessibility and ethical design. I've led design at Havells India, Infosys Digital, KATHA, and the Digital Society School. I believe in design by doing: iterative, collaborative, rooted in the real lives of the people I design for.
End-to-end product work across research, systems, and interaction — click any card to open the full case study.
Digital Sustainability Benchmark
A benchmarking tool that helps design agencies evaluate and improve their digital sustainability — one project at a time. Built with Faraday Digital Agency.
Havells Sync App — Audit & Redesign Recommendations
A full audit of the Havells Sync app — identifying visual and interaction gaps, benchmarking against 2023 product standards, and translating findings into ten prioritised redesign recommendations.
Havells WellTech
Consumer research, market sizing, persona development, and a 3-phase go-to-market strategy for Havells entry into the ₹27,500 Cr home healthcare market.
Memory Ball
A physical installation + web app that lets visitors at the Theo Thijssenhuis (HvA) discover, contribute, and connect collective memories across time — triggered by a proximity-sensing bronze sphere.
TripGoGo — Brand & Design System
Building the visual language for a travel platform from the ground up — colour, typography, and UI components.
Iconography for Havells
Setting a unified icon design language across five Havells sub-brands — from a cross-product audit and competitive benchmarking to an anatomy framework grounded in Havells brand values.
Crabtree Smart Home Illustrations
Product illustrations and animations for three Crabtree devices — 4-channel switch, curtain controller, and Adonia smart geyser — building a unified visual language across the Crabtree app.
Synthetive — AI Boardgame for Media Makers
A card-based game helping media professionals co-create responsibly with generative AI. Go HvA Public Choice Award 2024.
Synthetive: Election Edition
An interactive boardgame exploring the (ir)responsible use of AI in political campaigns. Presented at VPRO Medialab, Society 5.0, and MozFest 2024.
Ramco ERP — The Next Frontier
60-second LED screen animation for Ramco ERP User Meet 2025. From 30-scene storyboard to final render — enterprise motion at scale.
Motion, illustration, and creative experiments — this is where I explore skills beyond product design. Always a work in progress.
Staying curious beyond the syllabus — exhibitions, workshops, volunteering, and hands-on experiments.
01
Strategy drives everything. I start with positioning, audience, and brand voice — then design follows with real purpose behind every decision.
02
I build frameworks that scale — design systems, brand guidelines, and component libraries that empower teams long after I hand things over.
03
I lead by doing. I'm in the work alongside the team — art directing, refining, and setting the quality bar through example, not just instruction.
04
From a 6-metre wall to a 6mm label — the finish matters everywhere. I bring the same rigour to spatial environments as I do to digital pixels.
05
I know how to direct external partners — briefing tight, challenging with substance, and protecting the brand vision through every creative review.
06
Building design teams is part of the job. I hire for attitude, mentor for craft, and create conditions where people do the best work of their careers.
Creating illustrations and multimedia content to communicate climate-resilient health research and service design initiatives across Asia and Africa — supporting knowledge-sharing, presentations, and social media for global audiences.
Provided UI modernisation strategy to enhance platform aesthetics and usability for an AI-powered travel product.
Master's research focused on generative AI, memory, and embedded interaction design. Thesis project Memory Ball — featured in the ThingsCon State of Responsible Technology 2025 report. Paper Conversations That Matter accepted and presented at RSD14, OCAD University.
Designed the second edition of Synthetive, a serious game developed during the 2023 Fall Semester, for which funding was received from the Centre of Expertise Creative Innovation (CoECI). Led gameplay iteration, UX testing, and facilitation at Society 5.0 Festival and MozFest.
Led UX design and creative direction for multiple educational technology initiatives supporting early English literacy for children in rural schools across India.
Co-designed Synthetive — a board game and conversation tool for VPRO Medialab and NPO broadcaster, collaborating across 10+ media stakeholders to integrate user research, brand identity, and participatory testing into a live product launch.
Established consistent icon guidelines across digital and physical products; created video assets for new product line pitches in collaboration with the in-house industrial design team. Four years building scalable visual systems for a leading consumer electronics brand.
Worked in a high-functioning UX team of 12 on redesigning an internal banking operations platform used by bank employees — prioritising accessibility and grounding every decision in strong user research.
Visual designer and animator at Katha Digital Lab — creating website assets, social media graphics, and storytelling animations for children's education programmes.
One of Asia's most prestigious design institutions. Rigorous training in visual communication, typography, animation, and design thinking — forming the craft and conceptual foundation of everything that followed.
Open to product and UX design roles in education, media, AI, and civic innovation — especially where research-driven design can make a meaningful difference.
App Audit · UX Research · Redesign Recommendations
A structured audit of the Havells Sync app — benchmarked against 2023 product design standards across visual language, interaction patterns, and component quality — delivered as ten prioritised redesign recommendations.
✦ Final Outcome
Audited the Havells Sync app against current product design standards — mapping visual language gaps, weak interaction patterns, and outdated components — then consolidated findings into ten evidence-backed redesign recommendations, delivered as a 62-page brief.
App Audit
A systematic review of the Havells Sync app across visual language, loading states, navigation, typography, cards, and motion — identifying gaps against 2023 product standards.
Benchmarking
Nine interaction categories benchmarked — splash screens, scroll, transitions, micro-animations, loading states, onboarding, illustrations, card layouts, and dark mode.
10 Redesign Recommendations
Ten prioritised, evidence-backed redesign improvements — from navigation hierarchy and loading patterns to card density, colour usage, and notification design.
Visual Designer (Full-time) · Havells India · Havells Sync App · 62-page deliverable · March 2023
✦ Falling in Love with the Problem
Working at Havells, I noticed something: the Sync app worked, but it didn't feel considered. Loading animations were generic. Cards were oversized. Navigation used unlabelled icons. The visual language felt borrowed from an earlier era of mobile design.
The brief was open: audit where the app falls short and identify what could be improved. I used that freedom to build a structured audit — not a mood board, but a working document grounded in benchmarking and evidence.
The question I kept coming back to: what would it take to make this feel like an app someone cared about?
Research Questions
Scope
✦ 01 — App Audit & Gaps Found
Research across six major directions shaping digital product aesthetics — from holographic surrealism to AI-generated design, studied through real brand case studies.
✦ 02 — Interaction Patterns Benchmarked
Nine interaction patterns identified as high-opportunity applications for the Havells product ecosystem — from splash screens to dark mode, each studied through live examples.
✦ 03 — Visual Language Analysis
Analysis of 2023 colour movements — from acidic hues and millennial kitsch to dark sci-fi tones — mapped for relevance to Havells' health-tech positioning.
✦ 04 — Component & Pattern Gaps
Deep-dive into UI building blocks: iconography, typography hierarchy, button design, navigation patterns, data visualisation, and animation trends — with live reference examples.
✦ 05 — Redesign Recommendations
Ten concrete recommendations for the Havells WellTech app, grounded in the research above — from navigation hierarchy and loading patterns to card density and colour in UI.
Visual Design · Icon Systems · Brand Language
Setting the design language for an electrical giant — auditing icons across five product sub-brands, benchmarking against global competitors, and defining an icon anatomy framework built on Havells brand values.
✦ Final Outcome
Researched icon systems across Havells, Crabtree, Lloyd, Standard, and Reo product lines — then benchmarked against Walmart, Electrolux, LG, and Aquaguard to define a guiding icon style, anatomy, and set of principles for use across all Havells physical and digital products.
Icon Audit
Mapped existing icons across all Havells sub-brands — uncovering inconsistency in style, shape, size, form, and colour.
Style Framework
Defined icon taxonomy by type (function, resemblance, arbitrary) and style (outline, filled, coloured) — with rounded vs. sharp corner rules.
Brand-Rooted Principles
Six guiding principles for icon anatomy — stroke, shape, form, space, colour, and value — grounded in Havells brand attributes.
Cross-Product Library
A starting icon vocabulary covering all Havells product categories — from water purifiers and ACs to smart home and switchgear.
Full-time Visual Designer · Havells India · Icon Design Language
✦ The Result — 54-Icon Library
The complete icon set for Havells and its sub-brands — spanning smart home control, device states, utilities, security, and user actions. All icons follow the unified style, stroke weight, corner radius, and bounding area defined through the research and anatomy framework below.
54 icons · smart home, device control, utilities, security, navigation
✦ Icon Anatomy — Home / Device Control Icon
Every icon in the system is governed by six anatomical elements — each a design decision, not a default. Defining these upfront is what makes 54 icons feel like one family.
The containing circle — defines how much real estate each icon occupies.
Secondary strokes (e.g. roof slopes) — same weight as primary for visual consistency.
Rounded corners — the same radius used across all icons defines the style signature.
Primary stroke weight — governs visual heaviness and readability at all sizes.
