About Me
Top performing User Experience Design Leader with a passion for problem solving, creative process and technology.
In my 12 years of design experience, I have worked in multiple countries with various multi-cultural design teams.
Working in both agency and client side, I have managed projects for clients from domains including government, telecom, finance, education, automobiles, health care, aged care and data science. I have experience providing CX, UX and service design solutions by working with Waterfall and Agile methodologies. Along with good problem-solving capabilities, my skillsets include sketching, business and user requirement gathering, qualitative and quantitative user research, persona and user journeys, IA and workflows, conceptual design, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, team leadership, mentoring, coaching and training.
I believe in collaborative work environment and leveraging team’s knowledge and skillsets for collective growth. And any complex problem can be simplified by breaking down into logical steps and asking the right questions
Download resume: Saurabh_Karwal_Resume
Education
Masters in Design: 2008
Indian Institute of Technology, India
Major: Design thinking, Interaction design, product design
Bachelors of Architecture: 2006
School of planning and Architecture, India
Major: Architecture
Certified Usability Analyst: 2016
Human Factors International, India
Major: UX Foundations, User centered analysis, Web and application design, practical usability testing
Work Experience
Optus
Owned by Singtel group ,Optus is the second largest telecom provider in Australia. Optus provides telecom services like mobile plans, latest phones, broadband, NBN etc. More than 6 million customers in Australia uses Optus services on a daily basis. Generating $6Billion in revenue.
In this role, I lead the high net worth projects that have an impact on all the new and existing Optus customers customers Working as part of the experience design chapter, I worked very closely with the XD chapter lead and the digital sales product owner on high net worth projects having the following responsibilities and achievements:
– Collaborating with Product Owner, respective business partners to define product backlog
– Lead UX Experimentation across Sales squads, guiding the team on well-defined hypothesis, prioritization framework and solutions to be tested
– Leading end-to-end UX research including testing plans, participant recruitment, facilitations, synthesize and present finding/insights
– Designing new customer journeys and interfaces, from low-fidelity to high-fidelity artefacts including sketching, wireframing, interactive prototyping and visual design
– Auditing and optimising web interfaces to ensure the highest possible standard of experience design across optus.com.au
Key Projects:
– Redesign and implementation of Optus.com.au end to end online shop journeys to introduce new Optus choice plans resulting in 12% increase in online sales for new customers.
– Redesign of the online shop journeys to introduce multiple product shop for the new Family Plan to target 1.5% of new customers to generate in $5m revenue uplift.
Sitback Solutions
Sitback is a human centered design and development agency based in Sydney that provides Experience design, (Customer experience, User experience, sevice design) and dedicated support and optimisation services to customer focused organisations across Australia. They have a broad category of clients ranging from Government, education, finance, retail and not-for-profit organisations. I worked in various capacities at Sitback over last couple of years:
In this role, I lead the XD team and reported directly to the CEO having the following responsibilities, achievements and successes:
Business Planning and General Management
– To shape, design, and plan XD service offering and implement via quarterly roadmaps
– To maintain and develop excellent professional relationships with client’s CEO/ CFO/ CTO/ COO
– Acted as subject matter expert, visionary and strategist for the XD service area in the market
Business Development
– Engaged in sales and marketing activities in collaboration with the CEO, COO and marketing manager.
– Created Statement of Work or proposal documents for various projects based on the strategic approach.
– Developed and maintained vendor relationships
Methodology and Quality Assurance
– To collaborate with COO, Project Managers, Senior XD Consultants, and the development team to provide estimates and develop an overall solution implementation strategy and engagement models
– Serve as a lead as required and provide thought leadership and strategies for projects and initiatives – Assess XD risk and mitigation plan
Workforce Management, Supervision, and Mentoring
– Established a clear structure in the XD team from junior resources through to XD Leads.
– Helped create and track personal and professional development plans for individual XD consultants.
– Mentor and guide junior XD resources, engage on the strategy to bring on and mentor interns
Team strategy and vision:
⁃ Developed a sustainable experience design team structure by creating 3 pillars:
⁃ Research- Splitting into quantitative and qualitative research and creating a toolkit of research methodologies.
⁃ Design- Solution design including wireframes, prototypes, design tools, standards and UI kits
⁃ Emerging technology- Studying trends in emerging technologies and up-skilling the team if required.
⁃ Conducted a competitor review to identify the emerging trends in digital agency environment.
⁃ Conducted a gap analysis for the existing skillsets of the team as compared to the desired skillsets based on the competitor analysis.
⁃ Future proofing the XD team by mapping out the desired collective skillsets and upskilling where required.
⁃ Started an initiative to onboard development team by incorporating design thinking training in their weekly schedule.
Critical success factors:
⁃ Maintained a Gross Margin of 40% for the XD team
⁃ Maintained team productivity of 75%
⁃ Bringing down the accuracy of estimates for XD projects from +/- 5% to +/- 0.9%
– Worked on sales opportunities worth $600,000
– Delivered projects for new and existing customers.
– Acted as the 2IC to the XD director mentoring a team of senior and junior consultants.
– I was responsible for end to end XD process including:
Identifying client needs and managing client expectations,
Identifying research objectives,
Conducting initial business and user research,
Translating requirements into IA and UI designs,
Running usability testing sessions.
