WHERE I'M FROM
I was born and raised in a small industrial town outside Delhi, India. My dad worked for a power plant and mom worked for the government. I guilt-tripped my parents to replace their absence with a computer. I treasured my Roller Coaster Tycoon CD, and spent my childhood building theme parks, allocating costs, and making millions of dollar in revenue. It's arguably where my love for product design began.
WHAT I USED TO DO
A restaurant reviewer. Editor of the university newspaper. A researcher studying healthcare education in the most remote villages of India. Founder of a multidisciplinary design firm and one of India's first makerspaces. Got to create apps and installations for Airbnb, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Motorola, Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, and more.
WHERE I'M AT NOW
I am currently a Staff Product Designer at Asana, where I've worn many hats, including leading product strategy and design initiatives for adoption and growth. More recently, I have been asked to establish the foundation for the new Admin Experience org.
I am also the Mentorship Chair at IxDA, Seattle Wing where over the last year I've provided 1:1 mentorship opportunities to 96 designers.
Previously, I helped design several initiatives for Uber Eats. Before that, I was the Resident Designer with Dynamicland at Y Combinator Research.
HOW COWORKERS & LEADERSHIP DESCRIBE ME
HOW I DESCRIBE MYSELF
"Kritika's motion design prototyping ideas unlocked new ways for us to relay our features."
"Kritika's diverse concept model explorations have unblocked teams and helped them realize new ways to solve their challenge."
"As a mentor and team player, Kritika is a culture-champion and fosters a sense of community across teams."
"When we want to create complex data based frameworks for new features, we call Kritika."
"Kritika has discovered, pitched, and brought to life new product opportunities that will benefit us for a long time."
"Kritika's 200 page rich pan-industry research documentation on the Admin expertience is going to be pivotal for 8 teams across the org for the next 2 years."
Design things people love to use.
In doing so, I have picked up these skills and more from all the opportunities I've gotten to work on and amazing people I have met along the way.
See an opportunity, I jump on it.
Pitched an idea to Dara, Uber's CEO, and he responded. I got to lead the project. Delivery partners got a 2.5x tip $ increase from the launch.
Pitched an Uber Eats x Dunkin marketing campaign to the Head of Product and Marketing Director. 70M+ views across social media in 3 weeks.
Won 5 hackathon awards at Asana over 3 years. 3 of those ideas are part of the product today.
Building user empathy is key.
Cooked food in a cloud kitchen to understand what time crunch looks like, delivered food to people to feel parking woes first-hand, and personally spoken to over a hundred restaurants and delivery partners to understand their pains.
Learned about product pains and wins diectly from Asana champions from mom and pop shops to the execs at the biggest organizations in the world including Google, Uber, Figma, and with Sales & Channel partners who sell Asana across the world.
Awards
Red Dot Award 2023
2 SF Design Week Awards 2023
2 Communicator Awards of Excellence
7 Gold Indigo Design Awards 2023
2 Asana Hackathon Awards 2023
3 Asana Hackathon Awards 2022
Hack Mental Health Award 2018
Star Youth Achiever Award 2016
Featured in
Y Combinator News
New York Times
Forbes
The Verge
TechCrunch
The Independent
BestFolios
PaFolios
Jury
C2A Creative Communication Awards
Spark Design Awards
Davey Awards
HackPrinceton
Speaker
Princeton University
California College of the Arts