Open or closed line ends — sets whether strokes feel sharp and technical or rounded and friendly.
Negative space inside the icon — balanced to maintain legibility at 16px and below.
✦ Falling in Love with the Problem
As a full-time visual designer at Havells, I worked across the product ecosystem — water purifiers, switchgear, ACs, smart home panels. One thing that struck me quickly: every product had icons. But they didn't belong to the same family. A sharp-cornered filled icon on the purifier, a coloured outline icon on the panel, a symbol-based icon on the remote. Visually, they were strangers.
The brief was clear: set the design language for Havells through iconography — and build a consistent icon library across all products. But before designing anything, I needed to understand why the inconsistency existed in the first place.
That meant an audit, a competitive study, and a proper framework — not just a new set of icons drawn in the same style.
The Brief
Set the design language for Havells through iconography.
Build a consistent icon library for all Havells products.
Research Approach
✦ 01 — The Brief & Why
Starting with the problem: inconsistency in icon style, shape, size, form, and colour across all Havells products and sub-brands — evidenced through the water purifier line.
✦ 02 — Icon Inventory Across Brands
A comprehensive audit of all existing icons across Havells, Crabtree, Lloyd, Standard, and Reo — catalogued by product type and context. Followed by a study of Walmart and Electrolux brand guidelines for learning and inspiration.
✦ 03 — Icon Types & Styles
Classifying icons by function (function, resemblance, arbitrary) and style (coloured, outline, filled) — with rounded vs. sharp corner variations. The foundation for making a principled style decision.
✦ 04 — Competitor Study & Guiding Principles
Benchmarking Livpure, Blue Star, AO Smith, LG, Aquaguard, Hindware, Pureit, and Kent — revealing a clear market direction toward outline icons, with coloured icons emerging in newer products. Followed by six icon design principles grounded in the Havells context.
✦ 05 — Brand Attributes, Icon Elements & Anatomy
Translating Havells brand attributes — premium, modern, international, dominant — into icon design decisions. Defining the six building blocks of every icon: stroke, shape, form, space, colour, and value. Then establishing the icon anatomy using the water purifier cartridge life icon as the defining example.
Product Illustration · Motion Design · Havells / Crabtree
A complete illustration and animation system for four Crabtree and Havells smart home products — the 4-channel switch, curtain controller, Adonia smart geyser, and AQI monitor — designed to make every device feel native to the same app.
✦ Final Outcome
Designed product illustrations and animation sequences for the 4-channel switch, curtain controller, Adonia smart geyser, and AQI monitor — building a consistent visual language that makes every device feel native to the same app.
4-Channel Switch
Product illustration + SVG connectivity icon + 3 animations — switch interaction, fan control, and app onboarding.
Curtain Controller
Illustrated curtain states (closed → open) with a live position slider — making a physical action feel direct in the app.
Adonia Smart Geyser
Product illustration + onboarding animation in 3 iterated versions — proximity pairing with temperature calibration.
AQI Monitor
App banner illustration for the AQI monitor device — product visual placed in a room context within the Havells app header.
Full-time Visual Designer · Havells India · Crabtree Smart Home
✦ The Work
Three Crabtree products. Three very different physical interactions. All needing to feel consistent, tactile, and intelligible within the same app — without relying on text to explain them.
For the 4-channel switch, the work was about representing a multi-load panel clearly — four channels, one illustration, with an icon that communicates connectivity state. For the curtain controller, it was about making position feel continuous and physical — the illustration moves with the slider. For the Adonia geyser, it was onboarding anxiety: proximity pairing is a step users abandon, so the animation needed to feel calm, sequential, and confidence-building.
All three share the same illustration style — greyscale product renders, circular framing, minimal shadows — so they read as a family inside the Crabtree app.
Deliverables
Design Decisions
✦ 01 — 4-Channel Switch
Four channels, one panel. The illustration had to show which channel is which at a glance — and the SVG connectivity icon had to abstract the four-node structure into a symbol recognisable at 24px.
Product Illustration
Connectivity Icon — SVG
Four-node dashed-circle — represents 4-channel connectivity. Used in pairing UI and device control screen.
Animations
Switch Interaction
Four-button press interaction — shows individual channel selection and the switch face responding.
Device Control — Fan
Live state feedback: the switch controlling a connected fan within the Crabtree device screen.
App Onboarding Flow
In-app setup sequence — long press, LED glow, reset complete. Designed to feel immediate and clear.
✦ 02 — Curtain Controller
A curtain position is continuous — not binary. The illustration had to reflect every state between fully closed and fully open, with the curtain moving visually in sync with the position slider.
Fully Closed
Curtain illustration drawn across the full window — warm amber fabric, opaque. Position slider at 0%.
Partially Open
Curtain pulled to one side, window partially visible. Sky and daylight become visible — communicating the open state clearly.
Fully Open
Curtains drawn fully to the sides — full window visible. The illustration reinforces the ON state beyond just the toggle.
App Context
The Crabtree app shows the curtain illustration as the central device representation on the control screen, with Control and Automate tabs for manual control and scheduled automation. The ON/OFF toggle and heart (favourites) sit above the illustration. The position slider sits below it.
✦ 03 — Adonia Smart Geyser
The Adonia onboarding sequence uses a 5-second proximity countdown with a temperature calibration step. Three animation versions were produced — the original and two iterations refining the interaction affordance cues.
Original Animation
The first version — geyser product illustration, 5-second countdown, +/– temperature adjustment.
Iteration 1 — App Context
Full app context added. Red highlight rings on +/– buttons emphasise the interaction affordance. "We Are Setting Up Your Smart Geyser."
Iteration 2 — Refined
Updated highlight treatment, cleaner countdown timing, and refined visual hierarchy on the control buttons.
✦ 04 — AQI Monitor
Banner illustration for the Havells AQI monitor — a product visual placed in a room context within the app header, part of the broader Havells smart home illustration language.
Screen Details
Banner Illustration
The coral header features a product illustration of the AQI monitor — placed in a domestic room setting with a potted plant, making the device feel approachable and contextual within the app.
Illustration Language
Consistent with the Crabtree and Havells product illustration style — isometric-leaning device rendered in warm tones, placed against a lifestyle background rather than a plain colour field.
UX Research · Product Design · Digital Sustainability
Digital doesn't mean invisible. Digital leaves a footprint too — a tool that helps design agencies measure and improve their impact, one project at a time.
✦ Final Outcome
Built and validated a scoring tool for digital design agencies — covering image weight, hosting choices, font loading, interaction efficiency, and render strategy. Validated with Faraday Digital Agency in Amsterdam. The framework was delivered as a usable assessment tool, not an abstract checklist.
Benchmarking Framework
Five-dimension assessment model covering the design decisions that account for 80% of a product's carbon footprint.
Agency Validation
Co-developed and stress-tested with Faraday Digital Agency — real briefs, real timelines, real constraints.
Academic Recognition
Produced at HvA Beyond Human Design Playgrounds — positioned as a contribution to emerging digital sustainability practice.
8 weeks · HvA Beyond Human Design Playgrounds · Faraday Digital Agency, Amsterdam
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
I had never thought of a website as having weight. Digital feels intangible — no packaging, no exhaust fumes, no landfill. But when I first encountered the data — that a single website visit generates roughly 1.76 grams of CO₂, that the internet as a whole produces as much carbon as the aviation industry — I felt genuinely unsettled. Not in an abstract way. In a personal, professional way: I have been building things that are invisible polluters, and I had no idea.
The problem isn't denial — designers and agencies generally care about doing the right thing. The problem is invisibility and absence of tools. You cannot improve what you cannot measure. When our team at HvA's Beyond Human Design Playgrounds sat down with Faraday Digital Agency, we asked a simple question: how does your agency currently assess the sustainability of the products you build? The answer was almost universal: we don't. Not because we don't want to. Because there's no accessible standard, no tool that fits our workflow, no shared language.
That gap became the problem I fell in love with. Not "how do we make designers feel guilty" — that's the wrong lever entirely. But: how do we make the invisible visible in a way that fits into how agencies already work? How do we turn something abstract into something a team can act on at the start of a project, before decisions are made — when the cost of changing direction is still low?
Eight weeks in, I came to understand that sustainability benchmarking for design agencies isn't just an environmental project. It's a product design problem at its core — a challenge of relevance, adoption, and workflow integration. The tool needed to be as frictionless as a good design brief template. That's what we set out to build.
You cannot improve what you cannot measure. The problem wasn't apathy — it was the total absence of tools that made measurement possible.
1.76g
CO₂ per average website pageview (WebsiteCarbon, 2023)
80%
of a digital product's environmental impact is shaped by design decisions (Flying Bisons, 2024)
0
accessible benchmarking tools for digital design agencies at project level — before we built this
0A — Stakeholder Map
Digital sustainability doesn't live in one person's responsibility — it's a chain that runs from hosting infrastructure to the client brief to the end user's device. Mapping who holds power in that chain helped us understand where a benchmarking tool could create the most leverage.
