AKSHAY

San Francisco-BASED DESIGNER with a camera, a passport, and too many hobbies.

Hey hey! I’m Akshay (duck-sh-hey — 🐥-🤫-👋 without the D), a T-shaped designer blending systems thinking, research, and design to turn complex problems into clear, engaging experiences.

By day, I’m at Smartsheet crafting tools that help teams plan and manage their people more intuitively. By night (and most weekends), I’m chasing light with a camera, geeking out on vintage Porsches, or learning something new.

Curiosity keeps me moving. Craft keeps me grounded. And I’m happiest when making messy things feel beautifully simple.

Some details are under NDA but I'm happy to share more in a chat

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Some details are under NDA but I'm happy to share more in a chat 〰️

SMARTSHEET

San Francisco, CA

Redesigning Smartsheet’s people management tool to allow customers to easily plan projects and efficiently manage people.

BOOSTING DISCOVERABILITY

Increased product discoverability by 150% and unlocked $2M+ in quarterly sales pipeline by designing an integrated experience for Smartsheet’s people management solution.

IN THE WORKS | NDA
AGENTIC AI

Designing agentic AI experiences that reduce onboarding friction and accelerate time-to-value by translating complex workflows into clear, actionable steps.

IN THE WORKS | NDA
MONETIZATION

Redesigning the monetization experience to support a shift from sales-led to product-led growth. Crafting intuitive upgrade paths and onboarding flows that build user confidence, drive self-serve adoption, and boost engagement.

Cedar

New York, NY

Investigated motivations fueling patients’ pre-medical visit payment behaviors by driving a 6-week qualitative study at a healthcare fintech platform that reduces administrative friction for providers, payers, and patients. Findings defined user mind- sets and design principles and influenced product roadmap.

FOUNDATION STUDIO

San Francisco, CA

PROTECTED BY NDA

Designed zero-to-one solutions for lean startups by combining product design, user research, and systems thinking: from testing dog toys at Longsock to building a community for nomads at Kift.

GENEMOD

Seattle, WA

  • Enabled Genemod to close its highest-to-date fundraising round of $4.5M by re-designing electronic lab notebooks and lab inventory systems that scientists at biotech and pharma companies use to plan, conduct, and manage preclinical research.

  • Genemod’s ELN was fragmented, buggy, and disconnected from its inventory system—making it hard for scientists to manage research efficiently. With no PM, tight timelines, and a $4.5M fundraising round in motion, we needed to ship a redesigned ELN that researchers actually wanted to use.

  • I co-led a 10-week redesign effort across 5 sprints, partnering closely with design, engineering, and execs. We kicked off with user research and competitive audits, ran weekly design reviews, scoped features based on feasibility, and delivered a more intuitive, integrated ELN experience. I owned design for a key feature area end-to-end, from IA to implementation support.

    • Tight cross-functional rituals beat top-down structure

    • Designing for trust matters more than just function

    • Our redesign helped close Genemod’s largest funding round to date

UW + Core77

Seattle, WA

Won Core77’s Social Impact Award ‘24 for designing a service that addresses food waste, climate-smart agriculture, and environmental stewardship for small- and mid-sized growers and everyday consumers. The study combined literature reviews, field research, interviews, and surveys with interdisciplinary co-design sessions and concept testing through narrative prototypes.