– Oversee quality assurance
– Assisted XD Director with sales and networking activities
Key Projects:
– Department of education service navigator
– People’s Choice credit union:
Development of transformation roadmap, personas, user journeys, UX mentoring and training
– Sky-news: design and development of 2600 website: https://2600.skynews.com.au/
Worked as a part of the XD team delivering projects for new and existing customers. I was responsible for identifying research objectives, conducting initial business and user research, translating requirements into IA and UI designs, and running usability testing sessions
Key Projects:
– Department of Education Our priorities section: https://education.nsw.gov.au/our-priorities
– Stakeholder and user interviews and workshops
– User research including online survey creation and analysis
– Wireframe and prototypes
– Content governance framework
Sydney Water
Sydney Water is a statutory State Owned Corporation wholly owned by the NSW government. It provides safe drinking water to more than 5 million people across Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra. Working with the digital and corporate solutions team as a senior UX designer, I reported directly to the Digital Development manager.
In this role, I lead the XD team and reported directly to the CEO having the following responsibilities, achievements and successes:
Business Planning and General Management
– To shape, design, and plan XD service offering and implement via quarterly roadmaps
– To maintain and develop excellent professional relationships with client’s CEO/ CFO/ CTO/ COO
– Acted as subject matter expert, visionary and strategist for the XD service area in the market
Business Development
– Engaged in sales and marketing activities in collaboration with the CEO, COO and marketing manager.
– Created Statement of Work or proposal documents for various projects based on the strategic approach.
– Developed and maintained vendor relationships
Methodology and Quality Assurance
– To collaborate with COO, Project Managers, Senior XD Consultants, and the development team to provide estimates and develop an overall solution implementation strategy and engagement models
– Serve as a lead as required and provide thought leadership and strategies for projects and initiatives – Assess XD risk and mitigation plan
Workforce Management, Supervision, and Mentoring
– Established a clear structure in the XD team from junior resources through to XD Leads.
– Helped create and track personal and professional development plans for individual XD consultants.
– Mentor and guide junior XD resources, engage on the strategy to bring on and mentor interns
Team strategy and vision:
⁃ Developed a sustainable experience design team structure by creating 3 pillars:
⁃ Research- Splitting into quantitative and qualitative research and creating a toolkit of research methodologies.
⁃ Design- Solution design including wireframes, prototypes, design tools, standards and UI kits
⁃ Emerging technology- Studying trends in emerging technologies and up-skilling the team if required.
⁃ Conducted a competitor review to identify the emerging trends in digital agency environment.
⁃ Conducted a gap analysis for the existing skillsets of the team as compared to the desired skillsets based on the competitor analysis.
⁃ Future proofing the XD team by mapping out the desired collective skillsets and upskilling where required.
⁃ Started an initiative to onboard development team by incorporating design thinking training in their weekly schedule.
Critical success factors:
⁃ Maintained a Gross Margin of 40% for the XD team
⁃ Maintained team productivity of 75%
⁃ Bringing down the accuracy of estimates for XD projects from +/- 5% to +/- 0.9%
– Worked on sales opportunities worth $600,000
Standard Bank - South Africa
– To lead a team of UX designers while creating an account origination process for SBSA customers
– To work with the AO team on Agile methodologies and maintain stories on kanban board
– To conduct user research, create wireframes and prototypes and validate with users.
Key Projects:
– Redesign of account origination process for new and returning customers.
– Working with Agile methodologies and kanban board
– Conducted user research, created IA, screen flow and wireframes.
– Usability testing in every sprint
Human Factors International
Human factors is the world’s largest UX company based in Fairfield,IO. It has been functional since 1981.
I worked as the centre of excellence lead reporting to the Director of design in Mumbai, India office.
My key responsibilities included:
– Working with a senior UX consultant and a junior UX consultant on client’s projects.
– Client engagement including gathering business requirements, project objectives, competitor data and project KPIs.
– User research: user interviews, eye tracking, contextual enquiries, online surveys, workshops and ethnographic studies
– Wireframe and interactive prototype design and validation by usability testing.
– Mentoring junior designers.
Key Projects:
– Redesign of website for a housing finance company to improve stickiness and increase conversion rates: https://www.dhfl.com/
– Redesign of online shopping platform ShopCJ to match the visual design with the brand guidelines and proposition. To match the styling and design of the company’s TV channel.
Hero MotoCorp Ltd
Hero MotoCorp is the world’s largest producer of motorcycles based in India.
I worked as a design manager in the Reserach and Development department of the company,
My key responsibilities included:
– Working closely with product and engineering leaders to establish design objectives, high level strategies and key results for a group of designers.
– Providing mentorship, goal setting and accountability to designers.
– Research with the various rider groups and converting the findings into key design language and features.
– Creating product strategy and conceptual designs and overlooking the process to convert the designs to clay models and full scale prototypes.
Key Projects:
– User reserach to create design guidelines for gender specific 2 wheeler styling
– Design and development of 5 2-wheelers and 3 concept vehicles to be displayed at the Delhi motor show
– Conceptualisation, IA and Interface design of a vehicle-mobile integration app.
TVS Motor Company Ltd.
I worked as an automobile designer for the company. I worked on the concept models and graphic design of the company’s products. Working with the senior designers, I created conceptual designs for the vehicles for ASEAN and Indian markets.
I was also a part of the extreme innovation group which was lead by design leaders from the Art Centre College of Design, Pasadena. As a part of this cross functional team, we filed 8 patents for reducing costs of vehicle production.