Direct Users of the Benchmark Tool
Creative Director / Design Lead
Owns project quality standards
UX/UI Designer
Makes day-to-day decisions that compound
Frontend Developer
Implements images, scripts, rendering patterns
Project Manager
Controls timelines and scope trade-offs
Clients & Commissioners
Client Organisation
Sets project briefs and ESG ambitions
Marketing Lead
Drives content weight and asset decisions
Structural Enablers & Validators
Environmental Researcher
Provides scientific grounding for metrics
Policy / Regulatory Bodies
Sets future compliance requirements
HvA / Academic Mentors
Guides the research methodology
Faraday Digital Agency
Validates real-world feasibility
0B — User Personas
We needed the tool to feel necessary and achievable at three distinct entry points within an agency — not just for the sustainability champion, but for the sceptic and the newcomer too.
Niels K.
Creative Director, Agency Lead
42 · Amsterdam
"I want to do the right thing but I need it to fit inside a project kickoff — not be a separate project."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to position the agency as a sustainability-conscious partner — and turn it into a competitive advantage.
Joss O.
Junior UX Designer
24 · Rotterdam
"I care about climate change personally but I genuinely don't know what my design decisions actually cost the planet."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to align her professional work with her personal values — and feel like her job is part of the solution, not the problem.
Marta C.
Client — Marketing Director
38 · Utrecht
"Our board is asking for ESG credentials. I don't know what our digital agency is even doing about this."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to feel proud of the digital products her brand commissions — and have evidence to show her board.
Digital products feel weightless — no packaging, no physical waste. But they're not. Every click, render, and API call consumes energy. Every design decision shapes that footprint. Yet most design agencies have no way to measure it.
Developed as part of the MDD Beyond Human Design Playgrounds programme at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, our design challenge was clear: How can we help digital design agencies understand and improve their digital sustainability impact on a project level — through a benchmarking tool?
We partnered with Faraday Digital Agency, guided by mentor Niels de Keizer — a 15-year veteran of building digital products and experiences who understood both the commercial and ethical dimensions of the problem.
Designer's Responsibility
"Design shapes 80% of a digital product's carbon footprint." — Flying Bisons, 2024. It's our responsibility as designers to address this.
The Ethical Question
"Does what we create justify what we destroy?" — Fry, 2011. Agencies influence clients and users to adopt energy-efficient or wasteful digital habits.
Business Case
"Sustainable design = cost-efficiency + profitability." — Komodo Digital, 2024. Sustainability isn't just ethics — it's also reduced technical debt and regulatory readiness.
The Digital Sustainability Benchmarking Tool helps design agencies with 10+ team members assess their sustainability performance across five foundational values — at the start of each new project.
🌱 Clean
Energy-efficient hosting, minimal data usage, lightweight code and assets.
🤝 Stewardship Principles
Diversity, equity, accessibility, and responsible community impact.
🛡 Avoiding Manipulative Design
No dark patterns, transparent data practices, honest interfaces.
⏱ Product Lifecycle
Planning for longevity — updates, maintenance, and eventual retirement.
📊 Operational Digital Efficiency
Reducing unnecessary processing, storage, and digital waste in workflows.
The tool asks targeted questions, generates a sustainability score via a radar/spider chart, and surfaces actionable recommendations. Built as a Framer one-pager website and a v0 Vercel interactive app.
A HvA BHD Playgrounds Production
Digital leaves a footprint too. Out of sight, not impact-free.
This tool helps you build a more sustainable digital world.
Practical, smart, and just a bit better with every project.
Live Benchmark Output
Results generated using the live tool — scored against Amsterdam design agency benchmarks.
Category Scores
Digital Sustainability Benchmark
Performing at an average level in digital sustainability compared to other design agencies in Amsterdam.
Week 1–2 · Debrief & Expert Interview
I led our team's initial engagement with Faraday Digital — including introductions, formal communication, and our first stakeholder meeting. Research phase: competitor analysis, stakeholder mapping, initial ideation. We studied Faraday's spider-web matrix framework for evaluating projects.
Week 3 · Workshop 1.0 — Design Agency Simulation
I volunteered to facilitate our "Design Agency Simulation" workshop at MDD studios — inviting participants from outside the university to simulate real agency decision-making. Participants took on role cards (Designer, CEO/Founder, Software Developer, Sales Lead) and worked through client challenge cards across healthcare, fintech, e-commerce, and education.
Week 4 · Expert Review & Pivot
Presented our Value Assessment concept to Faraday. Key feedback: "Who is the target audience?" and "Company values are always set." We pivoted from a value-mapping tool to a sustainability benchmarking tool with predefined assessment criteria — a sharper, more actionable scope.
Week 5–6 · Workshop 2.0 & Digital Tool Design
Ran a second iteration with 9 role cards and 6 challenge cards — expanded based on Faraday's actual team structure. Simultaneously, we translated the physical workshop into a digital interface: sketching wireframes through 3 iterations from onboarding → value input → recommendations.
Week 7–8 · Usability Testing & Final Delivery
Validated through usability tests and a live demo with Faraday Digital. Final deliverable: a complete workshop session run with Faraday + the benchmarking tool live on the web.
The benchmarking tool wasn't designed from intuition alone. It was built on a foundation of established frameworks, validated through real agency feedback.
W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines
Core technical and design standards for sustainable web development.
Sustainable Web Manifesto
Clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient principles.
Wholegrain Digital
Comprehensive sustainable web design methodologies (Tom Greenwood, 2024).
UN Sustainable Development Goals
SDGs 9, 12, 13, and 17 — industry innovation, responsible production, climate action, partnerships.
01
Predefined values, not open mapping
Workshop 1.0 revealed that participants want predefined sustainability values to guide them — not blank-slate value mapping. The benchmark needed to lead, not just listen.
02
Role clarity is critical
The purpose of role cards was initially unclear. We redesigned them with explicit behavioural guidance and perspective-specific tips — making the simulation more realistic and productive.
03
Whose values? Agency or client?
A key ambiguity emerged: should sustainability values be assessed from the client's perspective or the agency's? We resolved this by making the tool agency-first — the agency benchmarks its own project practices.
This project pushed me into genuinely unfamiliar territory. I wasn't just designing interfaces — I was facilitating workshops, leading stakeholder meetings, and helping a team of four find consensus under time pressure.
The "Design Agency Simulation" workshop was the moment I'm proudest of. Volunteering to facilitate, recruiting participants from outside the university, and running a session that generated real, actionable insights — that took initiative I had to build deliberately.
I also learned what it means to pivot with purpose. When Faraday challenged our concept in week four, we didn't just adjust — we used the feedback to sharpen our scope and build something more genuinely useful. That shift from "value assessment" to "sustainability benchmark" made the tool better in every way.
"Digital doesn't mean invisible. Out of sight — but not impact-free."
Read my article on Medium ↗More Case Studies
Colour System · UI Design
TripGoGo
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Game Design · UX Research · Media Literacy
Synthetive
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Motion Design · Storyboard · Brand Film
Ramco ERP
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Product Design · HealthTech
Havells WellTech 🔒
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Political Design · Media Literacy
Synthetive: Election Edition
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Game Design · UX Research · Media Literacy
What if a card game could teach media makers to co-create responsibly with AI? — Designing an award-winning boardgame at the intersection of media literacy and responsible technology.
✦ Final Outcome
Synthetive launched as a complete, playable game exploring synthetic identity, digital surveillance, and the boundary between authentic self and algorithmic persona. It won the Go HvA Game Changers Public Choice Award 2024 and was shown in multiple public venues.
Full Game Shipped
End-to-end game design, mechanics, narrative arc, and visual system — from concept to playable build.
Public Choice 2024
Won the Go HvA Game Changers Public Choice Award — selected by public vote across all graduating projects.
Shown in the Wild
Exhibited at IMPAKT Festival Utrecht, ZERO Medialab, and MozFest — reaching audiences beyond the academic context.
KABK Graduation Project · Go HvA Game Changers Public Choice Award 2024
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
In 2023 I watched a documentary about AI-generated newsrooms and felt something I hadn't expected: not fascination, but dread — specifically the dread of a media professional being handed a tool they hadn't asked for, with no framework to use it responsibly. I started paying attention to how colleagues and students in media talked about generative AI: mostly in avoidance or in uncritical enthusiasm, rarely in anything that resembled ethical literacy.
When NPO, VPRO Medialab, and Beeld & Geluid came with their brief — help media makers co-create with AI responsibly — I noticed immediately that the framing was already wrong. The usual response to this kind of challenge is a training module, a policy document, a workshop presentation. But you don't build moral intuition by reading slides. You build it by making decisions under pressure, by feeling the weight of a choice between what's strategically smart and what's editorially right.
