Introduction

Sameer Chavan's Flipkart Design team - 150 designers - UX designers, User researchers, Creative arts, Content designers, Conversational (Voice) designers, copy witers, etc
Highlights
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20+ yrs of experience in Product & UX Design, User Research & Visual Design building products 0 to 1 and 1 to 100.
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Educated at top Institutes - Masters in Design @ IIT Mumbai, BE Mechanical @ PVPI Technology.
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Worked at top MNCs and Indian Startups - Intel, Intuit, LG R&D, Siemens, Oracle, Flipkart, Info Edge,
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Entrepreneurial experience of running own healthcare startup & design consultancy.
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Global experience working at Silicon Valley(USA), Seoul & UK. Worked across India - Chennai, Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore.
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Successfully setup design teams and org building at top companies. Hired directors of design, research, creatives.
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Experience working with Finance for team budgets, with IT for Software tools, with purchasing for vendor contract management, with HR for training & conferences, with CTO strategy for design team positioning, etc
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Conducted DesignThinking workshops and helped organisations build a customer-centric approach.
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Domain expertise in designing complex B2B Enterprise Applications and B2C consumer apps
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Speaker at Indian & international conferences.
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Hold UX patents, published design articles

Detail Case Studies
Some of my projects in different companies that showcase the design process, outcome and impact.
Bottom Bar Design
Ecommerce Consumer App
Designing the bottom bar for Flipkart's eCommerce app to provide entry points to new businesses and help the user to switch and access different Flipkart offerings
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Inventory Management
Enterprise SME
Designing Intuit's inventory management system involving order management, picklist, barcode scanning.
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Talent Management
Enterprise B2B
Redesigning Spire Technology's enterprise talent management system to increase existing user adoption, better NPS and new customer acquisitions
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Insurance Claim Settlement
Enterprise B2B & B&C
Redesigning Athenahealth's posting flow to make it easy to understand, do clean posting, reduce BPO calls, reduce cost and increase NPS
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Voice UI Design
Ecommerce Consumer App
Designing Flipkart's Voice UI system that involved - Voice & tone, dialogue designs, tools, Ingression points, UI positioning, branding, user onboarding
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Conference Room Finder
Enterprise IT
Designing a technology-based solution approach to solve the underutilized conference room in an enterprise setup.
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Leadership
Process & Standards
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Defined UI Standards & Guidelines. Built design system that is scalable, modular & reusable at Flipkart, Intuit, Oracle, Info Edge, Spire.
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Authored UI pattern documents at Oracle. Held design chair position at Intel to review developer apps.
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Built Usability Labs for Oracle, Siemens, Intel.
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Conducted UX research in India, US, UK & Korea.
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Setup UX process and competency matrix for Flipkart.
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Defined career growth path for designers.
Competencies design @Flipkart



Leading Teams
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Led teams ranging from 3-4 designers to +150 multi-designers.
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Led UX designers/Product designers, User Researchers, Visual Designers, Creative Arts, Content Designers, Copywriters, Conversational designers, Product Managers, QA teams, Frontend UI developers.
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Most of the companies that I have joined, I have build design teams.
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Helped designers to grow in their careers as individuals or as managers.
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Helped them acquire new skills through mentoring and sending them to UX conferences.
Leadership Approach
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Motivating and inspiring teams
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Empowering and making teams accountable.
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Building cross team(within design) and cross department(Dev, PMs) collaborations
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Define career path growth and support
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Building a positive Influence on all stakeholders
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Improving productivity and quality of designs
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Encouraging creativity, out of the box thinking, innovations(Patents) & Technology
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Being Inclusive, Empathetic and valuing diversity.
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Transparency, clear communication and respect to all
Leadership Style
I have led small (2-6) to large (150+) multi-disciplinary design teams and help organizations to build great products and design culture. I mostly follow situational leader styles. Some core principles I believe are
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Leading by example.
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People manager - coaching and delegation
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Collaboration and building team spirit
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Being direct whenever the situation demands.
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Being strategic or tactical when time demands.
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Accountability by OKRs and JTBD
Worked with cross-cultural, multi-geo teams
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Worked with cross-functional teams like Product Management, Product Engineering, Sales & Marketing, Finance (budgeting), Dev Ops, IT Engineering, Operations & Supply chain, HR Functions, Training and employee developments.
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Worked with cross geo team from UK, Israel, USA, Australia, Germany, Austria
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Managed large Design teams (150 designers) consisting of directors of product design, director of user research, director of creative graphics, Sr. Manager of Voice UI, Director of enterprise UX, Director of Content and Copy etc.
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Worked in USA, South Korea, Italy and UK. Managed multi culture & multi geo teams.
Domain - B2B, B2C, Analytics, Mobile
Multi domain experience
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Worked on complex enterprise applications including database at Oracle, Analytics at Spire Tech, Inventory systems at Intuit, migration tools at Intel, etc.
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Worked on the consumer app's growth & engagement for the next 100mn Indian users. Strong understanding of eCommerce shopping, videos, games, hyperlocal grocery, fintech products & payments at Flipkart.
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B2B SME apps like Taxation & Accounting at Intuit. Large Financials enterprise apps at Oracle. Innovative.
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Technology products at LG & Intel. Worked on NLP, ML, AI/bots, wearables(google glass & watch), speech recognition, multimodal interactions, IoT, mobiles, and desktop apps. Conversation Designs
B2C consumer app
B2B Enterprise
B2B Analytics Insights
Skill Map
Product Design
Interaction Design, Visual Design, Creative Graphics, Design Systems
User Research
Conducted User Interviews, lab Usability Testing, Remote studies
Design Management
Org design, team building & hiring, process and budgets
User Research
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Built usability labs at Oracle, Intel, Infoedge. Worked with the facilities team to design lab layout and buy equipment. Hired User researchers and Research Director. Drafted research process and protocols. Research Budgeting.
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Conducted primary and secondary research. User interviews, Focus Group sessions, task analysis in Usability Labs. Conducted multiple remote usability tests and survey(Qualtrics & surveymonkey)
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Published article on the "think-aloud" protocol in ACM SIGCHI.
Product Design (Interaction Design + Visual Design)
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Well conversant with interaction design principles and methodologies. Drafted reusable design patterns & style guides.
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Built user storyboards, wireframes, task flows, hi-fi prototypes in sketch, invasion and Figma.
Top Contributions
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3 UX patents, published papers and UX articles in Indian and International forums. One recent patent from Flipkart
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At Flipkart, designed Voice User Interface, Videos, Games, Grocery and B2B products like Ad serving and analytics. Defined competency for designers.
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I was the first design manager in India for Oracle. I have set up their design team & Usability lab. Worked on Financial, Clinical, & education products. Presented new concepts in Washington, USA.
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Set up teams for Siemens(SDRC) in India. Managed multi-geo stakeholders from the UK and USA. Conducted user research in the UK. Transformed Teamcenter desktop app to web app.
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At Intel’s IT team, I designed wearable apps for handsfree interaction for shop floor workers. The project was showcased at the IXDA conference, USA. Received Intel Innovation Award
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At athenahealth, set up the design team. Simplified their complex insurance claim settlement workflows. Conducted user research in US and India.
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At Intuit, built GST implementation into QuickBooks product for India. Setup content designer in India and USA.
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At LG R&D, Seoul conducted futurecasting research in UK. Worked on future mobile OS interactions.
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Recognized as the design leader in India, design mentor and jury at HCI conferences.

