The Philosophy of Product Design (with Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan, Global Strategic Design Director at Designit)

An interview with Udhaya Kumar Padmanabhan. Udhaya is Global Strategic Design Director at Designit, a global design firm working in all areas of design. Udhaya is a passionate advocate for good design principles, demystifying design practices and applying form to the formless.

We talk about a lot, including:

• His work with Designit, and how the design community is flourishing in Bangalore (the Silicon Valley of India)
• How he started out as a computer scientist & mathematician but somehow ended up in design and not data science
• The difference between product management, product design and UX design and where it all sits in a good product company
• Whether you need specific domain experience to be a product designer or whether any designer can get into product design
• The importance of up front collaboration with UX & product design and ensuring you're not just throwing stuff over the wall
• How easy it is to rescue bad design that you've inherited, when you need to start again, and what to do if you can't
• The importance of stepping back and hearing people out and not just preaching at people, and how design is about being in the relationship business
• The importance of "giving form to the formless" and applying good design principles outside of traditional user interfaces

Contact Udhaya

If you want to catch up with Udhaya, you can reach him on LinkedIn.