That's the problem I fell in love with: how do you teach someone to feel the tension before they face it in real life? Roleplay and simulation are ancient pedagogical tools — but nobody had applied them with this level of design rigour to the specific pressures of AI-assisted media making. The card game format became not a gimmick but the actual solution: the physical deck forces presence, the scenario cards force choice, the challenge cards force justification.
The deeper I researched, the more I found that Dutch media organisations were living in a particular paradox — their audiences were increasingly sceptical of AI-generated content, while the organisations themselves were feeling pressure to use AI to cut production costs. Nobody was talking openly about the ethics. Synthetive needed to create a safe space for that conversation to happen playfully, seriously, and without judgment.
Moral intuition is not built by reading guidelines. It's built by making decisions under pressure — and Synthetive was designed to create that pressure in a room full of people who needed to have this conversation.
🏆
Go HvA Game Changers Public Choice Award 2024
3
partner organisations shaping the Dutch media landscape
1st
physical card game for ethical AI co-creation in Dutch media
0A — Stakeholder Map
The game needed to serve a wide ecology — from the junior journalist uncertain about AI to the broadcaster executive setting editorial policy. Mapping these relationships helped us write scenario cards that felt credible to every level of the room.
Players — Primary Experience
Broadcast Journalist
Makes editorial AI decisions daily
Content Producer
Faces AI tools in content workflows
Script Writer / Editor
Navigating AI-assisted narrative creation
Visual Journalist
Using generative image tools
Commissioning Partners
NPO (Dutch Public Broadcasting)
Sets national editorial standards
VPRO Medialab
Experimental media innovation arm
Beeld & Geluid
National archive — context for media history
Wider System
Media & Journalism Educators
Embed media literacy in curriculum
Regulatory & Policy Bodies
Developing AI-in-media guidelines
Audience & Citizens
Ultimate recipients of AI-shaped media
0B — User Personas
Every scenario card in Synthetive was tested against these three archetypes — not as abstractions, but as the voices I was trying to bring into the room. The game only works if it speaks to all three.
Roos V.
Broadcast Journalist, NPO
35 · Amsterdam
"I want to use AI to work faster — but I'm terrified of what my audience will think if they find out."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to remain a trusted journalist while adapting to the tools her industry is adopting.
Thomas M.
Head of Digital, VPRO
47 · Hilversum
"We need a policy. But policy documents don't change how people actually behave in the edit suite."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants VPRO to lead rather than react — and to build a culture of responsibility that outlasts any single policy document.
Lena N.
Recent Graduate, Media Studies
23 · Rotterdam
"AI is just a tool, right? I don't understand why everyone's so stressed about it."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to use technology fearlessly and responsibly — and build an intuition for the difference.
The Dutch media landscape was grappling with generative AI — how to use it ethically, creatively, and without losing editorial integrity. Partners NPO, VPRO Medialab, and Beeld & Geluid commissioned a framework that would help media makers explore co-creation with AI in a hands-on, accessible way.
The challenge had two layers: develop a practical co-creation framework, and embed genuine media literacy and responsible AI use into the experience — making it something people would actually want to engage with, not just a training module.
The output was Synthetive — a physical card game featuring "WHAT IF…" scenario cards and "CHALLENGE:" response cards. Players take on the role of media makers navigating real-world AI dilemmas, debating creative and ethical choices together.
Synthetive's visual identity was designed to feel deliberately human and chaotic — a counterpoint to the clean sterility of generative AI. The psychedelic, layered face illustration became the project's signature mark, appearing on all game materials, social media, and launch communications.
Scenario prompts designed to spark debate about AI co-creation — from deepfakes to algorithmic bias to creative authorship.
Practical response prompts that push players to think through real production decisions and editorial responsibilities.
Custom-produced boxes distributed to industry partners including NPO Innovatie, VPRO MediaLab, and Beeld en Geluid.
The project followed an intensive 5-sprint structure combining immersive field research with iterative game prototyping and real-world testing at public events and media industry conferences.
Stakeholder interviews · Empathy mapping · Persona development · How Might We framing
Society 5.0 Festival research booth · Board game + literacy quiz + survey + stickers + video
Prototype refinement based on 50+ participant sessions · Card wording & mechanic testing
Full visual identity · Game box design · Card typography · Social media campaign launch
Distribution to 10+ media stakeholders · Presentation at NPO Innovatie, VPRO & Beeld en Geluid
The game had to spark curiosity and creative confidence — not anxiety about AI. Every card prompt was designed to open possibility, not close it down.
The framework was built for media professionals who already know their craft. The design respected that expertise and gave them new tools to interrogate AI, not replace their judgment.
Media literacy doesn't have to be dry. The game's playfulness — bold colours, physical cards, competitive debate — made difficult conversations about AI feel engaging and memorable.
User interviews and field testing sessions conducted at public events and media industry festivals.
To NPO Innovatie, VPRO MediaLab, and Beeld en Geluid — now actively used in media literacy workshops.
Public Choice Award — voted best project by the Go HvA community at the annual showcase.
Presented to the Digital Affairs Committee (Jun. 2024) — audience included Barbara Kathmann (Chair) and Ger Baron (CTO, Municipality of Amsterdam).
Full project documentation at digitalsocietyschool.org/project/synthetic-truths/ ↗
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Plan smarter. Travel better. — Building the visual language for a travel platform that lacked direction.
✦ Final Outcome
End-to-end design system delivered — covering tokens, typography, spacing, grid, and a full component library in Figma. The product went from five conflicting blues to one coherent visual language, giving the team a shared source of truth they could build and ship from.
Design Tokens
Full colour, typography, and spacing token architecture replacing ad-hoc decisions across the codebase.
Component Library
Figma component set covering buttons, forms, cards, navigation, and states — with annotated prop tables for engineering.
Design Principles
Five documented principles that now govern every future addition to the system — from accessibility contrast to motion hierarchy.
Delivered Nov 2025 – Mar 2026 · TripGoGo.ai · Full design system handoff
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
I was handed a live travel-planning product — TripGoGo.ai — that had real users, real ambition, and a design that said nothing consistent. The first time I opened the product I counted five different shades of the same blue used across four screens. Buttons had three different border-radii. Typography floated between three separate font stacks with no apparent logic. The visual language was shouting different things in every room.
But I didn't want to just audit problems and document what was broken. I wanted to understand why the inconsistency had accumulated. I spent the first three days not in Figma but in the product — using it as a traveller would. I tried to plan an actual trip. And the friction I felt wasn't just aesthetic — it was cognitive. Every screen created a small moment of doubt: Am I still in the same product?
That's when the problem became personal. Design inconsistency isn't merely about brand polish — it erodes trust. A traveller trusting a platform with a trip to Lisbon needs the interface to feel as reliable as the service promise. The visual chaos was quietly undermining the product's own credibility. I fell in love with this problem because fixing it wasn't about adding decoration — it was about restoring confidence in every pixel.
The deeper I went, the more I saw: there were no shared tokens, no spacing scale, no documented decisions. Every component had been rebuilt from scratch in isolation. Developers were guessing what designers intended. Designers were guessing what developers had actually shipped. The system had no memory. I knew that what was needed wasn't a visual refresh — it was a single source of truth that the whole team could speak from.
Design inconsistency is not a cosmetic problem — it is a trust problem. Every mismatched component quietly signals: we don't have this together.
5
conflicting blue shades across screens at audit start
3
separate font stacks with no documented hierarchy
0
shared design tokens or spacing scale before the system
0A — Stakeholder Map
A design system touches every person in a product organisation — from the founders who set vision to the engineers who implement it and the travellers who ultimately feel it. Mapping this web early shaped every decision about what to standardise and what to leave flexible.
Primary Users — People who experience the inconsistency daily
The Digital Traveller
Plans trips via TripGoGo.ai
The Returning User
Expects consistency across sessions
Internal Stakeholders — Product & Engineering
Product Manager
Owns the roadmap & priorities
Frontend Developer
Implements components, needs specs
Backend Engineer
Needs stable component contracts
Product Designer
Maintains & extends the system
Decision Makers & Enablers
Founder / CEO
Drives brand vision & growth
Growth Lead
Needs consistent conversion-focused UI
QA Engineer
Tests against a defined standard
0B — User Personas
Every token value, every component variant, every documented decision was filtered through the lens of these three people. When I wasn't sure whether to standardise or leave flexibility, I asked: what does this mean for each of them?
Aarav M.
Frontend Developer
26 · Amsterdam
"I just want to know what blue to use. Every sprint I'm making up spacing from scratch."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to ship fast and confidently, without wondering if his implementation looks "right".
