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.

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

BOOSTING DISCOVERABILITY

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.

  • Cedar launched a new product, Cedar Pre, to help patients understand and manage medical costs ahead of appointments. But early beta testing revealed low prepayment rates and unclear user motivation. My job was to lead a 6-week research sprint to uncover what drives patients to pay early—and what holds them back.

  • I led a 6-week sprint blending behavioral research with practical testing. We aligned with stakeholders, studied parallels across industries, and interviewed 10 patients to test concepts and payment models. I synthesized findings into patient mindsets, four design principles (FACT), and action items to guide Cedar Pre’s design and positioning.

    • Prepayment is as emotional as it is financial – patients need clarity and control, not just savings

    • Small shifts in copy, transparency, and payment flexibility can meaningfully change behavior

    • Our research laid the foundation for Cedar Pre's design roadmap and helped influence C-suite strategy after a major company reorg

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.

  • Food has become commodified—centralized, disconnected, and optimized for profit over biodiversity or sustainability. Many don’t know where their food comes from or feel connected to it. This disconnection fuels waste, reduces biodiversity, and weakens land stewardship. Radicle asked: How might we reconnect people to the land and reshape our food systems to be more diverse, mindful, and collaborative?

  • We ran a systems-oriented research sprint exploring food’s ecological and emotional value. Through interviews, site visits, co-design, and surveys across the food chain—from soil scientists to backyard growers—we uncovered five key breakdowns: over-commodification, soil loss, biodiversity decline, food waste, and land disconnection. We responded with a two-way heirloom seed exchange that pairs storytelling with seed sharing, genome tracking, and nature-based education.

    • Reconnection begins with reciprocity—between people, plants, and place

    • Community-led growing fosters agency and biodiversity more effectively than top-down systems

    • Radicle reframes growing food not just as sustenance, but as resistance to extractive systems