Me3

Hi šŸ‘‹šŸ¾ I'm Ro!

I spend most of my days hanging out with my beautiful wife and our adorable daughters, sampling some heavenly elixirs from Scotland, strumming my guitar, catching my breath in soccer or ultimate frisbee, and kicking it with friends.

Iā€™m from Mumbai, grew up in Dubai, lived in Yemen and now reside in Indiana. These experiences have shaped who I am and how I view the world and have greatly influenced my approach to relationships and work.

I started out with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and with the support of my amazing parents gave that up to pursue a love of design. I grew up on computer games, my earliest one being Qbasicā€™s Gorillas. My dad, sold and taught computers back in the day and showed me the unlimited potential these machines could have in the future.

While completing a traditional Graphic Design degree from Taylor University I drew on this love of computers and carved myself a path that intersected my love for design and my love for computers. This led me to my current passion for solving problems at the intersection of data and design.

I am currently happily serving time at ActiveCampaign, a sales and marketing automation platform. I also have a fun project that I'm looking to release in 2022, which will enable young professionals to maximize their talents.

Cheers!

Work History

ActiveCampaign - Design Lead (CRM & B2B)
2020 - Present

Currently, leading the design of our CRM here at ActiveCampaign. I also work on a handful of other areas, either ideating new product lines or improving the experience of our current product. As a senior designer, I also build on our design practice by identifying areas of improvement for our team, as well as assisting in building our design team through hiring and interviewing top design talent. 

Zylo - Design Lead (Founding Designer)
2016 - 2020

Lead the design of our product here at Zylo from MVP to scale over the past two years. Working alongside the VP of Product and the VP of Engineering to build our product roadmap, embed a design-thinking approach to our build and launch process as well as research, prototype, and build a design style that would enable the engineers to focus on the UI.

IWU - Lead UX Designer
2014 - 2016

Created multiple initiatives for enhancing the productivity and impact of the web and digital media. I created a branding style sheet for the web that would allow for consistency within the organization. I also re-branded the university logo to suit its purpose and vision. Created a 2-year digital strategy that would begin a gradual improvement of the website as a whole and move it to a more marketing-focused structure, in order to aid in admissions. I am a member of the Global Engagement Council and work towards building international recruitment strategies to improve the universityā€™s global reach.

Imavex - Product Developer / Designer
2013 - 2014

Built mobile apps for Roku & Google TV as well as Samsung, LG & Panasonic Smart TVs. I designed the User Interface as well as built the User Interaction for each of the above-mentioned devices, for over 30 clients. I also worked on web development using HTML, CSS, PHP & jQuery for over 50 clients based on campaigns created by our team.

Side Hustles

Advisor - Design & Product Strategist
2014 - Present
  • U.S. Army - Advised on brand design for the 2-12 Cav Company.
  • Ephesus Initiative - Created brand and digital strategy for a non-profit.
  • Avant Guard - Created brand and digital strategy for a nationwide boutique.
  • and more..
Tether - Co-Founder / Product
2014 - 2016

Created a relationship management tool, to help people strengthen close relationships.

ļ»æKoda - Founder
2020 - Present

On a mission to help young professionals unlock their path to career success through mentorship and community.

FAQs

What is my design process?

Depending on the time and affordance of a project, my process follows an adaptive version of this flow. I start with questions, usually, a lot of them, aimed at understanding the business goals, users, and their pain-points, (either through interviews or field studies) constraints, the scope for the project, and required deliverables. Once I have these noted I dive into quick concept design and explorations think through blue sky designs and then hone in on specific features. This includes building flows and prototyping screens that could be shared with certain users and stakeholders. I then take this data and start visualizing the simplest viable solution that could be shipped while sharing the overall goal with our team. These go through a few rounds of user testing and iterations. This process twists and turns based on our findings and constraints of the project and usually, I am able to take us from idea to initial build within a couple of weeks. Thus allowing us to iterate on areas as well we scale up.

Where do I draw my inspiration from?

The birds and the bees. Honestly, I get a lot of my inspiration from life and my experiences in it. For example a conversation with a friend about how an amazing experience with a clothing store made her a life-long customer inspired me to build out our new-student experience for the university that I worked at. As a designer, I am always looking for problems to solve or ways to make simple things around me better and those experiences pour back into the work that I do.

What part of the design process do I thrive?

My strengths and passions lie in the system design portion of the design process. While I do work in strategy, interaction, and visuals I enjoy working on building the system and components that we use to build it. I have enjoyed building products focused on the power user base and diving deeper into solving global problem sets across an experience. I am used to working with large data sets and complex systems to provide insightful solutions.

Hit Me Up!

I am working on my writing skill and have some thoughts on my process, design, and things that have helped me grow along the way.

I am always up for some good conversation and connecting with people with very different viewpoints. Whether you are a designer, a student, or a lovely human being. (I donā€™t talk to aliens.. anymore)