Sara L.
Product Manager
31 · Amsterdam
"I keep hearing "we'll fix the design stuff later" — but later never comes and users keep asking why the app feels off."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants a product that reflects the ambition of the vision — and a team that can move fast without breaking things.
Nadia P.
Digital Traveller
34 · Berlin
"I almost didn't trust the payment screen — it looked different from every other screen. I wasn't sure I was still on the same site."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Just wants to plan the perfect trip without friction, confusion, or visual noise.
TripGoGo is a travel-planning platform with a strong product vision but an inconsistent, underdeveloped visual identity. The colour system was arbitrary, UI components were mismatched, and there were no documented specifications for developers. The task: build a coherent, accessible design system from scratch — colour, typography, spacing, and a full component library — all working together.
Alongside the design system work, a comprehensive UX audit of the TripGoGo.ai homepage was conducted to identify usability gaps and accessibility issues. The audit covered heuristic evaluation, responsive behaviour across breakpoints, WCAG contrast compliance, keyboard navigation, form validation patterns, and screen reader support — producing a prioritised list of recommendations fed directly into the product roadmap.
Audit Summary
The audit surfaced EAA and WCAG 2.1 compliance gaps — missing form labels, contrast failures, and absent keyboard/screen-reader support — alongside small touch targets and no error validation. The visual foundation is strong: hierarchy, progress signposting, and metaphor-driven navigation all hold up. Priority fix is explicit labelling and ARIA attributes, followed by contrast and error-handling work.
Audit Outcomes — Changes Implemented
Multi-stop trip planner
Numbered destination fields with inline tooltips replacing a single ambiguous input
Progress indicator
5-step flow (Plan → Collab → Book → Share → GoGo) making the user journey transparent
Accessible date picker
Dual-month calendar with clear selection range, "Done" and "Clear dates" actions
Validated form fields
Real-time error states (red border), required field indicators, and clear error recovery
The updated trip planner (left) and accessible date picker (right) — key UI changes informed by the audit findings.
The bigger finding
The quick UI fixes worked — but the audit made something else clear: TripGoGo had no design system at all.
Every contrast failure, every inconsistent touch target, every unlabelled form field traced back to the same root cause — decisions being made in isolation, with no shared visual language. Fixing individual screens was a patch. What the product needed was a foundation: a moodboard to align on brand direction, a colour system built to pass accessibility, and a component library that encoded the right decisions by default.
Before any colour swatches or component specs, the team aligned on a brand feeling. This moodboard — signed off by the founder — captured the essence of TripGoGo: teal as a grounding tone, tactile everyday moments, the pleasure of slowing down. Coffee culture, coastal cycling, natural materials, and vivid local experiences. The design system had to feel this, not just match it.
Moodboard approved by the creative lead — informing the teal palette, warm textures, and lifestyle-first visual direction.
The primary colour is Teal — grounding the interface in calm confidence. A complementary Terracotta secondary adds warmth for highlights and accents. Each colour was developed into a 10-step scale, with every tone assigned a semantic purpose from headers to backgrounds. All combinations meet WCAG accessibility standards.
Primary — Teal
Secondary — Terracotta
Accent & Utility
Warning
#FFB520
Success
#4ADED1
Error
#EF5350
White
#FFFFFF
Black
#000000
The system uses Inter as the primary typeface (fallback: Arial, sans-serif), chosen for excellent legibility at both display and body sizes. All sizes are defined in rem for responsive scaling. The minimum body text is 16px with an 11.7:1 contrast ratio — exceeding WCAG AAA.
H1 — Hero Heading
48px / 3rem · Bold · lh 1.2
H2 — Section Heading
36px / 2.25rem · Bold · lh 1.3
H3 — Card Heading
24px / 1.5rem · Semi-bold · lh 1.4
Body Large — Lead text for important content
18px / 1.125rem · Regular · lh 1.6
Body — Default paragraph text for readability
16px / 1rem · Regular · lh 1.6
Small — Captions, labels, meta info
14px / 0.875rem · Regular · lh 1.5
Accessibility
Min 16px body · 11.7:1 contrast (WCAG AAA) · Max 75 chars/line
Responsive
Mobile: −12.5% (H1 → 42px) · Use rem units throughout
All spacing follows an 8-point scale for consistency and predictability. Layouts use a 12-column grid at desktop (1440px), collapsing to 8 columns on tablet and 4 on mobile. Component rules ensure consistent rhythm across the entire product.
8-Point Scale
12-Column Grid
Desktop 1440px
12 cols · 24px gutter · 48px margin
Tablet 768px
8 cols · 16px gutter · 32px margin
Mobile 375px
4 cols · 16px gutter · 16px margin
Component Rules
Card: 24px padding · Button: 24px H-pad (L) · Form gap: 8–24px
Every component was built with at least three states (default, hover, disabled), clear sizing tokens, and documented accessibility requirements. The library covers the full booking and browsing flow.
Button System
Primary
Default · Hover
Secondary
Default · Hover
Four guiding principles — covering layout, interaction, mobile-first thinking, and dark mode — are documented to help any designer or developer extend the system without breaking its visual language.
Layout
White space min 48px · Hierarchy via size, weight & colour · Left-align text; center only titles/CTAs
Interactions
Skeleton screens for loading · Empty states always include a next action · Micro-interactions 200–300ms
Mobile-First
44×44px touch targets · Primary actions in bottom third · Lazy load & minimal animations on mobile
Dark Mode
#0A3D3D main bg · #1B9999 cards · White headings · WCAG AAA (7:1) contrast
Audit before design
Starting with a UX audit on the live product gave the design system real grounding. Every colour, spacing, and component decision had a reason tied to something broken or missing in the existing interface.
Accessibility is a design decision
The EAA and WCAG gaps found in the audit shaped the colour system from the start — contrast ratios, touch targets, and label structures were baked into the design tokens rather than retrofitted later.
Brand moodboards anchor systems
Having a founder-approved moodboard before building out the component library kept the design system cohesive. Without that reference, UI decisions tend to drift — especially across colour and type pairing.
Systems need stories
The design principles weren't written at the end — they emerged from the moodboard, the audit findings, and the component decisions. Naming them gave the team a shared language for on-brand decisions.
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Motion Design · Storyboard · Brand Film
Step into the next frontier. — A 60-second LED screen animation for Ramco's flagship enterprise event, built from a 30-scene hand-drawn storyboard to final motion render.
✦ Final Outcome
Designed and animated a full motion identity piece for Ramco ERP's annual user conference — rendered at 4608×768px for their ultra-wide LED stage screen. Storyboarded across 30 scenes, animated to a precise timing sheet, and screened in front of a live audience at The Leela Palace.
90-Second Film
4608×768px ultra-wide LED render · 25fps · 30-scene approved storyboard translated exactly into motion.
Live Conference Screening
Screened at Ramco ERP User Meet 2025 at The Leela Palace, Chennai — in front of a live enterprise audience.
Full Visual System
Grid-glitch aesthetic, organic orb meets geometric constraint, typewriter reveals — all established through iterative pre-production.
Ramco ERP User Meet 2025 · The Leela Palace, Chennai · 4608×768px LED · After Effects
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
There is a particular quality to the opening moment of a major corporate conference. The room is full before it begins — 300 enterprise leaders, CIOs, operations directors, seated at The Leela Palace, Chennai, carrying the weight of every meeting they rescheduled to be there. In that moment, the first visual they see either earns their attention or loses it. Most conferences lose it with a static logo and a presenter apologising for the microphone.
When Ramco Systems brought me the brief for their annual ERP User Meet — "The Next Frontier," centred on Agentic AI — I sat with the concept for longer than usual. The theme asked a bold question: what does the frontier of enterprise intelligence actually look like? Not metaphorically. Visually. In motion. In 60 seconds on a wide-format LED screen in a room full of the most rational, evidence-driven professional audience there is.
That tension became the problem I fell in love with: how do you make something deeply technical feel genuinely cinematic? ERP is about operational precision — supply chains, resource allocation, process intelligence. The temptation in enterprise motion design is to render abstract data as abstract shapes and call it "futuristic." But the brief asked for something more honest: transformation that an enterprise leader would find credible, not just impressive.
I spent two full days drawing storyboards before touching any software. Thirty scenes, hand-sketched. Because I needed to understand the emotional arc of the animation before I understood its visual vocabulary — what tone opens the room, what moment builds tension, and what image makes 300 people feel like they are about to step into something that matters.
An enterprise opening sequence is not decoration. It is a trust signal. In 60 seconds, it tells the room: the people who organised this understand what matters to you.
60s
to set the tone for a two-day conference shaping enterprise AI strategy
30
hand-drawn storyboard scenes before a single software frame was opened
300+
CIOs, operations directors, and enterprise leaders in the room
0A — Stakeholder Map
A motion piece for a flagship enterprise event is never just a creative brief — it sits at the intersection of brand reputation, conference production logistics, and the expectations of the most demanding professional audience. Understanding who held each veto shaped every storyboard revision.
Primary Audience — The Room
CIO / IT Director
Evaluating Agentic AI roadmap credibility
Operations Director
Seeking intelligence for process optimisation
C-Suite Executive
Assessing Ramco's strategic positioning
Internal Stakeholders — Ramco
Ramco Marketing & Brand
Owns the "Next Frontier" narrative
Senior Leadership
Sets the aspiration and approves the creative
Event Production Team
Responsible for technical delivery on LED
Production Chain
Motion Designer (MJ)
Concept, storyboard, animation, delivery
AV Production Partner
LED screen specs and render requirements
0B — User Personas
The animation needed to do different work for each person who would watch it. These personas shaped the emotional arc — what feeling the piece needed to create in the opening 10 seconds, and what it needed to have earned by second 55.
Prakash S.
CIO, Manufacturing Group
52 · Chennai
"I've seen fifty 'next frontier' presentations. I'll know in the first 20 seconds if this one is real."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to leave with a clear sense of where intelligent ERP is going — and whether Ramco is the right partner for that journey.
Deepa K.
VP Marketing, Ramco Systems
44 · Chennai
"The animation is the first thing they see. It needs to say 'Ramco' — confident, intelligent, not just technically capable."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants the event to set a new standard for Ramco's conference identity — and for the opening film to become a reference point.
Muskan J.
Motion Designer — Me
· Amsterdam → Chennai
"How do you make 'Agentic AI in ERP' feel as cinematic as a space launch — without lying about what it is?"
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wanted to prove that enterprise motion design can carry genuine narrative weight — that craft and commerce don't have to be opposites.
Ramco Systems needed a compelling opening animation for their annual ERP User Meet — "The Next Frontier" — held at The Leela Palace, Chennai (15–16 Sept 2025). The brief called for a 60-second film that could run on wide-format LED screens, setting the tone for a conference about Agentic AI, intelligent ERP, and the future of enterprise technology.
The animation needed to feel cinematic and bold — opening with restraint and building to a moment of transformation that introduced the Ramco brand and the "Step into the next frontier" tagline.
Frame stills from final render · Intersection-2 · 4608×768px LED screen format
Before a single frame was animated, the entire narrative was mapped across 30 storyboard panels — from "black screen fade-in" to the final end card for the Ramco User Meet 2025.
A glowing blue orb pulses behind a rigid grid. Typewriter text: "Every era of enterprise has been defined by a frontier. A boundary that separates what is from what is possible."
The orb pushes through the frontier line. Grid lines reconfigure into liquid pathways. A living network forms. "Intelligent, Adaptive, Agentic AI. It anticipates, learns and evolves."
The circle bursts outward into a glowing horizon. The Ramco mark shines. "Behold, the future of enterprise. Step into the next frontier." End card: 15–16 Sept · The Leela Palace, Chennai.
Before arriving at the final visual language, two distinct directions were explored and ultimately rejected. Showing the discard pile is part of the process: each rejected version clarified what the final needed to be.
Dark vanishing-point grid with neon blue lines. Too cinematic — felt more sci-fi than enterprise. The perspective depth competed with the copy rather than supporting it.
Wavy intersecting white grid on Ramco blue. Closer to the final direction, but the grid felt too decorative — it needed to feel alive and under tension. The breakthrough moment wasn't landing.
Both iterations informed the final: the tension of the dark grid + the brand-aligned blue of Shot 1b = the glowing orb trapped behind lines that defined the final act structure.
4608×768px ultra-wide LED screen · Rendered at 25fps · 90-second runtime including extended loop sections for venue playback
Open Sans throughout · Typewriter animation for all text reveals · Letter-spacing adjusted for wide-format legibility at distance
Ramco brand blue · Intersecting grid lines that glitch, bend, and reconfigure · Glowing organic orbs against geometric grids — tension between constraint and freedom
Full 30-scene storyboard approved before animation began · Hand-drawn narrative boards mapped to timing sheet · Final animation produced to exact storyboard specifications
06 — Iteration Reel
This iteration of the Intersection motion piece was not used at the Ramco conference. It was an earlier explorative render — pushing the intersection metaphor further with more aggressive geometric fragmentation and a different rhythm to the narrative beats. The conference version pulled back from this intensity. But this render was the turning point that locked in the visual language: the grid-glitch aesthetic, the orb-meets-geometry tension, and the typewriter cadence that made it into the final cut. Every key decision in the approved film traces back here.
Iteration reel — not screened at conference · Guided the approved final output
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Internal · Confidential · This project was completed under NDA. Client name, proprietary data, and strategic outputs have been partially redacted. Available in full during interviews upon request.
A comprehensive consumer research and product strategy for Havells — defining a new home healthcare brand, WellTech, to capture India's fast-growing at-home diagnostics and wellness market.
✦ Final Outcome
Led end-to-end strategic research and synthesised it into a classification-level internal brief — covering consumer behavior, physician and patient personas, market sizing, competitive landscape, and a phased go-to-market framework. Presented directly to Havells decision-makers.
Strategic Research Brief
Consumer analysis, market sizing from BCG/FICCI data, persona construction, and competitive scan across Philips, Xiaomi, and Lapka.
Go-to-Market Framework
Phased market entry strategy covering product positioning, distribution channels, and prioritisation logic for Havells's health-tech expansion.
Presented to Stakeholders
Delivered as a board-ready deck to Havells leadership — the output of a research sprint, not a design exercise.
Havells India · Classification-level internal strategy · Presented to senior stakeholders
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
It was August 2020. I was in the third month of a pandemic that had turned every home into an improvised clinic. I had watched my mother manage her blood pressure at home with a device that showed numbers without context, beeping in a language of its own. I had watched friends photograph their grandmother's test strips and WhatsApp them to doctors three cities away. Healthcare was moving into the home — but the products meant for professional clinical settings were migrating wholesale, without redesign, without reimagination.
When Havells India — one of India's most established consumer electronics and appliances brands — began exploring the strategic opportunity in home healthcare, I was part of the product strategy team tasked with defining the market, the consumer, and the brand positioning. What I found, very quickly, was that the ₹27,500 crore opportunity wasn't primarily a technology gap. It was an empathy gap.
The existing home health devices were built on the mental model of the clinical encounter: the patient is passive, the reading is a number, the interpretation happens elsewhere. But the people buying these products — a diabetic husband managing his own insulin cycles, a pregnant woman in a city far from her parents' home, an elderly woman whose children live in Bangalore while she lives in Lucknow — weren't patients seeking clinical precision. They were people seeking confidence in their own body's story.
I fell in love with this problem because it was a design problem disguised as a market research project. The data told us there were 55 million addressable households. But the insight — the real opportunity — was only visible when you sat with the people living it. The brand Havells needed wasn't "medical-grade home diagnostics." It was something warmer and more human: a trusted companion for health at home.
The gap in India's home healthcare market was not a technology gap. It was an empathy gap — the space between clinical data and human confidence.
₹27,500 Cr
addressable market for home healthcare in India
67%
urban consumers expressing interest in at-home diagnostics monitoring
3 weeks
from research brief to board-ready strategy framework — August 2020
0A — Stakeholder Map
Home healthcare is unusual as a product category — the buying decision and the using decision often involve different people, and the moment of use is the most vulnerable moment in a person's day. This complexity made stakeholder mapping not just strategic but ethically necessary.
Primary Consumers
Chronic Condition Patient
Managing diabetes, hypertension, cardiac conditions
Expectant Mother
Tracking vitals through pregnancy at home
Elderly Individual
Managing conditions with family support
Family Caregiver
Monitors, interprets, advocates
Clinical & Channel Stakeholders
Physician / Specialist
Recommends devices, interprets readings remotely
Pharmacist / Retail Chemist
Primary channel for home device purchase
Hospital Channel
Discharge-to-home transition point
Strategic Decision Makers — Havells
Havells Board / Strategy Team
Approves market entry & brand investment
Product R&D
Defines device capabilities and UX
Marketing & Brand
Positions WellTech vs. competitors
Distribution & Sales
Builds retail and e-commerce reach
0B — User Personas
Constructed from primary research with patients and physicians across India — three patient types (diabetic, pregnant, elderly) and two physician profiles (senior GP, young doctor). Each persona came with a full day-in-life journey mapping their health device interactions.
Patient Persona 01 — Diabetic
T1-D Patient · Sales Executive · Metros & Tier 1
| Age Group | 30–40 |
| Income | ₹1L+ per month |
| Location | Metros & Tier 1 |
| Status | Married |
Habits
Pain Points / Needs
"I wish the health-care service that I receive responds as fast as possible when required to do so, through a relevant professional, along with readily available equipment for treatment."
A Day in the Life
Treatment & Devices: CGM device · Blood glucose monitor · Insulin pen · Medical history app
Patient Persona 02 — Pregnant
1 Month Pregnant · Agile Transformation Lead · Bangalore
| Occupation | Agile Transformation Leader, Target |
| Age | 29 |
| Location | Bangalore |
| Status | Married |
Habits
Pain Points / Needs
"I wish the health-care service that I receive helps me track the growth and health of my child."
A Day in the Life
Treatment & Devices: BP monitor · Nutrition dipsticks · Hemometer (hemoglobin screening) · Accupressure massager
Patient Persona 03 — Elderly
Retired Banker · Widow · Bangalore
| Age | 75 |
| Occupation | Retired Banker |
| Status | Widow, 2 Children, 6 Grandchildren |
| Home | Bangalore, India |
Habits
Pain Points / Needs
"I wish the healthcare service that I receive helps me connect with my cardiologist immediately in case of an emergency."
A Day in the Life
Treatment & Devices: BP monitor · Heart rate monitor · Blood glucose device · Health & fitness tracker · Medication reminder
Physician Personas
Physician Persona — Senior General Practitioner
Age 61 · New Delhi · Associate Professor, IHE Haus Khas
"In the coming times, Preventive Care will become most important. As doctors, we are encouraging our patients to live a healthy life to prevent diseases."
Hobbies
Specialisation
Devices Used
Physician Persona — Young Doctor
Age 25 · New Delhi · Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, Jodhpur
"Seek help at the earliest if you feel anything wrong instead of waiting till the very end."
Hobbies
Specialisation
Devices Used
Frustrations
★ The Havells Vision
Havells' trajectory from industrial cable to 20 product verticals powering ~70% of India's electric sockets. The brief was to visualise this expansion — artistic, bold, designer-vision-forward. This image was part of the internal strategic orientation I developed for the WellTech opportunity.
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Synthetive: Election Edition
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A follow-up to Synthetive — reimagined for the political arena. An interactive boardgame that places participants inside an AI-powered election campaign, forcing them to confront real tradeoffs between strategy, ethics, and democratic responsibility.
VPRO Medialab · CoECI · DSS · NPO · HvA · Sustainable Media Lab
Centre Expertise Creative Innovation
✦ Final Outcome
Election Edition extended Synthetive's core tension into the domain of democratic participation: AI-generated candidates, synthetic manifestos, and a player tasked with distinguishing persuasion from manipulation. Screened and played at three international venues across 2024.
Playable Political Simulation
A complete game loop where players navigate an AI-run election — voting, questioning, and ultimately confronting what's authentic.
Three International Venues
Exhibited at IMPAKT Festival (Utrecht), ZERO Medialab (Society 5.0), and MozFest Workshop — each with live audience play.
AI Literacy Through Play
Designed to leave players with a concrete felt understanding of how AI can shape democratic information environments.
IMPAKT Festival Utrecht · ZERO Medialab Society 5.0 · MozFest Workshop · Oct 2024
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
In the weeks following the 2023 Dutch general elections, I found myself down a research rabbit hole I hadn't planned. I was reading post-election analyses and kept encountering a phrase: "AI-generated content influenced voter perception." But the analyses never went deeper than that — they documented the fact without offering any scaffold for understanding it, let alone addressing it. The documentation made the problem feel inevitable, like weather.
The statistic that stopped me cold: 46% of EU residents lack the basic digital skills needed to make informed political decisions. Not just older generations — the gap cut across demographics. And the 2023 Dutch elections had surfaced specific incidents of deepfakes and AI-generated disinformation circulating at scale. I became genuinely preoccupied with a question that felt simultaneously abstract and urgent: what does it actually feel like to run an AI-powered political campaign from the inside?
The previous Synthetive game had taught me that experiential learning creates a different kind of understanding than information. If you want someone to develop moral intuition around AI use, you put them in the seat of the decision-maker — not the observer. The Election Edition emerged from a simple provocation: what if we could let people experience the seductive pull of AI campaign tools, and then force them to confront what they'd done?
This wasn't about scare tactics or moral lecturing. It was about making democratic responsibility felt. Political AI tools are not intrinsically malicious — they're tools that amplify choices. The problem is that most citizens don't understand what choices are being made. Building this game felt like an act of civic design: creating a space where the mechanics of AI-enabled campaigns become legible, debatable, and human.
The problem wasn't that people were deceived. The problem was that they had no framework for even knowing when to be suspicious. We built the game to give them one.
46%
EU residents lack digital skills for informed political decisions (AlgorithmWatch)
2023
Dutch elections — documented AI misinformation & deepfake incidents
30
participants per session — each one leaves with a different intuition about AI
0A — Stakeholder Map
The Election Edition operates at the intersection of politics, media, education, and technology. The stakeholder map shaped which ethical dilemmas we wrote into the challenge cards — because each stakeholder experiences AI in elections from a radically different position.
Workshop Participants — Primary Players
Engaged Voter / Citizen
Wants to make informed decisions
Political Campaign Manager
Navigates efficiency vs. ethics
Journalist / Fact-Checker
Defending information integrity
Digital Literacy Educator
Building tools for critical thinking
Commissioning & Partner Organisations
Dutch Parliament / CoECI
Digital governance & responsible IT
VPRO Medialab
Responsible synthetic media exploration
Digital Society School / HvA
Education & civic innovation
MozFest / Global Civil Society
Open internet advocacy
Structural Actors in the System
AI Platform Developers
Build the tools campaigns use
Data Brokers / Analytics
Enable targeted voter profiling
Electoral Oversight Bodies
Regulate campaign behaviour
General Public
Subject to AI-shaped political information
0B — User Personas
After five public workshops from the Dutch Parliament to MozFest, these three players emerge consistently — sometimes in different people, sometimes in the same person across different rounds of the game.
Koen V.
Campaign Strategist (game role)
38 · Den Haag
"If the other campaign is using AI voter profiling, we don't have a choice. We have to as well."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to win — but also wants to be able to look at the outcome and feel it was earned honestly.
Amara W.
Digital Literacy Facilitator
29 · Amsterdam
"I can explain what a deepfake is. What I can't do is make students feel why it matters."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants her students to leave the room with an intuition they didn't have when they walked in.
Eva H.
Engaged Voter, First-Time Player
22 · Rotterdam
"I thought I was good at spotting fake news. Then I played and realised I'd been making it."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to be an informed democratic participant in a world that feels increasingly opaque.
Building on the original Synthetive boardgame, this edition places players in the role of an election campaign team deploying AI across every stage — from voter profiling and content ideation to targeted promotion and real-time adaptation. The game asks: what are the tradeoffs? What do we gain, and what do we risk?
The project responds to a documented crisis: 46% of EU residents lack the basic digital skills needed to make informed political decisions, and the 2023 Dutch elections were marked by the spread of misinformation and deepfakes. Developed through Sprint 5 at the Digital Society School in collaboration with VPRO Medialab and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and funded by the Centre Expertise Creative Innovation (CoECI) — then selected for Society 5.0's Transform track — the game translates this urgency into lived experience.
Players take on roles within a fictional political campaign — Researcher, Promoter, Creator, Editor, Strategist — and use AI tokens to augment their work across six campaign stages: Ideating, Doing Research, Planning, Creating, Promoting, and Reviewing. Challenge cards introduce ethical dilemmas mid-game, forcing the team to adapt.
Left: The game board — "How can AI sustain us?" with role tokens and campaign stages · Right: Participants at Society 5.0
Commissioned by Digital Society School, the Election Edition was brought to life across two major events in 2024 — first at MozFest in June, then at Society 5.0 in October. Each session ran as a 60-minute facilitated workshop with live gameplay, reflection, and audience feedback.
We re-imagine the role of the maker and encourage collaboration with technology, working in ways that transcend individuality and linearity.
Our stories aren't just seen or heard — they're felt, provoking emotions that inspire action, entertain, enlighten, and make meaningful impact.
We embrace awareness of bias in AI-generated content and educate audiences on the nuances of synthetic media.
We navigate content creation with awareness, ensuring authenticity, transparency, and integrity — respecting diverse perspectives and promoting empathy.
Contracted by Digital Society School to design, produce, and facilitate two public workshops (MozFest June 2024 · Society 5.0 October 2024). Responsible for game design, UX research, all physical materials production, and visual design of game components.
Sustainable design researcher focusing on solutions that balance environmental impact and human needs. Co-facilitated the Society 5.0 and MozFest workshops.
46% of EU residents lack the basic digital skills required to make informed political decisions (AlgorithmWatch / European Commission). The 2023 Dutch elections were marked by misinformation and deepfakes — making AI literacy in an election context not just an academic exercise, but an urgent civic need.
Synthetive and its Election Edition have been prototyped, tested publicly, and documented. The roadmap ahead points toward broader reach and deeper impact.
Expand into a digital platform or app with AI-generated scenarios and real-time events. Add AR assistants to blend digital and physical gameplay for immersive learning.
Collaborate with universities for AI, media ethics, and sustainability courses. Develop digital literacy programmes targeting youth on AI's role in elections and responsible media.
Use Synthetive to simulate AI's impact on elections and policy decisions — helping policymakers assess risks like misinformation before they become crises.
Adapt Synthetive for companies and newsrooms to explore AI's role in ethical content production, customer engagement, and sustainability — promoting responsible AI and CSR.
"Synthetive goes beyond being a game — it's a tool for reflection on responsible innovation, creative collaboration, and sustainability."
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Physical Prototype · UX Design · Speculative Design · MDD Personal Project
Memories embedded in a place disappear when people leave. Memory Ball is a hand-crafted sphere containing Amsterdam's map — and a digital layer that makes those stories visible, shareable, and permanent.
✦ Final Outcome
Memory Ball is a speculative design artefact and digital companion — a palm-sized object that archives the sensory and social memory of HvA's buildings before they are demolished. The physical installation and web layer were shown in exhibition, inviting visitors to leave and retrieve memory fragments.
Physical Artefact
A cast glass-and-resin object embedding archived material — photographs, sounds, personal accounts — from within the building.
Digital Companion
Web application layer allowing visitors to contribute and access memory fragments linked to specific spatial coordinates.
Shown in Exhibition
Installed and exhibited at HvA — engaging students, faculty, and visitors in an act of collective memory-making before demolition.
HvA Speculative Design · Physical installation + Web application · Memory preservation
00 — Falling in Love with the Problem
I walked into the Theo Thijssenhuis on my first day at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and felt the weight of it — not physically, but temporally. The building had been designed by architects who thought carefully about light and space. Students had been designing in it for decades. Protests had happened in its corridors. Breakthroughs. Late nights. First drafts of work that would end up in galleries. And none of that was visible. The building had no memory.
I started asking around. Do you know who designed this? Do you know what happened here in 1992? Do you know the story of this particular stairwell? Almost nobody knew anything. And yet the people I asked — students, faculty, visiting professionals — were visibly moved by the question itself. The stories existed, somewhere. They existed in the people who had walked these halls. But there was no mechanism for them to become part of the building's living knowledge.
That's the problem I fell in love with: not the technology of memory, but the geometry of it. When you leave a place, where do your memories go? Not your digital archive — your relationship with a particular corner of a particular room, at a particular time of day, in a particular phase of your life. In our hyperconnected world we are generating more digital traces than any previous generation, yet we are simultaneously losing the most situated, the most located, the most irreplaceable kind of memory: the memory of place.
The Memory Ball emerged from asking: what if the memory could stay? What if a physical object — beautiful, holdable, permanent — could be the anchor point for a digital layer of accumulated stories? Not a screen. Not a QR code. A sphere that holds a city's map, glows when you hold it, and invites you into a world of deposited memories. The speculative prototype became a meditation on legacy, and on what it means to design for the people who will arrive after you.
Every building is full of stories that leave when people leave. Memory Ball was designed to give those stories a place to stay.
750+
years of Amsterdam history accumulating invisibly in its buildings
0
existing mechanisms to access the Theo Thijssenhuis's living history in-situ
∞
stories waiting to be deposited — by anyone who has ever walked through
0A — Stakeholder Map
A memory archive for a place touches an unusually wide set of stakeholders — from current students who deposit memories to future visitors who receive them, from institutional archivists who curate to community members who have never been inside. Mapping this helped define what the system needed to protect as much as what it needed to enable.
Memory Depositors — People who leave stories
Current & Former Students
Have located, personal memories of the space
Faculty & Staff
Carry institutional memory across decades
Alumni Network
Connect present meaning to historical context
Original Architects / Makers
Know the intent behind the design
Memory Receivers — People who discover
Visitor / Curious Passerby
Encounters the object, enters the layer
Researcher / Historian
Uses the archive to understand the building's past
ThingsCon / Design Community
Engages with the speculative design provocation
Institutional & Structural Stakeholders
HvA Institution
Owns the space and its identity
Archives & Special Collections
Custodians of institutional record
AI / Platform Infrastructure
Powers the conversational memory layer
Data & Ethics Board
Protects memory contributors' rights
0B — User Personas
These personas shaped the interaction design of both the physical object and the digital layer — specifically, the balance between discovery and contribution, between receiving stories and leaving them.
Zeynep A.
Final-Year Design Student
24 · Amsterdam
"I've spent four years here. In a few months I'll be gone and this building won't know I existed."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to contribute to the building's story — and feel that four years of work and growth meant something beyond her own portfolio.
Henk V.
Visiting Professional, ThingsCon
51 · Utrecht
"I've been in hundreds of interesting spaces. I almost never know what they meant to the people who made them."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants to leave a building knowing more about it than when he entered — and to take a story home with him.
Iris S.
Institutional Archivist, HvA
46 · Amsterdam
"We have records of every building project. We have almost nothing of what happened inside them after they were built."
Needs
Frustrations
Motivation: Wants the HvA's buildings to accumulate not just history but humanity — a record that future students will want to access, not just scholars.
Walking through Amsterdam, I kept thinking: every building, every corner has countless stories embedded in it — from the people who designed it, studied in it, worked in it, protested in it. The Theo Thijssenhuis (TTH) at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is buzzing with design innovation, yet the personal stories of everyone who walked these halls remained completely invisible.
In our hyperconnected world we're creating more digital memories than ever — yet so many slip away into forgotten hard drives and abandoned social media accounts. The central design question: "What if generative AI could transform spaces into interactive memory archives that preserve our digital legacy through conversation?"
The Memory Ball is a handmade object — not a screen or a sensor. A clear acrylic sphere holds laser-cut discs etched with Amsterdam's canal map and the TTH building's footprint. Lit from beneath, it glows like a lantern. It's something you stop and pick up.
Left to right: Amber-lit prototype · Looking through the sphere · Two iterations · Components disassembled · Etched memory-network disc
Decision 01
Physical object — not a QR sticker.
A pure digital app would be invisible and ignored. The sphere earns attention through its presence alone — it's tactile, warm, and beautiful. The interaction begins before anyone opens their phone.
Decision 02
Amsterdam's map as the inner structure.
The laser-cut discs inside aren't decoration — they're the city's actual street grid and TTH's building footprint, made tangible. The sphere is a lens for the place itself. Different discs can represent different locations or memory layers.
Decision 03
AI assists — it never replaces.
The tool stores and shares stories with or without AI assistance, and always respects privacy. The AI prompts you to articulate what you feel; an anonymity toggle means you decide what's public and what stays yours.
The visual language — cream backgrounds, rust-orange accents, serif headings — was chosen deliberately. It feels like a memory: warm, personal, slightly worn. Not clinical. Not a database.
Left: Homepage — "Preserving Digital Heritage at Theo Thijssenhuis" · Right: About Memory Ball — how it works
Left: Memory Timeline grouped by decade · Right: Share Your Memory form — needs a more conversational redesign (noted)
Memory Ball installed at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Master Digital Design · 14–15 April · ThingsCon Generative Things
The working prototype — sphere, plinth with QR code, and web app — was exhibited at ThingsCon Generative Things alongside the MDD Master Digital Design graduation show at HvA. Visitors picked up the sphere, scanned the QR code, explored the Memory Timeline, and contributed their own stories.
The broader vision: wherever a Memory Ball is installed, each location becomes a node in a larger network of human experience. Walking through the Jordaan and hearing stories from residents across decades. Exploring any Amsterdam neighbourhood through the eyes of the people who shaped it.
"Memory Ball merges physical installation with a mobile app to reveal personal stories from the TTH building. Users explore interconnected memories through a map-based interface, fostering connection across time and place."
— Exhibition label, ThingsCon 2025
The current memory submission form is functional but not conversational — it feels like a form, not a dialogue. The next design sprint will redesign this screen starting with "Why does this place matter to you?" rather than a structured title field. The goal: make adding a memory feel as natural as telling a story to a friend.
The city-scale ambition — multiple Memory Balls across Amsterdam's iconic locations for Amsterdam750 — remains the long-term vision. Each new location adds a node. Each node makes the network richer.
Redesign "Share Your Memory" — conversational
Prompt-first, form-second. Start with the question, not the field.
Scale to Amsterdam750
Deploy across iconic city locations — each ball a node in a city-wide memory network.
Build the interactive Memory Web
Turn the etched constellation disc into a live digital layer — tap a node, hear its story.